Busan

With the United States Armed Forces and the ROK (Republic of Korea) Army at Defcon 4, and my poor mother going months without a word from her baby boy, I figure now is a good time to update you about the happenings in Korea. North Korea is putting on a show, a full court press, to try and use their military might to leverage more drums of oil and bags of rice from China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and the US. I’m wondering if the American media has shown the parades North Korea has been throwing; you know the ones with a bunch of poor North Korean men goose stepping with what appears to be a bunch of Sherman Tanks right in front of them. I don’t know how many Sherman Tanks would be needed to take down ONE Abrhams, but I’m starting the over under line at 50! Their aggressive actions don’t scare anyone in Seoul, except the foreigners. But here’s what is scaring the heck out of them, swine flu. And to be honest, I’m scared too!


South Korea is many things, but clean isn't one of them. The chance of you going to a bathroom that has soap in it is a perfect 50-50 shot. The chances of you going to a bathroom with a liquid dispenser or a clean bar of soap (translation- no small curly black hairs on the bar) are nil. It’s pretty amazing to me that I’m not sick more due to the fact that I work with children and our school is horrible with soap. Yes, in my own school, the 50-50 ratio holds true. (Although I just went to the bathroom to check out if there was soap or not, and there was TWO bars of soap!) For your information, the toilet paper in the stall ratio is an abysmal 20% here at my academy.* Howie Mendel would kill himself if he had to stay here longer than an hour. For the most part, it is foreigners that have contracted Swine Flu, or as they call over here SI. Contracting it first from their native countries and then testing positive for it over here upon arrival. Some foreigners were quarantined for an eight day adventure that you should read about that here. Our company has already given us orders to try and avoid the foreigner districts. I’ve heard of companies threatening to fire anyone who is caught in one of these foreign districts.

*I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but South Koreans don’t flush their used toilet paper. They place it in a trash can.* I’m not saying this is wrong, because I vaguely remember watching a TV program on the problems that toilet paper and other wastes can cause on sewage systems; I’m just saying it is different. Especially in public bathrooms with heaping amounts of used TP.

**Many fancier places***, have trashcans that have a lids on them. You know the lids that flip over and turn in to the trash to open up. I simply refuse to use these lids. You push your trash on the lid. Gross. Then the lid touches more trash in the can. Gross.

*** Of course the fancy, fancy places, aka the western places, don’t even offer trashcans. You can simply flush without feeling guilty about it.

Last weekend took a toll on me. There was a Zach sighting! (Yes Aunt Susan I saw your boy, he is alive and well in Korea) Zach lives on a hill overlooking the ocean. His place is awesome. Like I said, Busan is known as the San Francisco of Korea, and the hills of that city overlooking the ocean have to remind you of San Francisco. We enjoyed the sun, the drinks, and the bloody beach battles. We played sports on the beach for hours. First we played football. And not to toot my horn or anything, but honk-honk I was Randy Moss out there. There were four touchdowns scored, and I caught every one of them. Because of my team’s dominance, we quickly switched to Ultimate Frisbee. Here is a funny quote from the Stuff White People Like website in regard to Ultimate Frisbee., “you will never see hippies get more upset than on an Ultimate Frisbee field. It can be jarring to see people who look like they should be playing acoustic guitars yelling at each other about whether or not Blake stepped out of bounds.” I’ve never played “Ultimate” because I’ve never really thrown a Frisbee before, and I certainly haven’t owned one. So I played this sport for dandies, and I’ve never ran so much in my life. The game is just one long transition break after another. With the sun bearing down on me like Tiger 165 yards out on the 18th hole in Augusta and enough beer in my belly to pass out an elephant, this game was exhausting. I take back every negative thing I ever said about Ultimate. I loved it. But everything on a sandy beach next to the ocean is fun. We also hit the batting cages, played soccer and catch.

So as I’m unsteadily typing this, with a sore, sun bruned body, I can’t really tell if I have SI or a hangover from an exhausting weekend. Here are the symptoms of SI: Body Aches, Fever, Headache, and Chills. Oh crap, check, check, check, and check. Excuse me; I’m going to go check myself into the nearest hospital.*

*I hate WebMD, probably because I’m a hypochondriac. If I type in “sore throat:” on their symptoms checker, I get 20 possible conditions. Here are some of the noteworthy conditions that I might have: Toxic shock syndrome, Dust Exposure, Strep Throat, Throat Cancer, Mumps, and of course Common Cold. Like Woody Allen, I see Throat Cancer and assume immediate death is assured, despite the fact that I’m 23.

Random Thing I Crave from Home Today- Kool Aide

As my time in Korea comes to a temporary end, I've been getting random cravings that I'm going to start to feature. To be honest with you, I haven't had Kool Aide for years, but for some reason I can't stop thinking about that surgary goodness.