Farting Game

Possibly the best game ever created--out of its way Mario, or it'll fart on you

Hide the Fart

Defensive Walking

My Seoul residing friend Krista brought this video to my attention. It does not pertain only to Seoul but is sound advice for most of Korea. Though they need to catch on video some of the events they warn against.

Old photos, just developed

Traci brought a waterproof camera in to get developed, a camera I forgot we even had. Most of the pictures were blue and underwater, but some came out.

Floating down a river outside Vang Vieng, Laos.



As you can see, it made us very happy.




Stupidly, goofy, giggly happy



Partly because I just swung off this thing after losing count of the beer I consumed, and didn't die.




Traci, underwater, making her trademark sound, a nasally euennggg



and here I am, looking sophisticated, as usual

It's Sorta a Wrestling Move . . .

It was a beautifully passing week for me at school. Some minor irritations chaffed on Monday, mainly the notification that I would have a new conversation class on Tuesday/Thursdays during one of my much-loved breaks, but the rest of the week seemed to flow by in a tired river of kids.

The new class turned out ok. Usually these two-student conversation classes more resemble romparoom than anything to do with education. In one of my previous classes--now moved over to Traci's jurisdiction ha--the two 6 year-old girls most productive use of the English language was squirming around the floor saying "I'm a worm!" Or hopping around saying "I'm a rabbit." Writing activities and even games quickly deteriorated into princess drawing sessions followed by "I'm a princess" repeated till the phrase had no meaning.

But the new class of Philip and Stephanie seems different. They stay in their seats; they participate; the speak English, even though at 7 they have no command of the language. Thursday, they became quite animated, somewhat scarring me into a realization that maybe it's me. Maybe I make kids crazy.

Maybe. But I generally do not make kids cry. Keith, our roommate and colleague on the other hand . . .

Yesterday, Traci and I were joking with Olivia Teacher, a new hire who speaks well and has a small son at the school, about how, just maybe, I do make kids crazy. Keith stepped in with "I think I made a kid cry today."

No cause for alarm. Kids cry all the time, especially in this country where they're coddled and babied through their first 22 years of life. A kid flips you the bird, you take away a measly amount of "points" that amount to a fraction of a notebook they could buy with change found in a gutter, and they cry. They get thrown out in dodgeball, and they cry. They don't win a writing game when they thought they would, and they cry.

So we joked "How? What'd you do this time?"

"Well," Keith said slowly "it's sorta a wrestling move."

Quite easily the best line I've heard in a month. It was poetic in it's timing, the silence that enveloped it, and the bursts of acerbic laughter that followed. I think Olivia, being a little older and not so into WWE etc., was more puzzled than uncomfortable.

He began to explain. "He was standing on the chairs looking out the window," not paying attention.

I guess he does this a lot, but Traci told me he is one of those kids that's a little out there, seemingly somewhere else but able to respond to whatever question he's called upon to answer during class.

So Keith gave him a choice either minus three points--a terribly insignificant amount--or something else. Something undescribed.

Naturally the kid took the "something else." Not gonna lose three points over something insignificant . . .

"So, I took him and" Keith demonstrated the backbreaker.




Laughter growing, jaws dropping, pointing, kids are looking in the door to the teachers office wondering why

"Then, I threw him on my shoulder," he continued "and spun around really fast. And made like I was going to throw him out the window." The same window, minutes before, the kid was placidly looking out.

"When I put him down, he had tears streaming out of his eyes."

"Keith, you can't do pile drivers on yr kids," I derided.

"That one's next," he said with a smile and laugh.

"Pretty soon parents are going to be calling the school, saying my son's talking about WWE and backbreakers . . . what's this about?" Traci laughed.

I can see Jane Teacher, the scatterbrained receptionist, puzzled and asking Keith "uh, Keith Teacher, uh some parents, they called, and uh, they are uh worried about 그뭔데 wrestling?" and the uncomfortable silence after.

Keith didn't explain what happened after that. The bell rang ding dong and we had other classes to go to, Keith, other kids to conquer.

Saturday Walk

We found the trail that each of us discovered in two seperate walks was one in the same yesterday. We followed it to an end, what we were hoping would be an easy route to Jenny's apartment in the neighborhood we lived last year, but found what smelled like a nightsoil field that had to be crossed.


Before leaving I took a picture of Traci at the start of the trail from our roof. She was puzzled by the navy blue man sized object that she couldn't remember putting there. Then she turned "oh a piece of garbage . . . " and forgot all about the strange sight until I showed her the picture.





The trail wound up and over a small wooded hill covered in graves and small vegetable plots. Some new holes were dug, seemingly ready for someone, and labled with what you could see in two different directions. One reason for the absence of bodies may be that the views are of somewhat dilapadated vegetable hothouses and a gas station.

Down one hill past the scrap metal heap and up the other side.



Where we found more grave mounds and small vegetable plots




and passed by the school and playground where I took my first tentative steps on the yellow dirtbike last year. It was where Greg and I made slalom courses and figure 8's of trash to practice tight turning. Having done that for a while I tried to see how fast I could get it and nearly crashed.





We saw a woman working her rows overlooking the fields that stretch north from Gumi towards Seonsan. They are just starting to look green and alive, the harbinger of spring when Korea sheds it's shit-feathers and actually becomes a beautiful place.




We jumped a small fence after walking through the aforementioned nightsoil fields and ended up in our old complex, now known as shitville. It was a ghost town, eerie and like something out of a bad horror movie. Doors were flapping and banging in the wind. Garbage was left everywhere as if people fled some plague (birdflu?) Adding to the atmosphere were the red circles painted on all the empty apartments signaling to passersby the contaminated units, the places to be left alone.


We started digging through the trash, of course, looking for gifts for Jenny or a table for our rooftop lounge now in construction. We found both. A car pulled up to one place, actually displacing us from a particularly interesting pile of trash. An old couple got out and went inside, giving us maybe a glance. I told Traci they were the stubborn ones, not willing to give up their homes to some developer owned by one the massive conglomerates that run the business of this country. I even compared them to the Saved by the Bell episode where the kids help save their favorite resort in Hawaii from doom by developer. Sadly I don't think this old couple has the ingenuity of Zach, Screech and AC Slater to lend a hand.




The place creeped Traci out, though she couldn't pull herself away



We found a nice broken mirror to take a serious self-portrait in. It may be holiday card material.



And more broken shards littering the ground behind an overfilled dumpster.



One place we looked into and found an onion, though sporting a green shoot, still quite usable, laying in the middle of the plethora of ajumma shoes. There was other trash about and a black plastic bag of bean sprouts a little past there prime. I expected someone to jump out at me, some big guy with tattoos going up the back of his neck and arms lined with sunken veins, telling me he was squatting this pad and for me to bugger off. No such thing happened, though a little later a man with a broom did come from around the back of another building--a terribly scarry thing indeed.

Around the backs of the apartments, you might still think they were lived in, albeit by sloppy sloppy families.



We walked through one place, not trashed inside, but not left in a condition anyone would be proud of. Even the floor seemed empty and hollow.



We had finally had enough. It was a little sad. When we moved out in August we were under the impression it would all be torn down to make room for new apartments, something not so ghetto. Instead, it's still there looking more like junkietown than ever.


We started looking at this pile of garbage and realized that just behind it was the courtyard where we barbecued all last summer, where children were still riding bikes around in circles, and adjoining that our old building. Our old place is the one with the fan in the window on the first floor, near the center of the image, if you can see it.



Taking pictures, to us then seemed a gauche and tactless thing to do. We went up to the mart where we would buy our beer, sometimes several times in one day, and bought some beer. It was like giving water to a dying person. The shelves were all nearly empty and on those products remaining a patina of dust told us how long they'd been there. There were mainly things that nobody buys from a small mart: five gallon jugs of a variety of soy sauces, massive bins of pepper, ironing boards. And there were products that people still buy on a daily basis in a dying area, at a failing local mart: beer, soju, chips, chocolate. Just past the door on the way out I took this picture on the sly--it's a little blurry--further evidence the old neighborhood's quietus draws near.

the first thunder I've heard since SE Asia just spread through the sky putting a cap on any and all plans I had to leave the house today. I was merely drizzly before and I was itching to get outside and walk along a path I just found yesterday that leads from where we live now to where we lived last year. It leads through an area you might even call woods, with some nice views of the farmlands that stretch north of here. But the possibility of mud held me off and the thunder woke me to the fact that I would not be leaving the house.

It's been that sort of weekend. Yesterday I read and farted around house, went out for two beers, came back and watched Apocalypto with Keith--It didn't have much substance to it--and that was the Saturday.

I may have found some pots, Greg delivered me some seeds, all I need is some dirt and a little good weather and I''l start my rooftop herb garden. Keith wants to plant some tomatoes and possibly other veggies.

farting is still funny