A rather surprising state of things, me being calm, especially with my most recent update: the Christmas Cambodia trip, which is not happening in its current planned form, if indeed at all.
It’s my own fault: I used logic & past experience to guesstimate when winter vacation might be, when Koreans possess a heinous anti-logic & usually can’t plan shit, except how to ruin everything.
Christmas Day is a Tuesday, & that is a red day here, so winter vacation always includes it. And so ours does, but this time (I can feel my rage at the motherfucking stupidity rising again as I write about this), we have to come in on Monday the 24th, THEN vacation starts on Christmas Day, through to I THINK Tuesday, the first, which is also a holiday, and coincidentally the day everyone in this God-forsaken fuckshow turns another year older because you can’t even apply reasonable expectations to numbers when it involves age here.When you ask an East Asian how old they are, the ONE NUMBER THEY ARE NOT is the number they tell you. So, we are coming in for ONE DAY b/c the Korean moms will freak out if vacation is too long, & that extra day would DEFINITELY cross that line.
I booked my trip from the 23rd (Sunday) to the 26th or 27th. You can see the problem. Sue of course is unable to change her shockingly-advanced vacay plan b/c Korean moms are crazier than the age system.
I bought the trip insurance yesterday, so hopefully it’ll kick in when I work on changing the trip tomorrow (want to wait til next week, but I’ll be in Borneo & not wanting to deal with rescheduling.) Of course, aside from the added costs of changing the dates is the added bonus of it being high tourist season, so not only will there be a price hike, it’ll also be that much harder to find a hotel. Once I’ve decided on my new dates. Yesterday I was pretty not-thrilled all day, only to get home & decide to lose it, as I do on the reg here b/c it’s such a thoroughly shitty, NOT FUCKING DEVELOPED FUCK SHOW.
Did I mention our building shut off the hot water this AM from 9:30-11? This is after they shut off electricity & ALL water last week for the same time frame, because that’s a thing you have to do every few months here if you live in an old building (read: 20-30 years old). HOW IS THAT A THING? WHY is it a thing? I’ve no earthly idea. & I can’t think about this shit anymore because I accepted the shittiness today & must move on somehow.
But this shitshow is never truly done teasing me with the illegality of logic here. My 1st year middle school class decided they want to have a speaking class (GREAT, getting kids to practice speaking is damned important, & impossible, though admittedly not with this particular class), via a debate class. Why do I hate this? Please refer to the logic statements above. The worst part is, when I try to explain to the students that their supporting argument actually is irrelevant to the topic or, as in yesterday’s case actually supports the opponents’ position, they didn’t get it. Fair enough; they may need explanations like that in Korean b/c it’s more complicated, & they’re middle school kids still learning. But the KOREAN TEACHERS don’t get it either. So I can’t even ask them to explain the concept as they’ve never seen logic, never mind are able to explain it to kids.
Annnnnnnd I just found out that the mother of a 1st grader called because her daughter goes to the piano academy after ours, which is down 1 floor in this building. The student apparently runs too fast down the stairs, so the mom called, not making this fucking shit up, to tell the Korean homeroom teacher she has to walk the girl down the stairs to the piano academy bc it’s unsafe for her to go alone.
I can’t anymore, I have to stop writing before I become violent. And that’s about it from update land anyway, I think. I can add Thai green curry paste to the allergens list, which I discovered by making a paleo Thai green curry for lunch this week. This shit just never ever, NEVER EVER EVER GETS OLD!
