Good day to you all. I thought we could have a thread just to jot down weird thoughts and ideas that may occur as the weekend looms and our leashes start straining.

I might as well start with my Eureka moment of 6 minutes ago as I listen to the atrocious sound of young kids learning to play the violin in the next classroom. People in Korea study English like they learn to play the violin. Genius!

Think about it. Nearly half the kids here study the violin. It's reached the point that the Asian kid who plays the violin is a cliché that Ivy League schools discriminate against them. So many people learn the violin yet no one plays it. No one mournfully plays alone on a rainy day. There are no violin stars in Korea. No one has ever made a party check list that goes; soju, pork belly, beer, assorted nuts and Minseok with his fiddle. Yet they are all next door to me destroying my peace with their futile caterwauling.

Hence my link with English education. I reckon the abysmal level of English in Korea despite putting huge amount of brains and effort in studying it is due to different goalposts. Very few people in Korea want to speak English. A handful at most. All of them want to be good at it though.

And so the kids keep running their bows across the strings and I keep showing them where to put their fingers. It's all so wonderfully futile. It's like I'm saddling a cow.

Anyways, what's making little circles in your brain right now?

I ate too much 돈까스  for lunch. As a foreigner I don't mind taking double the amount that everyone else does. But now I have a stomachache. 

Grade 5 Lesson 7. I will (future verbs).

I will go to Busan this weekend. What will you do?

Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
Eat
Go to the bathroom.
방콕
방콕
방콕
방콕
방콕
방콕
Go to my grandparents.

It's a sad fact of life when a class of 30 students most exciting in going to their grannies house.

40 3rd graders learning the recorder in the next classroom to mine.

I don't think I'm gonna make it.

There are just some people that grinds my gears in Korea.

For about a year, there's been these two ajummas that I pass by in a narrow walkway on the bridge when I'm on my bicycle. They never hear the bicycle bell, so at first I used to just trail behind them until the space got big enough to squeeze by. But lately, they would realize to look behind them every now and then since they knew I was coming, and I would say hi to them. They smile at me and we all continue on our way with no problems. God they grate me.

Another problem I have to deal with is one of my neighbors on my floor. She occasionally brings me home-cooked Korean meals, and they always taste fantastic. The problem is I have to wash those dishes, and thank her for making it. Her kids are also very lovely, which just makes me sick.

Don't even get me started on the maintenance man.

Now that you mention it, Korean English education is circling my brain.

Test time is coming in middle schools, and my co-workers are bringing me their questions to check them over for trouble.

The questions are awful.

They expect students to notice tiny, nitpicky grammar details in sentences that are already grammatically incorrect in far more obvious ways. On top of that, many of the questions are so ambiguous, I can't understand them until they explain that "that" is a conjunction in this sentence, and a relative pronoun in these other sentences, therefore that one is different and the correct answer!

Never mind that these students can barely write a coherent paragraph, they're supposed to be able to discern between a digression and a paranthetical statement. They're dismantling a concrete wall with a scalpel and tweezers instead of a sledgehammer.

It is literally the most inefficient method of learning a language I can imagine short of reading a dictionary.

On this Friday I've been thinking a lot about my friends back home and, like Orangeman, I really just wonder what's up with their weird lives. Some friends I hadn't spoken to for years before I moved to Korea and honestly, it seems like they haven't aged or changed a wink since highschool. They are all still sitting in their respective mothers' basements, smoking bongs and playing video games. No major developments of thought or progress in life. I don't care what they DO, but they all still listen to the same bands, and think the exact same way as in highschool. It just really chaps my ass, since they are all smart guys who just got too caught up in a scene (the weed scene). I wonder what it will be like when I get home...
I also miss my pet chinchilla too much. I hardly miss my friends and family (very random things will get to me, like a song or even smell). But when I think of my pet chinchilla and my stupid little boston terrier/pug mix, I get instantly teary eyed. Is this the case for anyone else, or have I finally lost it?
Also, Sixto Rodriguez IS the perfect music for today.

Guys, there are just too many hotels in Vietnam.

I just showed my kids one of the book's videos about time and Cinderella. And now it's just really bothering me! How did Cinderella just "accidentally" lose her slipper? The whole point was that the shoe was a perfect fit right? Well if it was a perfect fit then it wouldn't have slipped off as she was running away! Only a loose shoe would fall off as you were running! It's just really bothering me and I'm wondering why I never questioned this logic before.....

tl;dr Cinderella was actually quite cunning