Exercise and me have a weird relationship. Exercise is always there, is good to me and will take good care of me if I let it. All I have to do is give it some regular attention. This meager task has been beyond me for most of my adult life. I can’t count the number of times I “discovered” health, totally getting psyched in my head that THIS TIME WILL BE THE TIME I GET IN SHAPE. I buy workout clothes and a new combination lock for my gym locker. That combination lock usually would usually end up on my shelf with several other combination locks. Why did I have so many combination locks on my shelf? Because I would inevitably stop working out… and then forget the damn combination. I think I had four or five locks by the time I left for Korea; a painful reminder of health-attempts past.

My current getting-healthy endeavor began four weeks ago, when I received a call from a fellow teacher friend named Issac. He found out about some Tae Kwon Do classes that offered a nice rate on group lessons. The class was going to meet every day from 11-12am at a Tae Kwon Do gym conviently located one block away from my apartment. It seemed like a safe bet to me. Sure, I hazarded. Why not? What did I have to lose?

As it turns out, only one more person elected to join us (fellow teacher Natalie), and we went to our first lesson filled with trepidation but lots of eagerness. Our new teacher was a guy named Master Jeong (pronounced like “Bong”). We all thought he was in his twenties, but he surprised us by saying he was 41 with a wife and family. Flabbergasted, we began our first lesson.

Master Jeong’s english is, unfortunately, not very good, but despite the language barrier he managed to convey his meanings very effectively. It wasn’t long before we were doing lots of kicks and punches into the air while leaping about and shouting “Aiya!” We were all very aware of how old, out-of-shape, and white we looked. I’m sure the image I presented resemebled something akin to a beached whale trying to punch it’s way back to sea, but we preservered.

The next morning I woke up to every muscle and limb screaming bloody murder. I stood up, my legs nearly refused to cooperate. An MSN conversation with Natalie revealed that she felt the same way, but we agreed we’d definitely keep with it. A hot shower and a cup of coffee later, I was back at Tae Kwon Do class – leaping and kicking and destroying my body all over again. The next day, I did it again. And the next.

Four weeks later, I am still doing it. I no longer ache in the morning, and look forward to it every day. Master Jeong is an amazing teacher, and one of the nicest people I have ever met anywhere. He occasionally joins us for lunch after class, and although our conversations are difficult he is great company. He even took us out for Christmas dinner with his family, which was an amazing gesture on his part. He seems to be on a mission to stretch me, as he once remarked that my back was “very very stiff!” (I have a accupuncturist friend at home who can attest to the same thing). Sometimes, when Issac and Nat are doing their cool-down exercises, Master Jeong grabs me and starts twisting me into various shapes. It’s wicked painful, but feels great afterward.

Already I can feel it sort of working. I can do more sit-ups now than when I started, and although I haven’t noticed, Master Jeong says I am kicking much higher now than four weeks ago. Tomorrow he wants us to take a test for our orange belt, which is the next baby step after white. I am not sure if we are ready, but if he says we are than I guess we are.

I know I probably should have posted about this sooner, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it up. It would have just been embarressing to announce that I was taking Tae Kwon Do only to explain that I stopped a mere three days later. I can safely say that won’t happen soon, but I am still glad that I didn’t have to buy a combination lock.

The last week of the term was spent trying to find lots of supplemental things for the kids to do. The fill-in-the-comic-dialog game proved to be a popular activity, and as usual I nabbed photos of the best ones.

This comic is called “Player Versus Player”, or PVP for short. It’s an online webcomic that you can read here . I enjoy the comic very much, and I figured it would be good fodder for my students’ creativity.

Tae Kwon D’oh!

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Pizza and Ketchup

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Mmmm Tasty

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A Happy Killing

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I remember, way back when I first got here, I complained about the heat. Now that December is here and winter has reared it’s ugly frostbitten head, I find myself longing for those carefree days of five months ago. Let me tell you people, it’s friggin’ cold.

Wearing layers doesn’t seem to help, as the frigid air seems to find every chink and fold in whatever clothing I wear and gleefully blasts my innocent flesh with its icy chilliness. Keeping healthy is an impossibility. Not only do I have to contend with this cold, I am also exposed to about fifty little germ factories (i.e. children) every day. Despite every precaution I take, some clever little germ will inevitably make its way into my system. Coughs, sneezes, sore throats, or runny noses never seem to apart from me for very long.

This website hasn’t been updating very often lately. This is mainly due to the unfortunate fact that I haven’t been doing very much. Instead, I have chosen to remain holed up in my apartment like a frightened squirrel.

Oh well. I suppose it could be worse. At least I am not suffering through a transit strike like my brethren back in New York City.

P.S: Happy Birthday, Alison!

So my first full term has come and gone. My six classes worth of kids have vanished into the educational ether. I am teaching different levels next term, so even if some of the kids return to the school I still won’t be seeing them again anytime soon.

It’s left me a tad melancholy, but I suppose that’s part of the appeal of this job. There is no such thing as getting comfortable. You start a term, you spend a month learning all the kids’ names and discovering their little quirks and personality traits. Some are wicked smart, some are major trouble makers, some don’t care, and some are diabetically sweet. You try and teach then as best as you can. Some are receptive, some aren’t. There are times you want to strangle them all, but there are times that absolutely melt your heart. Then when you are finally getting used to things… blip! Time’s up and a new batch of kids come in.

Some of these kids, for good or ill, are so memorable that they’ll stay with me forever. I’ve already spoken at length about the girl who cried during class, but there are several others.

Like, oh say, Sarah. This little cherub of a girl would always bound up to me and grab my arm, for no reason that I could discern. I’d try and shake my arm but she’d always hold on. If she wasn’t holding my arm she’d be standing in front of my podium. She’d put her chin on the edge and stare up at me with the widest, most innocent eyes I’d ever seen.

Or Tommy. He is the wildest, most uncontrolable, and yet the most hysterically funny child I have been involved with. His favorite activity was taking the foldable paper cups from the water fountain, blowing into them, pressing them shut, and then popping them. He was so obsessed with them that he would often conceal a couple of dozen on his person during class. It was impossible for me to confiscate them all. He would also, for no reason that I could think of, spontaneously shout “Jam!” at random moments. This isn’t a korean word, he was actually referring to the spreadable jelly stuff.

June. A boy, small for his age, who would give out candy or snacks to the whole class 1-2 times a week. No reason for it, he just did it. A smart and funny kid who would unfortunately often fall sway to the “trouble-makers” that made up the class. I would always try and seat him seperately from the other boys because I noticed he would always perform better away from them, but it didn’t always work.

Bomin. This little girl was the shyest kid I had ever known. At the beginning of the term she would sit in a corner and rarely say a word. It was a great surprise to see that her essays were brilliantly creative (often using a story to convey what she was trying to say) and very well written. As time went on, I noticed her moving closer and closer to the other girls in the class. Eventually, she was chatting and laughing and wouldn’t keep quiet like everyone else. It was a joy to witness.

Julie and Suzi. These girls were always together, sitting in the back and ignoring me. They never did their homework, never paid attention, and more-often-than not were always listening to their mp3 players. What always struck me about them was how they were always always doing everything together, in unison. If one had to go to the bathroom, so did the other. If one had a question, the other had the same question. On the occasions when they did speak, they would finish each others’ sentences.

Joe. For a kid of 11 years old, he has an unhealthy obsession with terrorists. I would dread asking him to answer a question, because the answer would typically be “terrorist”, “murder”, “suicide”, or “a bomb!” I did my best to explain that these jokes were not funny and in even worse taste, but try explaining that to an 11 year old kid. When he finally started insisting that everyone call him “Joe-sama Bin Ladin”, I threw my hands up in the air and gave up. Hopefully he’ll figure it out one day.

Seddy. This little girl is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand, she seemed to never pay attention. She was always doodling cartoon characters in her notebook. But on the other hand, she always answered a question whenever I called on her. Her essays were always funny, well-written, and fun to read. Her cartoons were also brilliantly drawn. If she ever decides to go into artwork, she’s got a great career ahead of her. On the last day of the term, she handed me THIS DRAWING, which is now taped above my desk.

Well, that’s about it for this term. New set of classes start today. Woo-hoo.

Many of you seemed to like the peanuts cartoons I posted last week. I found the excercise to be quite enjoyable so I gave the kids a few more comics to play around with. This time around, I used a classic: Andy Capp! Here are two that had me laughing.

A dirty killing

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Insulting the teacher is a way of life

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Are you having a feeling fine day? I know I am.

I feel much better. Thanks everyone for your emails and comments. There’ll be a real update tomorrow.

Bleh.

I am sick.

Go away.

Let’s get one thing straight – asian cinema is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. A lot of these films are impossible to categorize, because of the cultural and philosophical differences that go into the creation of them. In the west, films are marketed into a simple categories like “Action” “Comedy” or “Romance” and presented to the world in a simple package. I have seen several films from Asia in the last year, and more so since arriving here, and they defy classification. I seriously doubt a Western film distributing company would know what to do with them.

Cynicism aside, I thought that I would share some of my Korean cinematic experiences on this website. I’ve seen several bloggers make attempts at film reviews, and I decided to follow the trend only because most readers of this site would never discover them otherwise.

So, yeah. Today I present the following:

This film is best described as a dark comedy, and by dark I mean very dark. The titular family is the Kangs, who have moved from Seoul to open a small mountainside hotel. For weeks, they have no business and are getting sad and desperate. A lone man finally arrives to spend the night, they are so excited that they almost scare him away in their eagerness to please. When this first customer kills himself in his room, the family panics and decides to bury him in the woods instead of dealing with the police (and the bad press that would result). When their next two customers – a young couple – kill themselves too, they immediately bury them as well.

Keeping these mishaps quiet proves to be more difficult they they imagined, as more dead bodies inexplicably turn up. Just about every guest at the inn is accident-prone, and more-often-then-not they find themselves dead in some mishap or another. As the body count grows higher, so does the family’s experience with burying them. In one memorable scene, the Kang patriarch praises his son’s ability with a shovel (”The first one took you over an hour. Now it takes you 2o minutes, tops!”). One can suppose that the theme of this film is how a dysfunctional family can come together via solving a crisis, even if that crisis involves corpses and burying them.

Of course, the police eventually get wind of all the missing people in the area and begin to get involved. What makes this film so brilliant is how the Kangs manage to get out of every situation only to find themselves with more bodies to dispose of. It was a pleasure to watch, and unlike anything I had ever seen before. I would heartily recommend checking it out if you can find it.

Do you realize that I have updated every single day this week? It was a promise I made to myself last week, and I am proud to have kept it. I was a bit worried because I couldn’t think of anything to post today, but then Matt Gardner sent me something I figured I’d share.

Matt Gardner is an extremely talented cartoonist from Arizona, whom I met online a few years ago. He has the misfortune of being on the receiving end of my various creative brainstorms and I am very fortunate that he occasionally gets inspired to sketch some stuff that I come up with. He does so without any prompting from me, simply because he loves to draw and he is always looking for inspiration.

In any case, today he sent me some sketches of Tim and Timothy Walters, the twin detective duo from “Two of a Kind”. He came up with a new look for them and was inspired to draw. Lacking anything else to chat about today, I figured I’d share.

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Tim and Tiffany in an “action pose.”

Standing around.

Tiffany looks like she has a secret.

Tim rocks out. Tiff wants to play Candy Land.

Tiff is excited. Tim is annoyed.

As a side note, Matt was the author of a hysterical webcomic called “It’s Gravy”. The comic is sadly discontinued, but the archives are still around. He’s also created some brilliant animated shorts on Newgrounds. I’d highly recommend checking both of these out if you are in need of a laugh.

The other day, one of my co-teachers suggested a brilliant new activity to try with the kids. You print out a comic strip, erase all the text from the word balloons, and then ask the students to fill in their own dialog. Since it is nearing the end of the term and I was in desperate need of some fun supplemental activities, I pounced on this idea. I meandered onto the web and finagled my way onto www.peanuts.com, whereupon I printed out this comic:

I used MSPaint to erase the words. I then printed it, copied it, and presented it to the wee ones in triumph. The results were unexpected to say the least. Some of the strips had Charlie Brown and Linus Van Pelt killing each other, while others decided that they were in love with each other. Some, however, had me laughing so hard that tears nearly streamed out of my eyes. I wanted to share the top five on this website. I don’t have a scanner, so I did my best with a digital camera.

Runner up #2: Linus the pathological liar

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Runner up #1: Stating the obvious

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Third Place: A faux pas
(Warning! Bad handwriting alert. Click here for an easier-to-read version).

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Second Place: Calling his bluff

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First Place: Master Charlie Brown

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I wonder what the kids would do with Garfield.