I knew this wasn’t going to be good. I dropped my fork and leaned my head on the window of the restaurant. I officially felt like a heaping smelly mess of garbage. It was my own fault of course, I have the eating habits of Rosie O’Donnell and the drinking habits of a 1950’s housewife. My body was going to revolt sooner or later. My last real relationship was with someone named Jack Daniels. It was abusive. Definitely. And this time was no different, except at 24 hours later, the hangover should’ve been gone. Even a Jack hangover.

I waddled home after dinner, feeling more and more lousy- and I remembered when the last time I felt this sick was! It was the night that Jess Stanley and I fell asleep on that street in New York City, right after she was done passing on her SWINE FLU to me! That night, Luke and Devon came over and we watched Cruel Intentions- (the movie that makes everything right) But the only thing I kept hearing out of stupid Selma Blair’s mouth was “Swine flu flu swine flufluflu swiiiiine flu.” The dreaded one and only. H-FUN, N-FUN. The disease, which over here is even worse than avian bone syndrome and super-aids combined! (…so I hear)

In fact, it was not swine flu, and my ability to make things gigantic in my head had proven once again that…well…. I’m dramatic. But whatever I did have hit me like a ton of bricks. In bed. I stayed. Forever. I even missed Wing Night, which was sacreligious on my part, but I hope to repent. 40 hours, in fact, in bed, take or leave a few. And they were boooooring. Work was surprisingly okay about my absences. I tried watching every movie that I had ever thought of. So I did. But after Mean Girls and Aladdin were done, I still had a lot of time to do nothing.

Then the bombs hit. And it wasn’t boring anymore. I realized, we have it pretty cozy in Canada, what with the no bombing of civilians and such. I knew I was scared, but I didn’t know if I should be or not. I have a tendency to overreact, so I really didn’t want to this time. I didn’t have TV, so all the information I was getting on the incident, was whatever I was reading online, which consisted a lot of “Raining down fire,” and such. Combine this with the information (or misinformation) I received from my American military friends, and I was on the brink of panic.

As soon as I was better from this weird flu, I woke up from a short nap and found my body covered in hives. Stress? Maybe. Allergies? Maybe. The doctor at the hospital concluded that I was allergic to the NOODLES I had for dinner. I crooked an eyebrow. He didn’t know Luke and I had been best friends for years. I wanted to tell him that this was impossible because I spend so much time with one gigantic, disgusting, pathetic human noodle, and we go everywhere together, but I figured it might be lost in translation. I wondered if this was the same doctor who told my friend she was too fat to get pregnant, or another foreign teacher that he had leukemia when it had actually only been asthma.

The nurse gestured for me to follow her down the hall. I obliged. She pointed to behind a curtain (with a window behind it to an office) She instructed me to take off my pants. “Oh no! I just have a skin thing!” I replied. She closed the curtain and I waited there. When she came back, she appeared frustrated that I had not taken off my pants, so I obliged. Then she took out two gigantic wide needles. Each of which could’ve eaten me. Courtney Love would’ve shrieked for joy. I was mortified, and stood with my eyes welling up, pants around my ankles, expecting any moment for a bomb to come exploding through the ceiling, finally putting me out of my misery once and for all. Instead, I was stabbed with that gigantic novelty pen. In the butt. And then I was stabbed again with the other one. What on God’s earth was I injected with? That, I will never know the answer. And did it work?

Of course not. I’m still covered in these disgusting sores. Do I know what they’re from? No. Did I pay a boatload of money to go to the hospital twice in one week? Yes siree bob. Looks like Elaine Romero’s prophetic snow globe cards may have hit the nail on the donkey’s head.

Tomorrow is the last day of these “war games” hosted by the Americans and South Koreans. Then we’ll see whether or not China has enough power to stop the North Koreans from retaliating just like they promised to do. I don’t know if I should be scared but I am, I don’t know why my body hates me this much, but it does. I think it’s always important, when life gets hard, to always remember the humour- If I die, at my wake, I’d like to be seated upright, drinking a pina colada, holding an archery set, wearing giant novelty sunglasses and Pittsburgh Steelers helmet. Oh, and I would like to be on a jewel-encrusted throne.

Hivey out.

“I hate Buddha!”

I overheard as I was drawing a scary ghost on the board. I whipped around. “Excuse me, C, what did you just say?” “I hate Buddha!” C repeated, with a look of anger and stubborness which up until this point I thought only I wielded. “Why?” I asked with intense accusation back, fully ready to get into it with this cute 7-year old girl. “Because God hates Buddha because Buddha doesn’t believe in God so I hate Buddha,” she said matter-of-factly with a devlish sparkle in her eye as she twirled her Jesus bracelet around her chubby little gross wrist.

“Actually C, what you just said is everything wrong with the world.” She looked at me puzzled and kind of like she wanted to bite me (again). “You can’t HATE someone because they believe in something different than you do. It’s called freedom of religion. You actually shouldn’t hate anybody. And if you think your religion is telling you to do so, you’re probably misunderstanding it. All religion needs to be inclusive. And if it’s not, we have to change it so that it is. Because what you just said there is basically the start of most wars in this world.”

She heard me and understood me and sat down. “I just love God so much!” was her reply. “I know,” was my only response, because there wasn’t much more I could say about the issue without getting fired, and I turned around to start drawing a mangled (I’m not very artistic) jack-o-lantern.

The kids were drawing little posters of Halloween things to decorate the classroom, and it was incredibly big deal to them that the posters be beautiful. I understood this because being the gemini that I am, when I’m not extremely lazy, I am am an colossal perfectionist. That’s why I was drawing and they were copying. No crappy scribbles were going up on my walls.

When I turned back around, two other girls had their eyes closed and their hands clasped together tightly. “What are you doing, ladies?” I asked condescendingly, knowing full well what nonsense was going on. “Thom teacher, we’re praying that our pictures are beautiful.” I put down my board marker and sighed. “Okay.” I sat down with them. “Whose making these pictures?”… “We are”… “So who is going to make them pretty or unpretty?”… “We are”… “Exactly. No one else is in charge of that. Just you. Making the pictures is your job. And when they turn out beautiful, you know who gets the praise? You do. Because you are good artists. You go to art academy. You practice drawing. It’s your work and it’s your destiny. So drop your hands and pick up those markers!”

I exhaled and dropped into my chair. Phew. That last ten minutes was full day’s work. I smiled at them, picked my marker back up and drew the most kick ass Dracula I’d ever seen. Bram Stoker would have taken me out for cocktails. Never has a “teacher” felt so high on himself.

On my break, Dev and I crossed the street to have a coffee at our regular joint. We sat down drink our coffees, and the craziest thing happened. A book fell right off the shelf and landed half on my lap and half in my hand. If this wasn’t shock enough, I looked down and screamed bloody murder. The title of the book was “Jesus Touch” Dev burst out laughing and I followed suit. But. Then it wasn’t funny anymore. It wasn’t funny at all. I peered up at the ceiling. ‘Alright fine. Point Jesus.’

I like dogs- we’re good company. Dogs are great. But there’s something very very wrong with the dogs here in Korea. They all seem to either be small or mangy, if not small AND mangy, and I’m typically not a fan of small, mangy things unless they’re Italian actors named Raffaele. So, as you can imagine, when we clomped into the dog cafe here in Seoul last weekend, I was significantly horrified. This cafe wasn’t a dog themed cafe, nono, it was infested with actual dogs. It doubled as kennel. Or perhaps a pound. The little demons were jumping on tables, crapping on the floors, eating out of people’s hands and just generally running rampant. There were men with swiffers and toilet paper and squirt bottles following the little cuties (who happened to be uglier than Sarah Jessica Parker after being mauled by a bear) cleaning up the little gifts they were drizzling all over the floor. I hadn’t been this appalled since I saw Valentine’s Day in the theatre. And apparently, everyone there had eaten their methpuffs for breakfast that morning, because everyone was elated that the entire cast of Homeward Bound was accosting them. Luckily, there was a waiting list to get in, so we left after petting a few them, without getting the full “face in crotch while eating” experience.

We had decided to do a cafe day because it was raining once again, so our next stop was the cat cafe, which was perfectly lovely. There was nice, calm music playing, the seating was comfortable, and the cats were at ease. Maybe because they were all slipped heavy sedatives, I don’t know, but they were peaceful nonetheless. One of them seemed to be foaming at the mouth. There were cats in cubby holes, cats above us, cats on our laps. I think my Aunt Carol would have been so happy to be there that her head would’ve spun around and exploded. I never thought I’d say this but…Cats:1, Dogs:0

Out we went back into the rain, thinking maybe Korea was a rain themed country. Other cafes we went to were: Charlie Brown cafe, The Anne house cafe (which was all pink and flowery), a Quiz cafe, a Book cafe (snooze-I’m illiterate anyways) and a Hello Kitty Cafe. Earlier in the day, the girls went to a cafe where there were tied up sheep, but I was too hungover to lift my head off the pillow. I think my favourite was the Charlie Brown cafe, it really brought me back to my childhood (which was extremely recent- becauseimsoyoungstill!) I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out the name of the black Peanut character (It’s Franklin)

I dedicate this post to Veronica the cat. You were a lovely cat, and we will all miss you greatly. R.I.P.

The Cat Cafe; credit Devon

Dog Cafe; credit Devon

An american soldier bought me some strange shot that was on fire. He said his name was Pain. I asked him what his real name was, but he was quite reluctant to tell me. He kept on buying everyone Jager shots (gross) and someone asked him why he liked Jager so much. That is when the best moment of my entire life happened: He unbuttoned his shirt to show  his chest, and there was a giant tattoo of  the jagermeister symbol. The girls I was with immediately started to laugh, but I quickly shushed them. “TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!” I scolded in a whisper. I was dying to know why this stupid idiot would get such a horrible, obnoxious tattoo. “Because it’s biblical”, he responded when I asked him. Biblical. Hmm. We all sat there, flabbergasted. Biblical. “Wh..why is it biblical?”, I asked holding back a fit of laughter, I think a tear actually escaped one of my eyes. Apparently, the story goes that a hunter was in the forest one day tracking down a particular stag, and he was just about to shoot it’s poor little head off when a cross appeared over the stag’s head. A shining cross. So, in the end he didn’t kill the deer because it was imbued with the holy spirit or something like that. More bewilderment all around. This guy wasn’t joking. The tattoo was real. HE was real. And then he showed us some more crosses on his body. Pain….. huh. Pain. I later found out that his real name is Clayton. And he was in Seoul escorting Arnold Schwarzenegger around. You can’t make this stuff up, people!

Last night, we went to Beer O’Clock which is a Canadian bar sort of close to where I live. I was challenged to do the shot challenge. 10 different shots in 15 minutes. Devon and I both succeeded, but she kept hers down. I can’t believe I may have actually found my Ke$ha match. Anyways, because we both succeeded, we get to have our names engraved into their walls Well deserved, I’d say. I’m very proud. I’m sure everyone can easily imagine that I was the essence of class and poise for the remainder of the evening.

“uhh…. our path is becoming water”

This weekend we took a trip over to Seoul forest, which was very funny because there were no trees in Seoul forest. “If there were no trees, what was in the forest, Thom?” You might ask, and I might reply, “ugly sculptures and deer corrals and giant bowling and an area to dress up as Korean royalty or as a native American.” Duh.

The real fun happened however on our way home from the “forest”. The path we were walking down by the river became flooded with water. It was as if the river just expanded. We trudged along anyway, but the neat thing is, it didn’t seem to stop the bikers biking down the path, into the water they went. Some, without seeming to even notice Poseiden had been at work. I would have done it myself, it actually looked kind of neat. Biking on water. Almost biblical. But The Han River makes Lake Ontario look sanitary.

I should explain why the river was flooded. A typhoon. I’m not exactly sure what a typhoon is, but someone told me its just the word for hurricane in Korean. That somehow seems incorrect. I Cowered in my room in fear one of the first nights I was here because of this thing. It sounded like the world was ending. Like in one of those disaster movies. And I wasn’t going to survive cause I wasn’t John Cusack or Jake Gylenhaal, I didn’t scientifically predict it, nor did i have a premonition, and I didn’t have  a pretty wife or cute kids to save to make me a hero. So, yeah. I was going to die. The rumblings sounded like Rita MacNeil had fallen down and the rain smashing into my window sounded like angry knives. Maybe I was going to die, I wasn’t sure, but I was this close to e-mailing my friends to remind them that I needed Arabian Nights (the racist version) to be played at my funeral. In any case, God was going to punish me for that falling out we had a while back. As soon as it died down, I scurried up to Devon’s room, where she informed me she didn’t know what I was talking about and she had slept through it.

Slept through it? We both marveled at that fact as we  walked to school ankle-deep in debris the next morning. Garage doors were ripped off, metal signs were bent, we found out later that a bunch of people HAD in fact died. The city was in a  state of emergency. School was cancelled that  day,  and the rain didn’t really stop for days after that. I considered building an arc.

“Sure, Russ, I know EXACTLY where I’m going!”

My friend from home Russ, and I decided to do some sight-seeing my first weekend here, after what felt like the longest week of my life teaching. You have to be so bloody organized at that school and I have the organizational skills of a sea lion. Needless to say, I’m a tad out of my element. (Organization is another one of those virtues I intend on picking up here) But, at least I have navigational skills. I’m a good traveler, in the way that I can orient where I am quite easily and I always know what direction I’m walking- or so I had originally thought. The subway system is easy enough to get the hang of- but it’s so dang gigantic! It covers what I can only assume is the greater part of the hemisphere and on paper looks more complicated than a spider’s web on speed. You can travel for decades on the subway! And when I say decades, I mean hours. Imagine the biggest city you can. Now multiply that by 6. Seoul is bigger than that city!

Russ and I decide to walk around Samcheong-Dong which has a lot of art galleries. I heroically led him to the subway, through a transfer, out exit 68 and then voila! I look at the map in front of me and then at the intersection and then back at the map. I am lost SECONDS after exiting the subway. It certainly doesn’t help that none of the streets here are named. Probably because there aren’t enough names in existance. The official Newmarket street namer (Elaine Adam aka. my mom) would certainly have her work cut out for her here. I had decided that the route in front of us was west, so west we went. Unfortunately, I was dead wrong, and now we had even less of an idea of where we were than we did before. Luckily for us, we stumbled into an ancient temple, so in we went. It was marvelous. The King who lived there was the King in power when the Koreans finally separated from China. It angered both Russ and I that the architecture in this palace was breathtaking, and yet ALL of the buildings in Seoul are dreadfully drab. Grey concrete. That’s all you see. The buildings have about as much imagination as a Canadian television show. It’s a desert of huge ugly buildings.

After we walked in 70 more wrong directions, we decided to just get on the subway and head over to The Seoul Museum of Art, which was a great idea in theory. There was a strange media exhibit going on. What happened next was strange. The videos (and there were only videos) ranged from news anchors testing out different hues of orange on camera to…. Pilgrims. On a bus. In infrared. My personal favourite was a girl dancing on a roof with a pigeon strapped to a helmet on her head. Everything just basically reminded me of any presentations Kathy Anderson and I did at Ryerson. In essence, a load of mule crap. If you’re thinking I’m ignorant or closed-minded to this stuff, you’re probably right. Although I looked over to Russ at one point and he said to me, “conceptual art isn’t usually like this” I smiled and then announced that I needed to go home. We walked out of there in a daze, as if we had just seen something profound.

“Do you mind if we change your name to Erik?

“I’m sorry?” I replied, still in a haze, sitting on a green furry chair in a room covered in pink and bubbles. It looked like a my little pony had thrown up all over my supervisor’s office at school. My eyes shut for a second and then reopened. I still had only slept 3 hours since Toronto and that was days ago, at this point, i think. I didn’t know. I didn’t know which way was up. I can’t sleep on airplanes, so I didn’t. For the whole trip. If I didn’t have my Chelsea Handler book, I think I may have died of boredom. The plane, however, had somehow miraculously cured any ear pain I was in. Probably. At this point, I’m sure I was too tired to feel pain. Immediately after arriving, I was whisked over to the school where I met my director and was informed that I would start teaching the very next morning. Without any training. Or preparation. Or sleep, apparently. Devon, a fellow foreign teacher met me at my apartment. And when I say Devon, I actually mean my guardian angel. From the very moment I met her, she has been a great guide and friend. After we had some dinner, she invited me to a friend’s house where a small shindig was going down. I of course thought, WWKD?, (What Would Kaitlyn Do?) so I tagged along. Needless to say, when the next morning hit, I was just a tinge exhausted beyond belief. I would have killed Sarah Michelle Gellar herself for a few hours of shut eye on anything fluffy that was lying around. Perhaps I could have on one of those bizarre furry apparatuses I could only assume was a chair that littered the tiny gay office I was now cramped into. Is it apparatuses or apparati?

“Erik teacher was supposed to come, but then he couldn’t anymore. That’s why we rushed you out here as soon as possible. We told all the kids and their parents that Erik teacher was coming, and we don’t want them to know that he backed out. Can we say that you are Erik teacher?” Maybe I was just tired, but this made about as much sense to me as a non-alcoholic cocktail, so I respectfully replied, “No. My name is Thom” And with that, a stack of books, a list of rules and some prayers landed in my hand, and I was pushed into my very own class. I stood, dumbfounded as small Korean children ran around the room, screaming, banging things, throwing things and laughing hysterically at me, the infamous and terrified Erik teacher. At this point, it’s safe to say- I certainly don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

Surprisingly enough, the job became pretty easy very fast. After the initial shock of not really having time to prepare anything, and teaching 8 different subjects to 8 different groups of kids wore off, I learned pretty quickly to just go with the flow. Teaching is a lot like improv. I sort of just start talking and see what comes out. I think my brief second city training may finally be coming in handy. I have taught them about peoples’ moods, mammals, the constitution, and Rosa Parks- among other things. It’s kind of like a grab bag of english fun! An all you can eat buffet of Thom teacher’s brain and all the things inside. I am becoming increasingly more aware that there’s not much inside of that thing (Thank you Unionville and Ryerson) but I sure can charades with the best of ‘em! I think my forte will be teaching them songs and dances- holla back, Jenny Martin!

But the first day. My God, the first day. That was scary. And hard. I slumped over on my desk in the teacher’s room, thinking maybe I had been too hasty signing this full year contract. I had barely made it through day one, and I had bags under my eyes and an insatiable desire to drink heavily. At this rate, by day 300, the kids might be calling me Mickey Rourke teacher. Devon patted me on the back. “You’ll get used to it. Wanna go meet my friends for some drinks? You have no idea how cheap beer is here. And accessible.” And then everything got better. I bolted up in my chair. It was as if Rod Roddy himself (God rest his soul) had just said, “Thom Stoneman, come on down! You’re the next contestant on The Price Is Right” I knew in that instant that she and I would be good friends. Good Ke$ha friends.

“You can’t travel with an ear infection”

These are the words my unhelpful and quite callous flight attendant said as the doors to the airplane slammed shut, and the engine started, “You’ll have to get off the plane”. The fact that she looked like Gayle from Gayle and Oprah was the reason I had decided to let her in on my little problem before take-off, hoping that with her Gayleness she would soothe me by saying “not to worry, you’ll be fine!” and flash me a friendly smile. And because it seemed like the responsible thing to do. Tell someone. (Responsibilty is one of the virtues I intend to gain during this experience)

“You’ll have to get off the plane”

“No!” I lied, not very convincingly to Gayle, “I mean… I’m over it. It went away, I’m just a bit nervous.” “Oh”, she replied stone-faced, “Okay.” and abruptly left. She wasn’t Gayle. She wasn’t Gayle at all. My eyes welled up as I squeezed my entertainment weekly into a ball. Was this going to be the end of my adventure before it had even begun? I felt as worried as my mother wanted me to be about this whole situation. I really did not want my eardrum to pop and spurt large amounts of blood all over the nice woman beside me (Who, by the way was wearing a shirt that said “The trout, the whole trout and nothing but the trout, so help me cod”- I could only assume that Dallas, which was my stop-over, must have been her home) Usually a good pun can snap me out of any bad mood, but in this case it only moderately calmed me down. “It’s going to be fine, dear,” the weird trout lady comforted. Finally, some vague reassurement- that was all I really wanted.

A few months back, I was in a play festival, in which I got paid in tarot card readings instead of actual money. (Ah, the life of an actor.) The playwright, from Arizona, Elaine, who explained to me all about the tick problem in the southern U.S. (Yikes!), read my cards about my adventure to Korea. She said I would be very successful, I would gain much from the experience, and that with my abundance of charisma, I would excel. However, she said my big obstacle would be my health. My health!? It was at this moment on the airplane, driving down the runway at, what felt like the pace of a disabled snail, I cursed Elaine’s name. Elaine and her stupid cards instead of money! I shut my eyes, chewed my gum rapidly and prayed to cod as the airplane lifted off, thrusting me into the start of a new chapter of my life. Whatever happened from that point on was going to be an adventure!