Friday, August 29, 2008

Here stands the ancient tortoise guarding the shores of Daejung-eup, where I teach.
Oh wait he's sideways oh well.
Below is a sign indicating the room where the man goes. The picture after that reveals the room itself.

This beach is a popular loitering spot for litter. I rode up to it on my scooter after I dropped by my school today.
As I start teaching from 3:30 to 9:30 on Monday, today marked the last weekday I would get to enjoy the Jeju sunset on this littery beach. As soon as I sat down on the dirty sand facing the dull azure ocean shore, I felt almost as pacified as I do while riding my moped. I immediately decided that for some reason I love this view.

As well as this one.
And this one.

This one too of course.
And now I leave you with the four attempts it took me to photograph myself flashing the west-side symbol palm facing out. Jeff tells me it's the cool thing to do on this island right now.
-Big Wilkinson
Posted by Will Wilkinson at 4:08 AM 2 comments
Thursday, August 28, 2008

Teaching
I realize I didn't get around to talking about the beach last time, so I'll kick this one off with a quick note on that. But first of all, I should finish up my perfunctory living accommodations report by explaining the social life here. I actually kind of live in the country. My immediate neighborhood consists of three houses, red, blue, and yellow, respectively (I'm in the middle), and several surrounding fields of ambiguous crops. During the day, seventy year-old women work the fields by hand, their bodies completely covered by thin cloth and straw hats half a meter in diameter. There are many more houses lining narrow, winding streets just a "block" north of us. My roommate Jeff told me he likes to get lost in that area late at night, where he sometimes meets up with a man who in one way or another identifies himself with Okinawa and sells him monster oranges. Jeff said their conversation is always the same. The man says, "Washington D.C. Good!" Jeff replies, "Yeah!" And the man says, "Verrrrry good!"
I do indeed have a roommate named Jeff, an early 30-something dude from Virginia Beach (not D.C., by the way) who spent a few lucrative years selling mortgage plans until he got sick of it. He is the only other white person I know here, but he's sociable enough to make up for it. Since being hired five months or so ago, Jeff probably hasn't saved as much money from the job as he could because he is too busy buying people treats all the time. He buys his co-teachers ice cream because, as he tells me, "They love that stuff," and then he laughs. I'm lucky to have such a genuinely good-natured guy living with me. Right now we're bonding through Bob Dylan.
OK that's all you get.
-Big Wilkinson

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Da Stuffs I Do

I got a text message from Ricco Green today. It simply contained the old adage "It's never too late to party time." I reflected on it a bit and then sent Ricco a response text showing my excitement that he had remembered and thanking him for reminding me. I feel like we should all take a minute and remember that every so often. I'm quite sure Gink could use a helpful hint of that nature every once in a while.

To be honest it couldn't have come at a better time. Ricco always was one for accidentally presenting me with the most appropriate advice. Basically today has been hectic. I signed up for the subject test for the GREs. A wonderful $130 that I'll never see again. During the registration process (one which I thought would take a moment and involve me filling in my name and credit card information) I was expected to name 5 schools I wished my scores to be sent to, the departments I would be applying to in those schools, and probably a dozen other tidbits about my hopes and dreams that I had been putting off solidifying until just then. I grumbled something about being unprepared. Shannin, the grad student who shares some area in the lab with me, laughed that I didn't have things figured out yet. Maybe I should have been more on top of things? I have yet to sign up for the general test more planning and paying-I think I'll save that for another day... Anyway...

I finished up registration just before going to the second of two courses I am taking this semester. Although I am not a graduate student I decided that with my abundance of time I might as well sign up for a graduate level class offered by the professor I am working for. The class is basically presentation of papers (one per week by one student) and then their discussion. We drew numbers to see what order we would go in.

I drew the first date.

I should have popped a few Bayer before leaving the house this morning.

Luckily Shannin offered to switch days with me. Everyone laughed. I accepted. Duh. She's kinda my wingman today.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

BlogSpot-meet your new master.

I've come to the shocking realization in the past 2 hours that everyone who is anyone has a blog spot. Up to 2 hours ago I had no blog spot. You can imagine my shock-up until 2 hours ago I was no one. I am now someone. Ha-I can't wait to go to my first high school reunion and shove THIS in their faces.
Anywho-now I'm here blogging my little heart out. I realize in a life that goes: Sleep-*Hopefully run*-eat-work-class-eat-work-eat-clean-sleep there isn't a WHOLE lot that is SUPER interesting to blog about. I also realize it's your problem if you are reading it and not mine. I'm saying I don't care that I'm boring if you aren't following. You can thank Big Dog Daddy, my mom and my cousin Sarah for what you're about to get yourself into.