They are cute and have no fingers

Nathaniel is in love with our budgies. He spends hours talking to them, kissing them, cuddling them, singing to them, playing other birds sing to them, feeding them, observing them. Before we got birds I had no idea that so much time can be spent on these little creatures, so many things can be discovered and noticed about them. Live and learn.

Kids doing drama.

These are kids from our summer camp. They were made to do a scene from Harry Potter 2, the one between Dobby, the house elf and Harry. Cool scene with a ton of possibilities to have fun and try one's creative expressions. Kids sucked at it though, after three weeks of practice, analysing, getting mime and drama classes. They are too tight and inexpressive, so the whole thing looks awkward and non entertaining. Can anybody eve understand what they are mumbling?! Can anyone believe that two talented teachers have been working with them on it?! I can not put it on my Korean blog which I write for the purpose of promotion and advertising unless I risk trying negative advertising with Korean parents, which would be a suicidal feat. The reality of educating Korean kids is that you will have to get into an unequal battle with the society consisting of peers and parents and their educational system. Everything in the opposite party drills into them that they have to give up their individuality, creativity and any need for self-discovery and self-expression. Their ultimate goal is conforming and fulfilling tasks given to them by a higher authority. We know we are fighting unfair battle.

Mosquito killing spray

This mosquito spraying machine comes every morning, on weekdays usually after I am gone to work. On the weekends it comes around 8 a.m. spreading noise, nasty smell and smoke. The whole neighborhood looks as if it were on fire. I wonder if they are ever going to write them off to history because these ancient machines are not effective for the purpose they were designed which is killing mosquitoes.

Coats in 30 degrees above zero

This is a photo of a random guy who is wearing a winter coat in the 30 degrees summer heat.

4 for 60

These are our four students. They come from two families. We gave them a great deal. For the beginning, we discounted 50% for each second child in the family. In addition to this, their mothers got extra 60,000 won d/c from me for every month. Our original price for 4 students would be 880,000 won; now we are getting 600,000 won. Oh well, for the first sale it is ok, the more we do it the better we get. We were ready to give free classes at the beginning, but noone wanted them. Now we get this 600,000 won to pay our rent and the electric bill. We haven't been marketing for over almost three weeks now. There haven't been any phone calls. Now, as the armistice between Nathaniel and I has been reached, I hope we will go back to marketing. We will have much less time for it now though because we got part time jobs in some small hagwon. I am a bit worried about spending our energy and time working for others, and I seriously worry that it will undermine us working for ourselves. I fear the business will suffer. I must prevent it.

Angina versa Migraine

This is honey aka apple pie aka baby aka bunny aka sweety. The past few weeks were very difficult in term of adjusting to each other and sharing life basically. So we pretty much sucked a lot of each other's blood. As a result of multiple and non ending collisions between my force and his we developed minor ailments: on my part-angina, on his-migraine. It is worth mentioning that he hardly ever gets any kind of headache, let alone migraine. He hardly ever gets sad because sadness makes him sick.
My reaction on the war was having panic and anxiety attacks and suffocating and rapid heart beat. Sounds severe; the was was brutal and merciless. I was ready to fight to the last drop of blood, or until I get MY MESSAGE ACROSS. But seeing Nathaniel starting to fall apart, I surrendered and we made peace. For now.

Deshevo i Serdito.

so four dishes: rice, noodles, rolls, chicken, and a bottle of beer came up to 26,000 won. Deshevo i Serdito which is "cheap and angry" if traslated literally from Russian.

Chinese

After the beach we went for some Americal style chinese food. John, joined us for that. He especially liked the food, and said it was very similar to what they get at a chinese place back home, in Canada. We ordered four dishes: shrimp fried rice, spring rolls, vegetable noodles, and sweet and sour chicken. We shared the food and all were stuffed; you can see Alla rubbing her ready to explode stomach in the picture. Good food; great prices. The only disadvantage is that it is a smoking place which actually turns me off from going there again.

Weekend wanderings

Saturday was a beach day, where we met Alla for coffee and a walk. Lina was unusually sociable.

Biking pains

Korea banned bikers on the subway. The new rule says you can take your bike on the subway on Sundays or a holoday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. How reasonable is that? We were going to a meeting when we were stopped. I filed a formal complaint at the subway office, and Nathaniel yelled at the workers at the top of his lungs about how stupid this new rule was. Here he is in the picture looking pissed after the yell. Now his next step is to walk around bike shops and sign a petition against the rule.

Saturday

I look forward to Saturdays. As all people do who do not have to work or rush anywhere on a Saturday morning. I dread Saturdays because my morning peace can be easily disturbed my intruders. Saturday mornings are especially noisy and filled with unwelcome visitors. It is noisy because trucks like to sell stuff outside and advertise it through loud speakers. Last Saturday we were awoken by the door bell followed by banging on the door, followed by kicking on the door, followed by a man screaming my name. I would have ignored the bell, the banging, but it was impossible to ignore kicking and screaming. I got up and tried to talk to him through the door. He was saying he was a Korean good helper who helps foreigners living in Korea. He needed to know how he could help me. It was absolutely important that he should pass the "help" info to the main foreigners helping center in HAEWOONDAE whose people had visited me earlier but were not able to meet me. I told him to go away and that I was still in bed and didn't need his and his help center help. He wouldn't leave, instead kept calling my name, and banging on the door. I went to the toilet to take a piss, washed my hands, took some time looking for my gown, hoping he would leave. After 10 min. he was still at the door. I opened the door, gave him a very angry glare:'Do you know what time it is now? It is 6 in the morning. It is Saturday'- "It is 6:15. The HAEWOONDAE helpers came. We want to help. You have many problems in Korea" At that moment he was my biggest problem, and he could have helped by not helping. He was about to tell me about the activities of the help center and how badly I needed them. I cut him off, grabbed a piece of paper he was holding in his hands and shut the door. My so anticipated Saturday sleep in was interrupted irreversibly. I tried to go back to sleep, but thoughts of "helping Koreans" kept popping into my head.
As I was thinking about "help in Korea" the noisy vendor truck came. After the truck the mosquito killing engine started passing under my windows spraying gas and horrific smell.

Korean Salsa recruits

Korean salsa recruits new students every month. They get trained and in the end of the course stage a performance in a bar. They approach it very seriously by getting fancy dresses, and professional make up and hair. All of which costs quite a bit of money. I did that too after graduating from my first course. The guys in shiny dresses and white shirts in the picture just danced their act.
And social dance again.

Korean salsa scene

I have been dancing salsa in Korea for almost two years now. Initially I took a couple of beginner classes, and after this I have been doing social dance in one of many salsa bars in Busan once or twice a week. Somyung area in Busan has at least three bars I know of. There is one in Busan National uni and a couple in Haewoondae. When I started two years ago, there were two bars only, the grassroot bar in Somyung called "latino", which is operated by a couple of professional salsa dancers; and there was one in Busan Uni area operated by a freelance artist and photographer. the bars are competing for the same crowd though. Each bar tries to keep fresh blood and flesh coming by recruiting and training new student- dancers. But my feeling is that competition is still tough. I know it because the bar in Busan national which was packed full every Friday is empty now. The crowd moved to the bar in Somyung. And of course, I moved with the crowd. I need my good male dancers to practice the moves.

How people learn to lie

We agree that lying is a learned behavior. Lina lied because she learned it from the environment. I didn't put checks when she was lying, and probably let much of it slip. For her lying though I partially blame the Korean culture. People here would say many things, all sort of things, promise things easily, extremely easily, without actually thinking to follow through and to keep their words. I see that in Lina's Korean family, in so many people I worked with, in Lina's friends. To say the least, the majority of interactions I had with Koreans over years were dissaponting and basically instilled in me a chronic lack of trust and faith. At the back of my mind "do not trust a korean" is always present. Koreans do not mean to be udermining trust in themselves; they are product of their culture where faith and trust are just of different value and definition then in my culture or in the culture of my husband and other westerners I hang out with.

Teaching trust, honesty and integrity

Lina has been lying about going to her yoga class. She registered June 20th and was supposed to go there every day which I thought she was doing. She would come home and say how difficult it was to do stretches and follow the teacher. Then last Monday I found out she was not going because Nathaniel saw her outside the house, the time she had to be in class. So I knew. Later she came to my school and commented on stretches she didn't do. Nathaniel and I had to talk to her about what she did. All her privileges( cell, computer, tv time, do what I want to do time) were removed. I have to watch her like a hawk. I kept MY TV time, which is an evolutionary step for me. Because in the past I woudn't watch TV if she was not allowed. How crazy was that?! I was punishing myself too. That was being nuts and over-responsible. In general I have this tendency of whiping up every one else's ass by either being too helpful or sorting out too much of other's crap. Bottom line I have to ask myself "am I enabling my child to cope with the world, to grow and learn to be responsible and taking care of herself, or am I turning her into powerless immature brainless leech?" The choice is easy.

It is great to be better

To me we are not looking like an old, tired, not so- fond- of each -other -old -couple anymore. We are very much in love. We are learning how to love better. Love is as much work as going to actual work. No illusions seriously. We, people, can make anything fun and worth it, be it love or work, or anything at all.

On the topic of love

So as I was being torn apart internally after not being able to adjust to my everything new in life, I was always keeping in mind that I had an unlimited number of options of what I choose to be, but at the moment my feelings of depressions and abandonment were too strong. That is how I was loving, ( because I obviously never stop loving Nathaniel) the poor, full of self pity, feeling neglected, undesired, with a classic victim mentality Tanya. Ready to shut down and isolate the whole world. The most attractive option of all-isolation, stay alone, the course of action that is luring me into the depth of the ocean of loneliness like a Serena. I did shut down because it had been my way of life for so long, all my life, it was all I knew how to do. But this time I shut down with a determination to look for another option, other options, better ones. It hurts Nathaniel badly when I am like that; he feels excluded when I do not talk or react on him for days. Who wouldn't!
I was hurting for a week with the same intensity. Then at some moment, I couldn't really point out when, this better option presented itself to my tired and losing hope psychic. In a second, I knew how to be the better me. Happiness and peace slowly crawled over me and oozed inside me. I will love better.

How I love now, how I will in the future

When I looked at this photo, I thought we looked like an old married couple who are not particularly fond of each other. It was a low time for both of us. We were crazy enough to start doing everything at the same time. We started living together, we started working together, we started a business together. Each of this activities is pretty major, stressful, and requires a great deal of adjustment on its own, but when you put a few of them together you have a recipe for disaster and a threat to relationships. We had different reactions to these stressors. He was mad, 'leave me alone for as long as for ever", "will sit on my ass immersed into computer games for 18 hours" mode. I was depressed, very sad, and found myself crying anytime and anywhere. I know a feelings stays and at times there is not much one can do about it. So it s always a better choice to find something to do, something useful as your rationality defines it or your almost muted by emotions brain sort of remembers. In short, when you can't take the feeling away, do something productive. I danced every other night. On the dancing floor rage came out, and I was a tiger. I was never a confident dancer, but those nights I did not care about the technique or skills. Objectively speaking I was good on that floor. Dancing didn't take my depression or sadness away, but it sort of communicated to me that at least I was not wasting time and nurturing my negativism.

Crazy sales by me or how to be a saleman

A week ago I made a crazy sale for a special promotion class. I am embarassed to say what it was, but I will. I made a program for uni students when they come for two hours every day for three weeks and pay us only 220,000 won (read peanuts) . When I was making this program I actually had in mind teaching groups of students. Then comes a student who needs a class and, Oh generous and slow thinking me, I sell her this program. This means me and her two hours every day, five days a week, three weeks long. I am not exactly sure what was going in my head when I made a decision to accomodate only one student for this program. I had a moment of panick after I realized what I did, but it was too late to back up. My word was given, I keep it even when it causes us to loose money. I screw up; I will fix it. I made a note in my head not to make such crazy sales anymore, and stop being such a helper, otherwise i will never make any money. Right now we are making just enough to cover our rent and utilities for the school, and living off whatever savings we had so far. On the positive side, my lonely student is great; she is fun to talk to and in general be around. She studies in Japan, so is not your average dependent Korean youth with no personal opinions or attitudes.

Upsets of today

The first thing I saw when I entered the school today was a large puddle of some prick's pee right on the stairs. We had a secret visitor over night who left his yellow message. I am reluctanly thinking that we will have to clean that up sometime very soon. The guy dowstairs is not going to do it. The owners are not going to do that. Now we have Koreans peeing by our door.
A mother called, and we talked for 10 minutes or so. I tried to be nice, persuasive, explaining, accomodating, and nice again. She was not interested as I got it in the end of our conversation. I like it how our consumers expect us to satisfy all their demands. " I called; you didn't answer"." I was passing by and dropped by. You were not there!" "You are a foreigner, how can you teach my kid English in Korean. The grammar must be explained in Korean! She is going to middle school. She must study her English text book with you in Korean." Ok, it is 21st century, so called age of globalization, but Koreans honestly do not care about actually speaking English. All they care about is how to survive through their education systems. Therefore, they demand you to teach tests like TEPS and TOEIC which have no relation to real world and how people speak and use English.
Coffee, I am on the verge of complete dissapointment with coffee making and drinking here. You get served anything under the label of "coffee", but it would be a poor mock up of coffee. Today we got lots of water and some milk and a trace of coffee in Angel in Ass coffee shop. AGAIN.