Ay amor es una tortura perderte

Due to the enthusiastic bribery of my friends and my undisguised affinity for fruity cocktails, I choose to continue Petite Syrah, despite recent personally cataclysmic revelations leading me to desire a more closed-mouth approach to existence here in Korea. My youngest sister, ever the voice of encouraging, soft sentiments, writes, "Kill yours or don't. It's the internet." Ah, indeed! I am reminded of one of my favourite songs of all time, which also, coincidently, echoes my thoughts on US foreign policy:

(Dre) Don't pull the thang out, unless you plan to bang
(Choir) Bombs Over Baghdad! Yeah!
(Dre) Yeah! Ha ha yeah!
Don't even bang unless you plan to hit something
(Choir) Bombs Over Baghdad! Yeah!

So, we will henceforth hope to affect a stylistic change in the content of this blog, adapting more of an emphasis on merriment and less on the maledictions of my homesick life in Asia. All that said, it still may sound like a girl is writing it, so don't be too disappointed if it still reads the same as before. ;o) It's an ambience thing. I'm working on it. Patience.

Another reason I must continue is because the mundane drudgery of public high school makes me bored at work and necessitates a worthy distraction, i.e. communicating my thoughts to friends and strangers. So yesterday I was bored, and on the way to our next class, I said to my co-teacher,

"Jay, I'm bored. Let's skip school Friday. Take me dancing in Shinchon."
"What? Where?"
"Hongdae. You went to school there, right? You must know all the fun places to go."
"Frankly speaking, Sarah, I don't like to dance."

Once again rejected by my Korean co-teacher. ;o) I'm starting to find it amusing to discover all the ways he can say no to me. I'm really not used to this.

Okay, so there's this Shakira song/video that I like, featuring Alejandro Sanz (And here's where the cheesy latin part of my blood takes over) ...La Tortura ... kitchen scene with the vegetable chopping. Very sexy. Spontaneity, boys. That's the name of the game. Aside from Shakira's ridiculous gyrations and the fact that she's covered in crude oil, I like the story and the lyrics. I am by no means fluent in Spanish, but I know enough to know that this is no love song. It's actually about the pain and torture of losing someone. So he says that his heart is hers, and she says, "Better save it for someone foolish enough to believe you." Whoah!

I don't have to teach class today, by some pleasant forture, so I'm working on pictures from this weekend and drinking Solomon's Seal Tea here in my office. Saturday I went to Insadong and wandered around the shops until I became I became unbearably lonely, seeing the couples walking everywhere together in the early evening and missing my own "solomon" poet man. On my way to the station I met a girl from Slovakia, and we decided to have dinner. She was on vacation from her English teaching job in China. These European women are very independent, I've noticed, especially the northern culture ones- She quite casually mentioned that she wanted to vacation alone and left her Canadian boyfriend in China! She had no place to stay, so I invited her to stay over at my place and we had a good time talking about eastern European drinking parties, boys, mothers, teaching, and Arkansas hick fundamentalists (she had a unique homestay experience to make a long story short ;o) So I met my first Slovak.

The following are pictures from Insadong. I love the paper lantens...