Self-Imposed Mandatory Monthly Post Fulfillment

Hellooo...

Well, life here is pretty static, but a couple of things have, in fact, happened. For one, after months of not even turning it on, having milked the maximal amount of hilarity out of the bizarre comedic medley that is Korean game shows, Amie and I discovered a new, exciting channel on our TV: the Armed Forces Network, or AFN! It has many of the familiar old shows from back home, including news programs from such networks as ABC and CNN. The commercials are mostly for jobs such as explosive ordinance disposal and military chaplain, but there are also some informative ones such as updates on the yellow dust alert, and notifications that America supports me. They are propaganda, but the propaganda is so much more obvious and up-front than that of the normal consumer-oriented ads that I'm used to, that I actually much prefer them. Anyway, I'll have to bottle my enthusiasm until next week, since I've joined "TV Turnoff Week," as a result of my newfound TV-replacing addiction, Facebook.

Also, they've already been here for awhile, but it'll be new to you: two more Canadians have joined us, both from Toronto. According to our supervisor, management prefers Canadians because they tend to be above average teachers, whereas Americans tend to be either spectacular or terrible, and they prefer a North American accent. Not sure whether to be insulted or complimented there - if I were prone to taking insult, which I am, I'd say it kind of sounds like Canadians are a good bet because we're uniformly mediocre. Whatever... I have to say that many of the Koreans I've seen have an incredible work ethic - they only introduced a two-day weekend here in 2002, due to (no doubt tireless and weekend-free) efforts by Korea's labour unions, and they drastically reduced the number of national holidays at the same time. Funny anecdote: not too long after we got here, our director told us to have a good "long weekend" - to which we replied, ecstatically, "what, long weekend??" - and were told, soul-crushingly, "yeah, Saturday-Sunday, riiight??," a line which we still use in times of despair.

It's not really all bad, though... We are getting paid pretty well, and our apartment is rather amazing. Plus, now we get to sit around on long weekends watching AFN - after this week is out, anyway :)

Bye for now!