Friday’s morning class boys’ team usually names themselves “Electric Fan.”
Ringleader: “Teacha! Today, we not Electric Fan. We team name is ELECTRIC GAY.”
Other boys: “NO!”
Me: “Really? G-A-Y?”
Ringleader: “Yes.”
Me: “Uhh, why?”
Ringleader: “We must Electric GAY.”
Scene: the current lesson for the 8th graders is about food, giving me an excuse to torment the students with pictures of cakes and desserts right before lunchtime.
Me: “People who don’t eat meat are called…”
Student 1: “Vegetarians!”
Me: “Correct! People who don’t eat meat, cheese, butter, milk, or anything made from an animal – not even honey! – are called…”
Student 1: “Suckers!”
Student 2: “Strange?”
Student 3: “Abnormal persons?”
With all due respect to my vegan friends – I do love my job sometimes.
Whatever you call it, it gets the job done.
Yesterday, the weather finally made up and begrudgingly admitted that it is supposed to be springtime. I quickly stitched together this thingy, pictured above, to hold my belongings so that I could go for a nice long run. I cut off and stitched up an old pant leg from a pair of corduroys. I looped a cute belt around it, but sewed it in such a way that I can still use the belt sans pouch. Finished it off with iron-on velcro – how did I never use this stuff before coming to Korea? Amazing.
“Fanny pack” is such a terrible name. Who says “fanny” any more in the U.S.? The only place where they say “fanny” with any regularity is over in the U.K., and it refers to another anatomical part. A part that is nice and all, but one in which I don’t necessarily want to be stuffing my keys.*
Other alternatives: my friend and her friends call it a “chaos pouch,” which sounds cool but doesn’t quite work for my purposes. (My real chaos pouch is my purse, which contains everything I have ever owned or looked at in my life). Maybe “belt bag”? “Butt banger,” because of how it swings when I’m jogging? (stupid giant clunker phone).
At some point I think I’ll put a bird on it, Portlandia style:
* not that I’d be wanting to stuff my keys up my tailpipe, either. Let’s just reiterate – “fanny pack” is a terrible name for a thing.
It happened two weekends in a row: I spilled liquids all over my MacBook, in more or less the same circumstances. Both times, I was frantically trying to find a way to watch a live stream that would air a KU basketball game. (To anyone who thinks I got my just desserts: shaddup, and by the way, Muck Fizzou for the rest of ever :p). The first time, I was really conscientious, and did the right thing; I’d immediately shut down my laptop, flipped it upside down and didnt touch it for over 24 hours. That second time, I’m sorry to say, I behaved like a petulant child. Are you joking me, me?! I did this shit again?! So instead of being a responsible and careful owner of an electronic device, I just kind of halfheartedly took a hair dryer and blasted the affected spot for a few minutes. It was typing fine, still, so stupid me, I actually continued to try and find a damn stream for the game. Then, out of sheer frustration, I just took off for an hour long run. I came back to try again, and to my dismay (yet not surprise), my computer had contracted schizophrenia and was rapidly switching back and forth between various languages : ancient Greek, Sanskrit, some sort of dead robot language, and gibberish.
I took it to an Apple repair dude down by the Yongsan military base in Seoul. I had to basically slay a dragon and solve miscellaneous quests to get to this damned place, and I went there because I thought the dude there would be most likely out of anywhere else to speak English. He does not, but through my co-teacher’s assistance over the phone, I was able to ascertain that changing the keyboard will be expensive – as in more than I want to pay for my stupid mistake – but not as expensive as Eli, in his Apple wisdom / nerdery, thinks it should be. Plus, I’ll be getting a new keyboard with 한글 characters on it, which will be useful when I want to hunt and peck in a language I don’t even know, versus type like a normal person in a language I sorta kinda know.
Moral of the story: though it is healthy and way good for you, running does not indeed solve everything. Especially if you are specifically running away from your problems.
