Skin Me

I'm so sick of my skin issues.  I hate them.  They come and they go and they change more than one changes underwear.  I've come the end of the rope so it seems.  I'm a-scared to go to the doctors because they ain't got the slightest idea what it is.  I think I have something simple this time.  However, they will give me 5 different things and send me on my way.  As my aunt says, 'They don't know the difference between a ass and a hole in the ground'.  I agree.  I will give it a shot and try and hit up a skin doctor, but it just makes my skin crawl to think of all of the lame things they told me last time about what I mighta coulda had.

I'm gonna try and get my eyes fixed soon.  I hate wearing glasses and the surgery is much less expensive here than back in the US.  I'll try and figure that out soon.  I have 2 weeks vacation, so why not try and get it done during that time since I ain't got a chance to head home for my vacation.  I have to figure out how to get my work visa put into my new passport so that should be fun.  I don't see why it needs to be so difficult sometimes over here.  I live like an all grown adult, but yet as a child.  I feel like nothing but a tiny little piss ant crawling among all of the people running around here too.  I'll be able to see better and it might not be so annoying after the surgery.  All of the people running around makes my eyes even more foggy.

I want to skin myself when I think of the election coming up.  I am so sad to see the country going in the direction it is going in.  It is just sad.  Where did all of the greatness of the country go.  I can remember that just a few years ago when I was right proud to be American and part of such an amazing country.  Now, I am more excited about the Grand Canyon and the mighty Mississippi than the political landscape.  My head's a hurtin' just thinking of it now.  How can we have such a sick system.  They are all not for me or my beliefs or my family or my church or my career or my community back home.  I'm an alien here too.  I even have a card to prove it, but my American passport that I just got failed to give me a bright feeling when I got it back in the mail this time.  I remember proudly reading through it last time I got one renewed.  I ain't so content with the state of the country anymore.  It just makes me sad.  I mean really sad.  Politics makes me sick now.  I used to like it, but now I am just wanting to know what is going on, but I get sad reading instead of excited.  My skin curls.  So sad!

New Chapter

It looks like a new chapter of my life is about to open.  It is the kind of thing that was only a dream just a few months ago.  They was no way that I could have done any of this alone.  I guess that this is one of those times that I am a bit angry at God for no reason. I can't place my anger, but I know with my head that all that is happening is good and is a gift that I only kind of earned.  I only done so well because of the support of others.  I am just not a person that can do things alone very well.  I can do almost nothing well all by myself.  I remember having a good friend sign me up for classes in university.  I wasn't exactly able to even use the computer well enough or sift through all of them dumb courses in the booklet.

I am just at a point where I cannot even start to think that I done it alone.   It is evident that Jesus is in control and I am not.  I fight to be in control of things and I fail.  I give up and God pulls through for me.  How is it possible that I landed this job? I went with a friend to the interview because it is fairly scary to travel alone in Korea to an interview at a top level school alone.  I'd be able to do it in the US without thinking, but not here.  Things are different and I can't speak much Korean.  My friend couldn't either, but we are dumb together.  That is the way to do it.  I sit through the interview and I give it my best.  Them 30 minutes were fairly short.  Time flew by and I don't recall too many details except the awkward times.  I walked out of the room and walked clear in the wrong direction instead of remembering where I had come in.  Then I went out and found my friend.  I said, "What you do?"  He said, "I don't know, but you got that."  I went on to tell the good and bad things about the interview and the questions that they asked and everthing else I could come up with.
Two weeks after, I seen this girl in our language exchange group.  She ask me about the job.  I told her that I wasn't sure and she went on to tell me that I didn't get the job.  She was sure.  How could someone just come right out and say that.  I don't know.  Are you serious?

I had to renew my passport and the courier company lost my passport for 1 week.  That ain't cool when you don't have an easy way to renew it here.  I needed it.  Not fun!!  It was found and got delivered today.  I continued to doubt each and every part.  I don't trust in God when he is clearly in control and I am not.  So, the chapter is a new one, but it ain't a clearly written one.  I know I can do this job, but I can't do it in my own strength.  I pray that this month will be filled with a calm feeling rather than anxiety about stuff that I ain't able to control.

Sore Mind

My mind is numb from sitting at work doing nothing.  You see....most people dream of such a job.  Well, it isn't a job at all.  I am treated like a after-thought at best, which I have grown to enjoy a bit.  It used to get on my nerves.  I've come to expect it.  I sit there and try my best to include the others in my daily life and whatever.  It is just hard when they are kind of too shy to even talk to me.  I don't care how well or bad somebody speaks English as long as I can communicate with them.  It takes a good long time, but whatever.  It don't bother me because mostly I'm bored clear out of my mind.

Everything here is just a bit harder than it needs to be.  I tried to do a bit of work here at home and I realized that I ain't got the right word processor.  My laptop from the US cannot read 'Hangul' which is the Korean letter system.  Now I'll drag myself out to a PC room and pay to do work that I forgot to do at work because it is so rare that I actually have to do anything.  I know that it don't seem right, but you have to remember that my mind has went numb.

I have a funny student who is in 2nd grade middle school here which would be 8th grade back home.  One day as I was walking down the freezing hallway he stopped me to ask me about Jesus.  He pointed to his heart and to mine and just kept saying Jesus and then giving a thumbs up.  It was really funny.  Then I seen him cleaning the wall for a few  hours a couple weeks after.  I ask him what he was doing and he didn't want to even try and explain.  I asked him in my limited Korean if he smokes and he said no.  I knew that is the reason why he was cleaning the wall.  First he told me no and that his clothes only smelled like it and then I bothered him and explained why it is not a good idea to do that.  By the end, we were laughing which is sort of cool.

I've went totally crazy this week because of the fact that I've needed to renew my passport.  I used the courier system that the embassy suggested.  The idiots picked up my mail and didn't give a tracking number  or a receipt.  Of course, they didn't come on time so I wadn't there on Saturday morning when the showed up.  I give the company a call and tried to speak 'English' the person there who speaks 'English'.  They didn't want to talk to me much cuz my co-teacher had set it all up.  What a joke!! My co-teacher is 'too busy' to follow up on my personal stuff, but it was in her name and she speaks Korean.  So, for a week I looked for my passport by any means possible without a tracking number.  The idiots finally give  me a tracking number 15 hours before they delivered it to the embassy which was ever bit of 5 days too late.  So yes, my mind is numb from all of this.

Nepal!!!!!

I like to do things in a kind of routine.  My friends here tell me that I am very scheduled.  I have to be.  It's too much going on all of the time.  I get my week planned out a week before it comes.  This week, every single hour is pretty much planned out for me.  I had to ask for 'early leaves' today in order to head off to the bank tomorrow.  It is something that is difficult to ask for.  I only get eight hours a year for this sort of thing.  I will send a small chunk of money back to the homestead and get my long awaited American check for my passport renewal.  They ain't no other time to do it, and they's very limited time before my next work visa must be done.  Time has flew so fast here this year.  I ain't never had a more faster year in my whole life.  It seems like every week is like me climbing a mountain in Nepal just trying to get it all done.

I've been lucky enough to find a nice Indian restaurant that is only a block from my house.  You gotta understand that this is Korea, so they ain't many places like this here.  The owners are from Nepal.  It is an interesting place.  He speaks rather good Korean, but his English ain't the best.  His wife don't speak English or Korean which makes for some funny conversations.  I bought some hand made gloves off of her that were made in Nepal for a gift.  It cost me about $2.  That's crazy!  I go there about 2x a week for some chicken and some rice.  It is pretty good.  I go when I ain't go the energy to cook.  It's so many weird/odd things there.  The owner has 3 front teeth.  I guess he has some weird 3rd tooth in between his main ones.  It cracks up my friends that goes there too.  Today I treated 3 of my friends to a free dinner using my club card filled with 30 stamps.  Then they took our picture cuz I'z the first to redeem my card.  I guess that it's another teacher who has 3 full cards who ain't brung in a party of 4 to get his $65 dollar meal for free.  The little Nepal place is quite an interesting place.  Oh.. I almost forgot to tell you that sometimes the owner wears this random pearl earring.  It is so funny! LOL!

I guess my readership is pretty much higher in Europe than it is in the US or in Korea.  I find that odd.  I guess now that I've wrote about Nepal that it might could start in Nepal too.  Who knows?  I'm surprised that they's people that reads my blog all over the world about my crazy random life over here in my loft house on the 10th floor in the city of Incheon, South Korea.  Nepal would be a cool place to visit.  I know someone who went there on a mission trip to tell people about the love of Jesus for the first time.  I guess they told them about how Jesus was born in a barn, lived a perfect life, died for everyone's sins and then rose from the grave to prove that he is God.  They did this while living beside of a river and using it to cool their food in a cooler.  Maybe I should go there some day and see if they still remember my friend who told them all of this for the first time.  That would be super interesting.

Way Too Much

They's way too much going on in the world.  It's too much crazy stuff that I am totally unable to wrap my head around.  So many people are so content to just hate and do terrible things to each other.  How exactly does people get to that point that they think that they are doing good by hurting people?  I have a friend that was raised in a 'Christian' home, yet her father won't talk to her sister because she got her a tattoo.  I'm pretty sure that the only reason she done that is to prove that she ain't under the father's authority.  Of course, this girl is ever bit of 25 years old and ain't lived at home in years.  Then again, a Muslim guy told me that it is okay for him to kill me because I do not respect the teachings of his 'prophet'.  How do you hate like that?  This is blind hate and the other hates way too much for more personal reasons.  Why the hate?

They ain't too many people that goes to my church here in Incheon.  It might be 60 tops.  I remember when I first came people were not too close.  They never wanted to spend time together and didn't give a rip if they seen each other at church.  You can forget thinking about seeing each other outside of church.  We've growed much closer, yet there is still some sort of uneasy feeling among some of them.  I can't place it, but it is there.  At least there is not so much desire to run out of the door after the service.  There's way too much work that needs done in Korea.  Too much bad stuff in your face all of the time and too much bowing to show how kind they are.  It is a crazy mix here.  Too much kindness and too much sickness.

I've had way too much fun here and way too many blessings.  I miss things, but it's too much going on here that is good for me.  I keep wondering why I have been sent here to work and live this random life.  I suppose most lives are random, but not like this.  I have a job where I sit way too much and teach way too little and get paid too much to do mostly nothing.  I am a puppet.  Why am I a puppet?  I am the token white guy.  I don't mind because it is okay.  I knowed it before I came.  It's okay.  It's just way too much to process.  My friends here are way too kind.  They somehow know exactly what I am thinking all of the time.  Sometimes they know way too much.  I hope that the guy that told me that it was okay to kill me knows way too much about how I don't want him to die.  Wow.. I wrote way too much about way too many random things.  I guess that means that I am random.  Who knows?

Happy Thanksgiving

It's a cool crisp day here in Korea.  The sun's a shinin' and the wind is softly blowing.  Today is the day of my church Thanksgiving Day meal.  I have so much to be excited about and so much that I am just amazed about.  This has been one of the most crazy months of my life.  I've been told that I have five different skin conditions.  One of them was a very serious one.  I've visited one of the biggest hospitals in the country three times along with the biggest one in my city.  We are talking about an area with about 25 million people.  So, these hospitals are supposed to be the best that they have.  I was given 8 pills a day and cream to put on my skin.  I became a pill junkster.  I went in there and told them that I ain't taking them pills no more unless they give me some proof of what it is and why.  I refused to continue.  I was thankful when I stopped.  What a relief.  I am thankful that 90% of my skin issues are gone.  Really thankful!

One month ago I went to an interview for a dream job.  This is the kind of job that you don't even really even dream of.  It is just right crazy.  I traveled for 2 hours by bus with a friend to the interview in a suit with my name inside of it.  I arrived a bit early.  I was going to give it my all and that is what I done.  I practiced with a friend a week earlier and I give the best answers that I could figure out.  They was 4 English teachers and they was one Korean dean or something. She never did crack a smile for the whole 30 minutes.  It was only 5 questions with a few follow up ones.  They wadn't even one weird question.  I answered them all and got up to shake their hands.  It was so awkward leaning over a U-shaped table.  I was suddenly nervous at the end. I walked out of the room and make a sharp right turn.  I had went the wrong way.  I instantly felt so dumb.  I didn't even know how to leave that office.

The next weekend was filled with waiting and wondering.  They had another full day of interviews to do for that job.  I felt as if their was a chance in hell that I'd get the job.  This job is like getting a job at Harvard back home.  The people who graduate from this university goes on to make lots of money and have top jobs all over the world.  It is nuts!!  So, I just kept waitin'.  I waited for one more week and I got an e-mail from them at 4pm the same day that they promised a response.  I opened it and it said, thank you for your interest in the position... bla bla bla.  I was not surprised.  I was just so happy to have got the interview.  It was awesome.  I was content with it.  How cool!

I asked my school to renew me.  I had hopes of moving on to university, but at that point I knew that I wasn't gonna get it.  They said yes after some talking among theirselves.  I wasn't excited about it, but it was a job. Then a few days ago I got a call.  I looked down at my phone in the office and answered.  It was an unknown    
Korean number.  Usually they call and insist that I speak Korean and call back 2 or 3 times thinking it is a joke that a foreigner answered the phone in Korea.   It was the dean of the highest ranking school in the country.  She asked in the most formal way possible if I was who answered the phone.  I thought she was going to suggest that I apply somewhere else.  She offered me the job.  I run into the other room so the others around me wouldn't have a idea what was going on.  I liketa fell on the ground.  No joke.  I hung up and went and sit on my chair in my office.  I wanted so bad to tell somebody, but they wadn't nobody there I could share it with.  I was stuck for four hours caught in a kind of shell wanting to explode.

I give it a day or two and I found out that my official renewal papers had come to my school.  I had to drop the bomb.  So, I tried my best to make it early.  I overslept that morning, so I had to run to school.  I got there and run down and told one of my co-teachers.  She was shocked and happy beyond belief.  It is just unheard of for a random dude from another country to waltz in there for one year and land a job at that university.  I told my main co-teacher and there was a hint of anger or annoyance or everwhat it was.  I ain't sure.  I don't care.  I was excited so I called two of my most coolest friends and told them that I wanted to buy them dinner to celebrate.  My friend showed up with a funny cake with 5 candles and we eat some Indian food and then some cake.  Life is just crazy.  You can't predict it and that is what I am thankful for.  Just thankful.  I will eat some turkey today and just be thankful.

Just Want to Sleep

Today I wanted to sleep more than anyone could imagine.  I worked all day at a job that is far from hard in most ways, but it drains your soul in other ways.  I don't never know what is going on, even when I try.  I've give up having that under my belt.  I just sit there and wait for information that I know ain't never going to come.  I do what needs done and don't do what don't need done.  In this land, making it look as if you got tons to do is so important.  But..., they ain't nothing to do.  They's nothing I can do about that.  I've planned most all of what needs planned for the rest of the entire year.  No joke.

I was tired, so I went to a restaurant that serves Indian food.  The owner is from Nepal.  This is very strange in Korea.  I was too tired to cook today, so I spent 10 bucks on some chicken and rice.   I could have come home and cooked, but today was my late day at work.  I was just tired.  I wanted to sleep like nobody knows.  Just as I was finishing my food, my phone rung.  It was one of the golden 10 who came to Korea with me.  He works with my former coworker who I used to know way back when.

He let me know that my friend who was pregnant and sick 5 years ago when I was in Korea is again in the same boat.  He works with her this time.  How crazy is that?  She is one of those people who know from the first time you meet them, that it is almost impossible to not keep in contact with them for the rest of your life.  It is just way out of control.  My friend who works with her now said that to me about 2 weeks after he met her for the first time.  So, we drug ourselves to a hospital on the other side of town to see our friend.  Her 6 year old kid was waiting for us there.  He gets so excited because he has 'foreign' friends. It is quite funny to see.  So, after being so tired, I forced myself to go and see my friend.  It was well worth it.  The family was funny and our mutual friend made it all the more crazy funny.  Living here is just so random and many times it makes you so so so tired.  Despite being tired, it was all worth it.