New plan for this thing: it's only for me.  I don't write well when I'm worrying about what a reader is going to think, and my blogs have never been meant for readers anyway; I've been keeping a diary in one form or another on and off since I was seven, and this is just the latest reincarnation.  My writing is getting terribly stale since I rarely read or write anything substantial in English any more, and I really hate that.

So, State of the Watchy address time.  School is not going that well.  There are a lot of reasons for this which ultimately boil down to cultural differences.  You'd think I'd be pretty well versed in that after six years, and I am, but the longer I'm here the more I just think some things are wrong.  Like the extreme hierarchical structure of a Korean... anything.  In particular, I hate people who don't know shit about my job telling me how to do it and/or doing it for me because they don't trust me to do it.  I'm actually pretty good at teaching English and NO ONE ELSE HERE IS.  Okay, a couple of teachers are actually quite good, but they're homeroom teachers now.

In spite of all this, the kids ARE learning; they're just not learning to really communicate in English, and I kind of feel like that should be more of a goal.  That and getting them to speak naturally instead of in these huge exaggerated sentences.  That and making what they're learning relevant to their lives.  But of course it's just an academic subject, and not even one that's taken seriously; the whole "English must be FUN!!!" complex that Koreans have really gets to me as well.  And, on a related note, the fact that no one seems to bother distinguishing whether or not something looks good from whether or not it actually is good.  Put on one horrible dog-and-pony-show of an "Open Class" and everyone thinks things are fine.  Or have visits from Education Ministry officials during which everyone is warned to make everything look good.  There are any number of ways in which progress could actually be checked, but none of them are implemented.

Okay, enough ranting.

Chris and I went to the Big Rock Head Park (or some such name) this weekend.  It's near Saengkeuk (생극), just in case anyone who's interested in going ever happens to read this.  It was full of giant sculpted heads of famous people surrounded by various other statues - deer, soccer balls, naked women.  Me being me, I spent the whole time waiting to see Hitler, because I just knew he was there somewhere.  I wasn't wrong; he was among distinguished company such as Kim Il Sung, Mobutu Sese Seko, Muammar Gadhaffi, and Osama Bin Laden in what I called the "assholes section" and the park called the "Communist section".  Which, if Hitler only knew, would absolutely inspire a Downfall-style rant.  I also enjoyed the statue of Jesus outside the church (fair enough) next to a statue of a woman with naked breasts (probably not strictly in line with Christian morals...)  Next to the church was a line of famous Christians like Martin Luther and a few Korean pastors and missionaries, and next to that were sculptures depicting various stages of evolution.  I'm not sure if the people who ran this park were actually that clueless or deliberately trying to piss people off.  Probably the former, but... really.  Rommel among the "creative thinkers" was another big question mark.

I guess that's about all for now.  I'm still very much trying to get my head around the whole marriage thing; it doesn't seem like a very Watchyish thing to do, to get married, and it's sort of hard to imagine a future with someone else when I've always just assumed I'd be alone.  This is in no way a bad thing; it just feels a bit like trying to eat one of those giant burgers that's falling out all over the place as you try to find a way to manage it.  However tasty the burger, there's still some anxiety about how to cope with it.

Maybe after practicing this writing thing a bit more, I'll remember how to do better metaphors...