viva korea

yesterday morning i went to the hospital to get the results from my TB/AIDS tests. the head teacher went with as an interpreter, and after a solemn exchange in korean with the nurse she told me that both were positive. i felt like i had about five seconds to live and my face got all red and i was about to start crying when she told me she was kidding. dead pan humor is hard to do in a second language. she told the whole office about the story, they thought it was hilarious. my boss kind of even made her apologize to me. i dont think any of them understand how bad it would be to have those diseases, especially since i would then be unemployed and would not only have to pay back my school for my flight here but i would have to pay for my flight back home. basically, i would be in the hole a few grand automatically and i would never have a happy life again. i got her back in a few minutes by pretending to forget my passport at home, and for a few seconds she panicked.
i ate some korean barbecue and it was delicious. i tried two types of oysters, both were really fresh and delicious, and i also ate sesame leaf for the first time. i cant remember exactly how it tastes but the closest thing i can put it at is mint, even though thats way off. you grill the meat yourself and then wrap it in lettuce or sesame leaf and eat it, maybe with some sauce or onions or seaweed too.
i went to some expat bars, i felt like i could have been anywhere in the world. 90s hiphop, darts, foozball. at this point i'm more comfortable being surrounded by koreans, even after only two weeks. the foreigners have unpredictable accents and behaviours. i heard an intriguing story about teaching english in the middle east, apparently ireland and arabs have a close bond what with the IRA training in the area and all. Sometimes people will be released after theyve been kidnapped once they prove theyre Irish. I also heard that there's no alcohol in Saudi Arabia, which I think is awesome. I heard you get paid $100,000 a year to teach in libya, and that people will frequently interrupt class to say things like"all christians should die", or "if my cousin married a christian i would kill her." i cant tell if thats just bar talk.  at the second bar there were bands, and they tried. i cant tell if its sad to pick a genre or if its sad to pick a lame genre, but austin got me real spoiled. they were kind of like a band formed by 19 year olds who were in highschool band together, except theyre adults there was a 'punk' band, with three 35-ish dudes playing greenday, it just seems wrong. the crowd seemed to love it, apparently live music is rare at this particular bar, usually its dance music and dancing, which is what i would have preferred.
at one point i was waiting in line for the bathroom and i was looking through my wallet, i found like 200,000 won, or $200, but then i realized in the dark that 1000 notes look a lot like 10,000 notes. it still cheered me up though. i took a bunch of pictures, maybe you can see em