June 29 to July 5: Canada Day vs. The Fourth

(Okay, this one’s going to start off a bit on the embarrassing/personal side.  I wasn’t going to mention any of it, but it does demonstrate how we foreigners deal with embarrassing/personal issues away from home; and besides, it’s all true.)

I found a lump on my balls.  Not knowing where to go or what to do, I spoke with Kester, whom I mention at the end of the last post.  I figured that with all his recent hospital experience here in Busan, Kester would be able to give me some advice.  He did that, and more, going off on all sorts of penis-related tangents.  Most importantly, he gave me the location of a credible urologist.

Tuesday I took the subway down to Busan Station.  Kester instructed me to look for the Dunkin Donuts, above which I would find the doctor’s office.  But all I saw above Dunkin Donuts was a neon sign that read Sex Shop.  What the fuck, I thought.  Was Kester putting me on?  I walked up three flights to a brownish, abandoned-looking hallway.  The door was nondescript except for the cheap “Sex Shop” sign on front.   Like a creep, I hovered just beyond it.  Should I just walk in and toss my balls on the counter?  I heard some guy coming up the stairs and decided to get the hell out of there.

Back on the street, I saw that above a Paris Baguette (which neighbored the Dunkin Donuts) was a large billboard with a cartoon doctor holding a clipboard.  Ahh, I thought, and climbed the stairs.  The male receptionist spoke to me in Russian (at least, I think it was Russian: Texas Street, located just around the corner, is home to a large population of Russians).  I responded with one word, “testicles,” and pointed south.

After a short wait, I was brought into the office where the doctor asked me a few questions in broken English, then asked me to take off my pants.  An awkward series of movements followed: I kept trying to take off my shirt, despite the doctor saying “No — the pants, the pants!”  It just didn’t feel right to wear a shirt while naked from the waist down.  Anyway, once the groping was over, the doctor said there was nothing to worry about, and that it should go away.  He didn’t charge me a single won.

I ate an overpriced, low-quality breakfast on Texas Street while the Filipina hostess asked me about the hours and pay for teaching at a hagwon.  I had a travel book on South East Asia with me, and she showed me where she had grown up, as well as all the places in the Philippines she had never been.  She couldn’t have been much older than me, and after a few questions of my own, I learned that she married a Korean in her early youth, and since then has lived only here, in Busan.  I felt sorry for her.

Wednesday July 1st was Canada Day.  Canadians make up a large percentage of the foreigner population, so there were a lot of them running aboot, sporting bright red outfits and chugging draft beers.  Though neither of us is Canadian, Paco and I met up and joined in the festivities.

For the past few weeks, while he waits for an apartment to open up (in my building, of all places), Paco has lived in a hostel, and in doing so he has found his calling.  Paco loves to play host, to share his knowledge of Busan and everything else, and to charm travelers with his British ways — especially if the travelers are female.  On Canada Day, he showed up with two young Floridians who lived in Seoul: one was a blond girl in whom I immediately detected snobbery, and the other a nice enough fellow who, it seemed tragically obvious, was not her boyfriend.

We took a taxi out to Gwangali and partied with friends on the beach for a few hours.  At one point, the Florida girl walked up and said she was leaving because “those people” (she pointed to a group of acquaintances) “are talking about geography.”  She thought she was funny.  Then she told me about an episode of MTV’s The Real World, and when my only response was a joke about my age, she walked over to Paco and — not realizing I was within earshot — said she was leaving because “those people are talking about geography and that guy is old.”  This last remark, I realized, was about me.  After a moment’s hesitation, I approached her and said, matter-of-factly, “You’re kind of a bitch.  Just so you know.”

The-poor-guy-who-will-never-be-her-boyfriend consoled her.  Paco sent them back to the hostel in a taxi, then marched back to me, incensed.  We had a minor screaming match (Me: “She called me old!” Paco: “But you ARE old!”), and eventually I apologized for “throwing salt in his game.”

(On hindsight, I do regret using the word “bitch.”  It’s too easy and unfair an epithet when it comes to women; I should have broken her down, pointed out her basic indecency and shitty sense of humor, insulted her intelligence a little bit . . . maybe next time.)

At the academy on Thursday I taught a group of English beginners, helping them with worksheets and whatnot.  I showed one girl where she had made a mistake and, when she thought I wasn’t looking, she gave me the finger.  “Out” was all I said.  She waited in the hall until class was over, then I brought her into the main office and waited for my supervisor so he could speak with her in Korean.  He showed up, and before I finished two sentences, he interrupted me.  “I know,” he said.  Another student had apparently told him what happened.

It bothered me that no one asked me anything, or told me what consequences the girl would receive, if any.  I guess I’ll find out this upcoming Thursday when I teach the class again.

Then, on Friday I was informed that I would have to pay a thirty dollar fee for extending my contract a month.  After what I considered a serious lack of consideration on Thursday, I was looking for any excuse not to extend.  After all, if the hagwon really wants me to stick around, why can’t they pay the fee?  Fuck it then, I thought.  No extension through September.  Paradise instead.  But that night I went out with Paco and Britts and company, and they helped me remember that life here definitely has its upsides.

Saturday was The Fourth of July.  I played ball with Jeff and Ash, a broad-backed black dude from Brooklyn.  The Korean kids we played against didn’t stand a chance.  I just dropped the ball into Ash and let him go to work.  That afternoon we went out to Songjeung Beach, where I remained until five the next morning.  Early in the night a large group of obnoxious Americans belted out the National Anthem in a way that frightened the Korean locals.  A policeman had to calm everyone down.  For my part, I spent the entire night trying to get plastered, but never really succeeded.  I went in the ocean at about four am because a couple chuckle-head foreigners kept shouting about bioluminescence.  I didn’t see anything.

I slept into the afternoon on Sunday then played some deplorable basketball with a few other exhausted foreigners.  We only played in two games because the goddamn Koreans think pick-up ball should resemble hour-long professional games.  Afterward I crawled home to die.  La-la-la-laaaa.