Sunday, 12 January 1997
Okay, I’m getting the impression … Hey, you’re not allowed to read this entry yet – I’m still writing it! Jeez, give me a break!
Note: A time travel experience – what I’m writing now, and what I’m going to write in the next few minutes are destined to become part of the past. But there’s a time for everything, so I have to go through the formality first to make the entry, even though I know this note, like all the others, will be revisited by myself in the future.
As I was saying before I was visited by myself, I suspect I’m getting bored with Korea. Which is really just a nice way of saying I’m so fucking tired of the place that I’m going to have a nervous breakdown or something.
Actually, that’s not at all what I wanted to say. I just thought it’s time for an entry, and then I had the time travel idea for an introduction.
* * *
It’s the twelfth day of the first month of another year.
The weekend has been too long. I want to work. I want to sit in my classroom at that Mother of Boredom and see how time S-L-O-W-L-Y but surely goes by.
I’m bored, and a bit discouraged about the fact that it’s still so many months before I can go home. (From reliable sources that have left Korea, I’ve learned that there’s truth behind the myth – there is indeed a world on the other side of Kimpo Airport!)
I mean, it’s almost the middle of January, but I so badly just want to hear another language other than Korean in public! I so badly want to watch European movies with English subtitles. I so badly want to eat barbeque and mieliepap, and potato salad. I so badly want to crack open some Black Labels with friends, watch TV with my parents, and watch rugby on a Saturday afternoon.
I’m craving the excitement of getting on a plane and going somewhere. I’m craving the experience of having a beer in Stellenbosch while speaking Afrikaans, and hearing Afrikaans and Xhosa and Zulu and … English around me. I want to get excited again about discovering a second-hand bookstore or a street book sale.
I so badly don’t want to be stared at anymore when I walk down the street. I so badly don’t want to try and teach English anymore to Korean twelve-year-olds who call me a “pabo” in class without realising I know they’re calling me an idiot.
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