Pióro

Let me get all Euro-centric for a sec. Koreans got a weird sense of hygiene. The feet thing I can understand. We were staying at a love motel in Seoul. Ah, love motel, let me explain. You see, in Korea it is not uncommon to live in small digs with parts of your extended family. [...]

Stereotypes aside, karaoke is big here in Korea. But karaoke is the Japanese name. In this neck of the woods the art form is called norae bang. You can find norae bang in the weirdest places: on big make-shift stages set up in a market to platforms erected within labyrinthine subway stations. We saw one [...]

Arthur is an English teacher from our sister camp, Camp Korea. Our camp was called Pantech and Curitel, named after the huge telecom company that sponsored the camp. Both camps were based at Howan University, just outside of Gunsan. It turns out that Pantech and Curitel don’t know much about kids. They sent some dude [...]

…see Warren and Agnes site. These guys are the homies who scored us this gig in Korea. Follow the link to WSRGraphics in the side nav.

Okay, how’s this for nuts? Me, 12 Korean children (10-13 years old) and raging disco hits. That’s right I’m teaching these kiddies how to git down. I have a class each day that involves something a little “creative,” i.e. not exactly teaching English in the strict sense. So I’m trying to teach these little dudes [...]

First day of class and I’m trying to learn the names of eleven Korean children. All the names are nuts and totally butchered by my heavy Western tongue. (I swear the consonants are lighter in Korean.) My assistant teacher suggested that I give them all English names. Before I could say, “Isn’t naming children a [...]

Here come a whack of pics. These photos cover the bulk of our stay in Poland, including school, and our second foray into Germany. Just click the Pics button to the right and pick Collection 5. And here’s a special Christmas treat for everyone—especially those on dial-up—all the of these images are Web optimised. I [...]

I think this is the longest I’ve gone without posting in the last six months. Weird. Not much to report from Whitby. Stop. I hear some of you laughing and saying, “But there’s never anything to report from Whitby!” Yes, ‘burb dissing is as easy as lying to models and both are good for a [...]

Just under six months and 16 countries later (minus one if you don’t count a simple train-ride through Switzerland and add one if you count the Vatican City) plus 10 hours of flying and 10 hours of waiting around airports and wa-BAM, we’re back in the land of maple syrup and insightful news features that [...]

I forgot my mother’s birthday. I knew it was coming. In fact, two days before, while Martha and I were on the train from Wrocław to Hamburg, I remember saying, “I have to email my mom in two days.” And did I? No. Instead, I was wandering around the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s red-light district. A friend [...]