TWO DAYS LEFT (Yeah, I'm counting days now)

Juliet says Goodbye. She still says Christine is her favorite teacher, but I'll forgive her.

Now that I'm done at the school, I'm posting pictures of all my favorite kids.

Here you go...


This is Juliet and Brian, the consumate Ladies Man. He chose well.


Yoonseo loved Andy and wanted to marry him.

Andy was scared of her.


Kelly was one of two students I saw every day for the entire year.


Karren.


I took more pictures of Emily than anybody else. Cute, cute, cute.


Emily liked to headbutt people.


Annie.


Jessica didn't know how to stop smiling.


John, probably the most photographed of the boys.

He was the other student with us every day for the whole year.


John liked to kiss people. What a stud.


JoAnn, probably the most gifted kid we had. I used to keep her busy by letting her do three assignments while the other kids were finishing one.


Her brother Jonathan was probably the most clever we had. He came up with a story about how the commas in contractions (can't, won't) were ghosts for the dead letters they replaced. He was in pre-school at the time and I almost flipped out.

JoAnn and him had some good blood.


Judy and Sarah. Judy was the most grown up kid we had. She had mini-breakdowns when she thought she'd forgotten her homework.

Sarah was the biggest class clown. She came from Arizona where people called her "Wobbles" or something and she really knew how to get under a teacher's skin with personal questions. Very clever kid.


Also grade three girls. They stuck together to protect themselves from the boys. They actually outnumbered the boys though, so they were often on offensive.


Grade one, cutest class ever. Yoojin (second) used to write me secret letters and I carried her bags to the bus when it was time to go home.


Christie, grade six. She wouldn't let anyone take pictures of her unless she had veto privileges, so I guess she liked this one.

That's it. I'll never ever ever ever see (most of) them again.

I guess I'll miss some of them, but not ALL OF THEM. Hehe, and I probably won't miss being at the school 10 hours a day either. Yuck.

Two more days to kill and I can finally walk on grass again. WOOOOHOOOOO.

Books

I'm bored of sifting through pictures and burning them on cds. Thanks to Darryl for giving me something to do.

1. One book that changed your life

I didn't think these questions would be so tough. None, I guess. I've gotten more inspiration while cutting my grandmother's lawn than I have reading any book in memory.

Now that I think about it, I kind of miss cutting lawn. That's something to look forward to next week.

Are there any books in the canon about cutting lawn?

2. One book that you’ve read more than once

Aside from books I read for school, the only multiple-read was Blood Meridian. I usually don't re-read because I get it the first time or it wasn't worth the time and effort again. With Blood Meridian, I wasn't sure why it was so good until the second or third read, but I knew I liked it. I guess it's also a bit of a literary jerkfest -- a literary jerkfest I appreciated for once.

3. One book you want on a desert island

No way. Having any book would be so useless (not to mention ironic) that I'd throw it in the ocean. And wouldn't you end up using it as toilet paper anyway?

I'd prefer an issue of Club.

4. One book that made you laugh

Confederacy of Dunces -- but only the first 100 pages or so, which I read while at the factory. I've given five or six copies of this book as gifts and I don't even remember the ending.

The whole appeal of the book is in the author's story (he wrote it and then shot himself, probably because it captured how pathetic he was), and in the main character's ahead-of-his-time personality. He's essentially an eccentric heavy-headed blogger and I know way too many people like him, including large portions of myself.

5. One book that made you cry

I don't know if I cried, and I wouldn't admit it if I had, but the saddest story I've ever read was a dollar-store marvel called The Theory of War, by Joan Brady.

It's the mostly-true story of a white child slave after the Civil War, and there are parts where he runs away from his captors to simply find a creek and play -- not to really run away of course, because he's too young and doesn't have a clue how to do it.

Now that I think about it, I also liked Roots. Slave stories are awesome, especially if they're mostly-true.

6. One book you wish you had written

Easy. The Da Vinci Code. That guy made like a million dollars.

I'd say Harry Potter, because that British girl made a lot more cash than Dan Brown, but the first 50 pages I read of Harry Potter were childish trashcrap, whereas The Da Vinci Code was one of the best books I've ever read -- especially impressive when I was reading it to see how bad it was, like my friends said. What idiots.

The people who say the Da Vinci Code is bad writing are as crazy as the people that say Harry Potter is good.

Also, I wish I'd written the four best books by Arthur Hailey. He was a better bad writer than Dan Brown.

7. One book you wish had never been written

I'm changing this to screenplay.

Waiting...

I cried when I heard there was a movie about a day at a restauraunt and I cried even more when I realized it was almost as cultworthy as Office Space. I always thought I was the one to write a book about the Fifth Wheel, but these jerks did it before me, did it low budget, and did it well enough that anyone who ever writes another book or screenplay about a restauraunt like the Fifth Wheel will be called a hack.

8. One book you're currently reading

I just finished skimming The English Patient to see if it was as lame as I imagined. It was.

Books with constant reference to classic literature are lame. Sorry to every Canadian and British writer in existence. You're lame. Think up your own s***. There are still new ideas out there. Find them.

I'm also in the middle of at least a half dozen books, including Brideshead Revisited, Away (Joan Urquhart), Middlemarch, Darryl's book (Sorry Darryl, I can't finish it)...

God, we could go back years here. I guess I'm technically in the middle of War and Peace, Don Quixote, de Tocqueville, not to mention at least twenty textbooks from UofT and five to ten from Western.

9. One book you've been meaning to read

The Dos Passos U.S.A. Trilogy. I've never seen proof that it exists in a store, and we're talking about years as a troll in the shops. I'll probably break down and order it soon.

10. Six people to tag (to do this themselves)

I don't know six people with websites. Sorry, continuum.

(Updated) Cutest Kid Ever

"Juliet, who's your favorite teacher?"
"Christine."
"Christine? Why is she your favorite?"
"Ummmmm. She's very smart."
"And Tim Teacher isn't smart?"
She nods her head in agreement.

TWO HOURS LATER, AFTER FAVORING JULIET ALL DAY:
"Juliet, who's your favorite teacher?"
"Christine."

The best song composed since October, 1982

Poor quality video, but here's further proof that "Smells like Teen Spirit" is the greatest song of my lifetime, if not yours.*



This sounds too good, even by a freshman band, and there's little doubt in this mind that more legitimate orchestras will be playing this in a hundred years, if we're still alive, along with more obvious fare like "Bittersweet Symphony" and "Wonderwall," two of the other great songs of the 90's.

Anyways. Wanted to post this because it's fun, and it backs up the best explanation of Nirvana I've ever heard, which is "lullabies played through foot pedals."

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*If you were born previous to 1972, "What's going on" is the best song of your lifetime.

ChanX is gone. He treated me like a lady /// Three Weeks Left

We went to a fancy restauraunt.

We rode the subway.

We went to numerous baseball games.

Only three weeks left, so it's starting to feel like a holiday again. All I have to do is go shopping, see a bunch of crap I want to see again or haven't seen yet, and then go home.

Don't ask me questions about what I'm doing next. Don't.

ChanX is here. We worshipped Ben Johnson together.

I've been sightseeing, but not taking too many pictures. Here's two.

The notorious Ladies Man and I went to a baseball game... The game was played between two Seoul teams who play out of the same stadium. They each had their own side of the stadium, so it made it extremely easy to bandwagon. We switched sides whenever we wanted to feel like winners.

The baseball stadium was right beside the Seoul Olympic Stadium, now renamed BEN JOHNSON MEMORIAL PARK.

(* now re-named by me)

This is me holding back the tears, realizing that the great Ben Johnson had once walked these very concrete steps.

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P.S. ChanX wants you to know that "JOTT KAWH" in Korean means "Kick Penis!" Apparently, it is the equivalent of saying "F-word Off."