Curtains are awesome!

I was feeling very irritable and pissed off during my kindergarten class today. I keep waking up around 5 in the morning and have a really hard time falling back asleep.I just spend about 3 hours in a some state of semi-consciousness having dreams about people suddenly being my bed or something happening in the kitchen, 3 feet from behind my head. It's really not an efficient use of 3 hours. It's scheduled as sleep time though. I don't seriously do that but I go to bed at 1 or so thinking that gives me 7 hours of sleep, not the 3-4 hours that it actually becomes. Going to bed earlier doesn't really help either since I can't sleep in this heat most of the time. I still don't know whether it's heat or light that keeps getting me up. Anyways, after I finished my one kindergarten class, I came home and threw some laundry in the machine and went to E-Mart to buy some curtains and or an AC unit.

It turns out AC units are ridiculously overpriced. Well, maybe not overpriced but way too expensive for me for thhe 2-3 months I'd imagine using it. I'm not going to $250 a month for the stupid thing that doesn't even include installation or energy costs, etc. Some were over 2 million won. That's a month salary, well more even and my gross pay too. I found some decent curtains though. They're kind of wooden and there's space enough to let air in but keep out all the heat. I swear one minute after I had them up I felt so much better. It wasn't so light or bear and felt cooler even. Then I realised that there's a pipe over my kitchen windows, for the gas line so I threw an old blanket over that for the time being. I'll probably get some shower curtains or something and use the pipe as a rod. I don't know why it hadn't occured to me before. Maybe madness is necessity for brilliance. I was seriously going batty. On good nights, I'd get maybe 6 hours and that's on the weekend. Plus, I figure shower curtains are cheap and it won't matter so much if oil splatters on them. Much less likely to catch on fire too. I never used to right in fragments. I wonder why there's such a disconnect between written and spoken English. People speak in fragments all the time. Maybe I just don't know the correct punctuation or something. Seriously though, what you would write formally and what you would just say are completely different. I'm sure people could easily spend 5 minutes speaking in what would be considered an obscenely long run-on sentence.

So anyways, I have curtains and they actually match stuff. They were only 23,000 too or $23 US or $29 Cdn probably. Putting money into my own currency depresses me. It never feels quite as cheap as it did initially. The won to US dollars is so easy. I just have to remove some 0's. I hardly ever take the time to put it into Canadian. Maybe I'm spending too much money. Probably at least 1.25 times as much at least or whatever the current exchange is. They are decent though and cover both sides of my double window. I did buy two and that was the whole point. They don't exactly go to the floor like the saleswoman told me or at least I think that's what she was telling me. I was going to get another one for over one of my sliding glass doors since it's right behing my head but it still leave about 15-20 cms so there would still be a gaping hole for light to shine right behind my head. I hope they sell shower curtains in Korea. I don't think most Koreans have them. Actually, I have never seen them but seeing as I've only been in a few apartments the sample size isn't all that large. They'd be nice though. Easy to clean and I could cut them without feeling guilty.

I was going to go back to E-Mart tonight and finish my wild and crazy curtain binge but I went to Matt and Renee's to retrieve the umbrella I'd left there on Friday night. I ended up staying a couple hours. We had pizza, watched some bad TV, and bitched about work. I met some girl who really hates Korea and can't wait to leave. Renee hates it here too actually. I've decided there are many things that I don't like but I don't really hate it. Sadly, the thing I hate most is my job where I end up spending most of my time and the lack of social interaction (which has been radically different the past week or so) but there's still enough interesting things or potentially interesting things that make me not dislike the place. It could be better, which is basically always the case anyway, but I know it could be a lot worse. Anyways, I might go back to E-Mart tomorrow night. Of course, these curtains might not help a damn and there's no way I'm spending more than $200 on any kind of fan. There was something there for 115,000 that I thought about getting. It was larger than a fan and had all these buttons but I think it was just a glorified air pushing machine that didn't cool anything at all. I've been swearing a lot more in my head too. I'm not a big swearer but these past few weeks I've been finding the inability to use other words or euphemisms. Instead of, oh I wish so and so would behave better in class I've been finding that I only say, fucking so and so, I hate him/her. I'm sure anyone who knows me could attest to the fact that an obscenity uttered more than once a month is very excessive. Some people, I don't think have ever heard me swear except for when I'm drunk and say things for shock value. Sometimes, I think I've got to outgrow this 11 year old mentality about my own use of obscenities. I really have absolutely no problems with anything anyone else says but it always feels so shocking if I use that kind of language. My mother would be proud I suppose. Then I think that I'm just reserving swear words to maintain their power. Like 'oh, Tyler, said the s-word. He must really be upset,' but then I just go and say it in my head but remain silent or make some strange comment. Maybe I should make a resolution to swear at least 2-5 times a day. You know, a couple shits and a fuck or something. I feel like I'm not optimizing my use of the language. Profanity though, my Jesus's and God's aren't a problem. I have no problem taking the lord's name in vain. I remember once, Armand Weller, this girl I went to school with went on some big kick in grade 5 or 6 about not saying 'oh, my god' or anything. I think I actually have a vague recollection of receiving a bible in school. I remember we used to say the daily prayer in grade one either before or after the national anthem. Talk about seperation of church and state. One of the relicts of growing up in a small French Canadian town, well formerly French Canadian communities. It is the only officially bilingual town in Alberta though. My parents were among the first wave of city folk to come and destroy most of that. Until like 1978 or something there were only 700 or so people in the town and today it's over 8000, I think. It definitely doesn't feel like the place where I grew up anymore. There's an actual grocery store there now and fast food restaurants. Actual chains within the past couple years, not just some local grad starting her own burger place. I wonder if Burger Boss is still there. If you really wanted to, I'm sure you could find the exact place where I grew up if you googled it but I won't tell you. I will tell you that I used to live in the golden house near the old Big Way. It was a pretty recognizable house back when Big Way was the only place in town where you could buy cheese. I would've said milk but technically I think there were always gas stations to sell milk. It's funny we had all these weird little businesses but there seemed to be an over abundance of gas stations, liquor stores, and dentists. Only 2 banks, but at one point I think we had like 8 different liquor stores. It had to do with privatisation and know I don't know how many there are. I find it hard to believe that it was once the government supplying us with all our booze. It was a decent place to grow up. I think in either 1995 or 1997 or sometime around then were ranked as the safest place to live in the province. Anyways, that my bit about my home town. I should probably go to bed now so I can make it to Korean class tomorrrow having prepared all my classes in the afternoon between 9-10. Not likely to happen but I can imagine it happening.