A New Form of Insanity

I'm getting really really settled in here in Korea.  By that, I mean I've bought a Wii.

I know, I know.  I have one back in Knoxville already.

But it doesn't have 161 games pirated on it.  Games that cost $20-$50 each back home.  And it didn't come with two controllers and two nunchuks, a steering wheel, and a gun.  For about the same cost as just the system costs back home.    And anyways, hello!  It's called Craig's List.  I can get rid of one of them.

I'm blaming it on Gene.  She tempted me in with her Wii, and then didn't invite me over enough to play it.  Then...then...she took me to the Gaming District.  Ok, ok...so maybe I asked her to.  OMG that place was AMAZING.  My favorite video game nerd friends back home would call it sexy, even.  It went on and on and on...like most of these crazy districts here do.  I want to say it was a whole indoor kilometer of video game booth after booth of men hawking Wii's, PS3's, old school original Gameboys...I mean, they had it all.  Brand new, used, whatever.  And the prices seemed pretty sweet.  I kept wondering if they had mirrors up to make it look bigger in there, but they didn't.

The outside of the Video Game District

Needless to say, on Sunday, this girl, sick with yet another cold, stayed glued to that machine for the rest of the evening.  Tonight I was itching to play as soon as I walked through the door after work...but I had to cook dinner first.  I was ambitious with my cooking, too.  Salad and mashed potatoes with gravy.

For me, that means using the blender to make my own honey mustard salad dressing out of cashews, honey, mustard powder, olive oil, raw onions, fresh parsley, and salt.  THEN shoving a bunch of vegetables down my throat after dipping them in it because it was delicious.  THEN...washing out the blender and using it to make the gravy...again out of cashews...rice flour which I ground myself out of dry brown rice using a smaller attachment to my blender...and of course garlic and onion powder...then throwing it on the stove...next to the potatoes I've chopped and have got boiling in the other pot...then draining, mashing, mixing in the olive oil and rosemary...then throwing the gravy all over it...then shoving it down my face while chatting with a friend still at my last school on Skype...all along, tweaking out that I can't simultaneously play the Wii.

We talked about how my old school does their best to make the teachers feel like crap about their abilities and tries to destroy their self esteems.  Tons of negative feedback is given over there.  Some of the teachers there might not agree with that...but I was there, and that was my personal experience, as well as many others'.  I had already been reminiscing on that today after hearing some parent feedback from Min, my awesome coteacher, who is responsible for calling all the mommies every week (quite an extraordinary task).  She told me that one of our kindergarten students had been telling his little friend about "A" is for "Aloe" after holding and tasting a chunk of frozen aloe during my "Intro to the Letter A" lesson in the second week of school.  Then that kid's mom got to talking to my student's mom about our school, and how they learn using hands-on methods, and not just rote memorization, and now she wants to send her son to my school, too, and might just do that in a month or so.

I mean, that pretty much brought me to tears it felt so good.  And I realize that's more the school's doing and not mine, but still, it feels good to be a part of it.  After getting torn down on a daily basis at my first job.  Now I teach lessons I feel good about and get real feedback from someone being totally honest with me and not secretive and who is also a teacher and not just pretending and who thinks of me as a human and not just property, and a supportive head teacher, and a principal who I can actually communicate with directly, and who is a teacher herself, and a predictable daily schedule...and constructive feedback on my teaching...and I mean, I could run-on this sentence for hours just to get my point across.

Finally, I turn on the Wii, and what do I choose to play?  Cooking Mama.  It's really fun...you get to motion like you're chopping vegetables, and stirring the pot, and frying things, etc.  I love it.

In other words, I've discovered a new form of insanity.  The kind where you tweak out while cooking because you can't play your Wii, only to play a cooking game as soon as you do play it.

At least I cooked some real food first, though.  But I also just discovered that even though I like living alone, it sucks that the phrase "I cooked--so you do the dishes" doesn't work in this scenario.

At least a video game doesn't produce any dirty dishes.

Playing Super Mario Galaxy with the cat