Freckles and the 'South African accent'

Right, so here is another installment. It might be a long one, depends on how I feel. Brace yourselves.

There are no stars here. It is killing me, that is the only downside so far. There was one star that struggled through the clouds the other night and i was disproportionately excited by it! I did a little happy star jig in the street, only to be almost knocked over by a scooter on the sidewalk. You cannot afford to lose your concentration on the pavement for even a second! I have almost become pavement carnage at least 10 times in the past three weeks. It's mostly because I am conditioned into thinking that it is a safe space for pedestrians. Which is mistake number one in Korea. Scooters and Motorcycles have free run on any surface. They even use the zebra crossings, as though two wheels means you can abandon the rules of the road and become a pedestrian when it suits you. Walking with an ipod is also a bad idea as it means that if they deign to give you some forewarning of your immanent danger you don't hear it and then it's your fault that you lost a leg.

In case you hadn't noticed I'm covered in freckles. This phenomenon is not often seen in Korea. My one class, after endlessly pointing and whispering amongst themselves (as if the teacher cannot see this, I mean really espionage is not their strong point), finally asked me what the spots on my arms were, when I said they were called freckles ( I duly wrote it on the board) they screwed up their faces in disgust and promptly stopped discussing it any further. well that did nothing for my confidence.

Then I was out the other night with the other teachers and I saw this girl in the bathrooms and randomly started chatting with her, mostly because she had freckles and I wanted to know if it was just me that they didn't like or if it was freckles in general. Turns out she went to the Dr for some reason unrelated to skin and he was like "Don't worry we will fix you and get rid of these as well (pointing to all her freckles!)"!!!!! I just laughed. It made me feel better about my so called affliction. ha ha.

The enigmatic South African accent. Does it exist? According to all the Canadians here Leonardo Dicaprio has the deffinative South African accent from Blood Diamond. Now I haven't seen this movie, but I have heard that it was a dire attempt, and thus it is not to be used as a reference for South African accents. This fell on deaf ears. I had to endure an entire night of "South African Accents"...all of which sounded New Zealandish, it was bizarre to say the least. And if I said anything they just said, you dont sound South African, you sound British. So I was no longer a reference for anything regarding SA. oh my days.

Talking of Canadians, they are not as fishpaste as previously thought. I really maligned the entire race unjustly, I was convinced that as a nation they were boring and I had no time for them. However I was mistaken and must swallow that bitter pill as the Canadian teachers here are hilarious and not boring. They may be other things, but boring not. So this is me retracting all those nasty statements made previously in public.