Let's reflect on Narcissus

So it is once again time for a story, and what better story to go with then Narcissus.  I've always enjoyed the tale of a vain man falling victim to his own admiration to himself.  As someone who tends to constantly stare at himself in mirrored surfaces this story really hits close to home.  Especially that time I tried to make out with my reflection in the men's bathroom.

I am not the creator of these images, and that showing the pictures from the books are for entertainment purposes only.  All of the pictures belong to the English Vine Corporation.

I forgot to grab a picture of the front cover of this book, however you can imagine it was sufficiently amusing.  So as the story goes, the river god Cephisus and a "blue" nymph named Liriope did what we in the industry like to refer to as a "romance dance."  Thus Narcissus was born, though with a warning that he should never see his own reflection, lest he get a complex or something I kind of trailed off at the end there.

Man look how "blue" that nymph is.

I love the river god's expression its like he's contemplating whether he should hug the baby or drown it in the river behind them.  The "blue" nymph has a content look of I just squeezed this thing out of me.  Go me!

Epic rap battles going on in the background there.

So Narcissus grew older and increased in hunkiness tenfold!  He has the locks of five Fabios and eyes as blue as some sort of nymph.  Since he is beautiful he gives no care to those people around him.  Like the ones lazily drawn on a featureless grassy plain behind Narcissus.  Narcissus didn't have any friends, so he spent most of his time walking the forest, because that's what people did before the internet existed.

All is now well in old Greek Anime land however, there was a goddess named Juno, who had a servant named Echo.  Echo was not a nice girl, and spread lies about the other servants and was mean.  So Juno was all like "Get the heck out of dodge" which made Echo cry.  Its almost like being a jerk to people has consequences or something.

I love her awesome horn hat thing, bad ass.

So Echo was cast out of the one place she knew and thrown to the wolves like so many fat German children.  She, however, did not come across a house made of candy, she only found some eye candy.

Here is Narcissus practicing his best "I have no emotion because I'm a model" stare.

Echo falls in love with Narcissus at first sight and becomes completely fixated with him.  So she does the smart thing and tries to run directly at him in an attempt to hug him.  This action somehow failed to make Narcissus love Echo and he ran off into the woods, because even someone as shallow as him can smell crazy a mile away.  

So wait if I have sex with my reflection would that be incest or masturbation?

Aphrodite the Goddess of Love saw this from way above and was downright angry that Narcissus didn't accept the immediate creepy affection of some random girl he met in the woods.  So she cursed him to fall madly in love with himself.  Luckily reflective surfaces were invented in the late 1800s so he lived a long and healthy life.

Or he decided to take a drink at a lake and totally fell in love with himself.

If only he had made himself a mixed tape, that always does it.

As he pawed at the lake trying to catch his beautiful reflection Narcissus had a total freaking breakdown.  Since he had never experienced rejection before he took it rather badly.  It was like every awkward love note pass, and nervously asking Sandy to the school dance all in one moment.  It made him lose the will to live, so he just laid down on the ground and freaking died.  Oh also Echo repeated him or something because that's tragic.  All of the nymphs in the forest mourned his death, even though everyone agreed he was kind of a dick.  Did you see his butt though?  I could bounce quarters off it, and they hadn't even been invented yet.

Even the flower is pretentious.

So where Narcissus died the forest flower popped up in its place, and so that is where we get red flowers.  I sure did learn a lot today.

Next time we dive into the wildly boring world of mechanics!

Don't be a play...a hater

The background for My Dino Pet.

So for the wonderful month of February, which is when kids graduate and move up to the next level of their schooling (for 7 of ours kids it meant the transition from our Hagwon to a real school).  Graduations are of course a huge deal in Korea much like at home, they actually have graduation ceremonies for kindergarten of all things.  I actually remember graduating from the kindergarten vaguely, I slid down a twisty slide and grabbed a piece of paper out of an elderly woman's hands.  So of course our private school was going to go all out for its dinky graduation.

Manda coloring in a roof.

We were informed at the beginning of February that we would be having the children do a play for their parents.  This is the first time the school has attempted this, and it would be for sure a train wreck even before the first curtain call.  Manda and I combed the internet for the least painful plays we could possibly find.  Originally Manda had chosen Peter Pan, however decided to go with the classic Stone Soup since her kids have the attention span of gerbils.  I grabbed a nice little play written by a 12 year old Mexican child by the name of "My Dino Pet."

Working hard on the Stone Soup background.

The month was painful and long, but it was all worth it when we finally finished the night and had a nice long three day weekend.  I had everything ready and Manda and I had even custom made our own backgrounds for the plays to make them look a bit better.  The children themselves actually had costumes ordered from them, Manda's poor villages became fruit and vegetables (for some reason).  My students who were supposed to be 3 small children, a mother, a doctor, and a dinosaur somehow became wizards, a sailor, and two ring masters.  I am not really sure what the the director was thinking with that one, but it is hard to complain about it at this point since it is after the fact.

The little trouble maker.

The star of my play "Peter the Dinosaur" had a blue dragon outfit.  The child I starred in the role is the biggest airhead in my class, so I figured he would enjoy running around on all fours and roaring like a dinosaur.  He certainly performed his role as a crazy lizard.  When the play actually started instead of staying in the cage that he was meant to wait in he ran around the stage and fought me when I tried to put him back. After much coaxing he stayed in his cage and the play went on.  Then when it came to the scene change he once again fought me to stay on the stage, and I literally had to drag him off the stage.  It was pretty mortifying but honestly it was pretty funny not that I can look back on it.

Insert scream goats here.

The best part about the play though is that we are now halfway done with our contract here in Korea.  It is hard to believe that as I am typing this we are 5 and a half months from our flight home.  I have some more content planned for the blog very soon so I shouldn't be such a ghost on here anymore.  Look forward to some very...interesting posts in the future.