What teaching is actually like...

I suppose it's all well and good me telling people about what teaching is like in a Korean school, but I think it's much more useful to actually show you. This semester I've taken the odd video and photo here, so here they are...

Actually, I'm sure that the folk back in England think it's a lot of this....

I wish. That was Sports day... pretty similar to a British one, except they had to 'practice' it the day before(?!) because parents were coming. I snapped it from the English room to show you the sheer effort that went into it. It was fully like an episode of It's a Knockout! Banners AND inflatables. Yes.

My job was the scoreboard anyway. Totally what I studied at university to do...

Anyway, Sports Day aside, they usually get snapped when they're playing a game or singing a ridiculous song because I want to embarrass them. Here are a few of them...

The first one is a 3rd grade class I did this week. Note the lost child closest to the camera with a book balanced on his head for the entire song. Can't teach em all!

Another 3rd grade class in this one, learning colours. Check out the dancing kid with the perm at the front. Yep, that's actually a hairstyle here. Pretty sure this was the week he came running in pointing at his hair to show me his lovely new curls. Very nice mate.

Here are some older ones, 5th graders, also dancing to one of the terrible songs. This is actually my favourite class. You can see straight away how much more they want to be filmed though. Poses being struck all over the place...

You may have noticed the general awfulness that is these songs. For your pleasure, here's one of the videos we would show in class for them to learn. Brace yourself: it's super gay.

Told you. Some of these videos freak the kids out so much. Rightly so.

Lastly, here are a few pictures that have been building up on my phone. These were all taken in the middle of class, simply because I'm THAT professional.

Some 3rd graders playing Snakes & Ladders:

Two good 4th grade students. The one on the left is pretty much fluent actually. He keeps asking me about architecture and construction methods because they're building next to the school. This child is 9! I was still well into eating blades of grass at that age.

A couple of 5th grade girls decided to not play the game and just make a banner instead. The 'ㅋㅋㅋ' at the bottom corner just means the same as writing 'lol'. Its sounds like 'kh-kh-kh'. Kind of a weird laugh, I know.

Lastly, I saw this and couldn't not take a sly picture. They have the strangest slogans written on their English notebooks. Last semester I noticed that lots of kids have stationary and school supplies made by a company called 'Erexion', which is just plain wrong. Anyway, why this book publisher chose this phrase is beyond me...

Mmmmmm, fragrant memories. Curry and kebabs.

Laziness...

Evidently i've been extremely lazy this time, to the tune of three months.

There's a reason for this. I suppose you could call it settling. The thing is, these days, those crazy things that first shocked or amused me are just accepted parts of daily life. The ridiculous decisions, the strange rules, the funny spelling mistakes, they're all just a given now as far as i'm concerned!

I think the problem is that we're both ready to make a move. I've definitely got a slight bit of work fatigue going on. It's not in the sense that i'm busy, just in that I do the same thing, week in, week out. It certainly makes me applaud people who do this job for five years plus. They're heroes!

Michelle and I both had our parents round anyway. First my folks, then Michelle's. That kept us busy for a good 6 weeks or so. it was actually really nice having them here. It was nice to see the whole 'new world' look in their eyes when something unexpected happened.

Kids at school are still good. I gave one class each a photocopy of my signed Park Ji-Sung card and they just went insane. Some kids laminated it. Ever since then, when I ask a question, I get this...

It's nice to have a class to look forward to every week. They literally come through the door saying, 'Teacher, this week... umm.. pick me! Pick me!' I've actually been altering my classes with them to ask more questions, because if I don't get around everyone they tend to get a little grumpy about it, like i've forgotten them! Bless.

I went on my first school trip too. First to the water works (wow!), then to a castle (it was actually just a few bricks, barely a wall), then to this famous stream in the country. It was significantly better than a day of teaching, I have to say. As soon as the kids saw I was taking photos it was mayhem, so instead of nice shots of the countryside and a few bricks I got lots of kids doing peace signs. Here are a few...

The last ones from a camera crew filming the cherry blossoms. Needless to say, the kids wanted to be filmed as well.

So, this weekend we're going paragliding. Should be fun. We finally have a free day today as well, and of course it's not hot enough for the beach. Typical. The weather has turned now though. I think it swung about 30 degrees in the space of a month. We've had some scorchers already, but I heard that summer brings with it 38 degree days. I'll be on the beach for those I think. Teaching should be fun for the weekdays!

We're thinking about going to Hokkaido, Japan for our summer holiday. Apparently it's the only place around that gets a European style summer, that is without the 99% humidity and monsoon rains everyday. I think we'll need it.

We're just counting down to October really. That's when the travelling really starts. I guess this blog will be updated a fair bit more too. In theory.

Desk Warming

At the minute things are a little slow. February has been a strange month work wise. The way that the Korean school system works means that the kids go away for a month over Christmas, then come back for a week and a half, then go off again for Spring Break for another 2-3 weeks. It's pretty ridiculous. Of course there was little work done in that week and a half. A few movies and games here and there, that was about it.

It's also all change at the minute. Pretty much everyone I knew at my school is leaving. Maybe I should shower more often or something. My co-teacher, who pretty much holds your hand through all the complicated paperwork and legal stuff, is leaving to have a baby. I had 90% of my lessons with her so it's a huge change. Also, EVERY other English teacher in the school is going. I mean, really?! So, next semester I'll have all new teachers to work with, which might take some time to get used to. I'm only here for another 6 months or so though, which is nothing.

I was hoping to get time off for these past few weeks due to there being no lessons and no kids around the place. In fact, there are no teachers either. I see the odd one or two now and again, but that's it. I'm enjoying something known as 'desk warming'. The most boring and pointless activity known to man. My day goes something like this...

8:30am: Get to school > 8:35am: Go back to bed > 10:00am: Stream some basketball > 12:00pm: Have lunch > 1:00pm: Watch a movie/play guitar > 3:00pm: Take my 2nd nap > 4:30pm: Wake up and go home.

There could be some Korean lessons mixed in with that but there you have it. A waste of a day, really. It makes me wonder if having foreign teachers here is actually worth it, because all this time I'm still getting paid. It's madness. Also, as cool as it sounds, it gets incredibly boring after a couple days. I'm craving some work to pass the time! I try to set myself little challenges, like watching all three original Star Wars films in a single work day. This is as exciting as it gets.

I had a day last week where I got snuck out at lunchtime to go sightseeing, which was awesome. Then last Friday I went out with the new head of English for a three-hour lunch. I really don't mind that part.

Still, I can't believe we're going into March soon. Time flies. The weather's finally getting warmer, so hopefully in a couple months we can have beach time every weekend. All about that.

Anyway, if you'll excuse me... I have some basketball to stream and a pile of movies to watch.

Winter in Korea

Wow. Who knew winters in Korea were so cold? Not me. I suppose the main redeeming feature about the weather here is that the endless drizzle and dull grey skies of good old Britannia is gone. Every day is one of those lovely winters days, the only problem being that its about -5C.

January was a ridiculously busy time for us. English winter camps took over our lives for about 3 weeks. I've been teaching full days (the horror!) from 9am until just after 3pm. Still, the class sizes have been good - maybe a max of about 15 kids, some days plummeting down to a lowly 3. This made my job a hell of a lot easier. I've been pretty proud of myself too. I actually formulated a working schedule lasting 17 days around the same topic of 'Around the World'. For once I felt like I was ACTUALLY doing my job well. Below is a picture of a HUGE class of five making some Brazilian carnival masks. Note my excellent scribblings on the board...

For a final project I had them create their own countries. They made flags, passports and maps. My god, some of them were adorable. Country names included 'Tony', 'No Die Land' and the beautifully titled 'Butterfly Cubic Land'. Bless.

Obviously with being so busy recently we've barely travelled. A quick trip to Busan a couple weeks ago was nice. We took in Yonggungsa Temple, which is apparently a rarity in Korea, being by the sea. This made it pretty damn photogenic, although the weather was, as always, painfully cold. We did get shown around by an ex-Buddhist monk though, who explained the paintings and the teachings of Buddhism to us. Funnily enough, he was working a big MIS project in Busan, something I studied (or slept through) during Uni.

Nice place anyway. Apart from that, we've just been mulling around Ulsan for the past few weeks. We're taking ourselves up to Gangwon province this weekend for a little treat though. The place has a bath and everything. Oh, how I've missed one of them. Temperatures of -13C sounds pretty appalling though.

The other day I took this as well. It's one of the sexy love motels in Ulsan, apparently part of a chain. You've got to love the slogans on the side...

100% love, baby.

Getting remote for Christmas: The Philippines

In these desperately freezing times, what we really need is a dose of sun and the chance to feel like a big shot. Cue The Philippines!

Christmas in Korea was going to be a washout by regular standards. We accepted that. With that in mind we’d arranged for a flight out on the 23^rd, returning 30^th.

December had been a total drag with prep for winter English camp, which began on the 2^nd, with mine running for an epic four weeks. This meant nearly 5 hours of teaching a day for this entire period. Absolutely golden.

Our plan was to fly to the remote island of Palawan – a place where electricity was sparse and roads were even more so. The whole place is pretty much 1000 square miles of jungle with an airport stuck in the middle. Once we got to the city, we would move up north to as remote a place as possible and, you know, just get our Crusoe on.

The first obstacle was getting there. An 8-hour layover in Manila was far from ideal. Sleeping on the floor of the terminal was even less so. I’ll tell you just what I needed right then… a man with a cockerel waiting to check in beside me. Ah, thank heavens. Come 3am that future fighting champion was the most unwelcome early wake-up call I ever knew

When we finally got to Puerto Princesa, Palawan, we took a walk to our hotel. Nice little place, only booked the executive suite. You know, it’s just how we do things over here. The Philippines is awesome, it’s beautiful and amazing, with opportunities everywhere, but one thing was just awful – the word ‘sir’, or in Michelle’s case ‘mam’. No matter how old the person was, we got it everywhere. I felt like a dick. The archetypal snobby tourist. I never got used to it. Why should a 50-year old boatman have to call me ‘sir’?! It’s just crazy, especially coming from a place where the more years you have the more of a dick you’re allowed to openly be and get away with it. All these damn multi-national etiquette contradictions!

So, Christmas Eve – we certainly weren’t roasting chestnuts on an open fire. We rented ourselves a boat, cue ‘Where are we going today Sir?’ (eugh!) We sat drinking from fresh coconuts on a perfect beach, then went snorkelling over coral in waters teaming with fish, then took a walk along an island no wider than the boat that brought us there. Absolute perfection of a day. Cost: £20

Christmas Day brought with it a ‘city tour’, mainly because we slept in too late to do anything else and I didn’t want to let our taxi man down. Less than impressive, I have to say. A dangerously overflowing crocodile farm, followed by a jungle walk that brought with an array of insect bites, finished with a butterfly house (not a patch of tropical world, of course). Still, it prepared us for some serious travelling the day after.

We were heading away from the motorcabs and the dirt of the ‘city’ (it’s really just a group of shacks spread across a few miles; ‘city’ is certainly a touch overzealous on behalf of Palawan’s citizens). A jeepney would take us up north to Port Barton, a place that could only be reached via a waterlogged bog of a track. Some serious Colin McCrae action went on in that driving seat to get us there.

Port Barton was the quintessential remote paradise. A beautiful wide bay with a white beach to snake around it. Fishing and scuba diving were the two main incomes. It was slow, that’s for sure. Coming from Korea, it was very slow. There was no hot water in the village, with the only electricity being available from 6pm until midnight. This meant any food during the day took a very healthy amount of time to prepare. Still, we were in no rush there.

We also had our first official scuba dives. A frankly insane wiry German lady with bad teeth took us to a place called Exotic Island to go down to about 12m. There were clams bigger than my head, starfish two feet across and so many colours that I kept filling my mask with water from sharply looking around so much. An amazing experience. I will definitely be getting my PADI certification by the time we leave Korea.

For our last full day we decided to check out Palawan’s Underground River. This has been voted as one of the new seven wonders of the natural world, so it must be special. To get there was tough. Wake up at 5:30am, miss the boat at 6am. Arrange another boat at 6:30am and leave to arrive in Sabang (the nearest town) at 9am. The only thing people had regretted to inform us was that we needed a permit to go see the damn thing. Registered tours only. To make things better, by 9:15am, all the boats were apparently full and all tours weren’t letting anyone on. Amazing. Luckily an awesome young guy called Mario just nailed it for us. He got us on his tour; the only catch was that we’d be walking back through jungle after for 2 hours – in flip-flops. Less than ideal. Somehow when we got to the river I manage to sneak us on a boat back though. How, I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe it was the snobby ‘sir’ tourist opening gates for me, who knows. Was the underground river worth the five hours of hassle and travel? Well, it was a river underground really. Caves and stuff.

The next day we were due to leave, but not before being upgraded to an executive suite once again in the same hotel! Hiyoooo! Love that place.

Anyway, we sauntered into the airport the next morning with forty minutes before our flight left only for them to tell us that we were going nowhere. They took our passports and started reading through big dusty books for some reason. We were told that our Korea visas only allowed us to enter the country ONCE. Since we had done so in September, there was no way we were going back without additional documentation. Absolute heartbreak, well for about 15 minutes. Cue a lot of ‘sir’ and snobby-ness once again. They basically had no idea what to do with being such a tiny little airport. They had never had visa issues of Brits coming to The Philippines whilst living in Korea. It was a total minefield. They did let us on with a few minutes to go, telling us we had to go see someone in Manila (I never did).

One last bit of ridiculousness though. We never checked in our bags because of this whole visa drama, so we walked through with all out liquids, including a litre bottle of water. It went through the airport scanners in Manila and got beeped.

The security guy looked unimpressed, ‘Who’s bag is this? Mam, is this yours?!’

Michelle nodded.

He pulled out something for one of the bags, ‘Mam, you can’t take an umbrella on board, you’ll have to leave it here.’

WHAT?! So the humble umbrella is now a deadly weapon. Obviously playing its part in the war on terror. I mean, what if the litre bottle of water was actually full of lighter fluid?! Just plain ridiculous.

Photo Trip!

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A Western Weekend...

Its been a busy few weeks once again. The working week just flies by at the minute, its unbelievable. We FINALLY got paid our flight reimbursement last week! Only a month later than everyone else I know. That together with pay day means its been time to live the high life!

Last weekend we actually stayed out in Daegu in a love motel. A sexy, sexy place. For only 25,000\ (about 13quid!) we stayed in our own little love palace, complete with blue lit hallways, condom vending machines and 10ft high posters of embracing couples on the stairwell. Like I said, it was a sexy, sexy place. We just had to be careful not to touch anything. The bar of soap in the bathroom must've been rife with hepatitis.



We were across there to meet some friends from our Orientation, and I have to say that I totally forgot what it was like to be with Westerners! Its been a while since we really spent any time with anyone who could speak English!

First we checked out Dongwasa Temple, a little north of the city. This was just unbelievable, but kind of for the wrong reasons. The temple was great and everything, but they had just built this ENORMOUS Buddha there. I mean, it must've been thirty metres high or something. Unbelievable. But, less than historic really. Here is the beast anyway...




We also managed to get a photo with one of the monks. For once this temple was still a functioning centre for training and meditation for them. It was nice to not be traipsing round with just tourists. Seeing monks walking to and from their dinner hall and lodgings felt nice and genuine. I would say one thing though, they're awful friendly with each other. I expected solemn silent clarity from them, but instead I saw them nipping each others bums and laughing all the time. Fair enough, I guess.



That evening we went all Brits Abroad. It started with going to a vinyl bar, where drinks come in little pouches that kind of resemble IV bags. For about 2quid you get a big bag of any cocktail. The guy just kept asking, 'Strong?!' to which I just replied, 'Yeah, why not!' We're definitely talking half and half here though. Whilst we had a drink (this place is a kind of street bar), they lit some fireworks and gave us sparklers! So, so awesome.



After this place we went to a sheesha bar. Mellow as hell, but decked out totally Turkish. Very, very cool. You sat on the floor and there were veils instead of walls breaking up the tables. It felt a little more authentic than the sheesha places back home, that's for sure.

We then went to a western bar (where I managed to list the 50 states on a till receipt), followed by a kind of club. One of those, bar/club places. I must've spent a hell of a lot, because I was totally gone by the end of the night. I just remember berating the DJ to place stuff, then struggling to speak Korean to some locals. Absolute lout. Of course, the night finished with a kebab. Which I didn't remember until I burped at lunch the next day and tasted dirty meat. Ha. Absolute disgrace. It was like being in Magaluf for the night.



Anyway, the whole weekend we had beautiful Western food. Burgers, fry ups, pasta... it was awesome. Not a Kimbap or Chigae in sight.

Needless to say, I was a total mess on Sunday. We were due to shop, but both Michelle and I had to sack it off and KTX it home asap. I even felt kind of rough on Monday. Hilarious weekend though. Totally worth it. I think perhaps sometimes we need an obnoxiously Western weekend to satisfy our cravings.

This week has shot by, as always. Yesterday we went to a free football match at the World Cup Stadium by our place. Ulsan were playing Jeonbuk in the K-League playoffs. They lost 2-1, and it rained. Boo. Free though! Here are a few photos.