Long Overdue update

Yep I'm still here. Its been a while since my last post and I realized that I am have been negligent in my promise to update on signifigant happenenings. Probably because they aren't really all that significant but its all relative right? I'll go through stuff in chronological point form style because thats the easiest way for me to cobble this together and gives the blog all the wonder and mystery of a grocery list (what comes next? I hope its 'bananas'!)

In a UN conference room a S. Korean soldier literally stands on the border of North and South Korea. The aviators make him look tough. The gun helps too.

• Last month I went on the DMZ tour, the De-militarized Zone of course had more armed military than I have seen anywhere else in Korea, perhaps they are using the French 'De'. It is interesting to see a heavily armed border and know that there are severe consequences for walking ten feet in the wrong direction (over the border), but I couldn't quite feel like I was in a Tom Clancy novel as it was fairly touristy. There was an element of tension though, which is quite an interesting thing to experience. South Korea's only neighbour by land is a country very similar to thier own that they have been at war with for over fifty years. You get the idea of how Superman feels when he visits bizarro world.

here the kids are improvising a slide out of a wheelchair ramp, previously they used me as a jungle gym. resourceful bunch.

• Took the kids to the park for a field trip, which is relatively lame as far as field trips go, but they did make a visit to a science center as well. In Canada the science center is run by the government, this one was run by an electronics company called LG. The exhibits were comprable but the corporate product placement did make it seem like LG invented pretty much evrything they were demonstrating (like electricity, DNA and a robot that could draw your picture very sowly). Its never too young to teach these kids about the birds and bees so one of the exhibits was a very detailed crash course on reproduction and heredity. I'm sure our three year old students fully absorbed everything they need to know about XY chromosomes. they followed that presentatoin uyp with a cool machine that will take a male and female and predict what thier baby would look like. Yet another activity that kids ages 3-6 obviously need to experience. One of the pairs was Wendy (age 5) and Denny (age 6), the resulting picture looked older than either of them and exactly like another student in thier class named Valentine next one of the teachers (egged on by the rest) took me into the machine to see what our baby would look like. If that kids face isn't an advertisement for keeping the Korean bloodline pure I don't know what is (its okay to call the kids ugly because it doesn't actually exist).

• I don't have a picture but the biggest actual development is that the school I work for was bought out by another school and my job has changed drastically. I have been moved to a different building while they remodel my old one and starting ext month they will fully integrate the two schools together. For now I mostly just teach kindergarten at my Hagwon, with only two elementary classes there a week (I still teach at an elementary school two afternoons a week). The upshot is that at least for now my hours are drastically cut down (at the same pay) with two days a week where I only have 3.5 hours of class time (down from 6!). the downside is that there are a lot of changes that have been stressing me out and our new boss is very critical. In the end I'm sure it will work out but in the short term its actually a lot tougher. But some changes should be interesting, such as the fact that I now have three classes a week where I will be teaching Musical English, and have been given pretty free rein as to what that entails. This fits perfectly with my plan to get all the kids signing 'the song that doesn't end'

• Climbed a mountain, it was fun. Its the same one Ken climbed with the land mines and stuff. I know its silly but it was kind of scary to even take this pic (wish my camera had better zoom).
  

Recent Pics

A few things I’ve been up to since the last entry.

Firstly Ken and I went to visit the Busan Aquarium three weeks ago, it was a pretty cool place however I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have since my body started running a fever soon after I got there. Perhaps it was some sort of primal defence mechanism against all the scary sharks? I have no idea so I’ll just assume that is true.

More recently I went on a field trip with the kindergarten kids at my school. We went strawberry picking outside of town. Well kind of. Back when I was a kid strawberry picking was an industrious methodical task. This was more of a ‘lets see how strawberries are grown’ trip where the management dissuaded you from picking too many berries. It was a fun trip though and I got a few pics of some of the kids I teach.

There was a another school there that was tossing rocks at a sad looking dog on the resort. Our kids took a different approach and led by Nick they pet the dog, which turned out to be really friendly. Really really friendly as Mary Ann here discovered.

The Korean guy rushed to her aid I rushed for my camera ad the doggie tried to become special friends with her.

It wasn’t a great shot but luckily she went back to the dog a few minutes later and I managed to snap this one. The reaction on the other kids’ faces is priceless.

These are the kids using hammers to mash wet rice into a paste that I soon had to beg off of eating.

This is a shot of the kids enjoying the fruits of their labors.

These are some members of my youngest class: April, Kari and Sidney. I think Kari wins this round of the "cute off".

This is Luke and Wendy from my smart class. They’re holding hands, but I don’t know if that means anything. I think Luke maybe likes Wendy and she likes him but I think Wendy like likes Valentine (not pictured) more.

And here are all the kids together.

Yesterday Ken and I went to a Baseball game, only $2 admission and you can bring in your own beer and food. Our team was the Lotte Giants, who won 8-2. Fun time and met a bunch of Ken's friends.

Went to the game and next thing I know they draft me.

Then Ken and I hit a Casino downtown. First time in a casino for me. Yeah, yeah I know by this age I should have been to one before but it turns out my intial instincts were right and I’m just not a good gambler. Fun time and when the dust settled I was only down $30. Luckily before we went to the casino I won a Winnie the Pooh doll in a crane game so I consider myself even for the night.

Next week going on a tour of the border’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with Ken. Should be a fun time.

less updates from now on

I'm deciding on whether or not to continue this blog in a regular fashion. Will probably just update with any major events a few times a month. theres various reasons and you can email me if you want to hear them. But basically I just have other things I need to do.

Me talk pretty one day

The title from this blog comes from a David Sedaris book I read recently that chronicles some of his mishaps in trying to learn French while living in Paris. Even correcting for his self deprecatory humor I know that I have got him beat for linguistic ineptitude.

Learning Korean can be tough. Especially when you don’t put any sort of planned effort into it. It occurred to me that I am now 5 months into my stay in South Korea, almost halfway into my contract and I speak the local language like a very young very slow child. And that is being very generous.

Now anyone will tell you that the best way to learn a language is immersion. It’s a lot like swimming that way. You go to a country where no one speaks English and you have two options:
a) Get everyone to speak your language
b) Figure out the local language

Now I have obviously been failing miserably at the first one, if you look at my students as an example, so I’ve really got to start putting more into the second option. There are some easy things about Korean, especially their alphabet.

The English alphabet is a bit of a mess. Each letter has multiple sounds and there are so many silent ‘e’s and messed up sounds like ‘ph’ and the word ‘colonel’. Hangul is completely phonetic and fairly easy to pick up. Here it is in its entirety:
Of course reading and understanding are two very different things. This has been evident when I’ve ordered things off the menu at restaurants with a decent pronunciation, but was still just spinning the wheel of fate when it came to getting something I would like. When you think you have ordered spicy chicken and you get deep fried chicken patties drowning in a black sauce it sucks to have only yourself to blame.

Now I’ve tried a few different methods for learning this language; video lessons, audio lessons and interactive computer lessons. Nick invited me to take actual lessons with him with an instructor but I turned him down. I have all these modalities already available, I should master them first. Sure there are failings to some of these ‘teach yourself’ methods, but as a language teacher myself I can see that there are problems with any form of instruction.

Of course what I seem to be lacking is some real motivation. This sounds pretty bad but if I’ve been getting by on so little Korean this long there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to finish up my stay here without acquiring any more. I also wonder how useful Korean will be to me in the rest of my life, since I don’t currently plan to return here for a second year. Spending my time watching American television online and listening to English podcasts makes it very easy to avoid soaking up even nominal amounts of Korean.

But then it occurs to me that a darn good reason to learn Korean is that I am here, and so is the language. And there is probably a whole heck of a lot I’m missing out on by not being able to converse with 99% of the people I meet.

So I will resume my efforts to get my Korean to a less embarrassing level. I may even take classes. I suppose I could start turning my television on again from time to time and see if anything starts to click. I remember in my first few months here being very disappointing that I could watch an entire episode of television aimed at two year olds and not pick up a word.

Ahn Chakhee and Ji Seungyeon, the two ladies that have been trying so hard via pirated video to teach me their language. God bless them.

Kinda funny

While walking out of the elementary school today one of my 1st grade students, Maria, caught up with me and walked for a block.

She curiously asked, in a mix of Korean and English, if I was going home to Canada now.

Apparently she thought that's where I went home to every night.

Kids are adorable at any point that I'm not teaching them.

Enough about me...

There have been a lack of updates. For this I apologize. i have plenty of ideas and the same amount of time as ever but just haven't been in the right headspace.
Breakups will do that to you.
this isn't the type of blog where I publicly muse on completely personal issues (although it does unintentionally veer in that direction sometimes) so suffice to say I'll get back to blogging and away from brooding soon enough.
until then, how about you tell me how your day was?

White Day

White Day

It shouldn’t surprise me that there was yet another Korean holiday to celebrate that involves candy. After Pepero Day (chocolate stick day)nothing should surprise me

It would be too much to call this a bonafide holiday, although I’m sure the women of Korea would disagree with me. But they would probably do so in Korean, which is just water off a duck’s back to me lately (you just assume everyone is yelling ‘nice hat’ after a while). The only other country that celebrates this holiday is Japan, and in this place its basically the female equivalent of Valentine’s Day.

On Valentine ’s Day girls give chocolate to boys. One month later on White Day boys give those same girls candies and chocolates (originally marshmallows, hence the name). Moreso than even Valentine ’s Day this day was created and promoted by commercial businesses.

The general rule is that a White Day gift to a girl is supposed to be three times the value of the gift that a man received from a girl on Valentine ’s Day. Which is a pretty solid candy investment for a girl if you think about it. It’s actually a better system than back home for the guys, since we usually have so much trouble on valentines day. This way we already know what to buy, how much to spend and who to give it to- rather than the crapshoot that was 24 He-Man Valentine cards hastily addressed that I remember not getting me any action as a youngster.

Now much like Valentine’s Day there are also smaller candies that are given out to every girl just for the sake of the day. So I picked up a few bags of Hershey kisses to pass out to my female students and fellow teachers, figuring that it might be a good occasion to buy some goodwill. Nick had forgotten all about White Day so I let him have one of my bags of chocolates, since it wouldn’t be fair to have kids in the school feel left out. So with my chocolate supply at half five minutes into the day I didn’t give any to the other teachers, figuring they would take it better than six year olds (who knows a grown woman to keep a grudge?). Now obviously its not a huge deal but both Nick and Patrick gave them treats (wonder where Nick got the chocolate?) so I might be seen as a bit out of touch. Only time will tell.

Now its hard for me to give out chocolate to kids, since I believe that most of them have had plenty enough candy as it is. But I don’t want my personal beliefs on nutrition to one day turn me into some weirdo that gives out toothbrushes on Halloween so I could justify this day. Some of the boys in my classes were a little miffed that they didn’t get any candy- amazing how quickly they forgot about just one month ago when they got candy and the girls didn’t. The school handed out lollipops to everyone so there was some eveness, but the three boys in my youngest class started crying despite my gentle consolations of : ‘tough luck fatty”. So I gave them chocolates too, they seemed more than willing to accept the gender confusion in exchange for some sugar.

I also served to alienate myself a little further from the staff near the end of the day when a bunch of them were sitting around the various cakes, cookies and chocolates brought in by parents and invited me to partake. They all already know me as a ‘picky eater’(which I guess is a step sideways from the ‘health nut’ moniker I had back home) which is a bit of a big deal since food is such a social event here in Korea. Many restaurants only serve one dish with plenty of sides that everyone at the table shares in. The communal sharing of food is essential to the culture and I’m the weirdo foreigner that doesn’t participate. But there doesn’t seem to be any animosity stemming from it, just curiosity at my quirkiness.

Now if White Day was somehow centralized around the exchange of pizza (Dominos take note!) I’m positive that I would have seen nothing wrong with packing away a slice or so ('so' meaning the number 14 here).

I scream, you scream, we all scream for…

It’s sometimes tough to be teacher of the year every single day. Part of the troubles that I have may stem from the fact that I am not actually a teacher, not in the literal ‘trained to do the job’ sense of the word. Now nothing bad happened today, aside from being unexpectedly exhausted all day (and I had a class of kids call me fat-but that’s not the story I’m telling today). It was one of those mornings that I just never completely woke up and my body just decided to hang at the halfway point until the next round of sleep came rather than getting the lead out.

Luckily though it was a Monday and that meant that I could take things slow with my classes. Due to the unfortunate fact that the weekend involves two consequetive days where the kids are not at English school it is unavoidable that by the time Monday rolls around they have just plain forgot the language. It is a well documented phenomena (by me, peer review by my friend Ken pending) but seems to stress the kids out only about as much as losing a penny down a sewer grate. So everything was back to basics and the day was passing in that odd way that time is wont to do.

It was only during my last class that my kids developed any animosity towards me. Although neither of us is really to blame. I don’t have textbooks for most of my classes this term, which is alright since most of my kids haven’t been given textbooks either. It really allows me to just freestyle things in that way that all highly trained teachers like myself excel in. For this class I had picked out one of the most challenging books the school had and photocopied the pages for my students, seeing as how these are pretty much the most advanced kids at the school. Now they thought that The Case of the Missing Pie was too hard and wanted to switch to a four sentence book called Dinosaur Bones but I tried to convince them that they needed a harder book to expand their vocabulary rather than stick to stuff they knew. It would also tie into their grammar studies with their other teacher on past tense verbs and comparative adjectives.

Well obviously that last statement was going to be a show stopper, and I’m sure you can think of nothing that could eclipse such a shining sentiment in a bored child’s mind.

Of course moments after I said this they saw Nick’s class walking through the hall back into class, each of the students waving an ice-cream cone at us through the window. Nick had taken them on a ‘field trip’ down the street to the convenience store and bought them all a treat. My class understandably began petitioning me for equal treatment. I soon discovered that there are tougher things to explain to Korean kids than the English language, such as your views on positive reinforcement techniques in the classroom and the educational value of a trip to the 7-11. In the end they listened to me politely and I oringinally thought they understood that I was saying I’d be happy to give them a similar prize for good work in the classroom as they all stopped their frantic pleas. Truth is I heard them say to eachother in Korean that it was apparent that I just didn’t have any money. I sighed and let it slide, if I were in their shoes I would have wanted some ice-cream too. So in truth we both learned valuable life lessons. They learned that Nick is a way more fun teacher to have than me. And I learned how to say no to kids begging for ice-cream, which is a skill that every adult should have. I guess this is growing up.

PS just in case I never remember to update you the missing blueberry pie was in fact eaten by scraps the dog, not Tubby as the gang originally thought. You’re welcome for the closure.

Waygook Special

There is a phenomenon here in Korea that I have termed the ‘Waygook Special’, although I’m sure someone else has come up with the same clever title. Waygook is the Korean word for foreigner, and in a very homogenous culture foreigners are a bit of an oddity.

Now what is a waygook special? When a taxi takes it upon themselves to give you a scenic tour of the city and stops at all traffic lights, heads in the wrong direction then finally doubles back after hearing your incomprehensible pleas. Its when you go to a produce market and get the same feeling as walking down the midway at a carnival when carnies call you over to their games o’ skill. Its when basically things that are supposed to be inexpensive turn out to be more expensive than they should be.

I’m not implying anything about racism here, I’ve not really experienced any of that here myself. Aside from that one old man on the subway on Christmas. But its hard to take someone seriously when they look like someone used too much felt on a muppet.

I also don’t want to give you the impression that Busan is full of a dedicated ring of shysters that actively takes advantage of foreigners. That is entirely possible but I frankly haven’t done any research to that end, the makeup required for the undercover work is cost-prohibitive. I’ve come to realize that the feeling that you are being ripped off a bit comes from two possible sources:

1. What you thought was cheap really wasn’t. Korea is the second most expensive country in Asia (Japan wins!) and is not the land of 25 cent meals like my obviously born- in-the-1930s friend Ken originally thought. Alcohol is pretty cheap for instance, even in restaurants. However if you go to an Ice Bar, like my fellow teacher Nick did, and have a half dozen bottles of beer delivered to your table in a bucket of… you guessed it… ice, expect to pay about $100 cdn for that privilege. Well you pay in Won, but I’m converting to help comparison. You can get a hilarious amount of tangerines for $3, yet apples even in bulk usually average to about $1 a piece.

2. What you thought you asked for you didn’t get. The best example of this for me came last night. Ken and I frequent a certain grill house every Friday and order a dish that is basically ribs without the bones. Now last week I had been very confident, not even looking at the menu when I ordered and feeling pretty proud until we paid and found out we had ordered a different dish than we thought. Bill came to $30 instead of $24 (with drinks), not a big deal but I was a little embarrassed. Last night when we ordered I kept my pride in check and pointed at the menu to order and made absolutely sure to order the thing we wanted this time, figuring it was better to be thorough than look cool. We were very satisfied with this slightly cheaper cut of meat, not really being able to tell the difference. Which made sense when we paid because it turns out they still served us the more expensive dish. I tried to explain that was not what we ordered, not out of anger, just confusion. I didn’t know all the words to explain myself so I treated the owner to a recreation. I picked up a nearby menu and repeated the motion of pointing at the thing we asked for, first thing listed. The owner smiled, shook his head and pointed at the more expensive thing down the list. I paid with confused exasperation.

Now I don’t think the man diabolically supersized us, I think he just brought us the other dish as a favor. He just made an assumption on what we wanted and went with that. Possibly based on the fact that the dish he brought us was the one we inadvertently ordered three times before at his place. Possibly because what we had pointed at was like when you order chicken at Red Lobster and the waitress winces and says : “Tell you what, I’ll bring you something nice.” I think to the time that Ken and I ordered chicken that was so spicy the cook came out from the kitchen to personally plead with us to change our minds. We laughed him off and then went through a very painful eating experience, which eventually ended in us hiding pieces of chicken around the table so we could save face with a clean platter.

I originally viewed the Waygook Special as a bit more malevolent than it seems to me now. Now I just figure that people see me as a blind man in a bowling alley facing the wrong direction. They gently turn me around to face the pins, never even occurring to them that I wanted to aim for the Coke machine.

Lousy Immigrants

Got a visit from an immigration officer today. He came to our school and was checking the work visas of our foreign teachers. I’d really like to make it sound scary but it wasn’t. Maybe if he had been wearing dark glasses and a suit and was chewing peppermint gum he would have fit my mental image of an imigrattion officer. Hard to take a guy in a tan windbreaker all that seriously.

I was happy to answer his questions, mainly because the assistant director had to pull me out of a class to talk to him. He asked to see Nick and I’s work card (Patrick wasn’t there) he jotted some stuff on a notepad and gave Nick back his card. He told me there was a problem with mine and he’d have to speak with me alone. So he took me into one of the empty classrooms and sat me down. Once again I really wish there was some tension here to relate but between the windbreaker and me getting out of precious minutes of work made me pretty upbeat.

Turns out he didn’t have me registered to teach at the school on the paper he had, he had nick and Patrick and someone named Joshua. Who wasn’t the guy that I replaced, he was the guy before him. So it was obviously just a matter of some files that weren’t updated, and after a series of phone calls the guy made he said that it was all cleared up. He explained that they had gotten some complaints about Oxford English School and wanted to know if I had ever been asked to work illegally. I told him no, which is truthful as far as I know. I did mention that there used to be something fishy going on with the elementary schools we teach at but that I hadn’t experienced anything personally. Now he seemed pretty interested in the elementary school stuff, and asked me quite a few questions about that. I take this to mean that a) we aren’t legally allowed to work at the elementary schools in addition to our private schools or b) he just plain did not understand my English and kept trying to get me to rephrase my answers. They are both quite possible, and frankly they both concern me about as much as eachother (which is very little). I was just happy to keep talking and get out of class. I didn’t really think too much about whether I would be screwing my school over with what I was saying. I think the chances are pretty low personally, as I really didn’t add much of anything to whatever investigation they were doing. For all I know talking to me was the extent of the investigation. I have no idea who would have submitted these complaints to Oxford, probably some former employee from a while back. Once again I wish I could work up some tension over this, but it occurs to me that I don’t really care if my school gets in trouble. In any case I’m not doing anything illegal so I know that I won’t be deported.

So after 15 minutes of intense interrogation (trying to build that dramatic tension) I headed back to my class, which had just started when I left. I would have figured since the Assistant Director pulled me out of the class she would have put someone in there (herself for instance) to look after the class until I got back. But that was not to be. Twelve 7 year old kids had been left on their own for fifteen minutes with nothing to do. It was like seeing a room full of care bears on speed. They were pretty much useless for any sort of teaching after that point, it took all my wiles to convince them to sit down long enough to play a game. I also found out today that if you distractedly tell a class with decent English they can use as much as they want when referring to the increasingly popular scented handsanitizer I carry around they will take it to extremes. Its kind of fun to watch kids just slather their hands with tons of the stuff and derive unending joy from it.

Painless Monday. I'm suspicious.

First full day of classes with my new allotment of students and theres not much worth blogging about. Which is a good thing. The classes went really well and there doesn’t seem to be any big troublemakers in my new bunch yet. Although I can’t really remember if my old classes were easy when I first started them or not. Maybe they all start off easy and then slowly turn against me. Probably part of some diabolical plot that Kim Jong Il is behind. That’s the most obvious answer.

Most of the kids don’t have textbooks yet so I have really just been killing time with them. Which is actually much tougher than teaching. Killing time and not having the classes go completely bonkers on you is a fine art (studies show its finer than Dadaism). I try not to play too many games with them because I live in shaking fear of the day when they get bored of all my games.

Tomorrow is a kiss on the cheek/kick in the pants day. The kiss on the cheek is that my elementary school is still on vacation so I’m done work by noon. The kick in the pants is that before kindergarten class I have to trek across town to the elementary school to participate in a ten minute advertisement for the English program to some parents. I was told today that it will involve a three minute speech made by yours truly. The stress for these speeches is always very low since the only two people in the rooms that can understand English are my co teachers in the program. Any parents that can understand me are probably better off teaching their own kids English anyway. So its another show up in a suit, smile, and try to sound as American as possible day. A very easy task that would be no issue if it didn’t interfere with my usual morning ritual of slowly sipping my way through a gallon of coffee. Maybe I’ll just rail the grounds tomorrow if I’m in a rush.

I've come to realize something about my body, it knows when I'm bullshitting it. I am fairly health conscious when it comes to diet and I'm not the type of person that eats processed or nutritionally void stuff. Never happens. Despite the fact that it never happens I drank me a fair bit of beer last night and ate some very very fried chicken. Luckily the universe seems to have survived such a logic bending paradox, and somehow so have I.

Now I'm not saying theres anything wrong with beer and fried chicken. this is more about drawing personal lines and sticking to them. Like when you promise yourself you'll not watch television but sure enough come 9:10 you're robbing a liquor store. I just get fascinated that 'things I don't eat' somehow end up in my belly. I hired a well known strength coach to write me a workout program starting next week and told myself that step one was to start eating well again.

Now after a stressful 'almost had to leave the country' debate with my workplace and some first hand experience on why long distance relationships are tough (not just an urban legend like body odor) some comfort food and some beer with my friend seemed in order.
And today I paid a little price. I was a little sore and sickly feeling and totally bombed my workout today. I'm sure that last sentiment really strikes a tender chord with all of you- or maybe it fits in the 'why should I give a shit' portion of your fact filter. I don't know. But right now I'm just looking at how my habits affect my goals.

A big thing for me is that I know that I've got eight more months in a foreign country to try to 'get my act together' (metaphorically speaking, unless I write a one act play. which knowing me is quite likely) to some small degree. I am not feeling too stressed with life at all right now (an oddity for me) but I know that the toughest thing about baseball isn't stepping up to the plate or swinging the bat- its making sure you've got enough follow through. Okay fine I don't know anything about baseball. Its the one with the fake grass, right?

Anyway the only other significant thing to happen today was that I joined Facebook, on Ken's advise. I'm heard its an evil fact gathering diabolical machine, but as long as I enter into the relationship with that knowledge I can make sure I'm the pitcher and not the catcher.

TGINM

Thank Goodness Its Not Monday

Today was the last day of my light work week and tumultuous contract negotiations and the dust seems to have settled in my favor. My new classes of students seemed pretty well behaved today and there doesn't seem to be any huge troublemakers in the bunch. Of course this means that Nick is probably stuck with all my old monster students. and when I say monsters I don't necessarily mean 'child of satan', but they're definitely in the bloodline.

There is one class I won't be teaching anymore that I will actually miss. This is one that would actually play English games together before class because they enjoyed them so much. And some of the students were coming a long way with their speaking since I was able to keep everyone in line with no trouble. they saw me in the hall today and when they found out I wasn't going to be teaching them anymore they were actually a little bummed. Which is a little surprising since most kids seem to have the memory spans of gnats and this is the first class to ever hold on to the memory of a teacher for longer than when one leaves the room.

But its probably for the best that Nick got that class, because when I think about two of my other classes that he got he will need the relief. He looked pretty frazzled today, but then he has long hair and horn rimmed glasses so its tough to look anything but frazzled or on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. He still hasn't finished negotiating his contract and I think that he was a little stressed over how the new workweek was shaping up. I felt kind of bad for him as he was walking into a class of kids I know to be 50% evil and I was heading home. But I didn't feel like... super-bad, since I was getting out an hour and a half earlier than him. Its like watching a World Vision commercial while eating pizza.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I go into to school for the entrance ceremony for the new Kindergarten classes. It shouldn't take more than 2 hours tops and once again my duties will be to just stand there and look white. I'm not actually teaching any of the new kids so my interest level for the proceedings (which is a base of zero for school events) will probably go well into the negatives.

Day off

due to me pressing the wrong button this didn't go up yesterday as planned, my bad

Koreans are adept at brokering uneasy alliances, and such a one was reached with my contract dispute yesterday. All is resolved and the new schedule is no better and no worse than the one I was working before. I come in twenty minutes earlier and leave twenty minutes earlier. It unfortunately took almost two hours to strike that deal but most of that time for me was just spent twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the new assistant director to talk on the phone to the director. Nick had substantially more trouble with his contract, as ours have different clauses and they were trying to load at least an extra hour a day onto his back. In the end I think they reached an agreement as well, but I'll find out tomorrow.

I found out what my new kindergarten classes would be and aside from one of them being a little large I think I made out alright. I get to keep my class of favorite students, as well as the two other classes that have been at our school for a while. Nick gets three classes of all new students, some of them very very young. It seems that the school noticed how much the really young ones would stress me out and have stuck me with the older kids. Which is absolutely fine with me.
Today is a national holiday so I've had the day off work. I haven't felt especially motivated to do much (combination of factors) so its just been an easy day in with a short blog. Happy Marching Day everyone.

Breakfast. Its what's in you.

What you are looking at here is some of the last containers of Oatmeal I could find at the foreign market today. I’ve been to the foreign market about 4 times now and have probably bought a dozen canisters in that time. I noticed each time I went back that there was less and less available. I’m not saying that there are none left there but chances are when I need more I won’t be going there. I do take a little pride in cleaning the vendors out tough.

There are a few bodybuilding websites that I can order it off of, if I can get a native Korean speaker to help me out (sites are entirely in gobbledegook). Now I suppose another approach would be to just not eat oatmeal anymore. And I suppose that is a possibility that I may have to face. But it is a grim and fibreless one.

Korean breakfasts here mostly consist of rice. Processed breakfast cereals are proliferating however. Now as some of you may be aware processed breakfast cereals are not the healthiest things for everyone to have in the morning (I only eat them after workouts) and even the healthy looking ones your grandpa eats are loaded with sugar.

The Almond Flakes and Chex translate phonetically, the middle box says "Kon-Poo-Roast"

I also see that McDonalds is aggressively marketing breakfast as well. A popular ad I see shows a guy running into the subway with a McMuffin in hand, basically just introducing the concept of eating breakfast to busy professionals here that tend to skip it b/c it was never really classically that big a deal. It just seems to make sense however, that there is such a big push. Since Nescafe and Taster’s Choice instant coffee is so popular here it would suddenly require that you eat something substantial in the morning to get rid of the taste of your morning brew.

Now for those of you that just can’t get worked up over a bowl of rice and kimchi in the morning, and think that hitting Micky Dee’s every morning might not be in the best interests of the continued pumping of your heart there are other options. There are many little Toasta Bahngs (Toast rooms) shops that will serve little sandwiches of toast, pork and onions in various tempting combinations. Of course I’ve yet to see one that is actually open in the morning, but it does present the reality that a lot of those ingredients are readily available at home. Personally I like oatmeal beside my morning eggs, which is the impetus for this rant, but I don’t want to scare people off that there are no options. Bread, jam, peanut butter(no natural stuff), pancake mix, eggs, bran flakes… sure there are options. But there doesn’t seem to be any local cropland dedicated to oats. It is by no means Korea’s fault that I can’t find any at the grocery store- and frankly I’m happy that I do have options at all.

I’ve heard some people, I’m not sure if they were dieticians or nutritionists so I’ll just call them kooks, propose that you can eat anything for breakfast. I’ll admit the North American idea of there being certain meals for breakfast that you don’t eat at the rest of the day is a little subjective. You should be able to eat prime rib for breakfast they say, following the kooks line of thinking that would mean I could eat a BLT for dinner and have pancakes in the middle of the night. Sure there’s no real reason for having breakfast be so specific, but there’s no reason behind toy poodles, brushing your teeth and earrings but they are still institutions.

Now this whole quest for a meal to start my day with may seem a little obsessive. But I do think that the way we start our days says a lot about how the rest of the day is going to feel. I wake up three hours before I have to go to work so I can have a lazy start to my day, and during that time I could have a mosquito sting me in the eyeball and I think I would still smile on my way out the door provided that I got my solid breakfast and pot of coffee into me. Plus wouldn’t it be cool to wear an eye patch for a day?

Gradutation Day

There are a few days where I am asked to wear a suit to school. Normally my dress code is entirely self regulated (only horizontal wrinkles allowed in my ripped jeans) so its usually an indication that parents will be around the school. So I have to show up in a suit, the other extreme. The benefit is that usually my only task for a good part of those days is to just stand around and look white. This morning was one of those days.

The kindergarten school was having graduation ceremonies, which means that my beloved Schweitzer class (you know they’re evil b/c its German!) was graduating. Schweitzer was one of my tougher classes, one that I was warned about from the get-go. Much like the townsfolk warning the Scooby gang about spending a night in the haunted slipper factory other teachers would get a faraway look when talking about this class. It stunned me when I heard that they were one of the graduating classes as their English level is sub-par and seems to only consist of the ability to ask to play games and color. Not sure how far that will get them on the streets of New York. But I suppose the school decided that was enough to earn their freedom (that and the fact that they are now entering elementary school). So I watched the graduation ceremony, and caught maybe one word in every ten minutes. Which is about par for grad ceremonies in general, even when they are in English they are too boring to really absorb. When I was in the high school band I played at three grad ceremonies before attending mine- making it even more anti-climatic. This one was also a blatant ploy to try to convince the parents to send their kids to our after school program in the future.

Now this means that next week there will be some big changes in who I teach in the morning. It could turn out that all my kindergarten classes will change. I could end up with some of Nick’s classes he could end up with mine and then there is the crop of new kids as well. There is also the possibility I will have to try to teach a room of stuffed animals English. I understand that is only a small possibility but it seems to me about the only thing that could be more futile than their current approach.

The real upside is that the remainder of my workweek looks like it will be blissfully light. With both my kindergarten classes and my elementary school classes on break – along with Thursday being a national holiday I have a fair bit of free time coming my way. Now its not super cool like a long weekend or anything but the light workweek will give me a chance to get a lot of things accomplished. Free will of course being what it is it also gives me the option to reject that opportunity and watch a bunch of American television (due to the wonders of the internet and spotty copyright laws in this country) and nap a lot.

But I will take a moment here to remember each of my graduating kids, you will be missed (assuming you are replaced with stuffed animals- and that those animals are bigger brats than you were)

Rod and Todd- I thought their names were funny and I couldn’t them you apart for the first few weeks of class. Now I can. Rod is the one that hides under the table and cries whenever he doesn’t get what he wants. Todd is the one that throws stuff.

Hunter- Again, funny name. I will always remember my shocked reaction when the lesson called for me to ask ‘what do you do after school’ and he said that he had a private English tutor. At least I know that I was not the only one failing you dear boy.

Miya- the only girl in the class, who was above most of the fooling around that went on. I never had to admonish her for being loud, she was too busy drawing pictures and ignoring me and everyone else to be noisy. I liked to convince myself that at least she was drawing in English.

David- His English level was not that bad, but his attitude was just about the worst. This presented a fun challenge for me as I could technically negotiate with him but he was a little bit of a brat so it was still tough.

Dallas and Kevin- Another set of twins, these ones almost indistinguishable (one looked a bit more well fed). Nothing bad to say about them actually, really good kids.

Bruce- I thought he dropped out a month ago. But he was there today graduating. I’d like to think that his parents recognized his talent and pulled him out of class before we could corrupt him any more.

In the end Schweitzer’s almost complete lack of interest in learning English was very beneficial to my Korean language skills.

Update-

I wrote most of this blog during the afternoon, this update comes right after finishing. So the good news is that because of the school schedule changing over I actually get tomorrow off completely. The downside is that they told Nick and I after class today that the schedule was changing as of March 1^st. They want to go from a 10-6 day like we have now to a 9:40-7:10 day. They promised us a longer lunch. Well you can imagine that I wasn’t having any of that. So we broke out the contract and I showed them that it clearly stated that I only work 30 class hours per week and only between 10 and 6. They said they were sorry. I sighed and reminded them that there were problems in the past and I was not willing to change my contract, and I was willing to leave. So they threw out some alternatives, and there’s a possibility that they might only have me there for 9:40 to 5:40, which I wasn’t going to be so much of a bitch to refuse as its basically the same shift. But that one is still iffy and I’ll find out tomorrow what the word from above is. It might be that I’m sleeping on Ken’s floor looking for a new job pretty soon. I should mention that the person I was negotiating with today is not the same assistant as before who I believe has quit. In fact a whole heck of a lot of our Korean staff is quitting, in a few days there may be almost completely new faces there. Now this of course means that they are pretty much desperate to hold onto Nick and I.

It does of course put me in a pickle. I’m willing to quit but I’m not ready to sign another 1 year contract at another school. I also don’t think that I’m ready to go back to Canada, not having saved enough money to cover my losses when buying a ticket home. I’m not stressed, or even frustrated. I’m pretty sure I can deal with whatever happens. When it comes to this matter I’d have to say that I’m just downright curious what will happen next.

Seoul Man part 2

On Sunday morning we tried to get an early start. We didn’t. But we tried. The first order of business was to find something to eat and after exhausting any other possibility we ended up at another McDonalds. We really were dying for a western style breakfast but we couldn’t find anything in our area, and then we were just dying for anything open that wasn’t KFC.

So after fueling our bodies with thee nutritional equivalent of battery acid we set off to see the Olympic Park. It was a long subway ride away but a pretty little park. Five or so stadiums now converted to college and public use surrounded by some nice paths and sculptures. There was a forty foot red metal banana looking thing and some sculpture that looked like a playground built from an auto wrecking yard. The second one had a plaque explaining how it depicted the negation of history by time or some such stuff. I think Ken summed it up well after reading it by saying: “I wish I was smart enough to care to understand that.”

We were some of the only foreigners there and Ken was quickly accosted by a Korean teenager trying to give him directions. She was a strange mix of shyness and enthusiasm and had perhaps a few too many jokers in the deck. I watched the bizarre exchange like a tv show which of course means that I dissociated myself entirely and let Ken deal with it. It was quite amusing and afterwards the girl gave me an apple to commemorate the new year.

We then set out to get a boat tour of the Han River, taking a long subway ride to the other side of the ciy- only to discover that we could have actually caught the boat near Olympic park and rode it back. Live and learn. The boat tour was a good view, but after about half an hour it was like the museum we had been to the other day; just a lot of the same stuff. What I found curious was that many Koreans never left the picnic table set up in the cabin or even seemed to look out a window. I guess I’m just enough of a skeptic that it isn’t enough to ride in a boat I have to actually go on deck and see the boat moving to derive enjoyment.

you'll have to take my word that there is a boat beneath me

We got off and checked out a big skyscraper which was another tourist hotspot. I had no interest in paying $12 to visit another skydeck (like a high floor bt only more expensive), and the buffet there looked ridiculously pricey. Apparently in some countries all the food you can eat is something reserved for the rich instead of the poor and frugal.

We searched in vain for a grillhouse but ended up at a TGIFridays as only chain restaurants were open. The meal was decent if a little pricey, although it would soon become apparent that filling my stomach to the brim with ribs wasn’t the best course of action.

We took the bridge back over the river to the main city by Ken’s insistence, I thought it looked way too long. By about halfway across I realized that I was going to have to visit a restroom with plenty of toilet paper quite soon. By 3/4s of the way across I realized that I might not make it. Its tough to get so close to making a mess you haven’t made since senior kindergarten in your pants and have almost no alternatives. The only one here being trying to discreetly do mybusiness on a conrete bridge with heavy traffic. By a stroke of pure luck there was a portapotty on the other side of the bridge down some stairs.

I almost didn’t make it, shedding my coat and bag early and getting everything lined up just in time. Two days with hardly any fruits or vegetables has an interesting effect on my body I don’t care to repeat.

like a horror movie, especially what went on inside

The upside was that for the rest of the night I was euphoric at my good fortune and the five pounds I had just lost. We happened upon a park with a bunch of exercise equipment in and I was like a kid in a candy store. I have never seen a barbell bench set out for public use and had to give it a try.

take that gravity!

We then went bowling, which turned out to be relatively pricey but not a bad time. Aside from the fact that I bowled horribly and the owner decided to hover around us like an unamused specter. We decided to head back to the same area of town as the night before as the rest of the town looked dead.

We got lost along the way. Korean streets aren’t set up in grid patterns so its easy to get turned around, but I for one just went completely bonkers trying to figure out where we were. I hate losing direction but what I hate even more is feeling like your brain is doing laps in a velodrome. We ended u where we were heading, but could have been dropped there by aliens for all the sense our route made to me.

We finished off our night again at WaBar. Mainly because the beer was cheap but also because it was one of the few places in that area that we were sure weren’t whorehouses. We were pretty dog tired and it was no surprise that we both decided that cutting our Seoul stay a little short by catching an earlier train the next day would be good.

We did finally get our western breakfast the next morning. Unfortunately it was again McDonalds. And they were out of hotcakes. But the coffee wasn’t bad and after serving the tourists in front of me the cashier was suitably stunned with my command of the Korean language (despite the fact that all the menu items are pronounced the English way).

But I did enjoy my Seoul trip and if I come back one day I know what places to hit when the city is a little more happening. But I think the best thing to come out of it is that I did it. I have a tendency to talk about stuff more than act on it and I managed to follow through on this trip with little planning and even less over thinking.

Seoul Part 1

Taking a cue from Ken I think I'm going to do this blog in two parts. I'm feeling a little sick today (after a weekend of eating crappy food- no connection I'm sure) so I'll give you friday and saturday today and sunday/ monday soon.

Seoul Trip

So an unexpected long weekend came and I thought it would be a good time to check out the place called Seoul. For those of you not aware Seoul is the mecca of south Korea, a giant metropolis where a quarter of the population calls home. It’s the city that most people think of when I tell them where I am teaching (unless their knee jerk is rice paddies and nukes). Having been in Korea for four months I thought it was time to finally venture outside of Busan and see a little more of the world. So my buddy Ken and I packed some bags booked a hostel and a train and jetted off Friday night.

Time being our most valuable resource we took the bullet train up. A marvel of modern impatience that travels upwards of 300km/h. When it feels like it. Ken and I were both disappointed that the lights of Korea weren’t convalescing into a warp speed blur as we sat in the train. In retrospect it occurred to me that the train probably wasn’t going to go 300 km/h the entire 3 hour trip unless Seoul was 900km away. It isn’t.

We got into town and found our hostel without too much trouble. I had some difficulties explaining our destination to the cab driver but we somehow got dropped off pretty much on its front door. The hostel we were at, although having a quaint love of small rooms, was actually fairly nice. For about a quarter of the price of the cheap hotel that was recommended to us by Ken’s coworker we had a tidy little room with private bath, cable tv and all the novelty of bunk beds. Couple that with the free breakfasts (coffee toast and jam) and the internet room and I am now convinced that Beewon Hostel is Korean for bargain.

BeeWon Hostel is known for its great view

Our first night in was a late arrival so the plan for the night was to wander around for a place to eat, a task which we completed both amiably and aimlessly. The blocks of dark windows were our first hint that maybe we didn’t catch the city on its absolute most happening weekend. It was the Lunar New Year and we were told that most people in Seoul would be out of town visiting family. I figured in a city of 20 million it would still be pretty darn busy. I was so wrong. Even from the first night we noticed that most businesses were closed and the streets were empty. We eventually settled down for a very spicy bowl of bibimbap ( a fun name to say that means ‘throw rice and veggies in a bowl with too much hot sauce and see if the foreigners will eat it’) and headed back home for an early night (2am or so).

The next day we met some Australians in the hostel over the breakfast -I was making breakfast tacos with some tuna, bread and a whole lot of imagination. Everyone was really friendly (exemplified by the fact that no one made fun of my sandwiches) but we soon parted ways as Ken and I went out for some real food. We walked by some ancient palaces, but were not there in time for the English tours. We were however right in time for the changing of the guards at GyeongBokGung Palace. There was a ceremonial parade in which a group of sharply dressed men with fake beards plastered to their faces marched around the front of the ancient palace. Korean males nowadays don’t sport much in the way of whiskers, but as the popular historic dramas on television show me they once had full thick black beards. The guards at the palace met halfway with large thin beards hanging from their cheeks.

even without words or eye contact annoyance can be conveyed

We wandered around for food. Now we were in an unfamiliar city but we are pretty comfortable around Korean cuisine nowadays. If only any Korean restaurants were open. Nine out of ten shops we passed were closed, the remainders were usually double fried chicken places. This is where you take a whole chicken and dip it in a deep fryer. Proud of this accomplishment you throw it under a heat lamp in a window display for passersbys to admire. When a customer comes and picks out a chicken they like they do them the dishonor of throwing this fried chicken back into the deep fryer so they can be sure that it had soaked up as much oil as possible.

It took us the better part of an hour and a half to find a small pocket of open shops where we descended into a McDonalds. I don’t make a habit of eating at a McDonalds, but even with my boy scout supply of jerky on me I was ravenous at this point. The meal wasn’t precisely filling but acted as a good form of negative reinforcement for my stomach. That chunk of indigestible flour oil and sugar will teach you to get hungry when not fed!

Seoul on lunar new year is a little like going to an amusement park on a slow day. Sure its great that you get to see all the attractions but the hustle and bustle is half the fun. By late into our first day the lack of excitement in the general populace was palpable.

We headed towards Seoul Tower, which was a nice little taste of home. A large building that’s basically a radio tower tricked out to be a tourist spot. The only real difference between this one and the CN tower is that this one was smaller. They tried to cover that up by putting it on top of a mountain they didn’t build but my keen eye wasn’t fooled. The Seoul tower was overpriced (don’t take the cable car, its not a long climb) and kind of boring but much like the CN Tower you’d feel a little denied if you hadn’t climbed it.

which side of the window am I on? the answer will not surprise you

After that we went to check out one of the highly recommended areas called “Itaewon”. We took a long walk there and saw a bunch more palaces and memorials that were all closed up for the weekend. Itaewon to Canadians must be what Chinatown is to the Koreans back home. It is a long stretch of street lined with bars clubs and shops all catering to Americans. Seoul has a lot of US soldiers there, and a fair number of ESL teachers. Also unlike Busan it has a lot of foreign tourists as well. Itaewon would be a horrible place for an American tourist to visit (or as it turned out two Canadian ESL teachers) since it really has little Korean influence at all.

Much more than Busan Seoul in general could be managed with only a few words of Korean in your mental pocket. Itaewon requires none at all. Understandably some of the troops stationed in Korea have neither the time or resources to learn to speak Korean (on of those resources being an inclination). We ordered dinner at a sports bar where the bartender and waitress seemed completely fluent in English and everyone else seemed like a rowdy soldier or a rowdy ESL teacher. Even ordering in my broken Konglish seemed to impress the staff with my effort. I do notice that the Seoul dialect of Korean is far easier to understand than Busan, which is what I was told long ago. Probably like the difference between Scottish and American. In any case Itaewon isn’t a bad place, just not our scene and we left shortly.

We took a long long walk back to the area of Beewon Hostel, eventually falling into a small pocket of liveliness. We were approached by two men on separate occasions, who we initially thought were club promoters but turned out to be pimps with bad marketing skills. We settled in at a place called WaBar, which is a western chain bar in Korea. We were served by a shy waiter with a name tag that said ‘Mulder’ on it. When I actually called him by this nickname he giggled like a little girl and scurried away.

Part 2 Soonish...

seoul update soon

I'm working on a blog to recount my Seoul adventures, but the three day adventure is taking little time to document and I've got to get some sleep to be ready for work. So y'all just sit tight and wait until tomorrow.

Or you could just check out Ken's blog, I'm sure he'll be updating his right away.

Valentine's day.

Today was valentine's day here, not that big of a deal really. in Korea this is the day that girls give chocolate to guys. theres another dya in about a month when guys give chocolates to girls. i think that one will be more popular.
I got a few nice pieces from some students, which was sweet. I just ended up using the chocolates as prizes in games for later classes- which I felt a little guilty about. Only a little.
I'm of course missing my girlfriend on V-day, but the fact that the one here doesn't resemble the one back home at all makes it much easier.

Everything is on schedule for Ken and I hitting Seoul this weekend. We have the bullet train tickets (300000 km and hour!) and a hostel booked (Bunk Beds! I get to be on top!) and we're trying to get a tour of the DMZ arranged. The DMZ is the no-man's land between north and south korea and it has a lot of history around it. and a lot of tension still there. the only other border I've ever been to is the 'longest undefended border', so the most heavily guarded border' could be cool.

Well thats it, a bare bones update. Like to go longer but I've got a few things to prep before my trip. Happy V-day everyone.

ps. the irony of it being valentine's day and one of my students being named valentine was not completely lost on him, but pretty near close.

Field Trip for the Kiddies!

I may have been out of Canada for a little while but you can’t show me a large metal hill with inner tubes and tell me it’s a sleigh ride. Potato sack slide at best.
Anyway this morning the kids were taken on their field trip to the Bexco Sleigh ride. The artificial snow I was promised there failed to materialize, or more aptly had previously materialized and gone the way of Frosty in the green house days ago. With no real points of reference for what a sledding actually entails the kids were still thrilled. There was a bit more friction going down the slopes so the inner tubes didn’t reach breakneck speed. But that also had the benefit that not one of the kids experienced the Canadian tradition of completing the second half of the downhill trip on your face after your tire flips. They had about two hours to go up and down the various slopes on the hill (maybe four stories at the top with gentle slopes- you’ll have to use the mental paintbox god gave you until I get new batteries for my camera). Now these kids were bundled up for a snowy ride, which was in sharp contrast to the bright kinda warm day that we had.

Now kids being kids and the tubes they had to drag up the hill being equal in mass and willpower to them they very soon got tired. I spent a good deal of time dragging sleds up the hill. As in the second hour and a half. Korean kids need to spend more time outside and less time in school, even without the bittersweet kiss of frostbite they were all tobogganed out fairly quickly. Unless I dragged their sleds, and sometime the kids themselves, up to the top. Then they had energy and enthusiasm. To be fair I was more than happy when break time was called, running up and down the hill dragging kids and sleds is fun but tiring.

They had a snack break, during which I noticed that not a single kid had a single piece of fruit or bottle of water. Cookies, chips, candies and juice (I don’t hate juice for active kids, but I’m on a nutrition tirade so it gets swept in there too) and plenty of those. Now in retrospect it was a field trip and the parents don’t normally pack snacks for the kids, so it may have been a treat mentality. But in my mindset if you’ve got a kid that can’t run up and down a toboggan hill for two hours you might not want to give him a box of cookies for a snack.

By round two I was getting tired, but the kids were exhausted. They were all really thankful for my help, some of our school’s bus drivers were helping them up the hills too. I can’t remember the last time I sweated through a t shirt and jeans in February.

I did have a lot of fun, and it took up half a day of work- but the downside is that it has rendered me too tired to doll this blog up like the high class call girl it deserves to be, you’ll have to settle for ‘homely friend with a good heart’. I’m going to to to sleep and pretend I’m not going to be sore tomorrow.