Leaving

Hi again,

This is the first blog post that I've written from my new home. Most of you know this already, but I've moved from my little town and little schools in the mountains of Gangwon-do, to the industrial suburbs south-west of Seoul to teach at a university here.

This of course, meant saying goodbye to friends and colleagues that I've made over the past two years in my little town, which was of course a tremendously sad, and incredibly drunken experience. It all started with an overnight teacher trip down the east coast of Korean, visiting caves, fish museums, and finishing up in a crab restaurant with a lot of soju and a whole crab each.

If you're wondering, this is a rock formation in the cave. 

Note the pretend microphone fashioned from two soju bottles and a pair of spoons. Classy. 

Following this was a "little" party back in Jinbu, at the marvellous Bar Cello. I have to say thanks to everyone (foreign and Korean) who came and made it an unforgettable night, that is at the same time very difficult to remember. Possibly the strangest part was fancy dress gear appearing at about 2am, as evidenced below. It wound up with an 8.30am walk home, and perhaps the worst Monday I have ever experienced. Worth it though.

After I stopped alternately shivering and sweating, began to be able to eat again, and the endless looping of Take A Look Around by Limp Bizkit in my head subsided a little (this was about Wednesday) I decided to get drunk again. Well, I say I decided; in actual fact my friends decided for me my inviting me to a barbecue in a carpenter's workshop. This did afford me one of those uniquely Korean experiences though - cleaning a barbecue using meat and booze. The procedure is as follows: light the charcoal (with a blowtorch, of course), and then put the grill top on. Once it gets nice and hot, choose some fatty bits of meat, and rub them all over the top of it, until you have a nice paste of dirt and hot fat. Then, throw a bottle of the local spirit over the top to wash this paste off and sterilize the grill. If you're lucky, you'll get a nice lungful or two of boozy steam as well (nb. I'm almost certain that this is not good for you). Korea, I think you should be worried when your national beverage is cheap and strong enough to be used as barbecue cleaner. Just saying.

Cleaning in process.

After we'd cooked the meat, we then engaged in some proper man cooking - making fried rice. This involves throwing rice, any leftover meat, and pretty much anything else that's lying around on the grill and mashing it all up (using what looked suspiciously like a plastering tool). It actually turned out surprisingly well, too.

Men at work. 

And then, sadly, it was time to say goodbye to my apartment, which while a little bit tatty, will be by far the biggest place I will have to myself for a while. It's also been the scene of a lot of happy memories - I'll always remember 성원APT 1동 1002호, it's name will always send shivers down my spine.

On the way out :(

Still, on to bigger and, err, smaller things. As with most jobs in Korea, my new one provides accommodation, though this time it's in the dormitory. Still, I've actually been pleasantly surprised by the size of the room. It's about 18 feet by 9 feet, and is well enough designed to squeeze in a bed, desk, dressing table, sofa, a wardrobe and large cupboard as well as a bathroom. All of my stuff fits comfortably in (although I threw a lot out before I left). I've also gone up in the world, moving from the 10th to the 18th floor.

Night view. 

Day view. 

 View from the door.

Bathroom. 

Sofa, bed, and as yet undisposed of moving boxes.

Dresser. 

Desk.

Right, that's all for now. I'll write another post about teaching and work fairly soon. Until then...

A

미안 (Sorry)

It hasn't been often that I've had to start a blog post with an apology for not posting for a while. Pretty much every post I wrote in Guatemala was prefaced with "sorry", but up to now in Korea I've been a lot better (probably because I've been an awful lot more sober). Worry not readers though (and some, well one, of you did), I haven't slipped back to the bottle, I have genuinely been too busy with other things to post on here.

I'm now starting out on my MA research assignment, looking at the effect of making your learners experts (relative to the teacher) in non-linguistic content. This involves video-recording, carefully planning 3 weeks of lessons and an awful lot of reading, all summarised in a 6,000 paper. I know I've already written about the difference between this and undergraduate work, but tonight I started to write my introduction more than 9 weeks before my assignment deadline - an unheard of and salutary experience.

I've also been busy tending to my other presence in the blogosphere, over at http://breathyvowel.wordpress.com. If anyone's interested in what I'm doing professionally you'll find quite a lot of stuff on there. I'm afraid that blog has taken priority over this one as it might help me with the next step of my career, which will probably take me away from my little town in Korea with a very heavy heart. More on that in the future when I actually figure it out.

As per usual these days, I haven't really been up to very much interesting. I've probably said this before, but my life as an ex-pat is probably far less exciting than yours, coupled with the fact that I need a mortgage to buy a block of average-quality extra mature cheddar. My days still follow a familiar pattern of Study Korean / Work / Exercise / Study TESOL, with the only thing different being whether I play Futsal or go to the gym. It does mean that I'm in pretty good shape - I'm weighing in at a positively weedy 11.25 stone (158 pounds) and there is some evidence that there may actually be muscle under the layer of flab on my belly. With the summer now almost here, I'll be quitting the gym next week to play football almost every night, and hopefully breaking out the bike again.

With the advent of summer, the opportunity to engage in one of my favourite pastimes comes around again, namely that of drinking outside shops. Many things in Korea are against the law, but tacitly accepted so long as you're not making a nuisance of yourself whilst doing it. Drinking in public is one of these. It's a very peaceful way to pass a summer evening, sitting outside your local supermarket with a 6 pack of beer and a tube of peanuts, and popping back in whenever you run out of anything.

I was reminded of the fact that I can do this by an old man sat outside the supermarket today. Due to the Confucian philosophy on which Korean society was founded, age is venerated, seemingly no matter what age is doing. In Korea it's not the juvenile delinquents you need to watch out for but the elderly ones, who seem to have license to do exactly as they please. This particular chap was taking advantage, and was sat alone with an empty litre bottle of soju and a pack or corn chips at least twice the size of his head. He appeared to be offering a running commentary on everything going on around him, to nobody in particular. This was going on when I went in to the store, and didn't appear to have let up at all when I reappeared 10 minutes later. One day, I hope to spend my idle afternoons in the same way.

I think that's enough words for now. I do actually seem to have some free time coming up, so I might manage a picturey post before the end of the weekend. If I don't, then I will at least try to post something soon, possibly pictures from the reprise of last year's camping trip, which I'm heading off on on Saturday.

Cheers,

A

Dogging*

* Animal lovers and/or my mother might want to give this post a miss.

"He was so mad he went home and kicked the dog, and then he ate him." - Jay Leno on Korean speed skater Kim Dong Sung, who was disqualified from the 2002 winter Olympics. Last year, while playing Trivial Pursuit with a couple of Korean students we got a question about the above quote. I was mortified, but the two Korean girls that were playing the game didn't seem bothered at all. What I thought was incredibly offensive they weren't the least bit bothered by.

If you asked someone who'd never visited Korea what they knew about the country, I'm pretty sure that the consumption of dog meat would be among the first things mentioned, even if only in jest. I wondered before I got here whether it might be a dying tradition unfairly used as a stick to beat Korea with, but it's definitely still very much alive here, as well as in other parts of East Asia, in particular China. While it's stigmatized by Western society, in Korea it's just another part of the cuisine, though considered a bit of a delicacy and traditionally eaten on certain holidays here.

Personally I don't have a problem with eating anything that isn't endangered. I think if you eat one animal, especially one that has been raised for the purpose of providing food, then you may as well eat them all. I'm also very curious to try different meats, so when my friend Nick came to visit and also expressed an interest in trying some dog meat, we set out on a mission to find some.

Not really knowing where to go to sample some, I asked my co-teacher. She didn't know, so asked a few of the other staff members for me. This caused a reasonable sized ripple of excitement in the staff room. Westerners going to eat dog meat is clearly not an everyday occurrence. I think all in all everyone was quietly impressed with our alimentary adventure, but it also shows that Koreans are not entirely unaware of the views of foreigners towards this practice.

We worked up a bit of an appetite with a bike ride to the Weoljongsa temple up in the national park, and then headed out to the restaurant. We'd been advised to go for a dish called "Jongol", which I committed to memory with the maxim "Jongol is massive" (apologies). The restaurateur looked a little unsure when I ordered it, pointing at the menu and saying "Dog-guh" while looking at me questioningly. I assured him I knew what I was ordering and he shrugged and went off to prepare it.

We sat down, and were soon presented with a large bowl of stock, with a pile of what looked to me like rib bones, meat, green onions and sesame leaves, covered in seasoning. We started up the burner, and gave it a stir. The waitress recommended a fine vintage soju to complement it and off we went.

"Wicked...Wicked..."

So what's it like? The most obvious point of comparison is lamb. It's similar coloured for one, and has almost identical shades of pink and brown according to how well cooked it is. The taste is very similar to lamb too, though I'd say a little less sweet and without the fatty richness than lamb has. In the stew it was also very tender, though I don't know if it would work so well grilled or barbecued on its own. All in all though, it got pretty positive reviews from both sides of our table.

Is that a guilty look Nick?

That definitely isn't.

It was only on the way to Seoraksan National Park the following day that I found the following passage in my Rough Guide: "However, any fears of Koreans chowing down on an alsation or border collie should be quelled, almost all dog meat comes from a scraggly mongrel breed colloquially known as the "shit-dog"...even so, the poor conditions that the animals are often kept in, and the continuing - and occasionally verified - stories of dogs being clubbed to death to tenderise the meat, are good reasons to avoid this kind of meat." I'm not sure quite what to make of this. I've seen dogs being kept by people for meat and they're not scraggly, and certainly not scrawny. They are usually kept in very small cages though. There's also some fairly unsavoury footage of dog farms on Youtube, but then I doubt there's much difference between them and farms for any other breed of animal here, or most other places in the world. If you've seen Food Inc., then. you should probably question where the meat in anything you eat comes from. Anyway, it's not quite enough to make me go running from this with my tail between my legs (so, so sorry).

In conclusion then, dog meat is pretty tasty, and was well worth trying, but on the basis of what I've seen and read since, I don't think I'll be eating it every week, at least not until they get some alsation on the menu anyway.

More holiday stories next time!

A

Caution: May contain extensive moaning about footballers defending properly.

Hi there,

Just back from a nice day and a bit in Gangneung, the closest city to me and handily placed on the coast. I am, perhaps inevitably, a little pink around the shoulders now, but as a wise man once told me, "Get one good burn in and you're good for the whole summer."

Anyway, my room mate from orientation, Jeff, came down to Jinbu for the weekend. We had no real plans for entertainment, so decided to see what opportunities the weekend produced. Having hiked over the hill behind Jinbu, we sat down to a fine dinner of Kam-ja-tang, a spicy pig spine and potato stew, or at least normally it has potatoes. The version we ate seemed to be lacking them, which is strange as the "kam-ja" is what gives the dish it's name. After that we popped to a couple of bars, winding up at my new favourite Jinbu haunt, "Chael-ro". Reason's to like this bar are: 1. A barman who speaks a little bit of English, and doesn't mind me practising my terrible Korean on him, and 2. The sign outside declaring the sale of "Hope & Soju"*. You really can't beat a bar selling hope, especially not alongside cheap liquor. It's all most people really need.

The night got a little out of hand later on, when having consumed a fair amount of beer, makkoli, and soju, Jeff and I declared Korean alcohol to be easier to drink than most countries. Perhaps feeling slighted, the barman then produced a bottle of Chinese liquor and proceeded to treat us to a couple of glasses. At 56% by volume and tasting like drain cleaner, it may not have been the wisest choice at 2.30 am, but we drank it anyway, and I duly woke up with comfortably the worst hangover that I've had here. This wiped out most of Saturday, with Jeff and I spending all our time sitting around groaning, sleeping and eating chicken in an attempt to recover.

In the evening we decided that going to watch my beloved (well, I've now been to two games and I own a baseball cap with their badge on it) Gangwon FC was a good idea. Turned out that it was, as we were treated to a very exciting game, but one that was marked by defending so schoolboyish, it seems unfair to the youth of the world to use that adjective. I've said before, Korean football is usually exciting to watch, unsurprisingly owing most of it's counter attacking and rapid changes of possession to a style of play modelled on the English Premier League. Sadly, changes in possession are so frequent (at least at the Gangneung stadium) because no-one is good enough to keep the ball for more than a couple of minutes. La Liga this certainly ain't. I lose count of the amount of times a pass is left by one player for another, while an opponent nips in, takes the ball and quickly gives it straight back. However, in attack some impressively slick passing is evidenced by both Gangwon FC and their opponents Cheonbuk, though with little class in front of goal.

Match action!

A Korean crowd.

All this changes 5 minutes before half time, when GFC get a free kick a full 35 yards out, and our midfielder steps up and smashes a swerving ball past the goalkeeper and in off the bar. It was rather reminiscent of Gazza vs Arsenal in the 1991(?) FA Cup Semi. Shortly after half time our winger, not for the first time, finds himself in about 20 yards of space on the far side, and has an age to advance into the box and pick his spot in the top corner. 2-0 up and seemingly coasting, but this is Korean football and you're never entirely safe, no matter how big the lead. Honestly, the defensive play in this game was probably the worst I've ever seen in a professional or semi-professional football match. The forwards and the midfielders on both sides were lazy, offering no protection to their backlines, and frequently putting them in danger. Clearances were shanked straight up in the air in the area, the fullbacks played so tight that the wingers were left with almost half the field to work in, yet still balls were getting down the channels. The ball flew over the centre-backs' heads so often I thought I was back watching England's world cup side. It was almost beyond belief, and I found myself studying the benches to see if I could spot Kevin Keegan's slivering barnet, such was the all-out nature of the attacking play.

Cheonbuk fans, with "Mad Green Boys" banner and Che Guevara flag. Possibly auditioning for extra roles in the forthcoming "Hulk: The College Years" movie.

Even at 2-0 up, Gangwon looked as if they were hanging on, seemingly unable to accomplish the simplest of defensive tasks. So it proved, as two simple goals were rolled in in 5 minutes, leaving the score at 2-2. Then Gangwon wasted two golden opportunities (both created merely from being in the opposition half) to win it, before in the dying seconds a long punt goes over our center back's head again, leaving two Cheongbuk players through on goal. Our center back gets back into a position to provide a match-saving toe-away, and promptly falls on his back. The Cheonbuk striker slides it under the goalkeeper, and Gangwon have lost. Once again, I'm left with the feeling that I might well have been able to do a better job. I wonder if I can get a trial. One thing's for sure, the Korean FA needs to look at the defending part of their coaching manual again, if there even is one.

Perhaps Gangwon's longest spell of possession of the entire game.

The previous night's excursions left Jeff and I unwilling and mostly unable to conduct an assault on any Gangneung nightlife, so we grabbed a Mr Pizza and headed off to Motel "Bally" (you do wonder what the thinking behind naming a Korean love motel after the Korean word for quick was). We spent the following morning at the beach, got sunburnt, then retired to a "makkoli jib". Makkoli is my favourite kind of korean liquor. It's a creamy rice wine which seems to be the equivalent of microbrew here. Each city has it's own varieties and fairly distinctive tastes. It's also most usually found being peddled by kindly "ajummas" (old ladies) in the old town markets of cities. Served with an array of delicious, high-carb side dishes (potato omlette, buckwheat dumpling, kimchi pancake, fried noodles) and a big smile, Makkoli makes an excellent lunch. A Makkoli house is probably not somewhere most foreigners go, owing to their often run down nature, but I can assure you that they're well worth popping into.

A Makkoli Jib

A Makkoli Hound.

I'll finish with the usual promise to write more soon. It's probably falling on deaf ears by now, but the photos from lots of recent adventures are sitting on my desktop waiting to be sorted, and I am on vacation this week, so you never know.

Laters,

A

* "Hope & Soju" is a miswriting of "Hof & Soju", "Hof" being one way bars advertise the availability of beer. This is a strange decision given that the Korean language has no F sound, and so replaces it with a P, hence the mistake above.

Jinbu AFC Debut or The Never-ending Mealtime

Everywhere you go, you find people talking about food. It's only natural. Everyone eats, and it's sensible and understandable to take an interest in what you put into your body. However, until last year I had no idea how much the average American talks about food. Empirical evidence suggests that a sentence uttered by an American in a social situation has roughly a 75% chance of being about food. This increases to around 95% if the social situation is a meal. When I got back to England for Christmas last year, I knew I wanted a curry and some roast lamb (preferably on separate days for the good of anyone in my immediate vicinity) but wasn't too bothered when that happened. Friends from across the Atlantic Ocean had their eating schedules planned out almost to the minute. Food is definitely more of an obsession for our cousins over there than it is in England. In fact, our lack of a national cuisine was often used by them as a stick to beat me with, which seems strange to me coming from a nation which, despite it's feverish commitment to artery clogging, still can´t cook a decent breakfast, thinks it invented the bagel and spends a fair amount of it's time wolfing down burritos.

The Korean attitude to food is even more obsessive. Hanshik is a real source of national pride. One of the first questions any Westerner gets asked here is "Do you like Korean food?". People can actually get quite offended if you say no. Whenever I return from a weekend away my co-teacher will ask me what I ate, and is always ready with a recommendation for whichever place I am going to. Almost everywhere in Korea is famous for some kind of food or another. I remember being taken to Icheon on my orientation course. We were taken to a restaurant which served "excellent rice". Yep, this restaurant prided itself on serving some of the best white rice in the country. Quite honestly, I couldn't tell the difference.

The social role that food plays here is also hugely, hugely important. In my town at least, restaurants outnumber bars by about 10 to 1. Eating out is fairly cheap here, so people do it far more often than in England. Every single occasion is, begins with or ends with a meal. I wonder (without wishing to be flippant about people in poverty) if anyone is ever really hungry here. One meal seems to follow immediately on from another. Sometimes this is fine. Everyone likes to load up on food once in a while, but when all this eating takes place over the course of a football tournament, you wonder how sensible it really is.

I was very much looking forward to making my début for the town football team. Despite having to get up at 6.30am on a Sunday morning (it was never like this for the Brecknock) I was really pleased to get to play some proper football. On the sounding of my alarm ,I jumped out of bed, ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs and a banana milk for energy, and headed out. The tournament was being played in Ansan, and featured four other teams. Ansan is over the other side of the country to us, a good three hour bus ride away. Understandably then, an hour down the road the bus pulled off the road and stopped at a diner, where breakfast was laid out. I was still pretty full from my own breakfast, and so just picked at a few things. This was immediately interpreted as me not being able to eat spicy Korean breakfast due to my delicate western palate, and the captain's son Phil was despatched to take me to the convenience store instead. Incidentally, my delicate Western palate would have it's revenge later. After failed attempts to persuade Phil that I was OK, I consented to him buying me some kind of chocolate bar. We got back on the bus, and continued on the way to Ansan.

When the bus next came to a halt, I looked out of the window to see this:

The impressively modern "Wa" stadium stood in front of me. "We play here" said one of my team mates. I was doubtful, and proven right when the bus then drove around the stadium to a training pitch at the back. Still, it was a very nice facility, and probably one of the better pitches I have ever played on. Having the stadium in the background lent it a bit of a professional air too. Take a look at the photos below.

And so the time comes for me to make my debut for Jinbu AFC. It's a good debut too, as we twice sweep through the opposition to go 2-0 up inside the first ten minutes. I score the second, as the opposition goalkeeper somehow manages to fail to stop my completely mishit lob. We continue to play all of the football, but show a worrying tendency to concede goals, as the opposition score twice on what are almost their only two forays into our half. Fortunately, we grab a late winner and sit down the victors, 3-2.

Just as I have grabbed a drink of the horribly named Pocari Sweat (Gatorade, basically) and sat down, the captain grabs my arm. "Alex, lunch" he says. It's 11am. Behind the stand we're sitting in, a picnic of fruit, kimbap and kimchi pancakes has been laid out. I sit down, and pick at a couple of pieces of fruit. The captain hands me a cup of beer, followed by a cup of makoli. Again, it's 11am. We have three more games of football to play. This kind of behaviour would barely be acceptable in a cricket tournament. Once again, my reticence in eating and drinking meets with a mixture of confusion and suspicion, but I am determined that I'm going to enjoy my football, and not run around trying not to be sick.

We run almost straight from the picnic area to the pitch for game number two. The lunch has had predictable effects and the pace of the game is incredibly slow. The Jinbu tactic of spreading the ball to the wings is effective in as far as it gets the ball to our wingers. Worryingly they have more than a little of the Theo Walcott about them, in that their delivery is sometimes erratic, and sometimes just plain rubbish. And the only person not too laden down with beer and pancake to get in the area is me. Our build up play doesn't reap any rewards and our defensive frailties re-appear. We eventually lose the second game 2-1.

I sit out the third game, which is probably a good thing as the sun is now blazing down, and the possibility of sunstroke is now very real. On the whole, I prefer playing football in the rainy British winter. Two almost completely immobile sides knock the ball around in midfield. Failure to pick up the one player on the opposition who even looks like a footballer leads to another defeat, 1-0.

After that, unbelievably, I am dragged off for lunch number two. This is a hearty bowl of ddak gae jang, a particularly good chicken stew made with red pepper paste. It's actually a favourite dish of mine, but not in the middle of a football tournament in 85 degree sunshine. My teammates once again assume I'm a wimp, so I have a small bowl just to reassure them that I do in fact like hot food. They look dubious, and fill their bowls to the brim with the stew. Of course, more beer and makoli are needed to kill the spice, and my team is starting to look a little drunk.

We play the final game, which has stopped looking like any kind of competitive match and is now looking like a game of keepy-uppy after a particularly good barbecue. Occasionally a player makes a run, but I think it's almost seen as bad form at this point. I start to want to go home. Travelling halfway across the country to play in this doesn't really seem to have been worthwhile.

The tournament ends, and we get changed and get back on the bus. I'm tired, sore and sunburnt, so the opportunity to sit quietly on the bus for a few hours is very welcome. I think I might even have a little snooze. It's been a long day already. Of course, just as I close my eyes, the bus stops back in Ansan. Surely, surely, no one could possibly want to eat more. Apparently they do, as we all pile into a seafood restaurant and sit down. On the floor. This is exactly, exactly what I wanted to do at this moment. A giant plate of tentacles is placed in front of us, along with a beansprout soup with ice in it, and a bowl of rice. Obviously, there are also about 30 bottles of soju on the table as well. The tentacles turn out to be really good though, mostly by virtue of being comfortably the hottest thing that I have eaten in Korea. Much is made (mostly by Koreans) of how hot the food is here, but up to this point I hadn't really been that impressed. This however, has a lot of punch. It's probably about the same level of spice of a not too lethal vindaloo. I get through it OK, which is more than can be said for a lot of my team-mates. I look around to see iced soup being poured into bowls of rice and squid, and people desperately fanning air over their burning tongues. I sit, smile and keep chewing. Not such a delicate palate after all. Then an old man from one of the other teams comes and sits next to me. As he tries to talk to me in English, he runs his hand up and down my thigh. I'm pretty sure this is just how old men treat their juniors here, rather than an advance. I don't know though, maybe he finds my creamy white skin exotic. Anyway, probably not what I really wanted at this point.

Team-mates

We leave the restaurant around 3pm. The Jinbu AFC record reads: Played: 4, Won: 1, Lost: 3, Breakfasts: 1, Lunches: 3, Beer: quite a lot, Makoli: 1 kettleful, Bottles of soju: too many to count. Finally though, we are on our way home, and doubtless everyone will simply sit down and go to sleep. This is OK. Though I am now a bit drunk, I can have a nap and I'll still be fine to face school in the morning. Then, this happens:

Yes. What you can see above is people moving through the bus, forcing everyone to drink beer mixed with soju, and also forcefeeding them rice cakes wrapped in seaweed, all accompanied by the absolute worst pounding dance music I have ever encountered. The ghost of 2unlimited is clearly turning in it's grave. How far things have fallen since the glorious mid 90s. The real nadir comes with a hideous techno remix of the YMCA, which goes down surprisingly well with my (probably homophobic) compadres. All of this reminds me of a time I went on a charity fundraiser travelling from Exeter to Liverpool and back. A lot of stuff like this went on. That's excusable, as I was 18 and an idiot. Most of the people on this bus are in their 30's or older.

On our return to Jinbu, there is still one more meal of cold noodles to eat and yet more soju to drink. I am by now drunk and fed up. I have been out since 6.30am and it's now getting on for 8pm. I am also forced to make my second ever speech in Korean (consisting of me mainly saying hello, and I like Jinbu). I finish my noodles and join some of the guys outside. I am definitely not going to be well tomorrow, as you can probably see.

And so it proves. I get in at 8.30, and pass out, waking again at 4.30am. I spend the following day at school in a daze, and at one point get the shakes during my third class. I really, really hate working with a hangover. It's just about OK if you're sat in front of a computer all day, but when faced with a class of Korean teachers it's definitely not cool.

In conclusion I should say that I did actually have a pretty good day. The above makes it sound pretty awful, but I've focused on the uncomfortable and awkward parts as they are generally the funnier ones. It was great fun to meet everyone involved with Jinbu AFC. They are a very funny and generous bunch, and I look forward to playing for them in the future. It also inspires me to keep going with learning Korean so I can communicate with them a bit better; while football may be the universal language, it's not a lot of use for telling a Korean that you've already eaten breakfast.

OK, until next time.

A

Sports Day

When I applied to teach in Korea I wanted to teach high school kids. The thought of dealing with classrooms full of kids any younger than 15 filled me with dread. Having got the high school post I wanted, I then learnt that there were not enough classes for me at the high school, and I was to be farmed out to rural elementary schools twice a week. Not cool, I thought at the time. However, over the time I've been here my elementary schools have proved to be among my favourite parts of the week. The kids are (in general) far more pleasant and in some cases more able than my high school kids, and classes are in general a lot more fun. Thus, when I was invited to attend Geomun Elementary's sports day I was more than happy to accept.

I must have gone to one of the smallest primary schools in England. I believe there were somewhere around 50 pupils in the school. This meant that grades were pushed together and I ended up in a classroom with two other years. Geomun Elementary makes Frant Primary look big, having just over 30 pupils above kindergarten age. Testament to Korea's huge education budget is the fact that each grade has it's own class and teacher, and the rooms are kitted out with huge TVs, computers, projectors and everything else you could want for teaching. It's an impressive institution and the kids seem to really benefit from it. Some of my best students are here, and will hopefully go on to do good things in the future.

On to the sports day then. I arrived during preparation and managed to busy myself putting out chairs, then helping the kids warm up by doing chin ups on the monkey bars and pushing them on the swings (a key part of any warm up).

"Microphone check. 1, 2, 1 ,2."

The first proper business of the day was to pledge the pledges, sing the national anthem, and then stretch off properly. Clearly, the only way to do this is to stretch to music. Preferably something trumping and stately that sounds like it was produced in the 1950s and probably was. Pictures and sounds can relate this event far better than I can in words:

I swapped hats with a student for the purposes of the comedy picture below. Then the serious business began with some short sprints. Below you can see two 6th grade girls really going for it, and some way back, one not really going for it.

It being sports day plenty of parents turned out to watch their kids. For a Korean parent (or, as it turned out, a guest English teacher) sports day is a little more involved than an English one. First up was the women's race. This was one of the strangest competitions I have ever seen. It consisted of a metal hoop tethered in the middle of the football pitch. The teams line up on either side and run to the middle in an attempt to get through the hoop first. The twist being that once through, the first woman is allowed to run off with the hoop and drop in closer to her side, leaving the opposition with much further to travel. To balance things out though, you can tread on the chain, grab the hoop or engage in good natured but spirited wrestling with your opponent in order to stop them from taking the hoop. First team through the hoop wins the prizes. Once again, I'll let the pictures tell the story:

Once the race was over, everyone was awarded a prize. For the older ladies too fragile to brawl in the sand, a more gentle fishing game was offered. What you can't see in this picture is the small boy in the "pond" clipping prizes onto each granny's fishing rod.

Then next up it was the men's turn. Given what I'd just seen in the women's event I was expecting to be given a rifle and told to shoot on sight. Fortunately ours was the more leisurely pursuit of hoop rolling. I was rubbish, but not as bad as some on the other team and we won comfortably. A good result all around. Here's a picture of me in action.

My event one successfully negotiated with minimal humiliation, the focus turned back on to the kids. Now it was time for them to take part in some strange activities. This particular event featured either skipping (OK), spinning on the spot (a bit weird) or putting on and taking off an egregiously coloured pair of trousers (really weird). Here's some video footage. Check out a clearly dizzy girl taking a slightly circuitous path back to her team post-spinning:

Next up was the school band's performance. I'm starting to really enjoy the Korean traditional drumming. We were given brilliant displays a couple of times at orientation. There's often some incredible athleticism involved with dancing and twirling hats, all while keeping the beat on a drum, or simply some brutal rhythmic pounding to enjoy. The school band's performance doesn't really have either of these, but is still pretty good. I was especially impressed that they took themselves off to practise one lunchtime without any adult supervision and managed to conduct a pretty well ordered session. It wouldn't happen in England, I'd wager. Here they are:

All this and we were still not through the morning's activities. Without even giving the kids time to change, we were on to the relays, with more excellent running action from the girls:

It was about this time that my high school co-teacher popped around to see what was happening (and, possibly, to check up on me). She arrived just in time to watch the Korean folk dance being performed by the kids, as pictured below:

I may occasionally be a bit dim, but I'm not entirely stupid. I knew exactly what was coming after the kids dance. I also warily took note of the camera in my co-teacher's hand. It looked pretty old. Definitely too old to have a decent video function anyway. I was probably in the clear, right? Wrong. As expected, the parents (and me) were called into the circle and I was forced to perform the entire dance, while my co-teacher captured it on video. I clearly have a huge masochistic streak, because here it is for your viewing pleasure. I am thinking of disabling the comments section on this post though to avoid the inevitable hilarity...

After a decent (and soju free, for once) lunch break, the festivities continued with the amazing onion ring race. This comprised crawling through a tunnel, then grabbing an onion ring from a clothes peg with your teeth, eating it and racing for the line. At this stage I wasn't really surprised by strange events, though I still had at least one surprise coming after these photos.

Geomun teachers (in natty matching tracksuits) pegging up onion rings. Only in Korea.

As the washing line was cleared away and the discarded fractions of onion ring swept from the track, I noticed two tables being set up where the washing line had been. Placed upon these were two transparent bowls of small fish, uncomfortably tightly packed. My palms started to sweat a little. This didn't look good. It got worse when the 6th grade teacher beckoned me to the start of the sprint course to join the fathers. The instructions were simple. "Two fish. End". I spotted some small bowls stacked by the fish and clutched at straws "Using the bowls?" "No. Bowls for ladies. You use hands." "Oh."

I didn't have too much time to reflect on this though, as the starting gun fired and I was sprinting towards the bowls. It actually wasn't too horrible, and I managed to grab two fish in good time. Things took a turn for the worse when one of them flipped it's way out of my grasp with 20 metres to go. I pondered briefly what to do, then figured that an attempt to rescue it would probably result in two fish flapping about on the sand, not just one. I raced the rest of the course, threw my one remaining fishy into the bowl of water that awaited it and then went back for the straggler. Whispering soothing words about cool water I managed to scoop it up and get it to the end of the course, still managing to finish second.

The fish were carried away to destinations unknown at this point. I suspect it may have been to the school canteen, but my co-teacher refused to be drawn on this speculation. There weren't many photos taken of the race, but I did procure this one of me scrabbling around for my two fish.

The two final competitions were the dressing up race and the tug of war. During the dressing up race the teams donned wellington boots and raced to dress two boys up as man and wife. Proof indeed that it's never too early to start stripping a young boy of his dignity. Following this was the parents tug of war, which my team won comfortably. This had very little to do with me though, as anyone who has seen the size of my arms will testify. Finally, the kids did the same, prizes were given out and everyone went home. Everyone except me, who went back to the high school and taught an afternoon class there. It's a hard life.

If you made it this far, congratulations, and thanks. This ended up being a bit of a marathon post, but the day was one of the most interesting and fun I've had in Korea. Many thanks to all of the staff and kids. I'm starting to think I might be around for next year's as well.

Cheers

A