Me Update

Usually I prefer to use this dank corner of the internet to write about (semi) interesting stuff that I've been up to. There's enough wasted terabytes of mouth-breathers writing about their deepest feelings on the internet already I think. However, I do have some bits and pieces of personal news that may interest you. If not, feel free to vent in the comments section below, and be thankful I'm not shoehorning smug travel stories directly into your inbox.

Next Year

I'm now into my tenth week of semester two at Jinbu High School and things couldn't be going better. I sat down and worked out how to make my lessons a bit more interesting and relevant to my students, with pretty decent results. We've done a month of music videos, in which I got to play Arcade Fire to my kids, and have them finish the lines to Summertime by Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. Now we're just coming to the end of a series of lessons based on Up (best movie ever), culminating in my students writing and performing an alternative script, one of which morphed into a musical, and will probably walk off with the prize of some cinema vouchers.

Things are going well at my elementary schools too. I've equipped my older ones with grammar textbooks, and they're now au fait with the intricacies of present simple vs present progressive. With the younger ones I'm working on pronunciation and basic spelling. This involves a lot of singing, running around and making letter shapes with our bodies.

All in all things are going really well, but I feel like my work is only just beginning, rather than entering it's final stages. Given that I seem to work in one of the most relaxed schools in South Korea, it seemed senseless not to renew my contract, so I will now officially be staying in Jinbu for another year starting March 2011.

Holiday

The good news is my contract renewal gives me a 5 week break during the winter vacation, so I will be coming home on January 24th, and staying until February 21st. This is at least good news for me, as it means I'll get a little respite from temperatures of -27C, and it may be good news for you, assuming you want to see me. I'll sort out some kind of schedule nearer the time, but keep some space free, yeah?

Educating Grev

I've been trying to do a bit of professional development of late, which has included joining KOTESOL, the association for English teachers here. I headed up to their International Conference in Seoul a few weekends ago, and was convinced that doing a masters would be a good idea. Having spent the weeks since researching various programs, I'm now in the process of applying to the University of Birmingham (The Midlands, not Alabama) to start an MA in Applied Linguistics in April. It's a distance learning course, so I can do it while I continue to work, without ever having to leave Korea and go to Birmingham, which is definitely a boon.

All that means that I'll most likely be spending a fair proportion of the coming years outside of the UK. I'm sorry if this is disappointing to anyone, but at least you'll always have an interesting holiday destination.

Soppy Romance Bit

Finally, after ten or so months of not doing so, Linda and I live on the same continent again. We've even managed to wind up in the same country. OK, she's over the other side (Incheon) but we are at least within commuting distance, and can see each other most weekends. I won't bore you any further, but expect the odd mushy photo in the coming weeks.

And that's all my news for now. I'll pop some photos up in the next couple of days from stuff that didn't really merit it's own post. I'll try to keep writing as often as I can, though my days seem to be getting busier and busier. I'm doing ok on 6 hours sleep a night, but I'm not experimenting with 5 for you lot's sake.

Sorry about that,

A

Visitors (Part 1 of several)

OK, so I've been meaning to post this for a really long time now, but finally (I think), here it is:

This blog is deeply committed to the avoidance of slush, sentimentality and most things romantic. One of my pet hates is crowing about relationships on the internet, but, just this once, I'm going to do it. So yes, I do have a girlfriend. Her name is Linda and she's from the USA. Here she is, looking charming as usual:

Linda came to visit for a couple of weeks at the end of June. We spent the first weekend in Seoul and Suwon, but didn't really do all that much except watch the England vs USA "soccer" game. In the end, a draw was probably the best for all concerned.

I was working during her visit, so talking to Linda became my lesson for the week. This actually wasn't the horrific experience that I thought it might be. My students were actually pretty kind with their questions. Particular highlights included "How did he propose?" (Linda's response: "He didn't"), "Have you seen his six-pack?" (Linda's response: outright laughter) and "Have you had plastic surgery on your nose?" (Linda's response: confused look).

After this, I remembered I had a camera, so here are some photos and words about what we got up to during the rest of the trip.

Dano Festival

The Dano Festival is a festival of all Eastern Asian culture that takes place in Gangneung each year. Linda and I were invited by the teachers at Geomun Elementary School, and spent a nice afternoon watching puppet shows, traditional drumming and trying out some traditional Korean printing. We also sampled some makkoli made at the festival (I will learn to do this for myself) and ate rice cakes, as well as touring the endless market stalls selling all manner of Korean curiosities, and some good old fashioned Korean tat as well.

Us in front of the festival gate. As usual I am failing to smile at all here.

A stick throwing game traditionally (if I head a won for every time I heard "Korean traditional" over the course of the afternoon I'd be able to afford a half size tin of Coca-cola) played by ladies in the Korean royal court back in the day. Final scores, Alex 2, Linda 0. The nice lady in the Korean traditional (sigh) dress even gave me a tube of toothpaste for my efforts.

After the festival tour, we retired to the seaside for a raw-fish meal. I'd had one before and not been too impressed, but this turned out to be excellent. The sheer range of seafood we started with was amazing, and included crab, shrimp and seemingly hundreds of other things of which I do not know the names. The fish itself is slightly lacking in flavour compared to say, tuna, but once you've dunked it in chilli sauce/wasabi soy, it's all about the texture, which is just chewy enough without being a pain. The fact that the meal is finished off with a spicy fish stew makes this a really great meal, and is definitely vying, with about 7 other things, for the title of my favourite Korean food.

Our (Korean traditional) "starter"

Gyeongpo Dae, Gyeongpo Beach and the Live Club

On Saturday we headed down to Gyeongpo Dae and Gyeongpo Beach. Bad planning on my part left us very little time to do anything before having dinner with one of my co-teachers, but we just had time to have a wander around and take a few photos:

Sittin' on the Dock of the Dae.

Korean Traditional Artwork

Some flowers.

Sad me.

Unamused Linda.

After that we met Mr Ham, one of my elementary school co-teachers, for dinner. As it turned out, we were gatecrashing his elementary school class reunion (they do it every month, so it wasn't quite as bad as that makes it sound). No-one really spoke much English, which made it rather awkward (as most things Korean seem to be), especially as Mr Ham had to look after us all night, but we still had a good time getting around rather a lot of duck for the second time in less than a week (Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm).

After that it was off to the "Live Club". I was quite excited. I don't get to see much live music here, so the thought of a nice acoustic set accompanied by a few quiet beers sounded pretty good. What I didn't figure on was the live music being provided by ourselves. This of course, meant I had to sing, and with a distinct lack of "Mack the Knife" in the choices, left me in a bit of a bind. In the end I went with what I know, and attempted "Easy Like Sunday Morning". Now, sometimes I can be OK at singing (needs citation), but I need to be drunk. In the case of singing in front of a bunch of Korean strangers, I need to be reeling drunk. I was only a bit tipsy here, so what followed was the most horrific, nervous, stuttering performance of the song ever heard. I can only apologise to the towering prophet that is Lionel Richie for sh*tting so completely on his work. At one stage both the club hostess and one of the group joined me onstage to try to help out, but this just made me even more nervous. I also realised what a freaking long song it is (Karaoke tip: never pick anything with a guitar solo) giving me even more time to die on stage. Eventually, deliverance came, the song ended and I sat down to consider my future karaoke career.

"I wanna be hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh..."

The crowd goes wild. And tries not to look. And especially not to listen.

I did get drunk enough afterwards though.

OK, I'm calling time on this blog post for the evening. More tomorrow I think as I'm determined to get all the photos online. I'm off to read Franny and Zooey by J.D.Salinger, drink a little pomegranate tea and fall asleep. That really makes me sound like an arse, doesn't it?

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