Shoes

Korean culture maintains the idea that you must remove your shoes before going into the main part of a building, all places with such rules have a sort of lobbyish area for you to dump your shoes.  If it's your place of work you will probably have sandals of some sort and if not you go socks.

So that means at work everybody is sporting the uber unfashionable socks with sandals look.  It also means that the extra pair of smart shoes I bought for work can only be worn on the way into work...yeah they'll last longer, but it sucks, I could have just stuck with my old pair.


Also, because they don't heat the hallways of their schools, just the classrooms, it means that my feet are generally freezing walking from one place to the other.  However I can see that during the summer time I will enjoy and cool place I can find.  So it's a good thing that I have A/C in my room, both at work and at home.

So, yeah the shoes thing, I did anticipate it, but I failed to see it coming for work.

Toilets

My head is still banging, but most all else has cleared up, so I thought I should return to work...so I did.

Anyway I suppose I don't really have much to say about today, other than it's snowing again, not laying but it's blowing all over the place.

So I wanted to talk about the toilets a little while a go and I think it may have come to mind again after yesterday...well anyway many Westerners that have come to Korea have noted about this, on various blogs and what-not, but I thought I would throw my two penneth in regardless.

In the west we are rather used to our porcelain thrones.  They seem to make sense to use, by sitting we make it a less arduous ordeal.  Some people in fact seem to enjoy that time alone to sit and read...well whatever.  However I doubt that would ever be the case in Korea.  There are no porcelain thrones, no there are sort of dugouts.

This is a rather nice looking version I have to say, this is just one I stole from the net though.

But there it is.  It took me some time to work out what I was supposed to do.  Some of you may think it is fairly obvious looking at it, but once you are in front of one you have to work out how to angle yourself, how low to get and where to stand and what you do with your pants.  Yes that's right this is a squat toilet.  When I first came across one I was in Busan and I thought it was some sort of archaic toilet, but no, it is common practice.  The only place you are going to find a western toilet is in a western restaurant modern accommodation and there should be at least one in each school, generally to service the disabled students.

Well I did not know this initially, so one time when I was fairly desperate I wandered through most of the school and all I could find were these weird squat toilets, finally I was led to the single western toilet in the school.  It was completely out of the way through a dark corridor and apparently almost no-one knows about it.

Well I guess that covers that bit, but there are two more things of note in public restrooms.  First is that the guys are not shy in the slightest, frequently they will not shut the doors leading to a toilet or if they do they have clear glass in them, so really what's the point?  This is often why I will retreat to the cubicles.  I mean I'm already the one to stare at but I have no interest in random people staring at my cock while I try to take a piss.

The second thing is that there are still quite a few unisex toilets here in Korea.  However they are not like the ones that sometimes turn up in the UK.  Sometimes in the UK there will be a unisex toilet, but it would be full of cubicles.  No here in Korea it means there are urinals for the guys and stalls for the gals.  But the girls have to push past the guy taking a piss to go to the toilet.

I don't know if it's just me, but I still like some privacy when using the toilet.


*Addition - There are a couple of inconveniences I forgot to mention:

1.  In many places the toilet paper is outside the restroom area and you must either bring it in yourself or in fact pay for some, so if I go traveling I take a whole roll with me.
2. If you find yourself using a squat toilet you are expected NOT to flush the paper down it, yes that's right.  They have a waste paper bin to the side of you, often without a lid.  So you've most likely been sat next to the remains of crap while you have uncomfortably had a go.  Not pleasant in the least.  In fact they seem to do the same thing here at school, even with the western toilet.

I've been Ill

Now, I'll spare you the nasty details of my illness, but let's just say it has been rather messy.

Yesterday I went into work with a banging headache, but I assumed it would clear up, by the time I got home I simply wanted to sleep and had no interest in eating anything.  I realised of course at this point that something was wrong, but I thought if I could just have a really long sleep it would clear up...I was wrong.

I got in a fair amount of sleep but I was forced awake fairly frequently during the night.  So by the time morning rolled around, I looked pretty rough and I was in fair disarray.  I realised iI would not beable to work today, so I tried rather unsuccessfully to contact the school and my co-teacher, but in the end I finally got through and was told I could take the day off...meh.  Anyway that only led to greater difficulties, one of the staff members came over to help me get some medicine.  Great, I though, oh wait, they someone that speaks no English...So for the next half an hour I was forced to wander around the town looking for a doctors, which turned out to be full, oh and lacked English speakers.  So I just used my handbook to get him to take me to a pharmacy to get me some pills.

This appeared to work and I was quite satisfied as well as fairly desparate to get back home.  However after succeeding to get the pills I realised I had no idea how to take them, ie how many and how often.  The fella I was with did his best as did I, but there was too much of a gap.  So I just did a lot of nodding and when he was gone, I just sat there looking at them.  I thought I could find them on the internet and hopefully work out if I had the right stuff and how to take them, no luck.

In the end I went to another Westerner's place and asked him if he could help.  He did, he went back to the pharmacy and used his slightly more advanced English skills to ask them and finally I had instructions.  Anyway, they appear to be taking some effect at least, but I don't know how I'll feel tomorrow.  I'll just have to see.

Oh, but there was one other thing, the prinicpal, vice-principal and some of the head administrators came over to see me today because they had heard I was ill.  At first I thought they may be checking up on me, but quickly I realised they were simply just concerned for me.  It was only a flying visit because, really I have a tiny, messy place and we have no way of talking to one another.

Well as I have said before, we'll see how I feel.

First day of the Winter Holiday

Yep it's the holidays!  But no I don't get them.  I am destined to work for the next month.  I have a week of afternoon classes teaching every grade daily, then two weeks of some sort of English winter camp and then another week just like the first.

Just a note on the winter camp, I have absolutely no idea what it will entail, teaching English of course, but I have been given no information regarding what exactly I'll be teaching, what ages or even if I need to prepare anything, bah.  Well I suppose one up side is that the school the winter camp is being held at is literally (and yes I do mean literally, not figuratively as most people fuck up now-a-days) two minutes from my place on foot.  Also meeting some new kids could be cool, hopefully they'll be just as awesome as the ones I have now.

So anyway, I started the afternoon classes yesterday and I had actually prepared my lessons correctly and had my resources set out like I wanted them.  I was dreading the first class: grades 1&2 combined, the last time I took them it was utter chaos, 24 kids that speak basically no English.  But that was not the case this time.  I guess being on holiday deterred a fair amount of the kids because I was left with a class much closer to about 8.  This was a perfect number and my lesson worked out really well.  The kids reacted to the games we played and they understood well enough to participate.  A few times one of the very few teachers in the school at the mo wandered past and stuck their heads in, at which point the kids all shut up.  Useful sometimes, but not as much when in full swing of a rowdy game.

So basically the first lesson went down really well and I was pumped for the second lesson, because next I had grades 3-4 which meant they may actually understand some of what I say.  However only two turned up, which effectively put my lesson plan in the toilet.  Try as though I might my lesson fell apart after the first 20 minutes and in the second half the two girls I was teaching decided they would teach ME Korean.  Fairly useful I suppose, but when they got bored of my inability they moved onto music videos.  Now this wouldn't be so bad in a room full of students, but the girls picked all these music videos which SHOULD be aimed at adults.  As a westerner, or maybe just a male adult in the room I brought it to an end quite quickly as I felt uncomfortable.

Finally I had my last lesson of the day, this being grades 5-6.  Now enough students did turn up to this one, not nearly as many as I would have liked, but enough for my lesson to hang together.  However they ran through my games like they were nothing and I quickly realised that I had set the level of the lesson too low.  It was a little late by the time I realised.  So I was left scraping together what I could.  I used up some of my resources for other lessons, but as I am such a new teacher I really lacked the stock I required, so in the end I was forced to fold and allow the kids to play UNO, although it turns out that it was actually only the last 10 mins where I had failed to produce anything.

Although clearly I had failed to adequately plan for the lesson I felt that they did not go all that bad.  For one the first lesson went down well, secondly I learnt some Korean and finally my lessons did not descend into chaos immediately.

Well that was yesterday and today I have just finished my lesson planning and will be trying it out in about half an hour, so I'll report back either later today or tomorrow, just depending on how knackered I am later.

Bus 13

Got the bus today and everything was fine.  So I pushed the button and got up so I could get off.  Another fella was in front of me.  The bus stopped and the fella in front off and the the fucking bus driver closed the door and kept on driving with me still on.  It was ridiculous I was attempting to get off the bus when he slammed the door shut.  I hollered at him, but he just ignored me and then dropped me off at the next stop, which was really far from my school.  What an arsehole.  It's not like I pressed the button and got up because I have some sort of fetish, I wanted to get off the fucking bus!

Bah, I just wanted to slap him across the face and make the bastard stop.  I'm pretty sure even in Korean culture it's not a standard thing to keep people on buses longer than they want/need to be there for.

Christmas

So, yesterday was Christmas and it was initially set to be an alright day, not terribly christmasy, but okay.  One of my friends was coming over from his town and we were going to hang out.  However that did not occur, he got ill and the plabs became null and void.

So I was a little down about that, but my spirits raised somewhat when I opened the few cards and presenets I had held onto from home, they were not much but they helped me feel better and marginally like it was Christmas.

Now this is not a story of gloom however, the day got better from that point on.  One of the guys from my building had invited me for a traditional Christmas meal.  It was really good, granted it was not exactly what most people are used to, but given the rarity of this sort of food and sort of cooking appliances, it was exceptional.  I got to sit back and eat ham, chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing and drink rice wine.

After lunch we all went our separate ways for a bit, you know for the after meal sleep that is a standard tradition on Christmas.  But later on we got back together and went out to have a few drinks.

Now there is a fairly standard procedure with going out at night in Korea: go to a few bars and then go to a noreban (Kareoke to you and me).  And yes that is exactly what happened.  Now I'm not a fan of Kareoke and never have been.  I am one of those people that knows full well that they do not have a good singing voice.  Now that's not to say that I don't like singing, I do, I'm pretty sure everyone does, but I like to either do it within the confines of my own home or maybe with people I am quite comfortable among.  But no, you can't do that here.  Everybody is expected to sing.

Well I escaped most of the night without singing, not exactly because I was refusing to do so, but unfortunately my musical tastes do not include generic Kareoke music, I just don't know the songs well enough to sing on que.  There ARE plenty of songs I know off by heart, but you'll almost never find them on a Kareoke machine.  Anyway in the end I was reduced to singing something because I was being presured into it by my new friends and the random Koreans in the place we went to (amusingly called casablance).  So I eneded up doing Imagine and Yesterday.  Not my favourite choices, but I knew them well enough.

Now I suppose that's sort of an interesting evening to some degree, but the random Koreans I just mentioned made things more entertaining.  There were three of them, the guy that owns the place that loves music and playing his guitar alongside the singers, a guy whose name I've forgotten but had a pretty good grasp of English and then there was Skybird.  By far Skybird was the most entertaining, he has a baner of flapping his hands when he introduces himself to westerners to try to make them understand his name.  Of cousre we're pretty sure this is not his real name, but really who cares?

The guy was pretty mad, he would get up on stage and dance/prance around as others sang, but in such a bizarre manner.  To be honest I can't really think of a propper way to describe him, you would have to meet him to really understand.  Strangely enough as crazy as he is, he actually has a pretty good singing voice, in Korean, but when he sings a massive grinn appears on his face and it's somewhere between amusing and scary.

I have some pictures to acompany this, but I have misleaid my camera, so I shall get them added shortly.

Well that was my christmas, boxing day, today has produced nothing of any interest so I'm just tagging it onto the end here.

Later all.

*Addition -

This is Sky Bird

Pictures as promised.

Night Out

I went out with the other tachers and members of the school, including the prinicpal and vice principal today.  I am not sure what I was expecting, but it was good.  We had a big meal across a long table and I sat across from the principal with my co-Korean teacher next to me so that he could translate as necessary.  For the most part I did not ask him to translate because it was a night for him to relax too, so only when people were talking to me or sometimes when I was to them.

I was able to eat most of it although my chopstick skills are still very poor.  Some of the smaller dishes I left however because they were too spicy and although I am up for trying new things I do not need to hurt myself in the process. 

Although for maybe 75% of the time I had no idea what was being said I still enjoyed myself and did my best to communicate without words where I could.  After the meal was done, I had a choice of get a lift back to my flat or go on to a kareoke place with the rest of the flat and get the bus back.  Now I am no fan of Kareoke and I did not like the idea of getting the bus.  But I thought I should grab every oppotunity to go out with the staff as I can, so I did.  I turned down the lift and went with the more difficult route.

The Kareoke went okay, I sang Hotel California and The Yoing Ones, not exactly my favourite songs, but they were songs I knew better than the rest.  The problem was that most of the songs were of course Korean and those that were in English were generally either American or big pop hits, which I would not know since I am no fan of pop.

But whether I was good or truly bad was not commented upon, either they liked it or they were simply glad that I gave it a go, either way it was good because I felt accepted.

Luckily for me after the Kareoke the Principal and two other members of staff decided to let me into their cab, and to be honest I'm pretty sure I lived out of their way.  But they dropped me off at my place in the caba dn went on their merry way.  I have to say I am very grateful though, because I'm quite tired now, yes I know very sad given the time, but I still have work tomorrow.

Anyway, all in all a very good night out and something I hope to replicate in time to come, which should happen to some degree at least seeing as how it is only nearing the end of my second working week and I am here for a year.

Well, that's all folks.  See you later.

Lunch was good.

Yes, lunch was good.  I actually ate it all! Except the Kimchi that is.

Not many classes though, which is not too bad I guess, but even when I had my class today, just one person turned up, that threw my lesson plan out of the window, so I just had him make origami flowers.  There was another kid there too, the one I like to call 'the hanger on' she has a tendancy to stare more than the rest, grab a hold of me and not know when it's time to leave.  I actually got her to speak some English today, which is new I guess, but she still scares me somewhat.

Anyway, not a whole lot went on today, so I guess this is more or less it.  Oh, but tomorrow I will be going for a meal with the teachers and the princial and vice-prinical, so that should be good.  I mean even if I don't like the food or I can't speak to anyone, it will still most certainly be something worthy of blogging, especially given how dry the bulk of this post is.

Very Strange Evening

I have deleted this post just in case.  It could have had some negative ramifications given how small my school is.

So just as a reminder to myself I shall say, I had a good day teaching Kung-Fu to the kids and the food wasn't too bad either.  But in the evening I had bribery pizza.  Hopefully that will be enough for me to remember in time to come.  Sorry to anyone that didn't get to read the post as it once was, but if you are interested and I know you ask me and I will explain.

Good Day

Yes, today was good, a bit slow, but good.

I was supposed to co-teach the kindergarten class today, but they went on a picnic instead since the weather wasn't too bad.  So that meant I had no classes until about 2pm.  That gave me plenty of time to plan some lessons for later on, but I did have lots of wasted time too, since I haven't been at this long enough to properly plan lessons.  I was very tempted throughout the day to plan Mount & Blade, but the batteries in my mouse had gone dead, so I resisted the urge.

At lunch I tried something new, I had eel, not bad.  The rest of the lunch was pretty naff, rice, lots of cabbage and a spicy soup.  After the meal, I went out into the school grounds to get some more photos, which I shall post elsewhere, but it didn't take long.  So I wandered over and met some of the students, some of the younger ones dragged me around for a bit showing me random things.  Then I decided I would sit on the seesaw with two of the kids, but that turned into about 7 or 8 kids all at once.  It was good fun, a bit mad, but fun, but I had to stop because I was basically making it move myself, too many kids on the other end.

After that I did some kung-fu for the kids...but only at their behest.  Then I headed back in, to prepare for the next lesson (or my first).  I actually had a lesson planned for the 3rd graders, but no-one turned up.  Not sure why, the 3rd grade teacher thinks they forgot, but I think he forgot to tell them.  So that was another hour without teaching, but I can use the lesson later.  Finally I actually had a lesson with some 5th graders, only 3 of them due to after school classes clashing.  So the lesson I had planned for did not work out, so I had them come up with as many words as possible from the letters I provided.  It worked quite well, but next time I won't allow the kids to use any of the words around the room, because that's all one of them did.  I was hoping to gage their ability with this, I'll try something else maybe.

So basically there was not much teaching done by me today, nor did I use any of the plans I created, but they can be re-used.  But the day was still good because I got to have some fun with the kids.

Town and Temple

Well I had planned on simply going around town to sate my Blog's need for pictures, which I did succeed with to a degree, however when I got to one end of the town I discovered a large archway and decided I had to go and have a look.  After quite a walk I came across a fairly large bhuddist temple, covered in tourists.  But anyway, I'll start with the photos of the town.

This is my apartment building, not much to look at, but there you go.

This here is the shop that I do most of my food shopping at, the choice isn't very big and as ever in Korea there's more fish in it than a Blue Whale could consume in a week.  But it's just up the road from me, so it's very conveniet.

A  phone box, yep that's all.

This is a pet shop, I guess, I haven't been inside but they have a bunch of dogs in the window in small boxes.  They're all small dogs and have stupid tops on them.  Oh and before you ask, no they are not for food.

The local Police station, although I get the feeling that if I had an issue and asked for help they woulc have no idea what I would be going on about.

This is just one of the many french-like bakeries across Korea, they are pretty good, but the stuff inside ranges from just plain strange, to really good.  Unfortunately without a grasp of Korean it's just a case of jump in and try something new each time.  So basically some days I come out happy and other days I'm throwing it away.

No idea what this is, probably an eatery, but it just looked a bit mental.

This is one of those PC Bangs, basically where you CAN use the internet or a computer, but basically most people go and play on computer games and most specifically Starcraft 2.

The entrace leading up to Tongdosa Temple.

 So when I saw this archway I decided I would go for a bit of a wander.  The main temples were about 1km away, but the walk was really nice and it smelt really fresh out there, which I have to say I can now appreciate.

I was amazed by this, someone has actually built a support for the tree so thatit doesn't break.

I decided not to take any photos of the inside of any of the temples because it is not just a tourist trap, people still pray there and I didn't want to act in a disrespectful manner.  In fact there were several buildings right at the back that the general public were not allowed into where I assume the monks that I saw wandering around live.  The temple on whole was really nice and I decided to pick a quite spot and do some Kung-Fu.  I couldn't actually find a place out of the way, so I went over to the river and did it there.  There were many people passing by, but that didn't bother me.

But about half way through I realised there were some people on the otherside of the river taking photos of me, heh, it didn't put me off, but for a short while I had a bit of a crowd.  To be honest it didn't bother me one jot, people here stare at me all the time, so if they're going to stare, they may as well stare at something exciting.

Well there we go.  I have successfully provided my blog with a bit of spice and I also got some good exercise in, in the process.  Right, that was quite a long one, I'm off for a bit now.

My Place

I was going to do a post on Korean toilets, but I realised I hadn't said anything about my accomodation yet, so the toilet bit can wait until tomorrow.  Right so as I have said before it isn't very big at all.  It consists of a bedroom, a kitchen area, toilet/wet room and a laudry section.

The pictures are generally self explainatory, except for the last one, that is my Korean washing machine and I have no idea how to use it.  So I may have to experiement with it, maybe I'll do a small wash in case things go awry.  I don't have a picture to the apartment block as of yet and it's too late at night to get a decent shot, so I'll come back and edit this post, maybe tomorrow.  While I'm at it I may as well wander around the town and get some shots of it.

Well, that's all folks, you can look forward to the town and toilet posts on the morrow...that is provided anybody is really following this blog as closely as I am writing it...well, later.

A Few School Pictures

I have still not had the chance to take many photos of the school as I would have liked to, because things both in school and out have been keeping me busy, but I did get a few snaps from my classroom and the corridoor outside.  Hopefully these will help sate you slighty Iain.

The lighting is a bit shite, but these were both taken at the same time.  It's pretty good and I've got a really good desk and with that desk comes a broken ass computer, full of loads of files I need to do my job as well as programme extensions that will allow me to read documents originally written in Hangul...anyway, hopefully that will soon be fixed.  In the meantime I have been using my laptop, so that I can still use the projector and therefore play videos that the kids can follow along with.

I guess these corridoor is pretty boring, but hey I have no other pics.  Hopefully I will have some new photos on monday, since I usually arrive at school really early.

The only thing of any real note on these photos is the fact that there is a sofa in the hall.  I have no idea why it's there but the kids seem to like it, so hey I guess it's all right.  I may even get some photos of the kids, but I thought I would leave that until I get the chance to ask them if they mind and also I get the feeling that it will cause them to get really hyper.

Right well that's that, not much, just a glimpse of where I go to work.

*Addition - Here are some more photos of my school, but from the outside this time.

Outdoor teacher that I suspect will be really nice in spring/summer.

Another seated area, perhaps for a smaller class.

I am yet to find out who this fella is.