Today some of the kids were participating in an English speaking contest. They could talk about any subject they wanted and they would be judged on their confidence, pronuncination and internation and content. There was one kid from the 4th grade, four from the 5th grade and four from the 6th grade. The ability of the kids varied. Some of them were very confident, but their pronunciation was not very good and others had great content. I was acting as one of four judges, although as it turns out my votes carried much more weight than the others.
All of the kids had a good stab at it, but there were clearly some better than others. One kid was basically reading out Korean that had been written to sound like English, but it made the speech sound pretty awful. Another chose to retell a story and a further kid chose a controversial subject regarding an island in dispute between Korea and Japan. Unfortunately the speech regarding the island was clearly the work of his parents and it was rather fanatical if not quite a bit racist against Japan. Of course that is not an issue here in Korea, but I was not in favour of it at all, and so he lost some marks in content from me, yet he would not have won anyway due to his pronunciation.
In the end we came to a decision about who had won and who would be the runners up, the 4th grade student would get a special commendation for having a go. The prizes are simply certificates, although I can see that this may be something to use and look back on I decided that I wanted to reward all those that participated and hopefully not deter them from having a go again at another time. So tonight I have baked a batch of cookies that I will distribute to the competitors. Hopefully it will be a nice treat and likely cause a little jealousy from those kids that could have participated, but chose not to.
Rigth I'm off to bed, wonder when I'll add another post...
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Saturday, 11 June 2011
6 months coming up
This week my 5th ad 6th grade teachers came to a decision to split my classes up, quite independent of one another, but the same idea shone through. I will take the more advanced kids and keep them going through the stuff I have been set to do and they will take the slower kids and teach them more fundamental things. Now kids are always going have different levels of ability, however the difference is quite drastic at my school. For instance there are some kids in the the 5th grade that can almost hold a conversation with me in English, all be it very basic and then there are some who are still trying to understand the alphabet. This is not to say that any of the kids are stupid, rather that in a small rural area as mine there are a lot of kids coming from broken homes, plus society here is not driven in the same manner as other parts of the country. Anyway all that just boild down to me getting better classes. I do like the kids that I won't be teaching for a couple of weeks, but I can be more lively and run through a variety of things with the kids that can keep up. I had my first lesson with the 6th graders and it wemnt really well, they seemed to enjoy themselves and so did I. I hope the 5th grade class is just as good and that these good classes continue.
Now it's not all hunky dory of course. While I do have these great classes from time to time, I am still subjected to having classes with kids that don't want to learn. There are some kids in the 5th grade that have no intention of doing any of the work I set them in the after school classes. The issue of discipline comes into play here. The kids that come to this have a very low level of English and I think that that is the problem, they have not done very well in the class and turned away from it. The only way they will even consider doing the lesson is if it is basically just a bunch of games, however English games require a certain amount of preamble, which they will not allow. So in short I am unable to get them to do anything of actual value, which means they will just play games and then depart, if anything mildly challenging arises they will certainly depart. I think also it has a certain amount to do with peer pressure, when the 3 girls come together they are worse, than if just one were to show up.
Today I went to Busan to meet up with Matt as ever. We were not in line to do anything in particular. However, however when I met up with Matt this time he was helping out two fellas. These guys were from an engineering firm based in the UK and they were out in Korea working on a ship. They're only staying in Korea for a month this time around, so we hung out for the day. They did a bit of shopping for their families and I couldn't believe the amount of money they were able to just hand over and it seemly meant nothing. After some shopping we had a meal, which came free from them as they said they could claim it back on expenses, that was cool. The two guys were really down to earth guys and if they are in the area any time soon, we'll maybe hang out again.
On Sunday I will have been in the country for 6 months, a couple of days later I will have been teaching for 6 months. I am half way through my contract. I have to say that these 6 months have not been the easiest in my life, ha, no they have most probably been the hardest. I am in a country where I do not speak the language and I have generally failed to increase the small level I do command. I am in an alien culture, with alien foods and few comforts of home. The town I live in is very small and has few English speakers and the only excitement to be found lies with walking in the hills or drinking one's self into a stupor. I experience a great deal of racism on many levels in my daily life. I had a terrible experience that none should have to go through, by means of an earthquake rather than the holiday that I had paid so much for and really wanted to have with my family and finally I have issues with the restrictions placed on how I may teach and what I may do. Yet it is not all doom and gloom, I am earning large amounts of money, gaining experience in many walks of life, meeting some new people and I like my teachers and students for the most part. All I can say is that I do not love it here, but I do not hate it either. Life here is just...meh.
I can hope that things will get better in the next 6 months. I doubt this very much, but I can hope at least that life remains tolerable. Yet I can at least look forward to my planned visit to the US to meet up with friends when I am done here.
Now it's not all hunky dory of course. While I do have these great classes from time to time, I am still subjected to having classes with kids that don't want to learn. There are some kids in the 5th grade that have no intention of doing any of the work I set them in the after school classes. The issue of discipline comes into play here. The kids that come to this have a very low level of English and I think that that is the problem, they have not done very well in the class and turned away from it. The only way they will even consider doing the lesson is if it is basically just a bunch of games, however English games require a certain amount of preamble, which they will not allow. So in short I am unable to get them to do anything of actual value, which means they will just play games and then depart, if anything mildly challenging arises they will certainly depart. I think also it has a certain amount to do with peer pressure, when the 3 girls come together they are worse, than if just one were to show up.
Today I went to Busan to meet up with Matt as ever. We were not in line to do anything in particular. However, however when I met up with Matt this time he was helping out two fellas. These guys were from an engineering firm based in the UK and they were out in Korea working on a ship. They're only staying in Korea for a month this time around, so we hung out for the day. They did a bit of shopping for their families and I couldn't believe the amount of money they were able to just hand over and it seemly meant nothing. After some shopping we had a meal, which came free from them as they said they could claim it back on expenses, that was cool. The two guys were really down to earth guys and if they are in the area any time soon, we'll maybe hang out again.
On Sunday I will have been in the country for 6 months, a couple of days later I will have been teaching for 6 months. I am half way through my contract. I have to say that these 6 months have not been the easiest in my life, ha, no they have most probably been the hardest. I am in a country where I do not speak the language and I have generally failed to increase the small level I do command. I am in an alien culture, with alien foods and few comforts of home. The town I live in is very small and has few English speakers and the only excitement to be found lies with walking in the hills or drinking one's self into a stupor. I experience a great deal of racism on many levels in my daily life. I had a terrible experience that none should have to go through, by means of an earthquake rather than the holiday that I had paid so much for and really wanted to have with my family and finally I have issues with the restrictions placed on how I may teach and what I may do. Yet it is not all doom and gloom, I am earning large amounts of money, gaining experience in many walks of life, meeting some new people and I like my teachers and students for the most part. All I can say is that I do not love it here, but I do not hate it either. Life here is just...meh.
I can hope that things will get better in the next 6 months. I doubt this very much, but I can hope at least that life remains tolerable. Yet I can at least look forward to my planned visit to the US to meet up with friends when I am done here.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Interesting...
So yesterday I had a bit of an interesting day. Fridays are normally pretty scerene, I don't have many classes to teach which is pretty nice, especially after a hard day of a thursday, where I am busy all day. So generally the day was pretty quiet, but after lunch I had the 6th grade and that was good and then I should have had the 5th grade. But as usually most of them were a no-show, just one turned up in fact. He was not terribly bothered about learning any English, plus I had two random 4th graders in my room. We played some random games with the stuff in my room. But then, what happened well, it's rather embarrassing, I ripped my pants, almost in two. At that point I needed some way to cover myself. I was not terribly embarrassed, but still signs of modesty are greatly appreciated as a teacher. So I shooed away my students and had one of the teachers drive me home. I'm going to try and sew them back together when I can get a needle and some thread, but it looks like they may be beyond repair.
Today I wentout to buy some food, I had decided that I would just take the day to do some of the chores in my house that have been mounting up. I had a couple of things to buy and I decided I would brave the market with my tiny amount of Korean. Thankfully I didn't really have to use it, but the prices were pretty amazing, so much cheaper than the shops and those shop prices are generally about half what I would pay in the UK. So I made some pretty good savings on my fruit and veg for the week. I think I may well take to going every week that I am at home for it.
Today I wentout to buy some food, I had decided that I would just take the day to do some of the chores in my house that have been mounting up. I had a couple of things to buy and I decided I would brave the market with my tiny amount of Korean. Thankfully I didn't really have to use it, but the prices were pretty amazing, so much cheaper than the shops and those shop prices are generally about half what I would pay in the UK. So I made some pretty good savings on my fruit and veg for the week. I think I may well take to going every week that I am at home for it.
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Update
I have failed to blog for almost a month, this mainly due to the fact that they have banned access to the site at work, but also because for the last few days the site has been down for maintenance. But one of my friends suggested to me that I should write my blog on a word document and then send it to myself, so all I have to do is upload it. So that is precisely what I shall do.
Changwon/Masan
I had two days off in quick succession, one for children’s day on the 5th of May and a second one for Buddha’s birthday on the 10th of May. I did nothing special on either of those days, which I suppose some would say was a waste, but it allowed me to relax and get some stuff done in my house that I had meant to get around to, but hadn’t. Also by having those days off I was finally able to bring myself to make the trek over to Matt’s. The journey in theory should only have taken about 2 hours, but I believe that that is an outdated calculation, plus due to heavy traffic it took me almost 3 and a half hours. So as one may expect by the end of it I was pretty fed up. But I arrived and grabbed a taxi over to meet Matt. I was not in his city though, we were out in Changwon for the night.
I knew we were meeting Chris, Tim and Barry (although Barry took a billion years to get there) and there was another guy, D. I have to say when I sat down after my obscenely long bus ride I was pretty confused by the insane conversation they were having. They were talking about the end of the world and aliens. Now I’m sure many of us have had these conversations before, but the thing that surprised me was that there was no voice of scepticism, they were just nodding along blindly, that is except of Chris, he looked bemused.
After the strange greeting we went off to get something to eat. We had something rather different than the norm for Korea though, we had Indian curry. It was run by a guy from Pakistan originally. The food was good, not the best by any means, but a welcome change. But it was super expensive and there was not much meat. From there we moved onto a local bar. It was alright, but it was tiny and created simply for foreigners. I would find it difficult to see any Koreans frequenting the place, other than perhaps women who wanted to hook up with white guys.
After that we split ways with the D character and moved onto a bar that Tim and Matt wanted to go to. It is pretty obvious what they wanted to get out of it, the very same thing they want from everything. It wasn’t all that far and by this time Barry had joined us. The place was pretty cool and of course Matt spent most of his time eyeing up women, while Tim did his best to reel them in with his proficiency in Korean. It can be pretty painful to watch, because while they may be successful of times, it seems to be all they can talk about when they are together. That much became evident when they were at the EPIK training together.
We had a few drinks and we turned to the girlier drinks, since in Korea it is completely acceptable, although I did not quite go as far as to have an Appletini as some of the others did. The night was alright in all, but it came to a close uneventfully.
However as I was settling in to go to sleep at Matt’s I received a text from Chris telling me that he and Barry had gone on to another place afterwards and Barry had successfully spilt 4 drinks and they were now dancing. The next day I found out that things continued to get messier from that point onwards, with sick being a re-occurring theme.
The next day I got to see where Matt lived and how he spends his time, when he’s not complaining about how easy his workload is. It’s not a bad place at all, it has everything you need, much more than I have even an hour from me. It’s not the nicest looking area, but that’s not so bad when there are places to go and people to see. The bus ride back was shorter than going, but it still took me about an hour and a half and I was lucky, since the second bus was more or less just waiting for me.
People come to Tongdosa
This weekend Jake and Matt made the effort to come over to my house. There’s not much in my town, but it does have the temple above it in the hills. Jake had seen the main temple before, but not Matt, so we headed there first. It’s about 1km from the town to the temple. After a couple of snaps, we moved on to the hills for the hike. I was out walking for a good 5 hours going on for six. I came back before the others because the flies were getting right in my face. They were not biting, but it was enough to annoy the crap out of me. So on the way back I walked at full pelt, I decide it would be good to break a sweat and get some proper exercise. By the end of it I was aching all over and I had chafed my legs somewhat. However it was a good day out and it was definitely good for me to get some extended exercise.
In the evening we had some food and then Jake and I wandered up to the roof to have a few light drinks with the guys from Tongdosa, well Jeff and Tim anyway. Jake settled in before me and I stayed up a bit longer. The night was quite sedate and then in the morning we had lunch before they left. It was not all that an exciting weekend, but it was good to get exercise, talk with friends and not have a hangover the next day.
Changwon/Masan
I had two days off in quick succession, one for children’s day on the 5th of May and a second one for Buddha’s birthday on the 10th of May. I did nothing special on either of those days, which I suppose some would say was a waste, but it allowed me to relax and get some stuff done in my house that I had meant to get around to, but hadn’t. Also by having those days off I was finally able to bring myself to make the trek over to Matt’s. The journey in theory should only have taken about 2 hours, but I believe that that is an outdated calculation, plus due to heavy traffic it took me almost 3 and a half hours. So as one may expect by the end of it I was pretty fed up. But I arrived and grabbed a taxi over to meet Matt. I was not in his city though, we were out in Changwon for the night.
I knew we were meeting Chris, Tim and Barry (although Barry took a billion years to get there) and there was another guy, D. I have to say when I sat down after my obscenely long bus ride I was pretty confused by the insane conversation they were having. They were talking about the end of the world and aliens. Now I’m sure many of us have had these conversations before, but the thing that surprised me was that there was no voice of scepticism, they were just nodding along blindly, that is except of Chris, he looked bemused.
After the strange greeting we went off to get something to eat. We had something rather different than the norm for Korea though, we had Indian curry. It was run by a guy from Pakistan originally. The food was good, not the best by any means, but a welcome change. But it was super expensive and there was not much meat. From there we moved onto a local bar. It was alright, but it was tiny and created simply for foreigners. I would find it difficult to see any Koreans frequenting the place, other than perhaps women who wanted to hook up with white guys.
After that we split ways with the D character and moved onto a bar that Tim and Matt wanted to go to. It is pretty obvious what they wanted to get out of it, the very same thing they want from everything. It wasn’t all that far and by this time Barry had joined us. The place was pretty cool and of course Matt spent most of his time eyeing up women, while Tim did his best to reel them in with his proficiency in Korean. It can be pretty painful to watch, because while they may be successful of times, it seems to be all they can talk about when they are together. That much became evident when they were at the EPIK training together.
We had a few drinks and we turned to the girlier drinks, since in Korea it is completely acceptable, although I did not quite go as far as to have an Appletini as some of the others did. The night was alright in all, but it came to a close uneventfully.
However as I was settling in to go to sleep at Matt’s I received a text from Chris telling me that he and Barry had gone on to another place afterwards and Barry had successfully spilt 4 drinks and they were now dancing. The next day I found out that things continued to get messier from that point onwards, with sick being a re-occurring theme.
The next day I got to see where Matt lived and how he spends his time, when he’s not complaining about how easy his workload is. It’s not a bad place at all, it has everything you need, much more than I have even an hour from me. It’s not the nicest looking area, but that’s not so bad when there are places to go and people to see. The bus ride back was shorter than going, but it still took me about an hour and a half and I was lucky, since the second bus was more or less just waiting for me.
People come to Tongdosa
This weekend Jake and Matt made the effort to come over to my house. There’s not much in my town, but it does have the temple above it in the hills. Jake had seen the main temple before, but not Matt, so we headed there first. It’s about 1km from the town to the temple. After a couple of snaps, we moved on to the hills for the hike. I was out walking for a good 5 hours going on for six. I came back before the others because the flies were getting right in my face. They were not biting, but it was enough to annoy the crap out of me. So on the way back I walked at full pelt, I decide it would be good to break a sweat and get some proper exercise. By the end of it I was aching all over and I had chafed my legs somewhat. However it was a good day out and it was definitely good for me to get some extended exercise.
In the evening we had some food and then Jake and I wandered up to the roof to have a few light drinks with the guys from Tongdosa, well Jeff and Tim anyway. Jake settled in before me and I stayed up a bit longer. The night was quite sedate and then in the morning we had lunch before they left. It was not all that an exciting weekend, but it was good to get exercise, talk with friends and not have a hangover the next day.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Plenty of stuff.
I have been away from my blog for a wee while, so I'm going to fill ya'll in on the past events of late.
13th April
I had just finished teaching at about 3pm, with grade 2 and they had been pretty terrible when one of the teachers came in and told me were going hiking right then. I had no hiking gear and I was dressed far too formally for such an activity. However I had no choice, but to go along with it. So I hopped into the Principal's car and proceeded to be a passenger for about an hour and we winded our way to a hill in Busan that we would climb. Once we finally got there we had to wait around for about half an hour because some of the teachers in another car had gotten lost on the way over. Finally when we were all together we set off up the big hill. I have to say dressy shoes, smart trousers and a shirt are not the desired items of clothing for hiking. They did not stop me, but it certainly made the going much tougher than it needed to be. Parts of the hike were up well walked paths, but others took us onto paths closer to animal trails. The views were great and at one point we came across some naturally growing flowers. This was amazing for me because prior ro this, other than cherry blossoms I had seen no real flowers. I have never really considered myself a flower man, but I think when you have been brought up in a country that appreciates them and then without for several months, one misses them.
The exercise was certainly good for me, but the hike munched up much of the day and I was left dusty and tired, yet I was unable to return to my humble abode. No, I had to go for a meal with the staff. I thought that it would suck, not because the food they normally choose to eat is bad by any means, but because I just wanted to go home. However I was happily suprised when I found that we were going to a buffet, because there, there would at least be options. An amusing point is that when I was asked if I like buffet, their accent and just the general way they said it, made it sound like they were asking me if I liked pupa, to which I flatly said no. But they persisted and one of them showed me the translation on his phone, so naturally we all had a good laugh.
When we arrived at the resteraunt it because clear that this was not your normal buffet, this was going to be good. Looking around we looked somewhat out of place, my group was all dressed for hiking, whereas the rest of the clientel were dressed up, I felt at least my being overdressed would make me blend in...well the best one can when you are one of the few white people there. The resteraunt was called 'The Party'. The food was good and there were options of dishes from around the world, plus it was all you can eat, so I just tried a bit of everything, then picked out what I liked and ate plenty of it.
However after the initial joy of finding that we had gone to an eatery that I would enjoy, there was the issue of the group did not seem to understand the concept of leaving. We must have been in there for at least 3 hours. All were done a fair while before we finally left. I could not say anything about wanting to leave because I was entirely dependent upon someone else for a lift. So I kept stum and twidled my thumbs for about an hour. Because although conversation would occasionally float in my direction, for the most part people wanted to speak in Korean, which is fair enough, but it just turned me into a third wheel.
All in all the excursion had been good, but it had taken up all of my afternoon and night and for long periods throughout the day I was fairly silent since I lack the language skills to otherwise participate.
16th April
On this day I went into Busan to meet up with Matrt and a bunch of his friends, they were all in the city for a stag do. Two of the attendees were going to be getting married shortly after. I did not know either of them, but that had let me tag along. I arrived a little later than them, since I was coming from a different direction. At first I had to get past the not knowing anyone bit, that any one suffers at first being the odd one out. But I was looking forward to a day of being around people that I could properly communicate with. It was supposed to be a whole day and night of festivities. So when I arrived at the Fuzzy Naval in Haedunae I made sure I got some food down my neck. Then afterwards we set out to drink a couple of beers on the beach. At first this was fine, but as time eeked on I began to feel the chill of the wind because I had changed into smart attire as I had been told we would be visiting a casino, which would be a first for me. But acting on standard western thinking I dressed up. However we spent an inordinate amount of time on the beach, so by the time we left I had lost feeling in much of my upper half, so the wind was not bothering me so much, but regardless I needed to get out of the cold.
As with having a fair sized group of guys (12) we had the standard group mentality, in that we seemed unable to make a decision between us and so we spent long periods of time standing and waiting or arguing about the next course of action. Howver we finally made it to the Casino and I discovered three interesting facts. 1. I did not need to be dressed up. 2. The minimum bet on most of the games and tables as well as the slot machines were very low. 3. Koreans are not allowed to gamble, so there would be only foreigners in the Casino.
I spent a fair amount of my time at a roulette table, just passing the time really. I put roughly $20 dollars down as my stake money and as the time wore by my money ebbed and flowed, but by the time I decided I was done with the game I left breaking even. I had won no money, but I had lost none either and I had bided my time as the others won or lost much higher amouts of money than I was willing to part with.
After a long period in the Casino I was getting hungry and after persuading enough people we finally made our move onto somewhere to eat. We had some very Westernised food, basically burgers all around, I think. They were good though. At this point I realised that other than the beer I had had on the beach, I had not been drinking. I was not excesively bothered, but rather just suprised, since this was supposed to be a stag party.
Then we finally moved onto a bar and we came across some people we knew, not from Busan, but the area we were in is an area frequented by western teachers. We spent some time in there and some of the group left for home at about 10pm. Then we moved back to the Fuzzy Naval and it was a good atmosphere there and soent some time in there before atempting to go to a club. At this point only 3 of us were together: me, Matt and another guy. But we were turned away, they said that we were not dressed correctly and too old. I can tell you that I was neither under nor over dressed and I cannot be too old, unless this club is designed for children. I believe the actual answer is that we were white, because Koreans worse dressed and older stumbled past without issue.
Finally we came to the end of the night at a place where you pay to sleep on the floor. You get a duvet and a floor mat. I had thought it would be terrible, but it was not allo that bad, yet I still awoke naturally early and returned home to get some real sleep. All in all the stag do had been infuriating. There had been some high points, but due to the lack of organisation it had dragged on endlessly with long periods of boredom. Yet, not the worst time either, when it did finally get going things were alright.
20th April
Not a long one here, just that we played volleyball again. I did in fact have gear I could wear for this, I had pre-empted it, by just bringing some comfier clothes in case. Basically all that can be said here is that I was terrible and made a complete fool of myself. Yet this is basically the second time I have ever played, so I wish they would stop expecting me to suddenly get good.
21st April
This day was interesting and as ever tinged by infuriation. I arrived at work early as always and dressed in my normal rather formal attire. I had gained some knowledge of some students going on a trip that day from the messages that fly about on the school messenger. However the messages are in Korean and I must translate them, so obviously they do not make much sense and I must use a lot of guess work. I watched as the students formed up outside. Then I became a little suspicious, so I approached one of the teachers and asked which grades exactly were going. After a few attempts of explaing, I had thought I had myself partially clear and the teacher said grade 1&2. Satisfied I went back to my room. Then she came in and gave me a piece of paper which had a chart and Korean on it. I just sort of blankly nodded and then sat back down. She came back once more and then said grade 5, then left. I became rather confused, why would grade 1, 2 and 5 go on a trip together. At first I pushed it aside and just thought they would do differnt things.#
Then after a short while longer I looked out of the window and saw most of the school outside. Once more my suspicions arose. I looked up and down the hallways and they were clear of teachers and students and many rooms were locked. I did however find one teacher and I knew she would understand me because she has better English than some of the others. I asked her what was happening and she just happily said "We're going on a trip". I returned with, "Oh, and what about me, am I to stay here?" She looked a little confused and said, "No, you're coming too." I just stared at her for a moment and then explained that no-one had told me this. She said that the trip had been moved forward a day due to forthcoming weather. Again I explained that no-one had informed me of any trip that I would be attending.
She told me I should pack up and get my stuff. I hurried along best I could and met her outside when I was done. She told some of the other teachers about my predicament, all looked suprised, but none could do anything for me. Once more I was expected to just tag along, regardless of whether I was ready for it or not.
I was piled into a car with some kids because there were not enough seats on the coaches they had hired to seat everyone. The journey was not too long. Once at the place, I had some fun with the kids and saw some interesting things at the Millenium park that we were at in Gyeongju. I saw some mock battles and a display of horse archery and horse acrobatics that was pretty cool. But once again I was wearing the wrong attire and because I had had no warning I had not been adaquetely prepared to spend the day in the sun. So as you can probably guess, with my colouring I got sunburnt. There were some pretty cool things in the surrounding area that I would like to go back and see, for instance there was a building that had what looked like a cut out of a pagoda in it's middle. Pretty cool. I also saw a huge hot air baloon in the sky.
All in all it was a good day, I got out of a busy day at school and I got to view some pretty cool sights and I also got to hang out with the kids outside the school walls. Yet it was still tinged with irritation due to the fact that once more I had been unprepared because I had been left out of the loop until the very last moment. I guess from now on I just need to have a spare change of clothes at work, in case.
22nd April
Another short one. This just to say that I finally got around to ordering an oven. This should improve my quality of life some because it will re-open culenary doors I have had blocked from me for the last 4 months. I know many people here who eat out every day. But for me, I like to cook and I really miss oven baked foods, but baking and general cooking. I will actually be able to have baked potatoes again!
This weekend
I have done nothing of note. I have cleaned my flat, cooked spaghetti bolognase from scratch (no premade sauces here, nor even tinned tomatoes) and let my sun burn heal some.
13th April
I had just finished teaching at about 3pm, with grade 2 and they had been pretty terrible when one of the teachers came in and told me were going hiking right then. I had no hiking gear and I was dressed far too formally for such an activity. However I had no choice, but to go along with it. So I hopped into the Principal's car and proceeded to be a passenger for about an hour and we winded our way to a hill in Busan that we would climb. Once we finally got there we had to wait around for about half an hour because some of the teachers in another car had gotten lost on the way over. Finally when we were all together we set off up the big hill. I have to say dressy shoes, smart trousers and a shirt are not the desired items of clothing for hiking. They did not stop me, but it certainly made the going much tougher than it needed to be. Parts of the hike were up well walked paths, but others took us onto paths closer to animal trails. The views were great and at one point we came across some naturally growing flowers. This was amazing for me because prior ro this, other than cherry blossoms I had seen no real flowers. I have never really considered myself a flower man, but I think when you have been brought up in a country that appreciates them and then without for several months, one misses them.
The exercise was certainly good for me, but the hike munched up much of the day and I was left dusty and tired, yet I was unable to return to my humble abode. No, I had to go for a meal with the staff. I thought that it would suck, not because the food they normally choose to eat is bad by any means, but because I just wanted to go home. However I was happily suprised when I found that we were going to a buffet, because there, there would at least be options. An amusing point is that when I was asked if I like buffet, their accent and just the general way they said it, made it sound like they were asking me if I liked pupa, to which I flatly said no. But they persisted and one of them showed me the translation on his phone, so naturally we all had a good laugh.
When we arrived at the resteraunt it because clear that this was not your normal buffet, this was going to be good. Looking around we looked somewhat out of place, my group was all dressed for hiking, whereas the rest of the clientel were dressed up, I felt at least my being overdressed would make me blend in...well the best one can when you are one of the few white people there. The resteraunt was called 'The Party'. The food was good and there were options of dishes from around the world, plus it was all you can eat, so I just tried a bit of everything, then picked out what I liked and ate plenty of it.
However after the initial joy of finding that we had gone to an eatery that I would enjoy, there was the issue of the group did not seem to understand the concept of leaving. We must have been in there for at least 3 hours. All were done a fair while before we finally left. I could not say anything about wanting to leave because I was entirely dependent upon someone else for a lift. So I kept stum and twidled my thumbs for about an hour. Because although conversation would occasionally float in my direction, for the most part people wanted to speak in Korean, which is fair enough, but it just turned me into a third wheel.
All in all the excursion had been good, but it had taken up all of my afternoon and night and for long periods throughout the day I was fairly silent since I lack the language skills to otherwise participate.
16th April
On this day I went into Busan to meet up with Matrt and a bunch of his friends, they were all in the city for a stag do. Two of the attendees were going to be getting married shortly after. I did not know either of them, but that had let me tag along. I arrived a little later than them, since I was coming from a different direction. At first I had to get past the not knowing anyone bit, that any one suffers at first being the odd one out. But I was looking forward to a day of being around people that I could properly communicate with. It was supposed to be a whole day and night of festivities. So when I arrived at the Fuzzy Naval in Haedunae I made sure I got some food down my neck. Then afterwards we set out to drink a couple of beers on the beach. At first this was fine, but as time eeked on I began to feel the chill of the wind because I had changed into smart attire as I had been told we would be visiting a casino, which would be a first for me. But acting on standard western thinking I dressed up. However we spent an inordinate amount of time on the beach, so by the time we left I had lost feeling in much of my upper half, so the wind was not bothering me so much, but regardless I needed to get out of the cold.
As with having a fair sized group of guys (12) we had the standard group mentality, in that we seemed unable to make a decision between us and so we spent long periods of time standing and waiting or arguing about the next course of action. Howver we finally made it to the Casino and I discovered three interesting facts. 1. I did not need to be dressed up. 2. The minimum bet on most of the games and tables as well as the slot machines were very low. 3. Koreans are not allowed to gamble, so there would be only foreigners in the Casino.
I spent a fair amount of my time at a roulette table, just passing the time really. I put roughly $20 dollars down as my stake money and as the time wore by my money ebbed and flowed, but by the time I decided I was done with the game I left breaking even. I had won no money, but I had lost none either and I had bided my time as the others won or lost much higher amouts of money than I was willing to part with.
After a long period in the Casino I was getting hungry and after persuading enough people we finally made our move onto somewhere to eat. We had some very Westernised food, basically burgers all around, I think. They were good though. At this point I realised that other than the beer I had had on the beach, I had not been drinking. I was not excesively bothered, but rather just suprised, since this was supposed to be a stag party.
Then we finally moved onto a bar and we came across some people we knew, not from Busan, but the area we were in is an area frequented by western teachers. We spent some time in there and some of the group left for home at about 10pm. Then we moved back to the Fuzzy Naval and it was a good atmosphere there and soent some time in there before atempting to go to a club. At this point only 3 of us were together: me, Matt and another guy. But we were turned away, they said that we were not dressed correctly and too old. I can tell you that I was neither under nor over dressed and I cannot be too old, unless this club is designed for children. I believe the actual answer is that we were white, because Koreans worse dressed and older stumbled past without issue.
Finally we came to the end of the night at a place where you pay to sleep on the floor. You get a duvet and a floor mat. I had thought it would be terrible, but it was not allo that bad, yet I still awoke naturally early and returned home to get some real sleep. All in all the stag do had been infuriating. There had been some high points, but due to the lack of organisation it had dragged on endlessly with long periods of boredom. Yet, not the worst time either, when it did finally get going things were alright.
20th April
Not a long one here, just that we played volleyball again. I did in fact have gear I could wear for this, I had pre-empted it, by just bringing some comfier clothes in case. Basically all that can be said here is that I was terrible and made a complete fool of myself. Yet this is basically the second time I have ever played, so I wish they would stop expecting me to suddenly get good.
21st April
This day was interesting and as ever tinged by infuriation. I arrived at work early as always and dressed in my normal rather formal attire. I had gained some knowledge of some students going on a trip that day from the messages that fly about on the school messenger. However the messages are in Korean and I must translate them, so obviously they do not make much sense and I must use a lot of guess work. I watched as the students formed up outside. Then I became a little suspicious, so I approached one of the teachers and asked which grades exactly were going. After a few attempts of explaing, I had thought I had myself partially clear and the teacher said grade 1&2. Satisfied I went back to my room. Then she came in and gave me a piece of paper which had a chart and Korean on it. I just sort of blankly nodded and then sat back down. She came back once more and then said grade 5, then left. I became rather confused, why would grade 1, 2 and 5 go on a trip together. At first I pushed it aside and just thought they would do differnt things.#
Then after a short while longer I looked out of the window and saw most of the school outside. Once more my suspicions arose. I looked up and down the hallways and they were clear of teachers and students and many rooms were locked. I did however find one teacher and I knew she would understand me because she has better English than some of the others. I asked her what was happening and she just happily said "We're going on a trip". I returned with, "Oh, and what about me, am I to stay here?" She looked a little confused and said, "No, you're coming too." I just stared at her for a moment and then explained that no-one had told me this. She said that the trip had been moved forward a day due to forthcoming weather. Again I explained that no-one had informed me of any trip that I would be attending.
She told me I should pack up and get my stuff. I hurried along best I could and met her outside when I was done. She told some of the other teachers about my predicament, all looked suprised, but none could do anything for me. Once more I was expected to just tag along, regardless of whether I was ready for it or not.
I was piled into a car with some kids because there were not enough seats on the coaches they had hired to seat everyone. The journey was not too long. Once at the place, I had some fun with the kids and saw some interesting things at the Millenium park that we were at in Gyeongju. I saw some mock battles and a display of horse archery and horse acrobatics that was pretty cool. But once again I was wearing the wrong attire and because I had had no warning I had not been adaquetely prepared to spend the day in the sun. So as you can probably guess, with my colouring I got sunburnt. There were some pretty cool things in the surrounding area that I would like to go back and see, for instance there was a building that had what looked like a cut out of a pagoda in it's middle. Pretty cool. I also saw a huge hot air baloon in the sky.
All in all it was a good day, I got out of a busy day at school and I got to view some pretty cool sights and I also got to hang out with the kids outside the school walls. Yet it was still tinged with irritation due to the fact that once more I had been unprepared because I had been left out of the loop until the very last moment. I guess from now on I just need to have a spare change of clothes at work, in case.
22nd April
Another short one. This just to say that I finally got around to ordering an oven. This should improve my quality of life some because it will re-open culenary doors I have had blocked from me for the last 4 months. I know many people here who eat out every day. But for me, I like to cook and I really miss oven baked foods, but baking and general cooking. I will actually be able to have baked potatoes again!
This weekend
I have done nothing of note. I have cleaned my flat, cooked spaghetti bolognase from scratch (no premade sauces here, nor even tinned tomatoes) and let my sun burn heal some.
Friday, 8 April 2011
The Cherry Blossom Festival
Yesterday was the Cherry Blossom Festival. The kids had spent the last week on and off making big lanterns of different sizes and shapes that would be put up around the playground later. The day of clases were cancelled for the most part. I did teach later in the afternoon, but to be honest with the hangover I was glad not to be teaching.
The kids, teachers and other staff were busy all day preparing and I helped where I could, but there was little for me to do, so I just entertained some of the kids for a time.
I took an early meal with the teachers and staff at a local resteraunt, it was a quick ordeal, because people wanted to back so that they could meet the alumni and get ready for the festival. People had come from all around the small town and those that had once attended and were doing well for themeselves had also arrived. So the playground was filled with the kids, past students and dignitary like guests and all were coming together to share conversation and food. Everybody sat under the cherry blossoms and talked. It's like those sorts of street parties they had after the second world war. I juest wish that I could have gotten more involved. But without any sort of grasp of the Korean language I was always on the side lines and the few friends I do have at the school were very busy.
I did not mind, but as 7:30pm approached and I had done the rounds I decided it was about home time. I was lacking sleep from the night before and no one had spoken to me in a while, so I took my leave. Although it was something of a lonely affair for me, it was still good and the kids were all very happy.
The kids, teachers and other staff were busy all day preparing and I helped where I could, but there was little for me to do, so I just entertained some of the kids for a time.
I took an early meal with the teachers and staff at a local resteraunt, it was a quick ordeal, because people wanted to back so that they could meet the alumni and get ready for the festival. People had come from all around the small town and those that had once attended and were doing well for themeselves had also arrived. So the playground was filled with the kids, past students and dignitary like guests and all were coming together to share conversation and food. Everybody sat under the cherry blossoms and talked. It's like those sorts of street parties they had after the second world war. I juest wish that I could have gotten more involved. But without any sort of grasp of the Korean language I was always on the side lines and the few friends I do have at the school were very busy.
I did not mind, but as 7:30pm approached and I had done the rounds I decided it was about home time. I was lacking sleep from the night before and no one had spoken to me in a while, so I took my leave. Although it was something of a lonely affair for me, it was still good and the kids were all very happy.
Strange food, good night.
I think my blogging may have been turned down for the most part. I am no longer able to blog at work, so it is most likely that I will only do so at the weekends now.
This week I have two things to blog about, the first is Thursday night. I went out with some of the teachers from my school. Although in places I felt a bit like a third wheel with my lack of Korean, the teachers began to open up a little later and they reall tried. Overall I had a good night out with them. Now that sounds like a very short post, but the meat of the topic is what I ate. They had been umming and ahing about where to take me for a while, their ideas were not exactly the sort of food I would have chosen. But I decided I should at least try these things, if I did not like them I would never have them again.
The first place we went to was a place that served offal, for any that don't know that's basically internal organs. These were of a cow, I was more than a little dubious, but I tried all that was on offer. Some of it was very fatty and others that were quite meaty and tasty. I cannot be sure what everything was, but I do know that I had kidney and intestines over spring onions (like a sort of sausage), there were other things too, but I really have no idea what they were. I guess this goes further to show that I am losing my western squeamishness to food.
Following the end of that meal we moved on to the next eatery and this one I have to say I was not exactly looking forward to, but I made it quite clear at least that I would not eat them raw. We were going to have oysters. They were dirt cheap too, so not the sort of expsense you have to shell out for in the west and probably therefore much fresher too. They did not taste bad, very irony, but I couldn't get over the texture, they were, every time I ate one my body openly cringed to some extent.
There was also a side dish at the oyster place: butterfly pupa. The others were gobbling them up, so maybe they did taste good, but I just couldn't cross the line. I guess in time I may go past it, but as it stands I still have certain western sensibilities as far as food is concerned (even though they are being worn down).
Of course to aid in the consumption of these rather bizarre foods plenty of soju was consumed, not enough to get me that drunk, but certainly enough to provide me with residual hangover the next day.
This week I have two things to blog about, the first is Thursday night. I went out with some of the teachers from my school. Although in places I felt a bit like a third wheel with my lack of Korean, the teachers began to open up a little later and they reall tried. Overall I had a good night out with them. Now that sounds like a very short post, but the meat of the topic is what I ate. They had been umming and ahing about where to take me for a while, their ideas were not exactly the sort of food I would have chosen. But I decided I should at least try these things, if I did not like them I would never have them again.
The first place we went to was a place that served offal, for any that don't know that's basically internal organs. These were of a cow, I was more than a little dubious, but I tried all that was on offer. Some of it was very fatty and others that were quite meaty and tasty. I cannot be sure what everything was, but I do know that I had kidney and intestines over spring onions (like a sort of sausage), there were other things too, but I really have no idea what they were. I guess this goes further to show that I am losing my western squeamishness to food.
Following the end of that meal we moved on to the next eatery and this one I have to say I was not exactly looking forward to, but I made it quite clear at least that I would not eat them raw. We were going to have oysters. They were dirt cheap too, so not the sort of expsense you have to shell out for in the west and probably therefore much fresher too. They did not taste bad, very irony, but I couldn't get over the texture, they were, every time I ate one my body openly cringed to some extent.
There was also a side dish at the oyster place: butterfly pupa. The others were gobbling them up, so maybe they did taste good, but I just couldn't cross the line. I guess in time I may go past it, but as it stands I still have certain western sensibilities as far as food is concerned (even though they are being worn down).
Of course to aid in the consumption of these rather bizarre foods plenty of soju was consumed, not enough to get me that drunk, but certainly enough to provide me with residual hangover the next day.
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