Royal Correspondence
The thing that stinks about signing a year contract and working in a foreign country is you make friends and then they leave. The good thing is sometimes they come back:
My liege,
Word of your return to Korea has reached the wilds of Manitoba. Eight honorable riders sacrificed their lives to bring this information to me and I will not let them die in vain. My self-imposed exile has not been without moments of excitement, but there has been nothing as monumental as our battles against the Vowel-beast or our storming of Namhansanseong Fortress. I have tried to make a life for myself here, trading sheep for whatever wood and ore I can, but I find something is missing. So it is time to shake off the chains of domesticity and return to the battlefield. Prepare your army and yourself for the long fight of winter, and know that when the Hanguk horde crashes against the Gates of Gangnam you shall have my sword at your side.
Your vassal,
Sir Kenneth
Reply:
Sir Keneth,
Do not think that word of your valor and exploits have not reached our ears. Many a long night at the nore-bong, where we have been haunted by the devilish shrieks of the damned and the chorus of Born to Wild, we have wondered when your presence would be returned for us. Finally, that day draws nie, when we will rise up once more and charge the hell-hofs of Seoul! When we will hold back the winters night through flagons of fire water and song! Yes! I feel it, no cultural bridge will be safe upon your return. Tis, time for a grasping of swords and an abandonment of common sense. To this band, you are always welcome.
The Former King,
Nathan of the NoRe
Lots of private joke in there. See how many you can get. Dorks of Korea, unite!
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Disco Dancing, English and the Things in Between
The blog's been running dry as of late. I want to post about all the crazy adventures I've been having as of late, the only problem is there haven't been too many crazy adventures. I made a third grade girl cry the other day. That was kind of traumatic for both me and her. I'm big on making kids talk in my class. Every once in awhile I'll call on a student and they'll freeze up. Usually one of the English proficient students will pipe up and say, "But teacher, she doesn't speak English!" To this I reply, "Too bad, this is English class."
I made this specific girl cry by requesting that she disco dance. Whenever someone messes up on a conversion, saying the wrong word or omitting a word I make them strike a disco pose, reminiscent of John Travolta on the Saturday Night Fever poster. This usually makes the kids laugh and hopefully makes them understand it's OK to mess up and do embarrassing things around their friends. With this girl the exact opposite happened. I understand though. It has to be tough when many of your friends understand English but you don't, and everyone is yelling out this incomprehensible stuff, and then people are dancing and your wondering if you've been sent to the looney bin. Then this funny looking stranger with a big nose comes up and says something that sounds like, "Borkdee sporkdee flee dee flem disco!" I think I'd crack too.
It's tough to remember what it was like in elementary school but I remember bits and pieces. I'm disorganized now and it was ten times worse when I was a kid. I remember adults yelling at me for no apparent reason. I knew they were angry, I just really couldn't get my head around why. Now I'm one of those yelling adults. I try not to be but on occasion it happens. The one saving grace is the little third grade girl has forgiven me. I think she totally forgot about the situation. We were playing the ball game, if a student catches the ball they have to answer a question. If they miss the ball they have to disco. This girl missed and struck the biggest disco pose I've ever seen. She is the disco queen. Now, if I could only get her to speak English.
The blog's been running dry as of late. I want to post about all the crazy adventures I've been having as of late, the only problem is there haven't been too many crazy adventures. I made a third grade girl cry the other day. That was kind of traumatic for both me and her. I'm big on making kids talk in my class. Every once in awhile I'll call on a student and they'll freeze up. Usually one of the English proficient students will pipe up and say, "But teacher, she doesn't speak English!" To this I reply, "Too bad, this is English class."
I made this specific girl cry by requesting that she disco dance. Whenever someone messes up on a conversion, saying the wrong word or omitting a word I make them strike a disco pose, reminiscent of John Travolta on the Saturday Night Fever poster. This usually makes the kids laugh and hopefully makes them understand it's OK to mess up and do embarrassing things around their friends. With this girl the exact opposite happened. I understand though. It has to be tough when many of your friends understand English but you don't, and everyone is yelling out this incomprehensible stuff, and then people are dancing and your wondering if you've been sent to the looney bin. Then this funny looking stranger with a big nose comes up and says something that sounds like, "Borkdee sporkdee flee dee flem disco!" I think I'd crack too.
It's tough to remember what it was like in elementary school but I remember bits and pieces. I'm disorganized now and it was ten times worse when I was a kid. I remember adults yelling at me for no apparent reason. I knew they were angry, I just really couldn't get my head around why. Now I'm one of those yelling adults. I try not to be but on occasion it happens. The one saving grace is the little third grade girl has forgiven me. I think she totally forgot about the situation. We were playing the ball game, if a student catches the ball they have to answer a question. If they miss the ball they have to disco. This girl missed and struck the biggest disco pose I've ever seen. She is the disco queen. Now, if I could only get her to speak English.
Fireworks
This past Saturday, Seoul had an international fireworks competition between Japan, the U.S. and, of course, Korea. Japan had an impressive but not overly rambunctious show. The U.S. came out in typical U.S. fashion with a bombastic flurry of light and sound that was akin to shooting first and asking questions later. Korea shot so much fire in the air that after awhile it was hard to see the fireworks for all the smoke. All in all it was the most impressive fireworks I've seen and it better have been because 2 million people showed up for the presentation.
Seoul Sunset
Two weeks ago I had a Monday off so I decided to hike Bukhansan, a mountain outside of Seoul. Bukhansan is inaccessible during the weekend because because there's too many people. In other words you can't go hiking because there's too many hikers. Pictured here is the fruit of my labor.
Our New Toy
The landlord just installed a bidet in our apartment. Now we're living in luxury. I think he might have gone to a seminar by the former mayor of Suwon.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
For Better or Worse
I'm back in Korea.
Better
1. I get paid more.
2. I get more vacation time.
3. I work less.
4. I get to make my own lesson plans.
Worse
1. I'm in the concrete jungle.
2. I teach a lot of sixth graders.
3. Lack of foreign influence.
So I'm trying to get the hang of my new job. I'll admit that I started this new job with a sense of cockiness, telling people that I was in Korea last year, that I've taught kids in the states, that this new job should be a breeze. I've always figured it's better to go into something a little bit cocky anyways. Well, the job has it's ups and downs. Instead of classes of fifteen, like I had last year, I now have classes of forty. Instead of living close to hiking trails and such, I live close to an unbelievable amount of bars. Instead of walking to work everyday, I now cram into a metal tube with a thousand other stranger and get shot to my school. And this is considered sane?
Still, it's nice to have things different. I get to make my own lesson plans so if the lesson sinks or fails it's totally my doing. It's interesting to run around this concrete jungle and see what I can find. Once this whole teaching in Korea thing gets old I hope I'll have the sense to stop doing it.
I also got and early break. Chu-sok (Korean Thanksgiving) was last week. Not even a week into the new job and already a five day vacation. Scott, Al, and I went to Namwon to hit up Jirisan national park. I'd like to say Jirisan was great but I don't know if we ever really got there. Jirisan is contains the second largest mountain peak in Korea so we thought the people of Namwon would have known how to get to this mountain, especially the guy at the tourist information office. No dice. I've never recieved so much misinformation in my life. I understand that a lot is going to be lost in any translation, especially when I have the basic vocabulary of a two year old, but we'd ask one person how to get to Jirisan (in Korean) and we'd get different info from everyone we asked. The tourist misinformation dude didn't seem to know where Jirisan was, the bus ticket dude didn't know how to get there. We ended up lost on the wrong trail. Surprisingly that wasn't so bad. We ended up on a hike that took us to some cool waterfalls and through the valley of snakes. We saw three snakes in fact and one was surprisingly big. Good thing for us they were all camera shy and scuttled away pretty damn fast whenever they saw us. Oh, it rained on us the whole time we were in Namwon also. Soggy and lost, that sounds like a lot of my getaways.
After Namwon Scott, Alison and I joined up with Warren, Ashley and Kat in Youngpyeong (not to be confused with Pyeongyang). This portion of the trip was considerably more relaxing as we just swam, played guitar, drank beer and had six hour long BBQs.
So that's the time so far in Korea. I'm trying to get out and enjoy myself, trying to keep everything fresh and look at this land, this job, this environment with open eyes. When I came here the year before astonishment was easy, but now it can be and effort. Sometimes its hard to slog to and from work and occasionally I get tired of not being understood, misunderstood, not heard. These are just occasions though and I comfort myself (or delude myself) with the truth that usually the effort is worth it.
I'm back in Korea.
Better
1. I get paid more.
2. I get more vacation time.
3. I work less.
4. I get to make my own lesson plans.
Worse
1. I'm in the concrete jungle.
2. I teach a lot of sixth graders.
3. Lack of foreign influence.
So I'm trying to get the hang of my new job. I'll admit that I started this new job with a sense of cockiness, telling people that I was in Korea last year, that I've taught kids in the states, that this new job should be a breeze. I've always figured it's better to go into something a little bit cocky anyways. Well, the job has it's ups and downs. Instead of classes of fifteen, like I had last year, I now have classes of forty. Instead of living close to hiking trails and such, I live close to an unbelievable amount of bars. Instead of walking to work everyday, I now cram into a metal tube with a thousand other stranger and get shot to my school. And this is considered sane?
Still, it's nice to have things different. I get to make my own lesson plans so if the lesson sinks or fails it's totally my doing. It's interesting to run around this concrete jungle and see what I can find. Once this whole teaching in Korea thing gets old I hope I'll have the sense to stop doing it.
I also got and early break. Chu-sok (Korean Thanksgiving) was last week. Not even a week into the new job and already a five day vacation. Scott, Al, and I went to Namwon to hit up Jirisan national park. I'd like to say Jirisan was great but I don't know if we ever really got there. Jirisan is contains the second largest mountain peak in Korea so we thought the people of Namwon would have known how to get to this mountain, especially the guy at the tourist information office. No dice. I've never recieved so much misinformation in my life. I understand that a lot is going to be lost in any translation, especially when I have the basic vocabulary of a two year old, but we'd ask one person how to get to Jirisan (in Korean) and we'd get different info from everyone we asked. The tourist misinformation dude didn't seem to know where Jirisan was, the bus ticket dude didn't know how to get there. We ended up lost on the wrong trail. Surprisingly that wasn't so bad. We ended up on a hike that took us to some cool waterfalls and through the valley of snakes. We saw three snakes in fact and one was surprisingly big. Good thing for us they were all camera shy and scuttled away pretty damn fast whenever they saw us. Oh, it rained on us the whole time we were in Namwon also. Soggy and lost, that sounds like a lot of my getaways.
After Namwon Scott, Alison and I joined up with Warren, Ashley and Kat in Youngpyeong (not to be confused with Pyeongyang). This portion of the trip was considerably more relaxing as we just swam, played guitar, drank beer and had six hour long BBQs.
So that's the time so far in Korea. I'm trying to get out and enjoy myself, trying to keep everything fresh and look at this land, this job, this environment with open eyes. When I came here the year before astonishment was easy, but now it can be and effort. Sometimes its hard to slog to and from work and occasionally I get tired of not being understood, misunderstood, not heard. These are just occasions though and I comfort myself (or delude myself) with the truth that usually the effort is worth it.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Pool People
We found this pool close to our cabin. It was fed with river water so it was cold to say the least, but fun. Still, I don't think this will ever become a major spring break party spot.
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