I'm baaaack

I must start off by saying that it is unlikely that this will ever be more relevant. Everything in it is absolutely perfect from the singing to the "chop" to the reaction after. This is what I experience every day so it was nice to see it in a classic.

After a month's hiatus I am now vowing to get back in the blogging game. It is obviously a good way to keep people updated back home but also a good way to remember this trip and all the crazy stuff that happens on a daily basis. For example:

Today was obviously a different day at school than most as it was the last day of classes before our kindergarten kids get a week off and the last day before that Christmas thing that everyone talks about. We really didn't do anything of substance in the kindergarten. We started out by doing our regular greeting which for me is: let the kids settle in, get today's date on the board, pick a class captain, sing a few songs via youtube video and do the daily word card which is just kids writing a word multiple times and then writing a sentence that I make up. We did this as per usual today and then I took out a textbook that I knew had a Christmas page and let the kids do that. When snack time came around some gimbap and "cake" made its way into the classroom and began to hit the kids nostrils making them hungry. Since they eat at the same time every day, this is a reasonable feeling for them to have.

...HOWEVER...

The oranges, bananas, cakes, popcorn etc. had not arrived and since this was a picture opportunity in which the parents could see the venerable feast laid in front of their children, we could not feed the children. 40 minutes later, my co-teacher finally gave up on the other stuff and allowed the kids to eat their gimbap and cake. I use italics for gimbap because it is the Korean word for the stuff. It looks like sushi, smells like sushi but usually has no sea food in it besides seaweed. There will be rice, green onion, ham, sometimes cheese and maybe crab. It isn't bad except for the fact that I don't like seaweed. On the other hand, I use quotations for "cake" because it is a crime against humanity that the Korean version of cake can be called the same as the e

nglish version. The "cake" that we get at the school is rice cake with one or two grains of sugar in it. It tastes like blended cardboard and water with some nutrisweet in it. Just awful stuff and an embarrassment to anyone that has ever seen a real cake.

Anyway, they finally ate this stuff and I put "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" on the TV. We just got to sit there watching it until all of the fancy food came in. The kids ate their fancy food after we got pictures of me pointing to it smiling while they looked at it too. Following this, we finished the movie, they got lunch (about 40 minutes after they wolfed down a bunch of food) and we went to the Hagwan.

Here is where the story gets interesting. F

or the Hagwan today, they didn't do real classes, they only had a test and got to watch movies. So what did the english teachers do you might ask? Well we got to dress up as Santa and ride on the school buses for 3 hours getting out at every kid's house, giving them a bag of god knows what, saying merry christmas and then hopping on the bus to head to the next place. The costumes were crap and every kids knew who we were but we still had to pretend that we were Santa etc. etc. Kids were falling asleep, zoning out or unable to hear me through the fake beard. It was overall one of the strangest and bizarre situations of my life. My favorite part might have been when there were 7 teachers all walking out of the school at the same time. It felt like we were on our way to rob a bank. I also enjoyed after the kids were dropped off and I took my beard, hat and jacket off and sat in my red pants with just a junkie white undershirt on. I felt like "Bad Santa" it was great.

We are off to go do some celebrating with the other foreigners tonight. Might be a long one but we'll see I guess. Just happy that the week is out. Hopefully I'll inundate the blog with a lot of updates over the next few days so keep your eyes peeled.

Parents Day (Nov 12)

We got to the school at 10 and found ourselves alone in our classrooms with no instructions and only a few kids. With too few kids to practice the play, no work to do and no instructions, we just hung out and played games and watched videos. Not so bad except for the fact that parents kept looking into the classroom to see their kids watching tv, sitting on the floor (chairs were gone to accommodate parents elsewhere) and basically playing while at school.

You could tell that they were expecting something different but what were we going to do? These are a bunch of 6 year olds who barely understand what you are saying, at the school on a Saturday and waiting to show their parents the play they have been preparing for a month and a half. Needless to say that they were restless, excited, and inattentive. We ended up practicing the plays a whole bunch of times when the kids showed up but even that was a challenge because the entire week was devoted to these plays and they were done with them. They just wanted them to end.

The real interesting part of the day was watching our co-teachers. This is basically an evaluation for them. If the kids to poorly and parents complain, it shines very badly upon their teaching. This is the main evaluation for the teachers so basically, they could sacrifice all learning in favor of memorizing a dumb play for a month in order to help themselves. Not to say that any teachers actually did this, but learning definitely was sacrificed.

The real crime of the situation is that the Korean teachers get paid peanuts compared to us and they do so much more work! They are working non-stop all day and even after the school closes and they make quite a bit less than us and do not have housing provided. That said, this job isn't too bad for them because their pay is not ridiculously low compared to other jobs. One of our co-workers is dating a Korean girl who makes $1400 a month working 12 hour days 6 days a week. We make $2400 for 9 hours 5 days a week (some days are way shorter). I understand that it's a societal thing, but it's just strange that in a well-developed country with a strong economy that workers reform and higher wage demands have not found their way in (though apparently they are starting to push more).

Anyway, moral of the story is that we had to go to the school for parents day, we babysat, watched the kids perform (or under perform) their plays and we walk away with money in our pockets and no worries while the Korean teachers left without any extra money and a bag full of stress.

Happy "Remember Pepero Day"

Being 11/11 and all, I think that it is important that I stop and remember the important holiday that this is. As would be expected, I have stopped to think about the troops that have/do/and will serve(d) for just causes around the world and may or may not watch "Hurt Locker" "Saving Private Ryan" or "Generation Kill" tonight to commemorate the day. However, there is a very strange holiday also going on in Korea called "Pepero Day" It is all about the tall, skinny, candy covered wafers called Peperos. The day is 11/11 because the 1's look like pepero sticks. It may be the ultimate manufactured holdiay as no one actually knows the origin other than the fact it was somewhere in the 80's or 90's and the fact that the Lotte company has a real lock on the pepero industry. There is really nothing special about it, other than you get/give copious amounts of peperos. Yes, they sound delicious like a kit kat or some other awesome treat, but the overall execution is more like a chocolate covered pretzel with half the chocolate and twice the pretzel. Sure something like that is good for one, maybe two sticks, but after 20 you realize that you have just gorged yourself on a whole lot of flavourless junk with no satisfaction but you ate it because it was there. Very frustrating situation to be in but hey, I only get one pepero day so I guess I'll buy in.

Today was a crazy day at the school. Apparently the Korean staff was all in the school until close to midnight last night making it absolutely perfect for "parents day" tomorrow when they get the "report cards" and present their english plays.

I use quotations for "parents day" because it is the title, but for "report cards"they are more descriptive of my feelings about them. Max teaches a kid that can not speak more English then the memorized responses of "Hello Teacher", "Fine thank you", and "me sticker" and who can not sit through 25 minutes of class without throwing a full out tantrum but we have been told that there are to be no negative comments, no strongly good comments, and no bad "grades" so this kid is getting a grade of "e" for excellent in 4 categories and a single "Satisfactory". It is just such crap I can't believe but that's the life of working in a Hagwan I guess.

So back to the day. We went to the regular school and up to our classes where we waited for 10 minutes until a teacher told us to go to the afternoon school where our kids would be. We did that and found the child equivalent of "the island of misfit toys from the "Frosty the Snowman" christmas movie. There was some kind of an inspection going on in the Korean kindergarten and all of the decent-good students were pulled out of our English classes and brought to the Korean school I guess to bolster the level of students at the school. This left us with the kids that have less-developed English skills or are tougher to deal with in the classrooms. The situation just felt so weird and obvious but I guess it's just to get show off the school. Anyway, we were told that we had 20 minutes to deal with the equivilant of the school prison population for 3 hours but that we could do what we want. We just played games and watched "Up" on the TV, but this inspection has been known about for weeks and they just sprung it on us in the morning. The lack of organization is very normal for the school but you never really get used to it.

Enough about the school for now, will report back after "parents day", as it apparently is an incredibly awkward and frustrating day.

Friday again already?

I don't know what happened to the week but I can't believe that it's Friday again. Maybe work is just getting easier, but that was definitely the fastest week yet. It probably has something to do with halloween happening on monday and another excursion on Wednesday. This week we went to an electronics store, tried to get the kids to listen to you while they were on optical stimulation overdrive, stick them back on the bus then go to the school and write a "report: read copy of the board" on the event. The key event of this whole 2 hour adventure is the photo op. The whole point is to get to somewhere that looks plausibly educational, stick a white teacher beside a Korean kid, smile, bear the flash, and do it again. Then take class photos, and some candid shots and event over. It is really strange, but makes for a short day so I don't mind.

I finally put a finger on how do describe the sweetness of food in Korea. I have mentioned it before, but there is a strange amount of sweet food in Korea. It is not like candy, but it is just thinks like spaghetti sauce that is sweeter than you expect. The analogy that I have come up with, is that it's like ordering a potato and getting a sweet potato instead. Except that they look the same so you never know until you bite in.

On the food note, we really need to diversify in our home cooking. We eat processed grilled cheese sandwiches, spaghetti, stir fry, and pancakes. We do however experiment a lot at school partly on purpose, partly because you never know what you are eating until you bite into it. I bit into something that I thought was noodles, turns out that it was a huge dish on tiny fried fish. The "chicken noodle soup" from the other day turned out to be boiled fish stew. The kim chi is sometimes good, sometimes basted in foot flavour. It is always an interesting Russian roulette.

We don't get paid until the 7th so we didn't want to go to Seoul until then. We wanted to go on the 12th, but it is parents day at the school on the Saturday and we have to go and do some fake teaching, help our classes do English plays, and basically show the parents how "good" the school is. (I lucked out, I got the best class in the school, Max did not). It is all crap but we will get paid OT for it so not a huge deal. After finding this out, we decided to go on the 19th but we have been invited to a co-workers wedding. She is Canadian and marrying a Korean guy. Good guy as much as I've met him. It will be a really interesting experience and a good night. Definitely worth sticking around for. Sounds like we will be going on the 26th now. So late, but it should be a good amount of time sticking around town to learn everything in town.

Few fun notes about school:

The kids love touching arm hair. I guess koreans are far less hairy than us Canadians and they won't stop rubbing your hair if you put your arm on their desk.

A kid kept trying to bombard me with kisses the other day. Turns out she kept trying to kiss my belt buckle. It was really frustrating to try and keep my eye on the other kids while trying to keep her away from me. She proceeded to kiss a lamp on the excursion later that day.

Finally, I think it's hilarious that all the Korean co-teachers are on their phones all day. They just keep them handy and text on them or leave the classroom to answer calls like it's no big deal. We have one english teacher who is also on his phone a lot but the rest keep them away. I just think it's funny.

Well I've probably bored people enough for now, will post about the weekend later.

Friday Friday, Gotta get down on Friday

Another Friday in Gwangju, another night of feeling tired from school and not that energetic. School is nice because we don't have to do any work outside of our school hours but hour upon hour with little kids is verrrry draining. We went out for dinner tonight with our neighbours, the couple that lives beside us. We actually took over their classes as we arrived the day they left to go to Stephanie's sister's wedding in their home town of Philadelphia. They are pretty cool people, we seem to get along well and had a good time at dinner. We went to the ice bar for a beer to show max the situation there. Adam hit an OJ again, but we didn't wait around for it. One of the funniest parts of going out with foreigners is talking about the weird parts of the Korean culture. The restaurant we went to had a shared bathroom. There was a urinal, men's stall, women's stall, and a sink. Earlier, we went to a school "excursion" to a place with separate bathrooms but the doors were just straight glass. No frosting, no nothing, just straight glass. Very strange.

One of the other things that I find very very strange is the fact that everything will smell very good here while walking down the street, then there is 3 seconds of brutality followed by a minute of normal followed by 3 seconds of sewage smell. I know this happens at home, but this is constant and everywhere. It can be downtown, near the house, near a mountain. It doesn't matter, the stench can follow you anywhere.

Tomorrow is the day to celebrate halloween here and we will be going downtown as a tacky tourist/cleopatra. I know that my tacky tourist costume sucks, but there are no second hand stores around here. So much of the Korean culture is based upon materialism and appearance that second hand stores do not exist. Therefore, the existence of reasonably priced halloween options is so low that it is not worth the effort to try to do them. Regardless, there is such a small foreigner base here that any effort will be noticed and appreciated.

On that note we went to "the first alleyway" and the "underground grocer" last night. Both foreign establishments owned by the same group, they stock foreign items and provide a place to meet other people who speak english. They seem really laid back and have opposing hours (10-7 for the grocer, 5-10 for the restaurant) but there is a chance that I might find a group to play hockey with. regardless, they have kirkland coffee (all coffee is espresso or instant coffee here), A&W rootbeer and Dr. Pepper in stock along with a few smaller items. Not a lot but enough to give you a fix for home.

Off to bed for the night, need to get up in the morning for world series game 7! I love early morning Saturdays and Sundays because I get to watch the Friday/Saturday night games live. Sad I missed game 6 though, sounds like an unreal event.

Weekend Update (Daily life stuff)

We had a pretty interesting weekend for the first one here in Korea. Nothing too crazy, just a lot of exploring and a little bit of fun. Friday I went to the "Munich Ice Bar." The term "bar" is used rather lightly here in Korea. To most eyes, they appear like a normal restaurant with no actual bar area. This particular venue was a regular looking restaurant with both a beer glass target and karaoke room tucked into the corner. I did not visit the karaoke room, but I did try my hand at throwing ice glasses at the target. The beer was served in plastic liners that sat inside of ice moulds. These moulds were inserted into 3 pronged handle/holders which were taken off prior to throwing. If you hit the target the machine lit up and prizes ranging from $30 gift certificates to nothing randomly. Over the night our group one approximately 7 orange juices and one mug of beer. The novelty of the experience was enough of a prize, but 7 orange juices was a little excessive. We didn't want to get too crazy after all. It was a good night because I met about 10 foreigners that I am sure I will meet again in the months to come.

Saturday was spent exploring town and shopping. We got some stuff for the apartment and explored the area near the bus station which has a few malls and a movie theatre. Saturday night we went out for a traditional Korean dinner with a "veteran" co-worker. he gave us a bunch of advice on what to do, where to go, and how to do things in Korea. He took us downtown and showed us the best places to hang out.

Sunday we went to the Kim Chi festival and a modern art exhibit. We watched kids from our school yodel and play traditional Korean drums. The yodeling was surprisingly good, while the drumming was surprisingly bad. Max's stomach turned while we were there and we went home where I caught the Canucks game. I then went to do some shopping and wandered around for a few hours exploring. We watched the New Zealand vs. Australia rugby match with some co-workers, and then went home shortly after as I have/had a bad cold and really needed some sleep.

Monday was better at school as I am becoming much more comfortable teaching little kids. Tuesday and Wednesday the kids are at "Sewoon Camp" and we will be going on morning excursions each day. I am not really sure where we are going either day, but it means that we will have a much easier time both days, especially Tuesday when we have fewer afternoon classes. I am really looking forward to it.

Max is now on a cleaning rampage and I am feeling guilty so I better quit now before I bore anyone to death!

A few observations

1. Everything is sweet...EVERYTHING. Apple juice has sugar in it, spaghetti is sweet, sauces are sweet, sugary snacks are everywhere, even hot sauces are a combination of sweet and spicy. Sometimes this is very good, other times it gets frustrating.

2. Shirts with English on them are the cool things to wear. You see a lot of shirts that just have American college names on them and it is not alumni of the school, it is just a shirt that you can buy at any store. Other shirts don't really mean anything, it will just say Dog on it or (enter english phrase here).

3. There is a definite, yet failed attempt to be helpful with English. Almost anywhere you go, there will be signs with English on them but half the time, there will be one English word or phrase on a sign and then everything else is Korean on the sign. For example, I went into a building yesterday that had a sign that said "Information" on it. "Well great, it will at least have a little small english print to tell me where to go." No, it just said information in big letters then had Korean with no universal signs or symbols. I'm not saying that they should have English on signs because I am not in an english speaking country, I just find it funny that they go to the effort to make the sign, then don't actually give you any information.

4. Business ownership is the ultimate dream here. Almost every single building here is an apartment with a business underneath it. Most of which are barely ever visited and for which I have no idea how they stay in business. Restaurants are the most obvious culprits, but corner stores and all other businesses are so abundant and so rarely busy, that I have no idea how they stay open.

5. There seem to be no weekends here. We get weekends but for the most part, there is very little difference between a Friday and Saturday in our area at least. Construction was going on Sat. and Sunday and every business was open pretty much the same hours as on weekdays. Schools still run, just with fewer classes. I just found that odd.

Off to school for the day, I will post about the weekend and upcoming week later.

I might go crazy...

"YOU DON'T EVER YELL KOREAN LIKE THAT IN THIS CLASSROOM AGAIN!!!" I think that everyone knows that my fuse is extremely long and I can put up with a lot of crap before I get angry but today I lost my mind on a bunch of 8 year olds and looking back on it, I still think it was the right thing to do. All I did was randomly group them into partners for games and I get a Korean chant. They were nice and quiet after I finished. I haven't hit the kids yet even though it is acceptable here. I will make note if I actually resort to this.

Next week will be easy. Two excursion days where we really do just babysit and two short days in the afternoon should be good for getting things done and getting to know the town. Now I just need to learn enough Korean to survive and I will be all good. So far I can say "hello" and "thank you." I am aware that this is absolutely pathetic and make no excuses but also don't really care at this point. I am just looking to survive school at this point.

We are headed to a bar where they serve beer in Ice mugs and let you throw them against the wall for prizes. One of the other teachers is taking us there. Since I hate beer, novelty ideas, and socializing this will clearly be a terrible night. I just hope I can find my way home. Good thing is that we live near a highway that has signs for the World Cup Stadium all over it. We are about 15 minutes walking distance from the stadium so if we find the highway, we will find our way home. Cabs are also very cheap so we can just hop in and go almost anywhere.

Enough for tonight. I will update on beer tossing.

End of Day 1

We ended up teaching our elementary school students after lunch. With no information on what we were supposed to do and the student's textbooks (no teacher copy) we taught for 4 hours. It was pretty interesting. For the most part, the kids are nice and want to learn but there is an obvious disparity in abilities between and within classes. Some students can speak to you well and hold up a conversation while others can only listen to instructions and write information down. The school facilities in the afternoon school are just ok. We pretty much have a classroom with a white board and that is about it. The Kindergarten is unreal. They take cello and computer and cooking classes at the school and we get to teach some sports to the students as well. The Korean teachers set the schedule for us and tell us what we should teach so it is really just a matter of understanding how to speak English and paying attention to the kids.

We got our landing bonus today, 200,000 Won (1000 to 1 ratio). We haven't had much of a chance to spend it as we taught until 6. We will be done at 430 tomorrow and will head to "Lotusmart" which is apparently like a Walmart or Target. Our pillows are terrible and we need some small things for the apartment. We also need to buy some slippers because you do not wear your shoes inside office buildings or houses here. Therefore, at work we take our shoes off when we go inside the buildings and put a pair of thin crappy slippers on. We will go and get more comfortable pairs tomorrow, my feet are sore.

I am too tired to think so this is just rambling babble. I will post when I can think again.

First Day

It has been a real whirlwind over the first few hours over here. We got into our apartment last night at 1230 pm and were given a bit of food to get us by the first day, some bread, cereal (no idea what it is except that there are almonds in it and it is "Post" brand. We didn't eat and just went to sleep around 1am.

We woke up at 9 and went to the school expecting to meet a few people and head home. We ended up on an "excursion" to a temple outside of the city and met all of our colleagues who seem very nice and welcoming. We sat down and ate lunch at the school (I had my first experience with "Kim Chi" and am not sold on it though I will not give it up. It tastes a little bit like feet) but besides that, the lunch was very good overall. I overate my rice and black bean sauce but that is ok because it was my first real meal in 36 hours.

During lunch our boss asked if we could teach the afternoon. I had guessed that this would happen as two teachers recently left to go to a wedding and they are short for the day. He gave us the "option" but obviously we can not say no right away and start off on the wrong foot. We are just home for a 30 min break while the Pre-school classes are taught and now we head back to teach elementary classes already! looks like we teach 9-6 Mon, Wed, Friday, but fewer hours Tuesday/Thursday. We will figure that out when we see our schedule.

More to come....