Complaints Department

I have received complaints that this blog contains too many complaints. Shut your damned hypocritical faces. Just kidding!
Here's a list of things that tickle my fancy:

Friendly people
Yesterday, I bought a coat rack. I had been very annoyed, because the only store I knew of that had them was always open with no attendant. So I could look and touch, but never buy. Just hire someone, you a-holes. Yesterday I finally found one. I stopped at the grocery store to buy some pork and bananas afterwards, and my arm was real sore from carrying a rather awkward box. Some people from my building who were ahead of me in line waited for me outside and offered me a space in their taxi. So, my arm awkwardness was greatly reduced.
That is friendly.
We are also accomodated quite well by just about everyone. They all know who we are, that we know nothing, and they are all happy to help. Like the Ryu Family. I mean, it's gotta suck for them. They're learning a little bit of english, but mostly, we are just eating their food. And learning a little bit of Korean. And yesterday Mr Lee told me that they had told him to tell us that if we ever needed help, with anything, we could call them at any time, and they would come help.
That is very friendly.
I have students who constantly stop to say hello, and most of the time try to talk to me. Even students I don't regularly see, from the grades I don't teach come up to me and try to speak. Sometimes with new vocabulary you can tell they have been eager to try out!
There are old ladies who stop you to give you a hug in the street. They give you candy, and want to shake your hand.

Singing
Everyone here sings. Not everyone sings well, but most people can be heard at some time or other with a tune on their lips.
Mr Lee uses music to get his girls excited about english, and I thin that Mr Hyun joins in because Mr Lee does the leg work of finding songs for him. Anyways, at the beginning and ending of every english class, I can hear 35 girls singing along with only the cheesiest sappy pop songs, sung by the likes of Britney Spears, Nick Lachey and, oh yes, Celine Dion.
I used "If I had $1000000" by the Barenaked ladies as a listening exercise for the girl's school. I thought it would be pretty easy, since it is basically just one sentence over and over again, with only the ending varying at all. It was harder than I had thought, but this week (the third week of listening at the beginning of class and trying to fill in blanked-out words) they started singing along. It made me so happy, in one class I almost started crying.
I tried to explain to them about "The Original Sausage Kings of Chicago", my unfortunately named acoustic duo with Andy Payne, and how we would perform that song at every gig (which were rare, I admit) and usually extend it to about ten minutes with choice verses such as this:

If I had $1000000, (If I had $1000000)

I'd buy Matt a haircut

Shut up you stupid asshole

If I had $1000000 (If I had $1000000)

I'd give it to Matt to get a hairstyle

But I'd spend it all on candy...

They didn't get it though. Of course, I didn't reveal the lyrics, only that it reminded me of "the old days", and shock them with the news that I once had long hair and an eyebrow ring.

McGyver reruns.

Don't ask me why I love this show. But I do. Oh man, I live McGyver. Not love love, but you know, the show is great. And McGyver babes sure are babes. Oh yeah.

Cheap awesome clothes.

So, Korea is the home of e-Mart and Lotte-Mart. They're like Sears, basically. And I have money now, so it's way easier to get new clothes. I am in a wool-loving, fun clothes-making country. I have bought a few new sweaters, and luckily, I fit into the largest size at most stores. Sometimes the second largest too!

The grade twos and one grade three class at the boys' school.

These guys make me laugh all of the time. There is one frustrating grade three class, but the other is amazing. Both grade two classes are just hilarious. All of the time, funny. And they know what they are doing.

Sometimes, it's the way they mispronounce "Special Forces" so that I think they want to name their team "Special Bus". But it's also that they understand why I thought it was funny when I explain it to them! Today, one team wanted to be called "Team Negro", which made me laugh everytime I said it.

Public transportation.

There is almost always a bus running to where you want to go. The tickets are cheap.

Are you craving a latte and some time to read? Take a bus to Kwangju and get a latte. Read on the bus. It is an extravagant gift to myself, but what the hell? It's fun!

The fall is extending forever.

It will drop to between zero degrees and five for one day.

"Wow, winter is finally here!" you will think to yourself.

The next day it will be fifteen, and you will feel hot in the sun. The next week will be similar.

This will repeat through all of November.

I like Fall. It is my favourite season.

And it seems like it will never end.

Snacks!

I just got handed a clementine. There are snacks being offered by everyone, to everyone, all of the time. Sometimes delicious things, sometimes disgusting bean paste filled rice cakes.

Cheap booze.

Yep, just head on down to Family Mart and pick yourself up some $2 1.5 litre bottles of Hite. Or a bottle of soju, only $2 or $3.

DVD Bangs.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Greatest. Things. Ever.

A private mini-theatre? Don't mind if I do.

No worries.

No money problems, no real work concerns (aside from boredom, and mild discipline issues), cheap bills, cheap food. No worries.

Beautiful scenery.

If you can plug your nose, this is a really beautiful place. It stinks a lot, whether it's garbage, burning agricultural crops for fallow, rotting compost collections, or assorted varieties of dung scattered about. But once you get past that, it is beautiful. Seriously beautiful. Korea is 70% mountainous, and one of the most forested countries in the world. The mountains are alive with colour, and are only starting to fade now in the very late fall. There is beautiful contrast between the colours of the leaves and the rocks jutting out of the mountains, and our fourth floor apartment on the highest point of land in the city gives us some great views, and lately, some beautiful sunrises.

There are terraced fields everywhere, so you can see for miles, and the hills have been worked out over time. And where hills do rise out of the fields, there are graveyards where people have placed their relatives so that they will have a view over the fields for all time.

Fresh foods

We're in Korea's breadbasket-equivalent area. There have been fresh fruits and vegetables available for the last couple of months, and when you buy meat, you can see them cut it off of a hanging animal behind the counter. It's pretty neat.

Barbecue!

That's all. The barbecue here is great.

So, hopefully, that will reduce your worrying about my suicidal mood. I'm not depressed, I just assume that no-one wants to hear stories about "I had a good day and people were nice. Then I went to the grocery store and when I didn't understand what the cashier said she tilted the screen so I could read it which was really nice."

BORING!

New and exciting frustrating things happen continually, but the awesome things are just a constant relief playing in the background. So stop worrying. Geez!

My grade ones at the boys' school are so behind it shocks me.

So, I have a three grade one classes at the boys' school.
One is about where the grade ones are at the girls' school are, which I believe is still behind where students are expected to be by that point. They're advanced enough though that they usually understand my instructions, and are able to interact with me in and out of the classroom.
My second grade one class, however, is so behind that it actually hurts me. I do not know what to do. Every week, I come to class with something more basic to try to get them participating, and each week I talk over their heads. I'm really not sure what to do. It looks like I will have to give up on teaching conversation and actually go back to teaching phonics, the alphabet and vocabulary. Really, teaching vocabulary is not what I am here to do! I am supposed to be teaching conversation, which means I only explain vocabulary as it comes up!
But, unfortunately, my students can not converse. At all. So I am teaching vocab. Which is fine, it can still be a lot of fun, because vocab can be easily turned into a game. Easy, but not very interesting for me, and definitely not too interesting for students.
Today was a memory game, where there were twenty-five numbered squares on the board, with each square correponding to a question or answer. Students get to choose two at a time, to see what question or answer they are, and then they try to match them up. Last week we covered opposites (which was WAY beyond even my second class), so many of the questions were on opposites (What is the opposite of up? Down) and other topics I've covered, like clothes and body parts.
The first grade one class got it wonderfully, which filled me with confidence. The second grade one class answered, occasionally got points, but it was clear 90% of the time that they had no idea what was going on. These kids have been studying english for seven years and they don't know the words "opposite", "what" and "top" until I come? And yet they can perfectly pronounce "I'm fine thank you, how are you?" That is only used once, and they would be just as well off to say fine, or good, and not have a programmed sentence pounded into them!
I don't know what to do. It's not fair to most of them to keep teaching what I am teaching, but without speaking to Korean to them in the classroom, I'm not sure how I can make it any easier. I'm thinking that next week I'm going to do the same game but with rhyming words, or maybe just classic memory with just pairs, no linkages.
Anyways, I'm struggling with this one class. The last grade one class is pretty behind too, and I have to rely on the coteacher, because the kids don't even understand "Open your books".
Oh well, tomorrow I have the other awesome grade two class and the grade threes. The guy that drives me crazy and his hair-style impaired friend have been in the office getting yelled at every day that I have been here for the past week. I'm pretty sure that they both probably failed all of their high-school entrance exams. It's too bad, but they really don't try. It's also too bad that they're in Korea, because no-one here will care.

Winter vacation

We have begun planning our winter vacation.
Well, more accurately, Jessie has begun planning our winter vacation. It is really coming together! I think it is going to be a great time.
Here's why:
I just received my acceptance letter to be a volunteer at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. If I was accepted, I can not imagine Jessie being rejected, so it looks as though it will be a go! Here's a link to a National Geographic article on the park.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/
2002/10/1017_021017_elephantheaven.html
So, it seem pretty amazing. It will be a lot of hard work, but it should be worth it for such an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Here's the plan as it stands right now (ie, as Jessie has explained it to me): Before going to the park, we will spend a few days in Bangkok, and then take a sleeper train up north to Chiang-mai for a few days. The park is just North of Chiang-mai.
Then, the park. A week of bathing and caring for elephants, and maybe office work, although hopefully not.
Then, a beach cottage for a few days in the South.
I can't wait. Maybe I'll actually unpasty-white my skin.

Saturday, November 26th, 2005. The best day ever.

Saturday was a great great day.
We went out for a tour of the local cultural sites with a hagwon owner, James Park, and nine of his students. Many of them were students that I teach at the boys' school or the elementary school.
Firstly, it was awesome to be with these students and not be a teacher. They are the stars of my classes, and I can not actually communicate with them. So it was nice that it didn't matter if I favoured them, because I didn't have to. So if they talked to me, I could just talk back, and not worry about leaving the others behind.
So, our arrangement was that we would go with them, and get free tours of local sites, and the only thing we had to do was talk to anyone who talked to us, and to correct any mistakes they made in their introductions to us.
Anyways, we were led to our meeting place, James' hagwon, by two students who wanted to live in our building. They were way too shy to speak to us, so the walk to the hagwon was rather awkward. When we got there, I was happy to see the stars of my classes there, including the kid who looks like Harry Potter, who is crazy-funny. So I knew it would be a good day.
We started at a Pottery Kiln site in Daegu-Myeon, Gangjin. It's where they used to make Koryo Celadon, the blue-green pottery that they have in Korea. The technology was imported from China. But as in all cases, apparently, Koreans managed to take someone else's technology and make it better. Or, as James so eloquently put it "The student becamse the master". They did improve the technology, and they have in a lot of things, I guess. I'm just tired of hearing about it. I don't care if your cell phone rotates to take widescreen pictures and will transmit a small burst of air if you blow into it, because at night, you all gather around a fire in a can and cast lots outside the bank.
The museum was actually pretty interesting, although much more so for us than the kids. They were more happy to kick and tease eachother and run around like crazy. We went to the giftshop, and James offered to buy us a gift for our day's trouble, which was really great. We didn't get anything there, because the only thing that fell within our gift price range was ugly celadon ducks. And since I don't have a gun and a conveyor belt at home, they were not seriously considered.
We left the museum and walked around the ground, where they had exposed dig sites where celdon ovens had once been underground. There was also a convention of Japanese photographers taking pictures of a celadon maker posing with a jar. Then, we were treated to a snack of clementines (Cheju oranges) and rice cakes.

Here's some kids playing in the leaves outside the celadon museum. It was a beautiful day!

The kids' main assignment for the day was to prepare introductions for us. They were really shy, and no-one wanted to start off, so I decided to loosen them up by introducing myself in Korean. Once they saw that, they would know they had nothing to be ashamed of! So I said "I am Matthew Amond. I am Canadian. I am a teacher at Yeongam Boys' Middle School." It was like poetry, I know.
Then the kids had no problems, and it was really fun. They were funny, and some of them wrote very good introductions! One guy though, from my classes at the boys' school, didn't, but that was no surprise. He doesn't seem to do much of anything.
Then we went to lunch at a restaurant. They had a really cute puppy outside. Again though, the kids had no idea how to play with a dog. I launched into the familiar wrestle and nip game, and thye freaked out as soon as they saw teeth. When we went in to eat, I asked to go to the bathroom to wash my hand, and I was led outside, where a washbin was filled with a hose.
In the afternoon, we went to Baengnyeonsa Daeungjeon, which was a Buddhist temple. It was pretty beautiful, but only took a few minutes to explore, and then it was not so exciting. One cool thing was the offerings to Buddha throughout the various little buildings. There was probably a ton of rice! Literally!
Okay, I have to break from the story to mention something. I am at the boys' school, working hard as always in the staff room. And there if this strange sound that I have been noticing here, like steam coming out of an iron. I thought it was a humidifier, because this room has heat, so maybe it dries out.
Well, I just looked over and saw that the source of the sound is in fact the snoring of my vice-principal. That's "The Korean Way".
After exploring the temple we went on a short hike of the temple grounds. We got to see a field of green tea, which was really cool. You never really see tea growing. But it does! The path ended at the site where the scholar Dasan spent his exile about 300 years ago. It was probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. People would probably pay money for that exile. There were green, yellow and red leaves all around it, a spring-fed rock pond and garden, beautfil rocks jutting out behind the cottage. It was just beautiful, there are no other words.


After the exile site, we went to a Dasan museum. We didn't understand much, because everything was in Korean. After we toured the museum, we made a pressing of an old plate with Chinese characters on it, which is now in our spare room, hopefully right-side up. The best part of this stop was the games that the kids played outside. First, they ran up the side of a big rock, and then jumped off of it. It was funny, because some kids could not get up. Then, they played this game were they hopped around on one foot and tried to knowck eachother down. I decided to sit that one out, for obvious reasons. In case it's not that obvious, here's a picture of James as he accidentally kicks his daughter in the face:

Before: Having fun, no harm done. Look at how much fun it is! Whee!

Oops! Maybe this game was a bad idea...

Other than that, it was a pretty fun game.
Then we were taken out for dinner. We went to the place in Yeongam that once kicked us out, and we never figured out why. It was really good. We both ate way too much. It was a great way to cap off the day.

Random thoughts

The phys-ed teacher is an angry man. Very angry. He's always yelling about something. I think he has developed Rheumatism or something and just refuses to admit it, because he hobbles around like crazy.
He's the only one I've ever seen hit a student with the bamboo stick, although I know that it happens here more than I see. He's currently yelling into the microphone for the PA, holding it just too close, so that it distorts. He's angry again.

I'm going to a traditional Korean play today. I wasn't going to go, but in the end I decided it was the right thing to do, if the alternative was to sit in the school all afternoon with nothing to do. At least the costumes will ahve pretty colours.
Sure, I won't understand a thing, but it should still be fun. And, worst case scenario, it's totally boring, and I get to have a really sweet soundtrack to some illicit napping.

So Jessie and I are going on a tour with some Hagwon students on Saturday. It's a free trip, and the kid that I think looks like Harry Potter is coming. His english is really good, and he is bringing me a copy of a bootleg of "Brothers Grimm".
We'll be going to a temple where they do tea ceremonies, so we'll be learning about traditional Korean tea culture. That should be neat. And we'll have five Korean students each who will tell us about it in broken english! So, all in all, a sweet deal. Robert think s we are being taken advantage of, somehow, but I don't see it. He seems untrusting of a lot of stuff that seems pretty innocent to me.

Piano lessons

So, I had my first piano lesson last night.
It was very interesting. I hadn't thought that I would be having lessons immediately, but apparently, that was to be the case.
I met Mrs Che in the parking lot of our apartment building (the mother from the family giving us Korean tutoring) and we walked into town together. She brought snacks, which was pretty great of her. Unfortunately, one of them was rice cake cookies, which is basically a great shortbread, but with a tasteless, unchewable center made of pure ricey badness. But, still, very sweet of her. I ate the chewy centres in order to have a counterpoint that made the shortbread that much better. Also, I didn't want to seem ungrateful.
We walked in, and I thought we would be just talking to the instructor to see what the options were, but it turned out that there was an opening at 6 pm to 7 pm every night. It may seem like a lot, but that's how much you probably should be practicing anyways, so why not? I got out of the Friday lesson, or at least made it optional, so that if Jessie and I decide to go do something, I don't have to worry about the telephone call and trying to explain my absence in Korean. So, if I go, I go, if not, no big whoop. That was a lot of commas.
Anyways, I had about six students in the place when I went. When the instructor called me over for a test, they all came to watch, which was a little humiliating. These kids are ten or eleven, and playing much more advanced stuff than the "Polly Wolly Doodle" equivalent stuff I was being tested on. And, I might add, testing rather poorly with.
I told them that I knew some basic music theory from playing guitar, but I think they might have gotten the idea that I am a classically trained guitarist. I basically meant that I can recognize a quarter note, and I know about a thing called "The circle of fifths". I think that they thought I meant "I can read music". So, I have some home study to do, I think.
So, she decided that I should start on book two based on my test, and I was ushered to a room where I was to practice lessons 19 and 20 for the next hour.
Korean piano lessons are really quite different from what I have heard about in Canada.
You have about ten minutes of instruction, then, you get a private room to practice. This room is not sound proof, so you get a good earful from the next room, which can be quite distracting, when you are trying to count out "1 2 3 4" and get both hands to do different things and in the next room they're playing a fugue or something... I don't know, it was really fast.
And then, it was over. I played it for the instructor (not nearly as well as I had played it on my own) and then she tried to sell me a metronome, which I am going to buy today, I think. I really should have one, it would make Carl happy.
Well, the bell is ringing, so I have officially spent my first entire period of school today writing in my blog.
That's all for now.

The Korean Way

So, I'm getting all wintered up, wardrobe wise. I bought another sweater last night, and some corduroy pants. And some turtle necks. It was an unexpected trip, Robert was going to Mokpo, and invited us along. I went, and Jessie stayed home to work on a proposal for her principal.
The proposal can be summarized as "I have an unreasonably long commute that was not what I agreed to when I signed the contract, and I spend most of my time sitting around at school playing computer games and writing e-mails, so it seems reasonable that two birds will be killed with the single stone of letting me go home early".
So far, the idea has not been received well. Not staying until five is not "The Korean Way". What is the Korean way, you might ask? Apparently, the teachers go on a forty minute hike after classes, that eats up the time until five, but usually runs over. If Jessie chooses not to participate in the hike that will probably make her miss her bus and therefore not get home until almost 6:30, she is still required to sit in the school, with no other teachers, until 5:00.
A classic example of the Korean way happened on Monday actually. Jessie's coteacher asked her "You will go to the bank?", and Jessie said that wasn't really necessary, she didn't need help, and would do it herself when she got home. Her coteacher then left.
She returned a few minutes later, and asked again "You will go to the bank?". Jessie said no again. Then her coteacher thought for a moment, and said "I go to the bank. Will you come too?". Jessie figured, why not, there was nothing else to do, and it would eat up aprt of the afternoon. Well, going to the bank actually consisted of a trip to the bank, followed by a trip to a walk-in clinic for her coteacher, and then a trip to a pharmacy to get a prescription filled.
But she can't go home early, that's not "The Korean Way".

"The Korean Way" has a few simple principles.

1. That's the way we do it, because that is the way it is done.
2. You can't do it that way, it's never been done that way before.
3. I know it doesn't work, but that's the way it's done. So do it.
4. If it doesn't waste time, it may not really be worth doing.
5. You will be given four hours to complete every five minutes worth of work. You will then be required to sit absolutely still for the remainder of that time.
6. Should "The Korean Way" change, you will be given no notice of these changes until the point at which those changes become important to you. ie, you will not be told until it is too late.

I hope that clears things up.

That's all for now.

My playlist apparently dictates my morning.

On my way out of the house today, I put on my "Super Happy Fun Playlist".
I was immediately greeted by a 65 or 70 year-old Korean woman and her grandson. She did not scream "White devil!", but instead said "Hello!" in a sing-song voice and then held up her grandson and waved his hand at me. Pretty sweet.
Old people are generally pretty nice here. They have a lot of good feeling towards Americans ever since the filming of M*A*S*H, which really promoted Korean cultural awareness all over the world.
Then, when I arrived at school, I was greeted in the office by a lot of smiles and hello, which I returned with "Anyong Haseyo"s. I actually felt really welcomed at work. And students stopped to talk to me in the hall, which was nothing new, but I can tell that my little speech entitled "You can say things other than "I am fine" when someone asks how you are doing, for God's sake!" is sinking in. Now they all say "I am good, thank you, how are you?".
Well, except for the kid who invited me to his party, he still gets involved in the classic infinite regress which I love to exploit for my own amusement. It goes a little like this:

"Hello teacher, how are you today?"
"I'm pretty good, how are you?"
"I am fine, thank you, how are you?"
"Good, thanks, how are you?" (At this point I realize what will happen, and ask again)
"I am fine, thank you, how are you?"
"... Umm, good... thanks. How are you?" (Realizing he has no idea what is happening, I ask again)
"I am fine, thank you, how are you?"
"I like this game, how are you?" (He does not catch the first part)
"I am fine thank you, how are you?"
... and so on, until either I walk away, or smoke begins to billow from his ears, like the Fembots on Star Trek when Kirk, Scotty, and McCoy started acting absurdly and asking logic problems.

Basically, trying to have a conversation with a student is like trying to talk to a DOS prompt. Unless you speak using a very specific vocabulary of commands, you are simply told "Invalid command or file name". And when you ask DOS how it is doing, it always responds the same way.

"I'm fine thanks, how are you"

That's all for now.

The weekend

So it's Wednesday, and it's been a long time since I have written anything.
So I am making up for lost time, by wasting time. I really don't feel too bad about it, I just found out that I will only hvae one class tomorrow. That is great news, because it means no grade three class including the boy that makes me crazy, but sad news, because it means no grade three class with the boy who I think is just great. He wants to be a doctor, so he is ALREADY working really hard, in the equivalent to grade nine. Go guy. He is the only kid in the grade school that I would even consider tutoring. I would tutor him for free, just because I think he is great, and seems to actually want to learn.
Well, the weekend then.
I don't even remember what we did on Friday. Probably napped, and complained about the fact that our apartment appears to have no heat.
On Saturday, I had to get up early. I volunteered to teach extra classes at the girls' school on Saturday morning. The grade twos were upset that there were no classes for them with the foreigner, and since I am working less than I am contractually obligated to anyways, I figured what the hey, and they got a recycled lesson from another school. Don't get me wrong, it was a great lecture, fun for the whole family. I did three lectures, and then got a free lunch, and then went home.
The plan had been to go to Kwangju for the Kimch'i festival. They had contests for foreigners, and it sounded like it might be fun. We had actually been planning on it for a few weeks.
But, when I got home, Jessie had gotten a new codec that allowed her to watch a bunch of programs that she had on her computer but couldn't watch before. So, we decided to watch one or two before we went.
That turned into three or four, and we thought that that would be well followed by a nap. Then it was about 8 o'clock.
Oh well, there's always next year.

I had been corresponding pretty regularly with Rodrigo over e-mail, so we made plans to have a guy's day in Kwangju.
We met at Starbucks, which actually has the highest concentration of foreigners out of any one place in all of Korea, I think. That's bound to happen, I suppose when there are thirty thousand foreign workers fresh out of university. If other universities were anything like Queens', and I'm pretty sure they were, we're all used to walking into a coffee shop with an unifinshed coffee from another coffee shop. Ahh, memories.
So we had a coffee. We went to Shinsegae (spelling?), the department store right next to the bus station. Poor Rodrigo. I have problems buying clothes here, because I am too big. I am too tall, too wide across the shoulders. Rodrigo is about 7' 8", and 350 pounds of solid muscle. Okay, that is an exaggeration (He looks like Darryl Sheppard and David Briggs had a baby, for those of you in the know). We tried on some clothes, and they were a little tight on me, and they were sausage wrap on Rodrigo. It was clearly not a good place for us to be shopping, and on top of the size problems, it is a pretty high-end retailer, so we couldn't have afforded anything anyways.
We went downtown after that. There was a little music store, and I stupidly went in. I almost walked out with a bass. A Gretsch Bass. For about $200. Maybe I should have. Maybe I'll go back tonight... probably not.
We caught the movie "Lord of War", which was good, but I recommend waiting for the video. More of a thriller than an action movie. By this time, we had been to Starbucks twice, and the "thrilling" aspects of the movie combined with my jitteriness made me want to punch the person in front of me in the back of the head.
For those of you who didn't know, I am drinking coffee again.
We went out for barbecue, and it was delicious. Astonishingly so, after a day with very little food. There didn't seem to be enough time, what with all the coffee drinking.
I found a coat, which was really good. I had been very worried that I would wind up having to pay over $200 for one that actually fit. But I found a really nice one for only about $85, so it was a good day.
I also bought a sweater, and have since bought another. The weather is getting very cold, and the schools are not heated. Short of wearing the same two or three sweaters that are appropraite for work every day, I needed to grab a few new ones. Mission accomplished. Next mission: turtle necks.

In other news, I am signing up for piano lessons tonight. I am really excited. The lessons here are very very inexpensive. And I will get to play every day. I am going to see if I can rent an electric piano to practice on too.

I just got handed a piece of dried fish or squid, covered in honey. This is a pretty common occurence when I am actually in the staff room, rather than hiding in the english lab. Well, the hiding days are over baby, because the english lab has no heat.

That's all for now.

Korean relationships

So, there are a number of interesting points here that are worth observing.
First: Boy on boy affection.
So this isn't a specifically Korean thing, I understand it is very common in a lot of non-Western cultures. But it's a little crazy here, especially in class.
Today, there was one boy, leaning to the side, and slapping a friend's bum. That's pretty funny in itself. But then, the boy getting slapped would slap the boy ahead of him on the ass. It's was this crazy chain reaction of ass-slapping, that was being repeated again and again. Of course, I've already talked about the hairstyling that was happening last Thursday. But aside from that, htere is a lot of just playing with another boy's hair. Just sitting there, petting him, like they would a dog. Just gently patting and caressing his hair. Sometimes, roughly or playfully messing it up.
And then other times, there are boys, with their arms wrapped around the waist of their best friend, who is sitting on their lap. This is a full-on hug, like a guy holding his girlfriend at a party or something.
There is also a lot of girl-on-girl affection, but there's a lot of that at home too, so it's not as interesting. Lots of hairstyling happened in class in Canada, but there it was just girls.

Dating
So yesterday, I was getting on the bus to Samho to see Jessie (I got off work early, and we had to go to the immigration office in Mokpo, regarding follow-up to the fake-contract Canadians in Korea), and I saw two girls sitting together on my way to the back. Well, I actually saw one girl, and a second head with very styled hair out of the corner of my eye.
Eventually, they started making out. Seriously making out. Which was surprising, because this is Korea, and things are extremely conservative here. I thought it was amazing, here we are in a country where holding hands in public is a really big deal, and here are two girls making out like bandits on the bus.
Then, the guy looked up at me. It turned out to be a guy all along. I was surprised, to say the least. And then I burst out laughing. And then they went back to making out.
The point is, it was actually the first time I had seen a public display of affection (That's PDA for all you In Touch subscribers out there [mom]). Wierd, eh?
Then, there's the apparently constant need to be together. I have no actual evidence for this, only hearsay.
I was telling Mr Lee about going to Kwangju over the weekend with Rodrigo (more on that later). He said "Oh, and Jessie too?" and I said "No, she wanted to stay home for the day". This was the week afetr I had told him about going to Kwangju just to get out of the house, and that Jessie had stayed home because she needed some time alone.
His response was the same both times. "I'm sorry to hear that". But it was said after talking about Jessie and I have different interests, and liking to do different things sometimes. His response?
"I'm sorry to hear that".
And Mr Ryu's response when we told him at our Korean lesson/English tutoring session that I had gone to Kwangju with Rodrigo for a manly day of shopping and movies?
"And Jessie is angry?"
So, it seems that the very idea of two people who are dating having different interests and enjoying time not wrapped around eachother or within touching with no touching distance is just really bad.
Weird, I think. I think a lot of Canadians would agree with me.

Hierarchy
This is really complicated to explain, and I don't even understand it at all yet. All I really know is that it pisses me off.
The verbs are conjugated based on who you are talking to, and there are about fourteen differnt greetings/thank yous depending on who you are talking to, and their status in comparison to you. What worries me is that if you use the wrong one, you can offend someone. And how do you knbow your status? Is there some sort of "An Idiot's guide to Korean Hierarchy and your place in it: The Foreigner Edition"?
Are Jessie and I considered on the same level as our coteachers? Other teachers in the school? How offended would my coteachers be if I asked, because asking if we were on the same level would imply that I thought we should be?
Because we are new, and therefore low on the ladder, it means that our days are subject to change with little or no notice. It's super annoying.
It's also assumed that I will respect someone no matter how ridiculously incompetent they appear to be (Looking at you, Mr B), or how poorly they treat me (I'm looking your way, people who laugh at me when I try to speak Korean).
Capital F.

That's all for this subject for now.

This has nothing to do with Korea

I'm just showing off. I was reading my friend Sarah's blog, and there was a link to a quiz.
You can take it as many times as you want, until you get the answer you want.

All-Around Smart You are all-around smart. Essentially, that means that you are a good combination of your own knowledge and experience, along with having learned through instruction - and you are equally as good with theoretical things as you are with real-world, applied things. You have a well-rounded brain. 20% applied intelligence 20% natural intelligence

http://www.quizgalaxy.com/result_images/int-quiz-bg.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat;'>

Take'>http://www.quizgalaxy.com/quiz.php?id=53">Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Cold weather

It is finally getting c0ld here. It's really hard to believe that less than one week ago, I was in Mokpo in just a sweater. Today I wore a coat for the first time. I've been doubling up on the sweaters, and recently had to stop taking off the sweaters in class. The rooms here are not insulated at all, so that they get very cold overnight when the weather outside is cold, and stay cold once it warms up outside. If you open up the windows all you get is cold wind, so it doesn't help at all.
I have run into a bit of a problem coat-wise as well. Defying all the ample evidence to the contrary, I apparently have huge Herculaen arms. I can't even get my arms into the coat if I am wearing a big sweater. So, there was a lot of shuffling this morning as I had to find a sweater that would fit into the coat. I wound up going with the smoky number I wore out last night.
I went out last night with Robert, the other foreigner in our fair city. We did a bit of a pub crawl, which actually led to us only drinking in two bars, but entering five to inquire.
The first was alright, but it was a night for exploration, so we didn't stay too long, just for one beer. We ranted about english in Korea, and about the lack of insulation that was all too evident as cold ebbed from the one-paned window we were seated at. They haven't turned on the heat yet anywhere, so most people wear coats all day, at school and in restaurants. Robert says the heat will come eventually.
Then we tried to find another, and wound up in two Norae-bangs (karaoke rooms) which wouldn't let us just drink, we had to get a room and sing too, apparently. I wasn't that drunk yet, and an audience of one, who didn't seem to want to sing back wasn't too appealing.
The next place we tried was a salon room, which apparently can be really pricy. Apparently, in a salon room, you can wind up spending $200 and $1000 in one night. You get a private room, and you are waited on by a few waitresses. The cost apparently comes form the touching, which can be both ways. It wasn't what we were looking for, so we moved on to "Time Resto-Hof". That was pretty nice, with big windows placed just too high to give any view of the street, but great views of the neon signs on the other side.
Here we got a little drunker and a little louder, and our conversation moved to making fun of Korean infomercial speak. "Hwah!!!" We talked about contradictions in Korean hygiene rules, and the weird mix of developing/developed worlds here. Some random guy bought us our first round, and some other random guy bought our second. The whole night only wound up costing about $10. Between us!
He also gave us some basil plants, so our apartment smells pretty good right now. Someday, we may be able to make pesto from the basil, which would be pretty cool, to say the least.

Class today was pretty good. This week, I have used the "If I had $1 000 000" plan I hatched last week. It has gone pretty well, and has been really revealing about the students' listening skills. Or lack thereof.
I had problems with the same guy again in class today. He had a straightening iron, in class, and apparently decided that my lesson was the best time to crimp his friend's hair. Seriously, I couldn't make something that weird up. I took the straightening iron away, and he protested, because although it had been heated and played with all through class, he had only started styling his friend's hair after the bell had gone. My class ran a few minutes over, but it was a lie, had started sooner. Even so, a straightening iron in class? Where the hell am I?!

That's all for now.

"I own fifteen belts"

On Saturday, Jessie and I went to Mokpo to spend the afternoon and evening with some Canadians we had met at the camp the weekend before, Rodrigo and Sarah.
It was really fun, they are great people.
We went to a DVD bang, which is not as dirty as it sounds (perhaps the first repeated joke of the blog). For the uninitiated, it's a private movie watching room (bang, in Korean), with a big couch and a private sound system that you can control. We saw "Bewitched", and it was the best half movie I ever saw. I thought it was really funny, of course, and the story was a neat twist, not just a straight remake. Nicole Kidman starred once again as the cutest woman in the world. Will Ferrel starred once again as a bumbling hack. And then, just as it was setting up for a great finale, it was over, without the finale. Very frustrating.
Dinner was at an Italian restaurant, which was really good. Nothing more really to say about that. Delicioso? Maybe. Real Italian word? Maybe not.

The bus station on the way home offered a classic example of the apparently music video-influenced youth of Korea. Older teens, they just don't seem to get that that's not real life, that's a rap video. Or in this case, a twenty-year-old pop video.
The guy was wearing approximately fifteen belts, a black denim jacket, tight black jeans, a black t-shirt, gloves with no fingers, and had a skull and cross-bones, white, on the back of his jacket. I don't want to exagerrate this at all, I want to be accurate. In my minds' eye, he was wearing a bandana, but that may have been an embellishment that I added on the way home. I like bandanas.
Now, this guy was looking really bad, and I mean that in a good way. He was a movie gangster, perhaps on his way to fight a benippled Batman and Robin. It was crazy.
The four of us (Rodrigo and Sarah had accompanied us to the bus station, which was really nice of them) had a good laugh.
As Jessie and I were on the bus waiting for it to pull away, I managed to catch one final glimpse of this guy. He was hunched over the crane game. The big yellow crane game, that plays annoying childrens' music as you move the three-pronged grabber and try to grab anything from a stuffed animal to a harmonica. For you Canadians, you may know these games from your local bingo hall.
Anyways, he was hunched right over the thing, and he was really into it. It was one of the funniest things I have seen since I got here, and it inspired me to create the following masterpiece, because, let's be honest, I have a lot of time on my hands.

That's all for now.

More pictures!

Here's Kim Man-woo. This is from the day that he was telling me about Korean popstars. He's holding a picture of his favourite, I think her name is Hong Soowa. He loves to stroke that picture! I wish I could say that the grade school writing on the board is his, but it's actually mine.

This is at the school festival. A lot of it was just karaoke, and here's a picture of one. In the background are two of my grade ones who decided to add an impromptu back-up dance. These guys are great, and both are very funny, even in english! I had a day off a while back, and I visited Jessie's school. This is the scene right after the end of classes. I was mobbed! It was a little crazy, especially with the fourth girl from the left, who didn't break her stare on me for about fifteen minutes straight. I would look away, talk to someone else, and then look back, and she would still be staring. Eyes wide open, like I was a bomb about to go off or something. It was pretty strange. According to her students, Jessie and I make a good couple. We babysat Sylvia's puppy the other night. Sylvia is an english teacher at the girl's high school, who introduced us to Robert, the other foreigner in Yeongam. She has an english name, but is Korean. Anyways, her dog, Maria, is basically the tiniest thing in the world. Not very playful, but entertaining nonetheless.

This is the kid who is constantly acting up in my grade three class. He's got some serious issues. I want to just kick him out of class, but some days I doubt that it would do any good.

Mosaics

I forgot to mention the mosaics we made at camp, I think. We all helped the other foreigners with theirs, since there were many more Canadians than anyone else. The first I helped with, and it was for India. The second Jessie helped with for Bulgaria, and the ast is the Canadian mosaic.

This is the view into the valley from our camp.

Camp pictures

These are the posters that greeted us when we got off the bus. There was two rows of people that we walked through, boys on the left, and girls on the right. We all tried to spot our posters to see our groups, and the air was filled with shouts of "So handsome" and "Very Beautipul!" (not a typo). This is me with my group. If the kids looked a little more than totally unengaged in what I was saying, this could be in a brochure somewhere. Basically, the boys had very low english abilities, so they were not interested in anything I could say. They played games mostly, and hung out with others in the same boat. This is Jessie and me at camp. Behind us are the pagodas built by the campers in attendance last year.

Bono would be really happy here.

With all the little fires burning, he would sure have no problem reaching out to touch the flame.
One things he might have trouble with , though, is finding anything. You see, in Korea, the streets have no names.
I was invited to a student's yesterday to help him celebrate the end of his exams at his night-school (which, in Korea, most attend from about age 10 on). Anyways, I set out last night to find it, and got totally lost. I tried two streets that might have been the one he was talking about before I found the right one. And then, where he said his building was, there were two.

I forgot to mention: not only are the streets unnamed, but the buildings are also unnumbered.

So now I am faced with the prospect of knocking on the wrong door and having to explain to a confused Korean why I am knocking on their door on a Sunday night. An equivalent situation, to help you with the imagining, would be if your "Road to Avonlea" viewing were interrupted. Going to the door, you find a smartly dressed Korean twenty-something holding a phrasebook. Flipping between pages that have the corners folded down (he obviously prepared on the way), he awkwardly says:

"I... student... (flip flip flip) middle school... (flip flip flip) looking am"

He then would smile meekly, as you slowly closed the door...

So, I wasn't too eager for that. I knocked on the door, waited. Then I saw the doorbell, so I gave that a try. Luckily, no answer.
I took that as a sign that I should quit while I was ahead. I feel really bad for not making it to the kid's party, but to be honest, I'm not even sure that I was at the right building, or even that I was there on the right day.
At least I had the phrase book handy, so when I got the pizza (our Sunday night tradition), I could properly ask for no corn.

"Oak-soo-soo Koom-ji!"

Topsy-turvy school year

So, the school year here is all topsy-turvy.
The first semester is March to July, and the second is September to December. So, if you read between the lines, I have two months of holidays, paid holidays, coming up.
I was talking to my coteacher about it, and he said that there is a bill that is being proposed to bring the Korean school year in line with the American (and Canadian) school year. It is encountering a lot of opposition, mainly from teachers.
The two month winter break actually has the purpose of saving the school money because they do not have to pay for heating during the coldest part of the year. And they really hate to pay for heating, let me tell you. I am currently freezing in my classroom.
Anyways, if they change the school year, it will mean having to renovate and insulate all of the school buildings, and paying extra for heating, which would probably result in a huge problem that would take a long time to resolve.
So for now, the year will remain topsy-turvy.
I'm not even going to touch the constant schedule changes that occur almost week-to-week. (only one class today)
That certainly isn't making the school year any more normal.

Happy Pepero day!

Today, back in Canada, it is Rememberance day.
In Korea, there is a much happier day, Pepero day!

On Pepero day, the kids all buy Pepero candy, and they exchange it at school, like Valentines in Canada. Basically, it's little chocolate-covered bread sticks. They look like ones, so November 11th is their day. Get it? 11-11!
So, a highlight of today was getting tons of candy from my students. So much I had to get a bag to carry it all. A big bag. Because my backpack was already full.

Last night we were approached by the owner of a hagwon (a private english academy) to teach at his school. We said that we couldn't legally, but I alluded to the fact that in ten months time, I may be looking for a new contract! He said that students wanted to meet us and get to know us, so his back-up plan was that we go on trips with his classes on weekends! It's pretty sweet. We won't be paid, we won't have lessons, but transportation and accomodations and meals will all be paid for! AND, it means that we will have Korean guides to take us everywhere we go, AND they will be able to tell us about everything.

So, it turned out well. But when I first opened the door, I almost groaned right out loud. It was the woman who a month ago tried to get Jessie and I to start tutoring three nights a week for a group of boys. Those boys, by the way, do not attend the free extra-help sessions that I set up after school. So, clearly they weren't too into the whole idea. This time she had brought friends...

She walked right in, and helped herself to a persimmon. Sure, eat our fruit. I started clearing the couch (our apartment was a bit of a mess), and she led the others in and sat on the floor. I don't know... she rubs me the wrong way, she is very pushy.
But it turned out okay.

Free trips? Don't mind if I do!

Tempted to use the bamboo stick. Seriously tempted.

So, my first class today was really really bad.
Most of the class was great, but there are two boys in it who are just too much.
One guy just really doesn't care about english, so he says the four words he knows over and over again as loud as he can through that class. He is basically the most annoying person I know in Korea.
He's not that dumb either. My coteachers say he is, but I think that that is more the Korean mentality of focussing effort on those who succees than anything. He just doesn't care, and no-one here seems to want to try to make him care.
Anyways, this kid knows when to play dumb too. He's very smart when he wants to joke around, even in english in class, but acts like he deosn't understand anything as soon as I try to talk to him individually, usually to try to tell him to stop being such an asshole.
Today, he just would not shut up. We were talking about the movies, and I had some questions about the movies for them to answer, just by filling in blanks with vocab words. When I asked "What movies have you seen recently?", he replied "Sheecksh in Shitty". I took that to mean "Sex and the city", so I said "Good! But, 'Sex and the City' is a TV show, not a movie."
The reply just about broke me.
"No, not "Shecks and the Shitty", "Shecks in Sheety", on the internet. you... umm.. 'ERO'!"
So, basically, he was talking about watching porno in class. I tried to kick him out, and my coteacher wouldn't let me. I was so angry, I was torn between finally using the bamboo stick, crying, and just walking out. I actually took a couple of steps toward the door before I caught myself.
My coteacher yelled at thim for a minute or so, said "Now he will be calm". He then proceeded to tear up his handout and spit on it. She said nothing.
How the hell am I supposed to discipline them, or be taken seriously, if my first effort to do it is totally undermined by my coteacher.
My next two classes were much better. My grade three class that doesn't care, but at least plays along with my lessons, and the grade twos.
Ah, grade twos, you are all that keep me going.
They know so much more than the grade ones, but they don't yet feel any pressure to be cool, so they will participate. Lots of my best classes are with the grade twos at the boy's school. They manage to make me have to pause to laugh at least once every class. They really are great. Hopefully when I come back to school afetr winter break, they won't have transformed into the same horrible grade threes I have now.
In other news, I've decided to scrap the rest of the lessons I had planned about the movies, and to start next week with a listening excercise based around "If I had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies. I already have a slideshow ready to accompany it, and I think it should go really well.
That's all for now. Back to killing time for a little bit. In a different way...

Camp

This weekend Jessie and I volunteered at a camp in Nam-Yang province (or maybe Nam-Yang county. Who knows!). It was a cross-cultural awareness program that was set up by UNESCO in Korea, a UN organization. It sounds really impressive, but it was just a camp.
Anyways, we were told to prepare for three hours of activities with our groups, preferrably having something educational to do with them. Jessie and I both decided to make scrap books with our groups, and play cards for the rest of the time (TEACH them a card game. hahaha).
Other than for those three hours, and some other random times, we could do whatever we wanted, which mostly consisted of sitting on the steps and drinking coffee.
The camp was pretty thrown together, but luckily there was enough teacher-keenness to pick up the slack where planning failed. Every camp game ever played was brought out at one point, from duck duck goose to about four different versions of wink-murderer.
All-in-all it was a pretty great time. The foreigners from countries other than Canada were all really great people, graduate students studying at universities in Kwangju. Many were hard-core computer programmers and networking types, but surprisingly, not boring.
After the kiddies went to bed, the foreigners would retire to the cafeteria, which would have been outfitted with a fine spread of fried chicken, clementines, beer, and soju, the korean rice-wine/bathroom cleanser. Then we would sit up and drink way too much with the camp's director. The other foreigners would head to bed around eleven thirty, and the Canadians would remain behind much later. Eventually, no fresh soju would be brought out, and people would take the hint and go to bed.
On Saturday, the afternoon was taken up with a rather lame activity. It was a dance that involved saying "Hello, Nice to meet you, Hope to meet again, I am happy" while doing a little jig of handshakes with those around you. This could have been fun. Could have been, but wasn't, because the man holding the microphone and counting off the steps had no rhythm at all.
Then, we did it to music. Surely, this would bring some improvement, we thought.
It did not. The music was too fast for what we were trying to do, and the man with the microphone continued to count off steps to the beat of another drummer only he heard, while people tripped and stalled all around him trying to match either him or the song, inevitably making the choice that put them out of step with their partners.
The activity took much too long, and wound up eating into the time we had to plan for. So, no time for cards. A scrap book was thrown together in half an hour, and then a rushed attempt was made at a capture the flag game was made, and it ultimately failed. Thank God for my being a don, I managed to pull a few games out of my ass and salvage the whole affair.
After that, we had a campfire, which was cancelled and moved inside as a talent night due to rain. I played "Such a Simple Way", "Shine", "I Will Survive", and, an encore (!) of "Firecracker" by Ryan Adams. It was really surreal, as I've never had a response like that before. At the end of "Such a Simple Way", the auditorium literally erupted with applause, about a 60% standing ovation eventually developing. At the end of the second song, Korean students started chanting "Encore! Encore!". And then one of the organizers, who had previously asked if I wouldn't mind not performing at all to save time wound up asking me to play another song.
Korean girls do this thing with their hands held up in front of their face so that they are looking through their hands in a heart shape. I'd never seen it, in spite of the fact that I kept hearing about it, but I almost started laughing in the middle of "Shine", because I looked up and saw about twenty of them scattered around the place. It was quite a change from playing the Callander Tavern, let me tell you.
After my performance, three of the other Canadian teachers got up to do some campfire songs, and after that, all of the foreigners left for the caf. We played Korean trivia for a while, which was really frustrating, because you had to either ignore the conversation to play the game or ignore the game to participate in the conversation, and either way, you missed about half of what was going on. Mr Park, the camp organizer, poured me a wicked meksu (half beer, or "mekju" and half soju, or "soju") which I for some reason chugged. It hit me all at once about 20 minutes later.
After the trivia game was over, I took the guitar back out for some sing-alongs, which was no good. I forgot that I didn't know any popular songs. Once we had exhausted my repertoire of Blue Rodeo and Brown-Eyed Girl, I basically became just background, which was fine for me at the time, as I was just loving playing as a consequence of the alcohol. Luckily for those in audience, Jessie had had enough to be less inhibited also, and wound up throwing in some really nice harmonies out of the blue.
So, all in all it was a really good, very social, and highly laid-back weekend. Not relaxing at all, in fact, I am still a little tired, but really good.
There were a few points that made me a little ashamed to be associated with the other Canadian teachers:

1. Hearing the Indian volunteer, Sooraj, being referred to as "Akbar".
2. Having half of the floor woken up at three in the morning by a fire-extinguisher fight.
3. Being woken up twice by one specific teacher pissing on the tiny balcony when the bathroom was physically closer.

Other than that, I had a really good time, and was glad to have participated. Anyways, more later.

Kim Man-woo

So, today I had Man-woo's class.
The whole 45 minute lesson was on how to answer 5 questions about movies. They did not take to it too quickly. They couldn't understand the vocab, which was super frustrating, because they questions were, for example, "What is your favourite movie genre?" and last week the whole lesson had been on how movie genre and "kind of movie" were the same thing.
Anyways, no-one seemed to understand, and it was really frustrating. Then, out of nowhere, Kim Man-woo's hand shoots up.
He is beaming.
And waving his arm like a maniac.
"Yes, Man-woo, what is your favourite movie genre?"
"MTV!!!!!"
"Okay..."

Later, when I walked around to see how everyone was doing, I saw that he had filled in every blank on his sheet with "MTV" in huge block letters.

He actually came into the lab as I was writing this, and took over the computer to show me things on MTV Korea's website. He's pretty shocked that I don't know of any Korean pop stars.
My homework assignment for tonight is to learn the names of a few that he has written on the board. Every day, he comes in and writes Korean words on the board with english spellings, and then I struggle to write them in Korean. He always has to correct me, but he doesn't rub it in.

Up-do's

So, the hair here is amazing.
Maybe it is because the country in general is made up of people who are shorter. Other than that, I would be very hard-pressed to find a reason for the gravity defying hairdos.
Some of them will have hair flipped and supported by hidden girders almost 5 or 6 inches above their scalp. I do exaggerate a lot, but I have to stress that this is not an exaggeration. Jessie will vouche for me.
I imagine that this may have to do with the sheer number of beauty shops that are around here. There are more beauty shops here than anything else, I think. Except maybe restaurants.
Every street has at least one beauty shop, with a pink, yellow and orange spinny sign, instead of the classic red, white and blue signs for barbershops, which are also everywhere here. One block alone here probably has four or five.
If you do come to Korea, let me pass on some advice. The double barber-signs don't mean faster service, they mean that the place is a brothel.
Also, the barbershops here are much more expensive than the beauty shops. Which are both dirt cheap. The barber shops are about the same as in Canada ($8-15), but beauty shops are only around $6 for a nice manly cut. And a nice pampering shampoo and scalp massage.
With it being so cheap, it feels like many businesses here cannot help but fail. Not only in beauty and barber shops, but in stores, the market is flooded, and according to Robert, the turn-over on stores and shops is incredibly high. Of course, considering that on a two block stretch of road there are five stores selling the same cell phones for the same carriers, it is hardly surprising. Not to mention the three stationary stores that are exactly the same, or the four clock and watch stores, the six or seven appliance shops with the exact same inventory... Or the two identical LG/Samsung appliance stores.
Seriously... they need someone with a marketing degree to take by them the hand and explain why every six months there is a new store on the corner.

The OTHER coteacher

So, I have a few coteachers. Usually, one who has the responsibility of actually helping me, and another who just loses a class every week to watch mine bomb in time they probably think could be better used (my last two lessons have been less than dazzling).
At the boys' school, the other coteacher is also named Mrs Kim. Which is pretty easy. She doesn't know quite as much as Suk-Gyong, but she is still nice. SHe's shy, because I think she is a little embarassed that she's less than fluent. But she definitely knows enough to be a good teacher. Aside from the fact that she runs out of class before I can talk to her, I like her a lot.
At the girls' school, however, it is a totally different story. My other coteacher is not shy. And he is certainly not embarassed at being MUCH less than fluent. He is very very arrogant, and interrupts my classes constantly to "translate" what I am saying, which I am very sure he is doing incorrectly. Just in case another teacher who knows him finds this blog, I should conceal his identity. His name will be Mr B.
Half of the interruptions to my classes are caused by him. He talks to the class all of the time, while I am teaching, and to the best of my knowledge, he is flirting. At least, that is how it appears sometimes. And he feeds students answers, which means that instead of all the students getting at least a chance to participate, his favourites, whom he stands behind and chats with get told answers.
To give you an idea of just how unqualified this man is, here is a gem that I am faced with deciphering almost every Monday and Tuesday.
"Matthew, I you pick up after school home."
This, of course, is his way of asking me if I want a ride home. The first time it happened, I was a little shocked, but I figured it was okay, since most of the teaching is done right out of the textbook anyways, so he can just read it. But, in spite of the fact that I have corrected him on numerous occasions, he continues to do it to this day, almost two months later! If that isn't enough, he does that horrible "I'll repeat the last word of your sentence back to you so that you think I understand what you are saying" thing. As in:
In car: "Mr B, will you please drive me to the store tonight? I need to get groceries."
"Yes, groceries."
"I think the store is this way..."
"Yes, store."
"Okay, I guess I'll go home and drop off my stuff first..."
In front of apartment building: "Goodnight Mr B, thanks for the ride home..."
Now, I might sound a little ungrateful. That is because I am. I don't really seem to be allowed to say no to a ride, even though I really like walking home. Usually the store is just a cop-out, and I just get a yogurt, and then walk home. But he gets pretty offended when I turn him down.
On Monday, I ran into Robert, the other foreigner in Yeongam, at the grocery store after being dropped off at the grocery store by Mr B. Robert used to be at the girl's school full time last year, so I asked him if he remembered Mr B.
It turned into a fifteen minute dialogue on incompetence.
Apparently Mr B is just at a point where his seniority is so high that he cannot be fired no matter how little he does. And he could not do less if he tried. Unless, of course, he had my job. And my english speaking ability.
Yesterday, I was locking the lab where I had spent the last hour of the day. I couldn't get the lock to work, and he just told me to forget it, and then ran for the door. The man is out like a bolt of lightening every night at five o'clock. On the nose. This is followed by a few minutes in the car where I try to figure out what he is trying to say...
Anyways, I don't like putting down people so harshly, but this guy is honestly just shocking in about 30 different ways. But I guess that he's here and I'm here, so I might as well try to work around him as unconfrontationally as possible.
Speaking of working around/with him... oh, this is good. I got my other coteacher to write a bunch of words in Korean so that he could translate them for students if they needed the help. A lot of them were new words, but if I explained them, acted them out, drew pictures, most classes would be able to guess them. Anyways, I gave him the list, and asked him to read the word in Korean is the students were struggling. I introduced the lesson, started to talk about the first word, and he interrupted and started reading the whole list, one after the other. He got through eight before my constant drone of "Excuse me... Excuse me... Excuse me... Excuse me..." in the background finally got him to stop. Basically, he had killed about a third of my lesson in about 40 seconds, so now I had a bunch of extra time to kill.
If that wasn't enough, when I did ask him for help translating, he went on and on and on in Korean. To translate a word, you need to say one, maybe two words. Now, I am short on time again. Thank you.

Korean Lessons

Last Tuesday I spoke to my coteacher, Mr Lee (actually Ee) about taking some Korean lessons over the winter vacation at the university in Kwangju. The vacation will be almost two months long for me, so I figured that I could afford the time.
He called that night to tell me that he knew a woman, whose daughter went to our school, who would be interested in teaching me in exchange for some english help. Pretty sweet deal, because I get to keep my money, so I said yes. We (Jessie and I) were invited over for dinner the following night to meet them.
It was a great dinner. We sat on the floor, of course, and ate some surprisingly delicious raw beef, some less than delicious raw pork, and some of what appeared to be raw fat. They seemed really friendly. It also became rapidly apparent that the lessons were not just for me, but for both Jessie and me. And they were not just for the woman, but for the whole family, her and her husband, two daughters and a son. They proposed that we meet everynight of the week, we said weekdays. We began on Thursday night.
We didn't have too much prepared, and just planned on asking what they wanted to learn, and attempting to communicate to them what we wanted to learn. They, of course, knew much more english than we knew Korean. Everyone knows at least a little here, and the father really knows a lot, which is really good for us.
We went back on Monday, with pictures of Jessie and her friends and a handout that I had prepared for my class that I thought they might find useful. It was really good. They enjoyed the pictures, and the handout proved to be very helpful for both parties, with them writing in Korean translations for us to take home.
Then we decided that every weekday was too much too. It's pretty typical here. We are two of the three foreigners in town, so people try to monopolize our time once they have an in. They have to, because they know that we can get what they are offering from anyone. So they want to isolate us as much as they can, or so goes my theory. It's not only lessons, they also will try to make weekend plans with you, and to have you over for dinner before lessons, take you hiking, pop in unexpectedly...
So, last night, I went alone. Jessie had a puppy to sit (for Sylvia, an english teacher from the girl's highschool) and some work to prepare for today. I tried to break it to them gently that we couldn't meet every night (It's not you, it's me...) because it's very important to be very careful to save face here. I told them that we wanted to meet on Mondays and Thursdays (lots of weeknights for other things, work, weekends stay open for travel, non-Korean hanging out) so that we could prepare better lessons and have more time to practice between lessons.
That took a LONG time to get accross. Once they got it, the mother went through every day of the week "Why noy Tuesday?", "Why no Wednesday?"... It's very difficult to explain that it is easier to learn when it isn't a chore or a drag to come. And that we wanted to do things other than learn Korean at night.
Anyways, I managed to get it all worked out, and gave them a quick little geography lesson on Canada with the help of a globe.
I'm going back on tomorrow. I'm actually excited to be learning a little bit, even though it is really slow coming.

Get the hell away from me!

Kim Man-woo will not leave me alone.
Shortly after every bell, I hear his heavy footsteps as he runs down the hall. And stops at my door, looks in, and says "Teacher Sorry!".
I've taken to responding "If you're sorry, stop coming!", because he has no idea what I am saying. And he's not sorry. So I know he won't stop coming.
Then he stands there, and breathes today's variety of just-barely bad breath on me. Just a hint of lunch. In my face.
Then, I think "Hey, Matt! Stop being such a bastard. He just wants to be friends. You're such an asshole." Usually, this is followed by a few feeble attempts at conversation. Today's went like this:

"So, Man-woo, are you performing in the school festival tomorrow?"

"..."

"Yeah... umm... You, festival, tomorrow... ... ?"

"..."

"Right... yeah... umm... nevermind."

"MTV!" (smiles so broadly it MUST hurt)

So then I go back to work, usually.

Today was different. He was standing over me, and I realized that the next class was my class with him. Which I may or may not have today. Allow me to explain.

When I got here this morning, I taught my first class, and it was great. Quiet, well behaved, gave out a prize for a contest from a few weeks ago. The contest was to fill out a questionnaire about movies. The group who won had many many mistakes, but they went way beyond the scope of the questions, so they won for creativity. So they got a much larger prize than I had planned. About 150 Hershey hugs. Delicious.

My second period was a spare, so I worked a bit. Third period came around, and my coteacher was noticeably absent. I went to the class, figuring that she was there. My class was also absent. I went back to the staff room, and no coteacher. Back to class, no class.
I finally asked another teacher "Where Suk-Gyong?" (conveying substance wins out over style), and I was told that they were at the high school preparing for the festival tomorrow.
Well, thanks for the heads up on that one. All of my classes are cancelled for the rest of the day I just found out. Do I have a holiday? No, I sit here. Well, at least I get to sit here. They were trying to make me sit and watch the rehearsal. As fun as that sounds...

So, I went out with Man-woo, and he left halfway down the hall and ran away. Pretty typical Man-woo. And yes, my last class was cancelled. Thanks for the heads-up, once again.

Oh well. At least I have this sweet "Consta-crash" computer to keep me entertained. Sweet.