New Digs

Hello party people. It's been a while. 

My bad.

Part of the neglect was due to my sojourn home (not much point writing about the California when most of you live there), and the rest is due to the mass of changes in my Korea life.  A lot has changed since I last wrote, and as you probably know, change can be pretty time consuming.

I'm at a new school.  I was transferred (hopefully not for performance related issues) from a school with a student body of 2000 students to one just shy of 200.  I wasn't expecting the change, but I couldn't be happier about it.  I was mired by anonimty and torpor at my old school.  When you teach one lesson sixteen times over two weeks (with a smattering of others in between), it doesn't take more than a few hours to do all of your prep.  Coasting is a word I'd like to avoid using to describe my time there.  And in the last weeks I was still seeing new faces among the faculty.

My new school is very small, and the English department is HIGHLY funded.  I've got a brand new English zone to play around in (teach), check it out:

Reading corner, some couches, the office in the back there. That's my chair you can see through the door.

The front of the classroom.  Behind those middle whiteboards is a giant flatscreen t.v.  Check the fancy new desks and chairs.  Plus there's a stage so a look very tall and imposing.

Some props: Letters for phonics, games, food and a cash register.

The office, and Kyeong Man, my new co-teacher.

My desk.  Replete with the instruments of shaping young minds (i.e. messy).

My teaching situation is incredibly different.  Instead of the haphazard schedule I failed to describe in an earlier post, I teach everyone.  All the classes.  It's pretty awesome, but definitely a lot more work.  I think that's good though.  Productivity is an intertial force as much as stagnation.

Instead of the five (four maybe? I was never too sure) coteachers I taught with before, I'm down to two.  The one (not pictured) is only in school twice a week.  The largest class in the school is 26 students and the smallest is 15.  It's going to be a whole new dynamic.

As well as small classes, it's nice to have a small staff.  I met all of them on the first day.  Quite a departure from the school with a teaching staff 80 (maybe?) strong.  Last night, we had a welcome dinner at a very ncie restaurant.  Check out the dish:

Yes, it's moving.  Those are live abalone.  And they were good, too. That dish was a hodge-podge of two whole chickens, clams, oysters, mussles, whole crabs, ginseng, shrimp, some mushroom that is allegedly extremely expensive (Still tasted like musty dirt to me) and of course, the live abalone.  Don't worry, they didn't live for long once they were submerged in the boiling broth.  At least that's what I'm telling myself.  To wash it all down, we had beer, soju (traditional liquor, about 40 proof), beer mixed with soju, and liquor made from ginseng.  All on the teachers union.

After that, the upper administration left, and the rest of us went to a "nore-bang" (like a private karaoke room. Ubiquitous and wildly popular in Korea).  After an hour or so of singing, more beer flowing, and maybe a moving rendition of Wonderwall by yours truly, we went to another restaurant.  I guess the live abalone weren't enough.

In said restaurant, more soju, more beer (lest you forget, this is the staff at my school who's guzzling this effluveunt alcohol.  On a Wednesday.  Teachers.  Wednesday.  Booze.) then the food was brought.  Any guesses?  Offal. 

Yes, folks, the live abalone wasn't bizarre enough for the welcome dinner, we also dined on various parts of the intenstines, the stomach (I coudn't help wondering which of the four, and how profitable it must be to sell cow stomachs.  Four per cow!  Now that's a real... cash... cow?) the heart, and the aorta.  Yes, last night I ate cow aorta.  It wasn't bad, though.  Chewy, surely.  But with a little green onion and some incendiary chili sauce, it was really quite tasty.  Especially, the heart.

So my welcoming was nice, if a bit... interesting, but it helped me to make some connections at work and prove myself as the fearless foreigner.  That's my school situation, more updates to come.  I'm waiting on a couch to come for my new apartment, once it does I'll be all settled in and can tell you all about it.

And here's one of my new 6th grade classes sending you their love from the ROK.

(Those are supposed to be hearts.)

Team Spirit

In my capacity as an English teacher I facilitate a lot of games.  A LOT of games.  A while ago I started letting the kids pick their own team names.  I've noticed a few that are pretty frequent, namely myself and Obama.  They come up with some other pretty good ones, and a lot more ridiculous ones.  Here's a small sampling:

Korea vs. China vs. Turkey (the Thanksgiving kind)

Obama vs. Osama bin Laden

Tyler vs. Super Tyler

Fire vs. Ice vs. Tomato

George Washington vs. Obama vs. Tyler

Shooting fire vs. Cute Dog vs. 4

Genius vs. Brilliant

1 meter vs. 10 meters vs. 11 meters

Star vs. Heart vs. Chicken

Galbi (Beef Ribs) vs. Yummy vs. Girl's Generation (Kpop band)

Piggy vs. Bear vs. Squirrel

Lincoln vs. Obama vs. Lee MyungBak

WiFi vs. WiBro vs. 4g

U.S.A. vs. Dagger vs. Bea$t

Handsome vs. Die vs. ㅋㅋㅋ (This sounds like the "k" in cake - kk-kk-kk, which is how they write "hahaha")

That's a nice little sampling, I think, and just happens to be all I can remember just at the moment.  If I see any other gems, I'll let ya know.

Some Cultural Factoids

Korea has many customs, traditions and superstitions similar to the U.S., and many that are unique to Korea.  Here are a few I've learned, though I'm sure there's many more:

For birthdays, instead of cake or ice-cream people make myokgook, a seaweed soup.

You don't, however, ever eat seaweed soup before an exam.  It's slippery texture will make the answers slip away.  Instead, it's traditional to have yeot, a sticky rice candy.  It's believed to have effects opposite to seaweed.  It's common to see yeot springing up in all the stores this time of year, as kid's are taking their high-school and college entrance exams (i.e. the ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS EVER THAT WILL DETERMINE THE COURSE OF THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. Got to have luck on their side.)

You also don't wash your hair on the day of a big exam, since the answers might end up swirling the drain with the shampoo.

If you sleep in a closed room with a fan on, you will die.  This is a phenomenon called "fan death," and even though no-one is quite sure what causes it, (spot cooling resulting in hypothermia, suffocation caused by the air moving too fast for proper inhalation, or the spinning blades breaking apart the oxygen molecules are among the theories posited) a few cases are reported every year by the mass-media.  Infants and the elderly are most susceptible, as is common with most made up ailments.

If you write someones name in red, they will die or you want them dead.  This comes from the Buddhist practice of writing the names of the deceased in red, on gravestones or otherwise.

Koreans have an aversion to the number four, since the pronunciation ("sa") is the same as the word for death.  Buildings will sometimes skip the fourth, fourteenth, twenty-fourth, etc. floor, just like Vegas casinos will skip the 13th floor.  Or in some elevators you'll see an F in the place of the number four.  But just like in the western world, seven is a lucky number.

It's bad luck to break a bowl or plate.  It's worse luck to eat from a bowl or plate with a crack or chipped rim.

There's an expression, "Sam han sa ohn," which means literally three hot four cold.  This is the perceived weather cycle when the temperature is changing, three warm days followed by four cold days.  I want to vet the system but I can't be bothered to keep track.

There's just a few I've picked up, if I hear of any more I'll jot them down!

Ko Phi Phi paradise, much delayed

So I believe I mentioned like eight months ago that I went to heaven on earth.  I needed some time to register what happened.  About time I posted some pictures though, methinks.  This, friends and family (and strangers who've happened upon this blog), is Ko Phi Phi, Thailand.

 

On the approach.  I'd estimate these particular cliffs to be at least three hundred feet.




Tourists arriving at Phi Phi Don.





Ridiculous beach, completely enclosed in horseshoe shaped mountains.  The water was  bathtub warm and crystal clear.  You could walk out for hundreds of yards with the water barely reaching past your waist.  I don't know why the sky looks so gray in this picture, it was never anything but clear blue.





Click on this picture.  Our hotel was a thirty second walk from this spot.  Thus the week was spent primarily shoe free.



This monkey has developed a taste for Coca-Cola.  A palpable example of humanity's befouling interaction with the natural world?  Or awesome.



Snorkeling trip to Phi Phi Leh.  Our boat looked just like the wooden one on the right.




Snorkeling.  I still haven't developed the pictures from my underwater camera (surprised?).  You can see some fish if you look carefully.  They really liked to eat pineapple (the floating bits).  The guides would toss it out and they would come swarming.




I got bit by a fish (maybe it thought I was a piece of pineapple?).  Jaclyn thought it was funny 'til she saw me bleeding.  Then she thought it was hilarious.


 



Us on the beach where they filmed The Beach.  I put on sunscreen probably 4 times a day (spf 50) but I still ended up roasted, as evidenced in this picture.  That's what you get for being so close to the equator.  A small price to pay.



Jaclyn is always at home on a boat, even a jankity wooden skiff.



Me, not so much.

This is the view from the top of the mountain (panorama below).  The beach to the right of the isthmus is the one in the pictures up above.  Almost everything on the isthmus was swept away by the 2004 tsunami, but sprang back up quickly thanks to tourist dollars and donations from good samaritans.  Around the island you could find signs thanking the donors that helped businesses to get back on their feet.  Our hotel survived the destruction and was used as an impromtu hospital.

 

Quite the vista.



One more for good measure.

Valentine's Day dinner in paradise.  It was a really nice restaurant, with our table directly on the beach.  But for whatever reason the food was crap.  We got a pizza afterwards.





Sunset on the water.

EPIK Life

As I sat in my office, clipping my fingernails while I watched Monday Night Football on a chilly Tuesday morning, I got to thinking.  This is strange, I thought.  It's strange that I'm watching football in Korea on a Tuesday morning.  It's strange that I'm clipping my fingernails at work and no one is batting an eyelash.  It's strange that I'm getting paid for this, and handsomely at that.  

Don't get me wrong.  I do a lot of work, and I work hard when I am working.  But there is a lot of downtime as an English teacher in Korea.  A LOT.  We are contractually limited to 18 teaching hours a week.  Anything beyond that and the school has to pay out the behind, so my school treats extra hours like an ebola outbreak.  An hour translates to one 40 minute class.  Yet we work 8:30 to 4:30 every day.  If my math is right, that means we're teaching roughly 10 percent of the week (I don't teach math).  So what do I do with all those other hours?

Number 1:  Lesson plan.

 

This is a no-brainer, of course.  With all the extra time, there's no excuse for not being on top of your duties.  But there's only so much lesson planning you can do.  I'm finished with my official curriculum classes.  For the year.  That's through December.

My situation is atypical.  Not in terms of free time, but concerning what I'm actually teaching in the classroom.  My head-teacher has requested that every other lesson I teach non-curriculum material.  Sounds cool, but it's pretty tricky.  Since the desired effect is to develop the Korean kids familiarity with western culture, I started with western related things.  Realistic greetings, western food, extreme sports, etc.  After a while, and with two western teachers planning these extra classes, the idea-pool gets shallow.  In my last three lessons I've taught fortune telling, the sign language alphabet, and origami.  I always tie in some kind of key language that I think could be useful (future tense, parts of the hand, and geography respectively (don't ask me how geography and origami are related, I don't want to explain it)) but it's come to the point where I find an activity I want to do and assemble the language around the activity.  Maybe not the most effective method of language instruction, but I'm working within the directives handed down to me.

The fact is, the kids don't care. And they don't need to.  They know as well as I do that these "elective classes," as I call them, aren't applied to their grades and are, generally, nihil ad rem.  This leaves me with a conflict of interest.  Do I teach the language that I think they need to know, or do I try to keep them interested.  I make a solid effort to do both, but I definitely favor the latter.  Particularly because if they're not interested, then trying to teach what I consider critical language is just lost on a bored, rowdy classroom.  I've had it happen before, and it's not fun for me, it's not fun for them.  Their retention is nil and I leave feeling deflated and frustrated.  Thus, origami is good for everyone.

I forget what I was talking about.  Oh, right...

Number 2:  Practice origami.

I'm getting really good.

Number 3:  Facebook

I hadn't been on facebook for months before I got to Korea.  I use it a lot more now, but I've kind of forgotten how.  I'll use it to organize soccer games or get in on trail rides.  But sometimes I'll open my homepage and just stare at it.  "What am I supposed to do?  Why is this a cultural phenomenon again?"  The loop opened up and I fell right out.  Sometimes I'll aimlessly click around and wonder why I'm looking at a friend of a friend of a friend's wall.  "Who is this person, and how did I get here?"

Number 4:  Streaming TV

Like I said, I'm watching the Jets play the Dolphins right now.  I do a lot of TV watching, but this isn't limited to my downtime.  In case you didn't know, I'm got a touch of the A.D.D.  Lesson planning in the awkward silence of my office just kills me. I need some noise, some distractions to try to block out.  Thus, I watch the Daily Show daily, sporting events frequently, and have watched I don't know how many episodes of Top Gear.  Fantastic car show from the U.K. if you're not familiar.

Number 5:  Keep up on current events.

I've never been so informed about events around the world.  A lot of the websites out there are yellow-journalism garbage more concerned with their hit counter than reporting events in an accurate and unbiased fashion, but you take what you can get.  

Number 6:  Blogging

Sporadically.

Number 7: Playing with my new Kindle

Before I got the kindle, I felt like I couldn't read because busting out a book is a conspicuous way of saying, "Look!  I'm doing absolutely nothing work related!"  But now with the Kindle, I can just put it on my desk and read away.  Pretty handy.  And If anyone asks, I'm using the built in Oxford English Dictionary to snuff up on some etymologies.  Cuz an online subscription to that thing ain't cheap.  It also has free 3g, various games, email, and a web browser.  Kin-dle! Kin-dle! Kin-dle!

I probably do more stuff, too, but I'm gonna go practice some more origami.  Got to get this frog mastered.

Do boayo!

I went to Shanghai. It was neat.

I will let this picture sum-up my feelings about Shanghai.

We were visiting Jaclyn's college roomate, Nicole, who is living in Shanghai getting an MA in design.  She lives in a very tall apartment.



It's really nice.

 I threw like 15 paper airplanes out of there.  Sorry, Gaya, I just didn't know when I'd have another chance to throw paper airplanes from 300 feet.  (Also, did you know that paper cranes are perfectly balanced and if you throw one from 300 feet it will float gently to the ground without flipping over?  Who'da thunk it?)



The view at night is cool.

 Shanghai has amazing architecture.  It feels like being in a future city.  Check out the skyline.

That mondo river is the Bund.  On one side is the future city, seen here, and directly behind is a bunch of colonial looking buildings.  The view at night is even better.



Neat

 This ranks right up there amongst the best vistas I have ever had the good fortune to behold. And I think that is saying something, I've seen a lot of vistas.  (Please forgive my braggadocio, I'm just trying to convey how spectacular it is.)  Here's another view:
 

Double neat.

 Here's one more example of some cool architecture.  There really were amazing buildings everywhere.  The place is truly an architect's wet-dream (sorry, graphic).

Can you feel the qi flowing?

But not everything was super-mod.  There was a radical garden called YuYuan with this cool bridge built on rocks and lots of excellent architecture of a more classical nature.



Garden



Building

We went to a really cool club, it was really fun.  Well, first we went to the "Obama Club," and it was empty, creepy, and (I'm pretty sure) a strip club.  And when I see empty, I mean literally empty.  They let us in just to look, then when we took a picture they kicked us out.

The poles are a dead give-away.

Then we went to another club called, "Rich Baby," which was really fun.  Can you tell by our gleeful faces?

This is Jaclyn's favorite picture.

There are also some killer dumplings in Shanghai.  We went to this place packed with locals where you could watch them cook through a steamy window.  The process is amazing, and takes way more people than you'd think.  In assembly line fashion, they cranked out, by my estimation, at least one dumpling per second.  Maybe faster even, there hands were literally a blur.  That could have been the condensation, though.

Hold still, I'm trying to take a picture.

They also have this really fast maglev train in Shanghai.  Needlessly fast really.  But it's the world's first, and it's kind of fun.  And it levitiates on magnets (hence maglev, Nicole).  Everyone was taking pictures of and filming this thing while we accelerated.

That's 268 mph.  Why does it go so fast?  Because it can.



And I'll leave you with this picture I took of a stairwell, because I think it's cool.

 



New friend

So I'm back to life in Korea, and things are settling back into the old routine.. teaching all day, having kimchi and rice lunches, playing soccer (or as I've come to call it thanks to the British influence, "footy,") and hanging out in my favorite Daegu locale (Costco, duh).  Things were going along swimmingly, and it looked like it would be a term much like the last, then she happened (cue foreboding music):




















         (This space is inserted to help build the tension.)




































      (Is it working?)
























    (Probably not if you have a really big monitor.)



















    (Here it comes!)

AAAHHHHHH!

I was walking home from this little Korean joint called Starbucks, through the urban farm behind my house (see earlier posting) when I heard this pathetic little squeaking.  I looked around, and saw this little rascal trying to get to me through some thick weeds.  She was so small that she kept stumbling and getting stuck in the brush.  Well, I couldn't just go about my business in the face of such desperation, so I grabbed her and took her around to the neigbouring houses.  Everyone told me they had no idea where she'd come from, and I couldn't just leave her in the farm/trash heap, so she ended up in my apartment.

I was going to write about my vacillations, my doubt, my turmoil about having a pet in a studio apartment in a foreign country, how she'd undoubtedly put a hitch in my travel plans (i.e. world domination), be an added and unneccessary cost, and how she'd be bored in my apartment all day.  While all those things are likely true, I started writing this blog over a month ago (oops).  And in that month, she's grown on me a lot (and grown a lot physically.  She's more than doubled in size according to the vet).  It's come to the point where I can't imagine parting from her, even though she keeps me up all night and likes to destroy things in my apartment (boredom thwarted).  Fact is, I think I love the little rascal.  So, welcome to the family Goa!