Somehow I can't seem to stop saying whatnot. I'm not sure whether I just like the word or I simply can't be bothered to think of additional examples for whatever I'm talking about. Probably the latter.
Christmas time was an odd one for me. It was my first Christmas away from home, and in a foreign country, and consequently it didn't really feel like Christmas at all. I had a Christmas meal at an American missionaries open house buffet thing in Seoul, so I got a fix of some home-cooked food. Merry Christmas' were said, but it felt more like a get together than an actual Chrismas meal. Very nice of them to open their house like that, mainly to other displaced western English teachers like myself.
Korea itself doesn't celebrate Christmas on the whole. There is a growing amount of Christians in the country, and they celebrate of course, but mostly Korean's embrace the commercial and decorative side of the holiday. Shops, particularly in Seoul, have decorated their outsides lavishly and one of the bars I often go to in my little town has had a brightly lit Christmas tree standing in thr middle of it for a month. It's right in a perfect position for tipsy customers to fall over it, however I've never had the luck of seeing that. The large malls in Seoul decorated mainly with electronic decorations, not surprising really, and some of them were really great. A little church in my town also decorated the trees in it's front area and there were enough lit trees to give Trafalgar Square a run for it's money.
Still, there are some definite differences. Probably the biggest difference is music. Though there was a carol contest (with money prizes!) at school the songs were mainly pop Christmas hits and ballads. The singing wasn't all bad, but listening to 40 entires with only about 12 songs was rather repetitive.
The other thing is Christmas songs in shops and bars. They all seem to want to play them but mostly they were Korean covers. Koreans particularly like Feliz Navidad (a song I know but hardly love) and I heard it far too much. In a bar in Seoul my colleague and I got serenaded by three costumed people, probably from the local university, trying to raise some money. Feliz Navidad clearly didn't work with us so they tried The Beatles' Let it Be. It wasn't their night though. I did finally hear Last Christmas, but on Boxing Day so it doesn't count. I haven't heard any actual carols like God Rest You Merry Gentlemen and Silent Night. Ah well.
Christmas is over now, though the school and my little apartment are still decorated. Beginning tomorrow we have our winter holiday, for a week, and I'm highly excited. Here's hoping for some good stories to be telling! Happy New Year to one and all!
P.S. I've added some more photos to my 'South Korea' album, http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042337&l=c3609&id=16105286 so check them out. Me in a santa hat is wonderfully festive. It's two pages, so click on the number 2 near the bottom to see the rest of the photos.
2006년 12월 28일 목요일
2006년 12월 20일 수요일
Weekend of disasters...
Well well, it was indeed a weekend of disasters. Not for me, but for some unfortunate Koreans.
After a night out in Seoul on Friday night I spent Saturday recuperating and getting myself ready for a party with the Korean teachers from my school. We went to the aparment of one of them, and had some proper home cooked food. Far too much of it, so I had a proper feed. They then took us out to a place that rented out karaoke rooms. John (a Scottish English teacher colleague of mine) and I belted out some classic Brit songs for the Korean's enjoyment. I Can't Get No Satisfation by the Rolling Stones went particularly well.
It had just begun to snow when we went inside, and by the time we came out the ground was covered and conditions were a little icy. A Korean colleague drove us to a bus stop so we could catch the bus back to the town we both live in, and the roads were definitely dodgy. She went really slowly, but we did see another car that was going far too fast crash into the back of a sensible slow driver who had pulled out into the next lane of the highway. Not too bad a crash but it left a pretty big bump in both cars. For some reason many Korean's put on their hazard lights during dodgy conditions. Whilst it may clue others up about that driver's lack of confidence it does mean that cars can't tell when people are indicating to turn. As well as the crash we saw we kept driving past pairs of cars on the side of the road with annoyed looking Korean's standing next to them shaking their heads. Luckily for us the bus driver was a pro, he must have driven in icy conditions a lot.
It has only snowed here twice, and only stayed around for a day or two, but I think we expect more in January. It's bitterly cold here now, especially at night, so I've begun wearing bigger hats and coats.
On Sunday I saw another disaster. The school next to my aparment has some out buildings (I think they're used for storage) and one of them caught fire. I watched from my balcony as interested people filled the streets and one man ran back and forth with a bucket trying to douse the flames. Eventually the fire deparment showed up, after the fire had almost burned itself out. It was fairly comical to see three fire engines and 25 guys turn up to deal with one small shed. I suppose they were worried it might spread to the school. No such luck for kids who didn't want to go in the next day. Maybe some had a test and it was attempted sabotage!
These are dangerous times....
After a night out in Seoul on Friday night I spent Saturday recuperating and getting myself ready for a party with the Korean teachers from my school. We went to the aparment of one of them, and had some proper home cooked food. Far too much of it, so I had a proper feed. They then took us out to a place that rented out karaoke rooms. John (a Scottish English teacher colleague of mine) and I belted out some classic Brit songs for the Korean's enjoyment. I Can't Get No Satisfation by the Rolling Stones went particularly well.
It had just begun to snow when we went inside, and by the time we came out the ground was covered and conditions were a little icy. A Korean colleague drove us to a bus stop so we could catch the bus back to the town we both live in, and the roads were definitely dodgy. She went really slowly, but we did see another car that was going far too fast crash into the back of a sensible slow driver who had pulled out into the next lane of the highway. Not too bad a crash but it left a pretty big bump in both cars. For some reason many Korean's put on their hazard lights during dodgy conditions. Whilst it may clue others up about that driver's lack of confidence it does mean that cars can't tell when people are indicating to turn. As well as the crash we saw we kept driving past pairs of cars on the side of the road with annoyed looking Korean's standing next to them shaking their heads. Luckily for us the bus driver was a pro, he must have driven in icy conditions a lot.
It has only snowed here twice, and only stayed around for a day or two, but I think we expect more in January. It's bitterly cold here now, especially at night, so I've begun wearing bigger hats and coats.
On Sunday I saw another disaster. The school next to my aparment has some out buildings (I think they're used for storage) and one of them caught fire. I watched from my balcony as interested people filled the streets and one man ran back and forth with a bucket trying to douse the flames. Eventually the fire deparment showed up, after the fire had almost burned itself out. It was fairly comical to see three fire engines and 25 guys turn up to deal with one small shed. I suppose they were worried it might spread to the school. No such luck for kids who didn't want to go in the next day. Maybe some had a test and it was attempted sabotage!
These are dangerous times....
2006년 12월 15일 금요일
My photos on the web.
Not really a blog this one.
I just thought I'd say you can see photos of my trip so far through a network website thing called Facebook. You don't have to sign up, just go to one of these addresses:
South Korean photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042337&l=c3609&id=16105286
My classroom, school, and town:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045093&l=1f748&id=16105286
Visa trip to Japan photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042340&l=160bc&id=16105286
If you want to know what the photo is of, scroll to the bottom of it and I might have added an explanatory note.
Hope everyone's enjoying the Christmas spirit!
I just thought I'd say you can see photos of my trip so far through a network website thing called Facebook. You don't have to sign up, just go to one of these addresses:
South Korean photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042337&l=c3609&id=16105286
My classroom, school, and town:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045093&l=1f748&id=16105286
Visa trip to Japan photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042340&l=160bc&id=16105286
If you want to know what the photo is of, scroll to the bottom of it and I might have added an explanatory note.
Hope everyone's enjoying the Christmas spirit!
2006년 12월 11일 월요일
Teaching.
I've realised I haven't actually written anything about the actual work I'm doing here, so I'll try to remedy that.
I teach English to young kids, from 5 to 13 years old. I have about 5 classes a day, each lasting 50 minutes. So it sounds like a day should be really short but I often have long breaks, so I generally work from 9.30am till 6pm. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have six classes because I only teach the really young 5-year olds on those days (they are a handful and a half).
Teaching itself isn't too hard. The kids work from a variety of textbooks and as a teacher I just get them to do all the exercises and hopefully learn the english. With the young kids it's mainly vocabulary, and the older kids are more about the elementary rules of grammar.
Whilst teaching itself isn't too hard, controlling the classes can be, especially the 6 and 7 year olds. Not being able to speak Korean means I can't really reason with them to be quiet, so I just end up shouting a lot of the time. They have a sticker reward system going on at school here, so I can use that to control a little, but it often falls flat on its face.
The books teach American English, which is a little hard to come to terms with, so I often have to check in them to see what phrases I'm meant to be teaching.Two of my6 older classes are learning aboutthe planets in different textbooks, and the accompanying tapes pronounce them in different ways, so I'm incredibly confused about whose learnt how to say Uranus the amusing way.
I just had an incident with some 6 year olds, one was standing oin a chair cleaning the whiteboard and another pulled it out from under her. Crying ensued. There's a lot of bashing and falling over, but most of the time they seem to bounce, so there's not too much crying for me to have to deal with, maybe one every two days.
So teaching is doable. The breaks give me time to catch up on emails and maybe do some fun worksheets for the kids. Also, as it's Christmas, we've been asked to decorate our classrooms, so I'm busy with paper chains (homemade is always the best in my opinion).
Well, this has been rather a long blog. Congratulations to anyone who actually made it this far! Don't fret though, it's over now.... or is it?
Yes. It is.
I teach English to young kids, from 5 to 13 years old. I have about 5 classes a day, each lasting 50 minutes. So it sounds like a day should be really short but I often have long breaks, so I generally work from 9.30am till 6pm. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have six classes because I only teach the really young 5-year olds on those days (they are a handful and a half).
Teaching itself isn't too hard. The kids work from a variety of textbooks and as a teacher I just get them to do all the exercises and hopefully learn the english. With the young kids it's mainly vocabulary, and the older kids are more about the elementary rules of grammar.
Whilst teaching itself isn't too hard, controlling the classes can be, especially the 6 and 7 year olds. Not being able to speak Korean means I can't really reason with them to be quiet, so I just end up shouting a lot of the time. They have a sticker reward system going on at school here, so I can use that to control a little, but it often falls flat on its face.
The books teach American English, which is a little hard to come to terms with, so I often have to check in them to see what phrases I'm meant to be teaching.Two of my6 older classes are learning aboutthe planets in different textbooks, and the accompanying tapes pronounce them in different ways, so I'm incredibly confused about whose learnt how to say Uranus the amusing way.
I just had an incident with some 6 year olds, one was standing oin a chair cleaning the whiteboard and another pulled it out from under her. Crying ensued. There's a lot of bashing and falling over, but most of the time they seem to bounce, so there's not too much crying for me to have to deal with, maybe one every two days.
So teaching is doable. The breaks give me time to catch up on emails and maybe do some fun worksheets for the kids. Also, as it's Christmas, we've been asked to decorate our classrooms, so I'm busy with paper chains (homemade is always the best in my opinion).
Well, this has been rather a long blog. Congratulations to anyone who actually made it this far! Don't fret though, it's over now.... or is it?
Yes. It is.
2006년 12월 6일 수요일
Korean showers.
Now, I don't mean to be picky, but the showers here are really beggining to p*ss me off. My bathroom is a sort of wet room, well, there's a drain grate in the middle that all the water goes out through and no cubicle for the shower, so they must be going with the whole wet room thing. But the shower is attached to the wall above the sink, so unless you're one of those circus contortionists the only way to use it is to hold it in one hand. I keep dropping it, accidently putting it faceup in the sink so that water flies everywhere (including all over my towel), and I inevitably end up getting shampoo in my eye, something I haven't done much since I was about twelve!
Also, not having a bath, and not having much of a possibility of being able to have a bath in the next year, is rather annoying. If I were a bit older I'd be able to complain about the cold getting to my bones and needing a nice Radox filled bath. But I'm not, so I won't... yet.
It is definitely getting cold though, but it's still fairly dry, so I don't mind too much. I've brought out the hat and scarf, but I'm leaving the mittens until I absolutely have to. That way I'll appreciate their warmth more. Or so the theory goes anyway.
Also, not having a bath, and not having much of a possibility of being able to have a bath in the next year, is rather annoying. If I were a bit older I'd be able to complain about the cold getting to my bones and needing a nice Radox filled bath. But I'm not, so I won't... yet.
It is definitely getting cold though, but it's still fairly dry, so I don't mind too much. I've brought out the hat and scarf, but I'm leaving the mittens until I absolutely have to. That way I'll appreciate their warmth more. Or so the theory goes anyway.
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