Lunar New Year

Today is Lunar New Year. You may have heard on the news about Chinese New Year. Same thing, essentially. It's the most important Korean holiday of the year, it's like Christmas around here. My neighbourhood is pretty deserted and all the shops are closed - all bar McDonalds, Starbucks and Domino's, and all the 24 hour conveni-stores. Consequently today I've had a cheeseburger, a pizza, some hot chocolate and some beer. Oddly, however, fruit vendors are out en masse. I also have some tangerines for later.

It's nice to have a four day weekend but it was our intention to do something, to go somewhere. We tried to book a room at a ski resort but underestimated the amount of Koreans who were planning the same thing much much earlier than us. Ah well, another time.

In other news, there are only three days left of the intensive schedules, which is great. I'm looking forward to getting my three hour lunches back. I'll miss the classes I've taught this month, especially 14 year old one-to-one Tom. He means I'm in school from 9am til 7.30pm on Tuesday and Thursday as his class isn't until 6.45, but he's great. His knowledge of English football is awesome, and he tries hard to get through the book we do as quickly as possible so we can get onto the real reason he's there - to talk football. I can even forgive the fact that he's a Man U fan - with Park Ji-Sung it makes sense.

That's it. Happy Seollal, readers.

Halfway

More than that.

I've completed six months and a week and a half of this year-long thing, so here are some brief thoughts.

Being at home seems a distant memory, but the first few weeks in Korea seem aeons ago. When I reminisce about those humid, exciting times, so much has changed. It's certainly become chillier (-8 yesterday in Hongdae.) I'm feeling pretty good about my ability to make kids learn stuff and still have fun and that, a far cry from when I was being observed. Kids are still quitting but I'm confident that's not about me. Everyone's kids are quitting. The three guys I work with are cool, and have certainly made the living in another country thing easy as hell. 

Though I've hardly mastered the Korean language, or even learnt basic phrases, I possess the very, very barest essentials. I can say the following:

• Hello
  
• Goodbye
  
• Yes
  
• No
  
• Thankyou
  
• Tuna kimbap please
  
• One, two, three, five.. maybe seven
  
• Hundred
  
• Thousand
  
• How much?
  
• Shut up
• Merry Christmas
  
• and shovel
  

I have, however, become an expert in internationally-understood gesticulations, so who needs words?

This blog, too, conceived as a means of letting people back home know what I'm doing conveniently and with pictures, has had visitors from every continent, from Peru to Malaysia to Reunion island to Kazakhstan. So hi you lot.

I'm going to bed.

Birthday

Like racehorses, Koreans get one year older on New Year's Day. So although I had my birthday on Wednesday, I've been 24 for a week and a half.

Midweek, my birthday passed without much fanfare and without any alcohol, because firstly I'm a professional and secondly, I know the drawbacks of teaching rowdy kids with a hangover. Weekend will probably contain a certain amount of decadence. I kept it from the kids too, though it was leaked to one class, a class I've only been teaching for a week on the new intensive* schedule. The next day, one girl presented me bar of chocolate with this brilliant message attatched.

It says "To Michael Teacher. Hello I'm Sarah. Happy birthday to you. When you teach me I am so happy. Whey you come ECC first I don't know your name but you teach me and I know your name. From Sarah." (I resisted the urge to correct her grammar with my big red pen.)

The next day, today, having finished off what was left of my birthday cake (which had a tomato on it and was consumed with chopsticks), I went to work with the last of my birthday out of my system, not expecting to have to deal with any more of it. But Will, second from the left, evidently not wanting to be outdone in the impressing Michael Teacher stakes, had brought a whole carrier bag full of sweets for a party during our lesson. What your see above is nearing the end of our saturnalia of sugar. That was fun. Though I wasn't too sure about the chocolate-covered sunflower seeds.

*Winter intensives started at the end of December. I probably wrote about summer intensives some time in summer, so go and look for that. The winter intensive schedule is a bitch - I'm in school from 9-7.30 two days a week, and only have one 40 minute break on the other three. But, as you'll have noted, I'm teaching some good kids, and the days fly. Plus, and I'm sure I've said this before somewhere, think of all the wons!

Japan

Over Christmas, I hopped across the East Sea to Japan. Japan is good.

Mt Fuji there. Not as close to Tokyo as cartoons would have you believe.

We never left Tokyo, and in a sense it was was obviously quite similar to Seoul, but here's the difference: everywhere you went, things were just a bit more exciting. Crazier, in a good way. And more expensive. Freaking expensive.

Before I applied for this job I had an interview for a position in Japan. Didn't get it. The interview was a farce. Anyway, the monthly wage I was quoted was however many yen 1000 English pounds buys you. I spent half that in four days in Tokyo. OK, I was on holiday and was using that as an excuse for some exorbitance, but it still makes you think how I'd have lived on that wage. I get the equivalent of the yen wage I was offered in won here in Seoul, which allows me to live like a king - and still I've bought a laptop and had two holidays in the last six months. I'm going start saving money this year.

First night in Japan was strange. We'd booked one night's accommodation in a hostel in Asakusabashi, which is nothing like Tokyo should be. It was suburban. There were no lights, few people, not much going on. Bars were non-existant. The next day, which was Christmas, we went elsewhere.

Shinjuku, actually. Shinjuku is much more like the Tokyo you see on TV and futuristic anime. Lights, people, pornography: everywhere. Christmas lunch, incidentally, was fish and chips, and, later, a salmon pizza. Neither were pleasant. Aside from the food aspect, it didn't feel especially like Christmas. Sure there were Japanese dressed up like Annual Gift Man and, y'know, some tinsel here and there, but it was 18 degrees, and I went to an arcade. Plus, people were taking the decorations down at 9pm.

Christmas Lunch

Then we spent another night at a hostel followed by a night in a place called Kimi Raikkonen. I mean Kimi Ryokan. Both were in Ikebukuro, which was good, too. Cut a long story short, I'm going back one day. When I have shitloads of money.

As promised, I'm going to give the blog some much needed photography.

Rainbow Bridge

We got on something like DLR to get to here. Nicer than London Docks.

The view from halfway up Tokyo Tower, which, incidentally, is the same as the Eiffel Tower, just a bit bigger and red.

Shibuya Crossing, the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world or something. You've probably seen it on Lost in Translation.

Day 1: I slept in a pine coffin.

Tokyo Tower. Told you it was just like the Eiffel Tower and red.

Condomania. It sold phophylactics and other phallus-oriented stuff. This was in a mall, in the same building as a two kids' theme parks. Oh, Japan.