Thankyou, honest and law-abiding citizens of Seoul

I'm a lucky boy.

Cycled the hour journey to Hyewha for a Saturday afternoon Indian. 'Chicken Haravara, mm', I thought, as I arrived, and mildly distracted, swerved to avoid running over a dog. Locked the bike, headed to the curry. Crossing the road, Chris commented that I'd not had the best luck up to this point: not only had I narrowly averted some third degree caninicide, I was nearly run over myself by an unindicating motorist turning sharply into a side street. All part and parcel of the death run that is cycling in Korea, but slightly disconcerting nonetheless.

Anyway, nodding in weary concurrence, we crossed the road. Then, suddenly sensing something was wrong, I stopped in my tracks: my wallet was gone. Chris judged my initial reaction to be that of the demeanour of a man about to say 'dude, you stepped in something'. He was kinda relieved, then, when I told him what had actually happened.

We ran back to the bike, wallet not there. Dog still was though. Had it fallen out here, or at some point in the maybe five miles since I stopped at the Family Mart to get a drink? Contemplating these options, I took out my aggression on my bike. On the corner of the roundabout however, there's a police station. Expecting nothing, I trudged over to it and brought out my rendition of the internationally-recognised gesture for 'I've lost my wallet'. I was met with blank stares. So, as I was dragging Chris in with his wallet as a visual aid to my despairing charade, I was pleasantly surprised to see a man emerging from behind the counter with a black, square-shaped leather pouch of sorts. My wallet. I pulled out my photo ID and I was good to go.

All this happened in about four minutes. I could have lost my wallet, killed a dog and died; I didn't, so I see it as a good day.

In other news, I have an interview next week for a job here next year. That's a good thing.

Teachers' Day

Today is teachers' day. How good is that?

I received several gifts including: shower gel, hand lotion, assorted vitamins, bubble bath (strange for a country devoid of baths) a mug.. with a lid, candy, several flowers and cards and, best of all, a W50,000 department store voucher.

And of course I left resenting the kids that didn't get me anything. Cheapskates. 

My haul

Naming Kids

When I signed up for this year I did some research into the hagwon education system. By research I mean I read some blogs similar to this one. One thing that stuck out was the fact that these teachers were at regular intervals given the opportunity to give their students English nicknames. Great, I thought, and began drawing up a mental list of potential names. I'll admit this first list contained names such as Bing, Michael Jr and Bjork. 

When I arrived it was mid-term so no new kids were immediately forthcoming. Several months later, though, still nothing. The teacher that started at the same time as me, Sean, had by this point bestowed names on around twenty kids, and didn't hesitate in reminding everybody of this fact. Hourly. So at the end of February the new batch of kindergarten babies started and I assumed there'd be swathes of Korean 6 year olds for me to anglicise the shit out of. Nope. Not one. 

I came close a couple of times. Another teacher taught a brand new afternoon class once - eight kids, named them all - then the very next lesson the schedule changed and I took over. I had a kid come up to me and say "my name's JK," as in the initials of his Korean name Jin Kyung or something. I told him balls to that, you're Kurt. His mother was having none of it, so JK's still JK. Another kid turned up, excited about getting an English nickname, a feeling shared by me, and we settled on Leslie, after my dad. He liked it, and went home with it all over his books. Next day he came in with stickers covering the name I'd given him. His mother had renamed him Leo, because it was more Catholic. Gah. What about Pope Leslie?

This never happens to other bastard teachers. Sean even named a kid Bowie and it stuck. Bowie! Which, to be fair though, is unspeakably awesome. 

Post

I've been receiving enquiries, complaints and death threats regarding my bloglessness, so I thought I should post something to placate my baying hoardes of readers. All four of you. Hi!

The new kindergarten kids have settled down pretty well. I'm mainly teaching the kids that were here last year, but I still get to see the others. There are plenty of characters, but clearly owing to the unavoidable sentimentality I harbour for my babies from last year, it's just not the same. Teaching is still fun though. There's another open day at the end of May (see the beginning of November 2008) so I'm practising for that. I was lucky in that I'm teaching the two most advanced classes - for one class we're learning about the seven wonders of the ancient world, meaning I'm drilling into them basic classical history and Greek mythology and having them remember several historical dates along with names and concepts like Mausoleum of Maussollus at Halicarnassus, Antipater of Sidon, King Nebuchadnezzar II, Herostratic fame and incestuous monarchism, though I may leave that last one out. And they're coping fine! And they're speaking a second language! And they're six! All this when my co-workers are struggling with "this is a square. What colour is the square? Is it a big square?" Ha!

At the same time though, I'm counting the working days till the end of my contract (37!). For reasons I won't go into (for now) on a public webblog, working for YBM ECC has its drawbacks, major drawbacks. Now I've concluded that, because I like living in Korea, it's easy, good money and fun, and also as I have nothing much better on my plate, I'm staying on in the country for a second year. I'll steer clear of the whole hagwon thing though - I've applied to work in a public school, the grass on whose playing field appears incandescently greener than the mucky sespool (sic)  I find myself wallowing in at present.

I'll try to post again before I leave!