Michaelteacher in Seoul

OK

2009-12-07T19:20:00.002+09:00

I'm nearly at the end of a character-destroyingly unpleasant period of my life. Since I finished at ECC at the end of June, I've been adrift in a sea of desolate unemployment. Scoot back to July: I had intended to return to Seoul with the SMOE, working in a public school, and it was all going smoothly. I'd gone home in good spirits (despite that taxing Vietnam holiday) expecting to enjoy six weeks in blighty, meeting friends across the country, eating all the food I missed, train travelling over Europe, pubs, etc etc.

All I had to do when I got home was prep my documents, which shouldn't have been a problem. Got everything I thought I needed and sent it off, but an email soon arrived - apparently I needed not only a letter from my previous employer, as in my manager at ECC, but one from my previous employer in the UK as well. I asked my old boss to provide me with one, then it was time for the trans-Europa express. I returned home two weeks later and still there was no letter. It took further badgering but eventually I was able to pick it up and send it off to Korea. I sent it Monday, it arrived Thursday. The following Monday there was an email in my inbox informing me that all the places were full and I wasn't going to Korea. I'd taken too long - or someone had. On Wednesday I got some even more devastating news, but that sorted itself out eventually.

So there I was. All my stuff - my suit, my shoes, all my winter clothes, my PS3, my orange folding bike - they were still in Korea. And I was stranded. It was the same for the guys I worked with, and so followed the aforementioned void of brain-clawingly frustrating workless existence.

Turns out it's a damn sight more difficult to get a job in Korea this year than it was in 2008. I must have registered with forty recruitment agencies and applied for scores of jobs - and the response was alarming. Ninety five percent of the jobs I applied for went nowhere, there was no reply, positive or negative. The rare occasions that I did hear back, there might have been a phone interview arranged for early in the morning so I'd get up, wait around, and.. nothing would happen. A couple of times I did get to speak to someone, but there was no follow-up. Then, at the end of October I had an email from one of the jobs I applied for a couple of weeks previously.

It was an English guy who was going to be opening a school in Incheon in January. He said he'd like to talk to me. We arranged a phone interview for 8am. I woke up nice and early and waited patiently. By 10.40 I'd run out of patience and went for a shower - it was almost 7pm in Korea. I did take my phone in the bathroom though. Just in case. I'd just got wet when it rang.

Turns out I got the job.

Still, I had another six weeks to wait and filling time was challenging. I watched most of the West Wing, then all of Battlestar Galactica and Band of Brothers. I started Mad Men. On one day, I watched ten movies, back to back. I've watched around 115 episodes of Urusei Yatsura. I started writing. I memorised all the capital cities in the world, and all the US state capitals. I became amazing at Kakuro, Sudoku and crosswords. I reached a personal record of 208 football keepy-ups. I bought known time-sapping computer games like Football Manager and Civilization. I went on morning cycle rides. I'm getting close to visiting every article on the list of unusual wikipedia pages. I took my elderly dog on inadvisedly circuitous walks. I read the novelisation of 24. And many more things I'd rather not revisit.

I start next week. I'm going to be a PE and art teacher.

Imagine that.

Since I'll be in Incheon, this blog will be inaccurately titled. If I do continue blogging I'll do it on another piece of blog. And it'll be miles different to this one.

Finished teaching, but

2009-07-04T23:08:00.005+09:00

My last day at ECC was Monday. You know that. I've since had a couple of days off in Seoul before travelling to Vietnam. Right now I'm in Da Nang in a pretty nice hotel with a private beach, in-pool bar and resident Filippino pop stars.

Since I finished I've been unable to shake off the teaching shackles. Perhaps I just exude peadagogy. First, on Wednesday I had a good long chat with my coworker's Korean girlfriend and talk got to the improvement of her (already pretty conversationally flawless) English. Then, in Hanoi, I was sitting on a bench in a park having just finished my book when a couple of Vietnamese girls came up and announced that they were learning English. Apparently it's a hobby of theirs to approach westerners in parks with questions about English. I had 4 hours to kill before my bus of hell departed - I was happy to be Michael teacher again.

Then, that evening upon finally boarding the aforementioned bus, I was at it again. I was the last to board and there was only one seat left. I was sat next to a German girl, who, being ein Deutscher you'd correctly assume could speak English almost fluently, but she insisted on my acting as corrector. Then we tried speaking German and it was just embarrassing. Then, as the night turned into morning the aircon stopped working and everybody got very irate.

Anyway, Filippinos are serenading me, away I go.

Vietnam

2009-07-02T22:18:00.003+09:00

On Thursday evening I wrote a long and boring complaint about the nation of Vietnam for your enjoyment. I'm currently in 'Nam and it's not that great for various reasons as partially laid out in said blog. I have however chosen to delete it as all it was was maniacal rambling from a very frustrated man. Since I wrote it I've had a 24 hour bus journey. Things have been put into perspective. It's not been a great holiday so far, but it can only improve. Hey!

Besides, what's this got to do with teaching in Korea?

It's over it's over it's over it's over

2009-06-30T17:23:00.006+09:00

This could be the penultimate post on this thing. Depends what I feel like.

Said goodbye to the kids yesterday. Nearly killed me.

Then there was a party, with beer, Jaegermeister, cigars and free champagne provided by the phenomenal staff at Metropolis bar. Nearly killed me.

Then, I was nearly killed. By a psychopathic cleaning lady. Here's what happened: I (used to) live on the third floor and not once did I get the lift up those two flights of stairs (I would talk at length about the elevatorial habits of people here but I'll keep it short (as I'm in parentheses). It's customary in Korea to use the lift to go up or even down a single floor regardless of age or physical prowess. Westerners too. These people are just lazy in my opinion.) Anyway, this afternoon I tried to ascend the stairs but my path was blocked by an ajuma, a cleaning wench. She was scrubbing a stair. I'd already reached the second floor and she was between me and my apartment. I made to climb over the step she was working on and she freaked out, just flipped. She threw her sponge at me and I almost fell. We exchanged angry mutually incomprended words for a bit until security came and I relented. I used the motherfucking elevator.

Not wanting to end on a downer, here's a video. This is the first time I've used windows movie maker, probably shows. Anyway, enjoy.

Vagina

2009-06-27T13:45:00.009+09:00

I'm a fan of kimbaps, rice and stuff rolled up in a seaweed sheet: this has already been established. My favourite variety is tuna, or in Korean, 'chamchi'. Written down it looks like this: 참치. The Korean symbol for the phoneme 'ch', you can probably work out, is the one that resembles the pi symbol with a hat on. The Korean symbol for the sound 'j' is the same but without the hat, and obviously 'ch' and 'j' have a similar phonetical resonance.

Now. I talk to my kids about food all the time, so kimbaps are frequently discussed. And to my incomprehesion, a couple of times my response to the question 'what's your favourite kimbap?' has elicited giggling. What? Tuna? What's funny about tuna? Then one kid was kind enough to spell it out to me: the Korean slang word 'jamji' means... that's right, vagina. Yes, I've unwittingly confessed to eight year olds that I enjoy eating vaginas.

One class went sick on it. Really sick. I walked into class one day to find this on the board:

The on the second picture you can also see 'jjijji', translatable into English as 'boobies'. I think those are meant to be nipples.

I'll be home in ten days. Ooh.

Metropolis

2009-06-26T02:08:00.003+09:00

A couple of months ago, we found the perfect bar. After months of searching, months of endless Hite and Cass on tap, months of enduring fireshows and dicks on both sides of the bar, months of bartenders unable to understand you due both to language barriers and painfully loud, awful music, months of vain attempts to watch live sport - essentially months of inadequate drinking, we discovered a gem. It's in Nowon - a five minute bike ride away - serves real beer, has darts, foosball, quiz machine, big screens, sensibly-volumed music (that patrons can request), live sport, toilets, everything.

When we made our first few trips there the owner was manning the fort by himself, and we were his main customers. He speaks perfect English, and we got ingratiated quickly, helped by the continuous flow of won we were thrusting at him. I like to think our business helped to keep him afloat in those first few weeks. Right now, as the place is thriving, I like to think we're putting his kids through college. As of today they're employing five guys and a part-time girl. In no small part down to us I'd conjecture.

Last month we watched the FA cup final there, for which I was a temporary Everton fan. Sean provided a Toffees shirt which I happily wore, over my Leeds shirt of course. It's OK so long as it doesn't touch my skin.

I plan to enjoy my good riddance to ECC party in there this Monday evening. Champagne'll be involved and the Alley Kats will flow like wine.

I'd like to add: I've been there this evening, so if you feel this blog is written particularly poorly, attribute it to that. It's fine though: unlike some craggy idiots I don't do this sort of thing on a school night - tomorrow I don't start until 2pm.

As it happens, eleven classes to go... that's it.

Saying goodbye

2009-06-25T22:09:00.004+09:00

At time this job has been damn near untenable. The way the school is run coupled with some indescribably asinine co-workers has driven me on a daily basis to at least a slight deviation from the usual blithe equilibrium I maintain. At worst I've been moderately indignated. Hey, I don't get that angry. The kids, however, have made this year worth doing. Except when they punch me in the balls, then I do get pretty shouty. Some have a bigger place in my heart than others, but I'll miss them all.

Every day I teach a class of geniuses, genuine future world leaders. They're batshit crazy, but they're brilliant. This is a video of Sunny saying goodbye to me today.

Sweet, sweet, unobtainable western food

2009-06-13T10:14:00.009+09:00

Korean food is good. I like a regular daeji galbi, kimbaps are healthy fastfood options, hell, I've even discovered that over the course of the year I've developed a taste for kimchi. Fifty weeks ago even the smell made me queasy; now, in moderation, I find it delicious. Oh yeah, and that's right: fifty weeks down. Two more to go.

But today I'm talking food. Sweet, sweet, unobtainable western food. There's a Kurt Vonnegut short story about three POWs working on clearing rubble in a bombed German city who discuss nothing but what they're going to eat as soon as they get home - they have notebooks filled with recipes and sketches and lists of their favourite meals. This is me in Korea. Here's my list, as I dream of the impending two months of gluttony.

1. Roast dinner. Meat unspecified, would favour beef joint.

2. Large, crusty, fresh baguette filled with bacon, real cheese and HP sauce.

3. A shepherds pie.

4. Lasagne/Spag bol.

5. A cassarole replete with big chunks of beef, carrots, potatoes, and suet dumplings.

6. Another roast dinner.

7. A real English curry. Indian food is gettable here but there's no subsitute for the real thing.

8. Nice, oily tuna, on fresh pasta, with feta cheese, coarse black pepper and lots of vinegar.

9. A ham and Branston's pickle sandwich.

10. My personal culinary pièce de résistance (the one thing I can cook that might actually impress people): hunks of chicken breast topped with goats' cheese and basil, wrapped in prosciutto ham and lightly browned in the oven. With CHIPS.

Take note, mother!!

Thankyou, honest and law-abiding citizens of Seoul

2009-05-25T16:53:00.002+09:00

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

2009-05-15T18:16:00.004+09:00

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

2009-05-13T08:51:00.004+09:00

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

2009-05-08T18:28:00.005+09:00

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!

Academies, sandwiches, wine, The Sandwich and Wine Academy

2009-03-29T21:43:00.003+09:00

A few months ago I listed a few things I miss from home. Two more you could add to that: sandwiches and wine. Aside from Little Jakob's, which I've really gone off, sandwiches are scarce. They're sold here and there, but they taste weird, really weird. Wet, and regardless of their purported content, fishy. Making your own is fraught with hindrances too, given the lack of real bread in this country, as well as the fact that cheese is either processed or exorbitantly priced. Bread is the major concern though. No bread no sandwiches, and sandwiches, as everybody knows, are the best food in the world.

Wine. Wine, like cheese, is way overpriced - consider that you can get enough soju to send you to hospital for under a tenner, wine doesn't have much a market here. I had my first bottle a couple of weeks ago. The cheapest bottle in the supermarket was six quid and it was a struggle to get through it. Nasty.

Academies. Academies or hagwons are where parents send their offspring when school isn't happening. That means any time from 3pm or so til well, dawn. Well, maybe not, but on weeknights there are buses outside my window at 1am picking up middle/high school kids. There's probably stuff going on til later. Academies cater for any subject you can think of. Around here there are billions of English academies but my kids have told me about their various other extracurricular work, ranging from the normal: maths, science, Korean, to the artistic: piano, guitar, painting, to the leftfield: robots, DJing, lego. That's right. Lego. It's just down the street.

So, considering all this, imagine my intrigue when last November travelling in the schoolbus on a field trip I saw a neon sign flash by for.. wait for it.. a Sandwich and Wine Academy. I've spent the last five months searching for it. I was convinced I'd dreamt it. Then, last week as I was coming home on my bike, I spotted it. Sadly though it wasn't a hagwon, it was just a restaurant. But hey, potentially the greatest restaurant ever!

Today Chris and I biked down to Hyewha and had a sandwich and a glass of red wine and it was lovely. Real bread, real wine, and some bacon. Cheap too. Fantastic.

I'm cycled somewhere in the vicinity of 80km this weekend. I'm insane. I'm also exhausted. Bed.

Snow

2009-03-24T17:34:00.004+09:00

Following my assertion last Thursday that summer had arrived in Seoul, I should've known that meteorology would have taken note and gone out of its way to prove me wrong. Saturday was beautiful, 20+ degrees - I biked to a teacher training course in Jongno in just a t-shirt - and Sunday was passable. As I'm typing though, Tuesday evening, 5.30, it's fucking snowing. Snowing!

Stupid country.

Exercise

2009-03-19T19:25:00.004+09:00

The only exercise I got in my first seven months here was walking up and down the copious steps all over the place and occasionally jumping around like an idiot trying to entertain 5 year olds. My diet was such that I didn't become all fat and that, but I wasn't feeling particularly great.

That's starting to change. I started going on long exploratory walks when the weather was clement. Then I noticed the big chunk of mountain right next to where I live and discovered hiking. Last weekend I bought a bike, and Seoul got a bit smaller. Tonight I'm going to cycle the few miles to Hyehwa and back. Granted we're going there for a curry, but still, I'm exercising! Plus I'll save a few thousand won in taxi fare.

Summer appears to be back, too - just as it happened in the autumn, the weather changed overnight. We went from freezing - it was insanely cold at the weekend - to 20 degrees this week. I went to work in just a shirt today. This is welcome news after the bleakest winter ever. Very welcome.

Institutionalised Alcoholism

2009-03-08T21:11:00.010+09:00

I saw in the English expat magazine recently an advert for a teacher recruitment website. It listed the features and benefits they offered, and showed a picture of a large group of westerners who may or may not have been recruited through the site, in a bar, downing shots.

Now, in my opinion that's a bit wrong. You wouldn't advertise any other job with a picture of your current employees getting trashed. It's not professional. It's certainly true, though, that a lot of teachers view their year in Korea as a paid jolly, seeing nothing wrong in spending unconscionable amounts of time and money on hedonistic pursuits.

Now, like most people, I enjoy a few drinks - but not during the week, at least not excessively. I know of teachers who've rolled in in the morning, unshowered, wearing clothes from the night before, having had little or no sleep, smelling of soju. I can't fathom how this can be done: teaching dozens of screaming under sixes with a hangover? No thanks. I've done it before, in previous jobs, jobs where I can sit behind a checkout or answer phones for eight hours, jobs where I don't have to use my brain, but not when I'm working with kids - it's not fair to them, or to their parents who've paid hundreds of thousands of won to send their kids to our hagwon.

And it reflects badly on other teachers. And I had to get that off my chest.

Last Video

2009-03-03T23:05:00.004+09:00

A video that shows why Jasmine's so adorable.

I have no idea why she's laughing.

Goodbye Cambridge 1

2009-03-03T18:47:00.009+09:00

Having been given our new, savagely mangled and extended schedule for the next four months, lectured on how our school is going to shit and it's nobody's fault but ours, and braced ourselves for the mess that will be the first day of the new school year tomorrow, we, we being all the teachers, both Korean and foreign, are feeling a bit deflated. One Korean teacher even quit. With immediate effect. (That means more sub classes for the rest of us. Mmmmmmmm.)

More on that though once it's up and running, or at least up and floundering. Now is a time for reflection on the last eight months. My sadly disbanded homeroom class, Cambridge 1, have all been sent off to elementary school. Most, as I said, are coming back for afternoon classes as of tomorrow, but I won't get to teach them. Bastard Chris teacher will, and he's not displaying the relevant emotions, namely those akin to finding an oasis in a desert of piss: relief and tempered joy.

When I first arrived here I wasn't their biggest fans. They were loud and uncontrollable, they spoke far too much Korean, and they didn't seem to take to me either. Gradually, though, as we progressed through the neverendingly repetitive Wake Up series of English books, preceded by a daily phonics lesson, I fell in love with them. Here's a tribute.

Eunice

Eunice, loud, bossy, uncompromising, was the early leader of the class as far as I could see. She had been placed, wrongly, in the more advanced MIT class but moved down to Cambridge when she couldn't cope. At first I thought she was a bit bored with the work, but as time progressed realised she was just lazy, and a lot of her potential wasn't reached because she failed to put in anywhere near enough effort. Her tests may have needed improvement, but when she wrote 'I love you teacher' on every page, how can you hate her? While her spelling and writing remained on a low improvement arc, her speaking ability, already pretty good, was getting ever better, and...

Most memorable moment: When I found out we were going to perform a play for graduation, there was only one lead. Eunice, as the mean Princess Miserella, a role that could've been written for her, was awesome. It's a shame she's quit ECC outright now, she'll never be back.

Nathan

Nathan was quiet and a bit dim last summer; now, he's a bit less dim and a bit more of a troublemaker. He's a troublemaker in that he actively looks to start fights with anyone close to him - it's not a mischievous thing, I think he likes causing controversy. It started to become a real problem around the beginning of the year, and I really began to dislike the kid. To give him credit though, after some repetitive but stern words from me and the manager he sorted it out. Plus I've never seen anybody so happy to receive a Christmas present - as you can see from the picture, it was a god damn triangle.

Most memorable moment: Trying to work out the answer to 8 plus 5. The video to which is here.

Eric

Eric was the smartest kid in the class and he undoubtedly needed to be learning at a higher level, but did he ever know it. Often suffering from big fish in a small pond syndrome, (if that's a thing, it might be) he was regularly dismissive of his classmates' abilities while striving to show his own relative superior knowledge at every given opportunity, which meant everyone else ended up resenting and ostracising him. It was only through the resurgence of another student (see below) that he ended up showing more humility and, later, having more fun. Still, an excellent student to have in the class for obvious reasons, also on Valentines' day he gave me some soap. And I mean good soap.

Most memorable moment: Setting me Korean homework off his own back, then giving me a sticker when I got eveything right.

Paulie

Paulie began life under my tenure as a rowdy, sulky, spoilt bitch. He's good friends with Jack and together they wrought havoc on my early lessons. Paulie was the brains of the operation, if not in his grades, his ability to sense an opportunity to create mischief was inspired. Even his name - initially just Paul but suffixed with an -ie in line with his Korean surname, Lee, to differentiate from the Paul in Cambridge 2 - conjures up images of Italian American gangsters. Paulie's misbehaviour, though, was refined. He was able to mastermind great crimes, such as calling the teacher 'poo poo gas' or stealing Nathan's eraser, with sincere affection. Paulie was probably the second most affectionate student in the class, playful and constantly declarative of his love for his students and teachers. He endeared himself to me equally with his affection and his already well developed sense of cunning. He's damn photogenic too.

Most memorable moment: When, through his silver tongue and powers of persuasion, he managed to take 70% of all the big, famous 'soccer player stickers' I had sent from England from other kids throughout the kindergarten.

Jack

The other half of the Paulie and Jack crime duo, Jack was less affectionate and more thuggish, the brawn to Paulie's brains, but still, he had his moments. After my last lesson, totally out of character, I received a crumpled piece of A4 paper, upon which was scrawled: To Michael Teacher. I like you. So, I like you. From Jack. Jack's feelings are usually kept under wraps, so this was a nice surprise. He was sporadic in his classwork: at times he really couldn't be bothered, at others he'd come from nowhere to win the spelling game (where points are awarded for letters) with words like "fishbowls" or "playgrounds." His final exam marks weren't the best, though, so I hope he can cope with the step up to elementary school. He's there with Paulie, so he will at least have a partner in crime.

Most memorable moment: Bit of a crude one, but memorable. One day in October he shat himself. He carried himself quite well afterwards.

Heather

Heather left ECC just before Christmas to go to America, though she came back for the graduation last weekend. Heather was a great student: smart, loveable, friendly, but quiet and hardworking. Around November, Heather was involved in a bit of a love triangle, or possibly square or pentagon. Paulie and Jack were both became a bit besotted with her. Eric had always been friends with her as she'd been one of the smarter ones in the group and Eric could relate, but those nascent kindergarten feelings of love both seemed to hit Paulie and Jack at once, and soon they were falling over themselves to offer her erasers, pencils, their hand in marriage. Eric, the fouth corner of the square, then became a bit jealous and turned his envy towards the two boys in the forms of intellectual superiority. Paulie and Jack responded with primal insults and it got a bit dirty. The pentagon... or even pyramid, I suppose, is formed by Jasmine, who at some point declared her love for everybody. Strangely, though, when Heather left, everybody stated coldly that she meant nothing to them and they hated her. Still, there were emotional hugs all round when she came back at graduation. Fickle kids.

Most memorable moment: Paulie and Jack devoting themselves to her on her last day, Heather blithely lapping up the attention.

Sarah

Sarah, I think it's fair to say was the weakest student in the class. Over the course of the eight months I taught her, there were only minimal improvements in speaking, reading and writing, whereas everybody else made middling to astounding gains. In spite of this, though, in our open lesson, where the parents came to watch me teach them about a subject we'd practiced for a month and the point was to memorise and enunciate clearly your section of the lesson script in the right order, she was exemplary. Despite underwhelming in rehearsals, she did brilliantly in the class play too. She tried hard most of the time, but you could tell things went over her head a lot of the time, and with kids like Eric in the class, I couldn't help her as much as she needed without disadvantaging the others. I'll miss her though, especially since she inexplicably quit with one week of lessons to go, and I wasn't able to say goodbye.

Most memorable moment: Revelling in rare praise after on open day I singled her out as the star performer, and showered her with stickers and candy.

Jasmine

So we come to the gem of a student that every teacher dreams of: Jasmine is very clever, funny, interesting, adorable, well behaved and affectionate to the point of stalkerish. She's unique and I will unabashedly admit that she's my favourite student by a mile. When I arrived at ECC in July, she was very quiet and spent most of the lessons in a world of her own or half asleep, her head on the desk, not participating in the lesson. This lethargy and apparent slow-wittedness (as mentioned on here before, she was once stabbed in the face with a pencil and didn't flinch) led the foreign teachers to facetiously speculate that she was perpetually high. After the first couple of months, though, she started to come out of her shell. I started teaching them phonics and Jasmine was suddenly putting her hand up in class. Her spelling improved no end. She'd come out with priceless one-liners or tangential anecdotes about her dreams, or tangerines. She told everybody on a ten-minutely basis how much she loved them, swooning all the while. When Heather left in December she stepped up and assumed the position of dominant female and set about catching up Eric. By the time of the final exams, she was top of the Cambridge class academically, even beating half the students in the class that had been learning English for two years. I still say that Eric's the smarter kid, but grades-wise Jas was just pipping him.

Most memorable moment: So many, but number one was when she came in one day and told me about her boyfriend from tae kwon do class. "He kissed me... on the lips!" (giggle) (swoon) "And then here.. and here.. and all over. Mmmmm." Bear in mind she was born in 2002. Don't be alarmed though, I'm pretty sure that's all that's happened. She's referred to Paulie as her boyfriend since, and as mentioned above, declared love for everybody, including me. She lists her dream occupation as mother. She's going to break some hearts, that one.

Bye, you adorable little bastards!

Cheating

2009-02-27T20:28:00.003+09:00

In one of the classes I teach, or technically, used to teach, we did a book that had the answers printed in the back. These two pictures show what was always inevitable...

Graduation

2009-02-22T12:35:00.004+09:00

It's the end of the school year right now, so the 7 year old kids will be leaving us and starting school from March. This means they graduate. Graduate from kindergarten. It is pretty weird to see kids who in real ages are only six wearing mortarboards and gowns - they do appear much older than usual, as I associate the image of the graduate with somebody in their twenties.

Aside from that it wasn't as odd as my own university graduation. We've been practising for the last month a play that the kids performed for their parents before they received their diplomas. My homeroom Cambridge class did a piece of drama called Sleeping Ugly, a bastardisation of Sleeping Beauty where the princess is a bitch and the prince falls for the 'not so beautiful' normal girl. I chose the play for the sole reason of casting Eunice in the mean princess role, and she was awesome, she blew them away. She has a future on the stage that one. Despite the rehearsals being at times chaotic the play went down OK. Eunice even slipped over at the start but recovered remarkably well. Plus, though I only saw the one play the general consensus is that they did better than the other class of seven year old students, so in your face Cambridge 2!

So, they graduated last Saturday and we've had the last week of study. The majority, though, will be coming back for afternoon classes in March. Of the graduation kids I've been teaching my guys in Cambridge 1 fifteen times a week, and the other classes either daily or thrice weekly so yeah, I'm going to miss them, a lot. Tributes and endless albums of photos to come...

My guys receive their diplomas... so proud

Sarah, on the left, decided to quit ECC after graduation... with one week left.

Sarah again

Left to right: Jack and Paulie (Fairies), Eunice (Princess Misarella), Eric (the Handsome Prince), Jasmine (Jane), Sarah and Nathan (Narrators)

Jasmine, playing herself, becomes friends with the prince

Dylan the goat from Cambridge 2 class

Noah the goat, was however the cutest thing I've ever seen

Lunar New Year

2009-01-26T21:19:00.002+09:00

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

2009-01-11T23:46:00.005+09:00

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

2009-01-09T19:22:00.007+09:00

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

2009-01-03T22:48:00.007+09:00

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.

Korean Television

2008-12-22T22:24:00.007+09:00

Two posts tonight. I'm in a blog mood.

I have cable TV: 86 channels of movies, sports, other stuff and game shows. Lots of game shows. Actually, about 78 of the 86 channels air game shows.

I think they're game shows. Really, who knows?

Here's a snapshot of what's on on a weeknight . I really have no idea what I'm watching for the most part. If anyone reading this wants to point out any glaring inaccuracies, please feel free.

Channel 3 - Korean tourists in Japan, looks a bit like Wish You Were Here. They're looking at koi carp and posing for photographs with a bronze bust of man near a ship. Just what I plan to do next week.

Channel 7 - Shopping channel. Disappointly they're only flogging rice cookers tonight. Last week they were promoting something you eat that causes some kind of biblical enema, at least that what I gathered from the computer simulation of someone's intestines.

Channel 8 - Soap opera. These are always worth a watch for the often bafflingly amusing scenes that crop up. Currently there's an old dude staring dejectedly at a pharmacy. Not so good tonight.

Channel 10 - Ajuma Idol (?)

Channel 14 - Game show...? A woman appears to be making herself cry for the entertainment of a studio audience. What? To achieve this she's twisting the hairs on her temples? OK, now she's snapping chopsticks with her buttocks and picking up a fat man like a baby. I'm flicking channels.

Channel 18 - Super Action. Often shows watchable movies. Steven Seagal's Exit Wounds tonight though. Ow.

Channel 19 - What? Piers Morgan! Euugh, that was unexpected. It appears to be the Royal Variety Show. How odd. Off.

Channel 25 - Discovery Channel. Wait, it gets worse. Bear Fucking Grylls. I don't want to get started on him. He deserves his own post. His own blog.

Channels 34-37 are sports. One is showing a collection of own goals from English football from the last thirty years, another has international billiards. This stuff's hypnotic.

Channel 38 - Game show (?). This show appears to be on every day. All day every day. On multiple channels. It consists of perhaps five main guys, one of whom has peroxide blonde hair and is therefore instantly recognisable on this and countless other shows, performing arbitrary tasks. Tonight they're in a field, at night, taking hats, scarves gloves and boots from a box and putting them on. A man resembling a Korean Jesus is photgraphing them. What I can never fathom is how there's never a winner (though there's occasionally a loser). Watching it makes my head hurt because it's so confusing. Oh, now I think they're homeless men. Next.

Channel 42 - Man in a bakery, buying a cake.

Channel 43 - Monk, with a blackboard, doing maths.

Channel 51 - People playing computer games on TV. Like Gamesmaster with Patrick Moore, but a whole channel. Now it's the Sudden Attack master league.

Channel 63 - Golf channel. Golf, 24-7. Predominantly women's golf.

Finally, channel 86. This is a black screen with a white graph on it, labelled Cable TV Analyser, showing the MHz and the dBnV, whatever those are, along with the time, date and various other useless pieces of information. This is more hypnotic than the billiards.

Christmas in Korea

2008-12-22T21:16:00.004+09:00

Just like back home, the buildings of Seoul are illuminated with gaudy plastic and colourful flashing lights. But, well, it's always like that.

Christmas has crept up on me relatively unheraldedly. Nothing happened until December, which makes perfect sense, and since then I've been subjected to a few Christmas songs (but no Wizzard) and some tinsel but that's largely the extent of it. The churches are the only places to put any effort in in terms of decorations. I'm not one to shun the concept of Christmas - though I can see where Ebeneezer's coming from I really enjoy the food and the couple of days off work - it's nice though not have it rammed in your face.

At school however, you'd be forgiven for thinking Christmas had been cancelled. (It literally has been for the teachers: the annual Christmas meal we'd been told about has been shelved.) The place is currently undergoing extensive renovation meaning the thick carpet of dust on everything is the only vaguely festive thing on show. It's festive because it looks like snow. I suppose I wasn't expecting much but when you mention Christmas to the kids they do seem genuinely excited, and it's a shame not to share in their childish mirth. Especially when however many thousands of wons were spent on the Halloween decorations.

There are Christmas activities tomorrow but I've inexplicably been left out of the fun, I'm just teaching normal lessons. To compensate I'm bringing "presents" for my homeroom class and sweets for everyone else. Presents is in inverted commas because they're pretty shit: I just went to Lotte Mart and spent W12000/six quid* on seven stocking fillers. But my children are easily impressed. One of the presents is a set of castanets.

Hmm.

*July exchange rates. I'm not mentally strong enough to check what the pound is worth at the moment.

It started snowing earlier too. I could've experienced my first white Christmas had I not been leaving the country on Christmas eve. Can't envasage much snow falling in Tokyo either. According to the internet it was 17 degrees there today. I'm taking my shorts.

"Teacher, so... do some people love dead people?"

2008-12-14T15:01:00.002+09:00

A question posed to me by Kelvin last week, Kelvin from my smart afternoon class.

My Friday class is currently all about strange creatures - the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, giant squids.. 'Bat Boy' - and last week we'd digressed onto the subject of zombies (or 'jombies'), which led to the electronic dictionaries being taken out. As I was explaining the concept of being undead, Jenny looked up the Korean word for corpse and showed Kelvin. A few seconds later a combination of amusement and horror passed over his face as he scrolled down a couple of entries in the list to the Korean word for, erm, necrophilia. It had a short description and everything.

Now how do you respond to that one? It's uncomfortable enough to explain away a question about sex.. normal, living people sex.. but there's no way to get around cadaver love.

OK. Next page, come on. First one to finish gets twenty stickers. Just don't ask me any more questions.

Not much to report

2008-12-08T22:23:00.002+09:00

A day after last month's payday, I bought a new laptop, a holiday to Japan and a curry. I was consequently constrained by a tight budget which prevented me from doing all that much. Fortunately, I was able procure all five seasons of TV show The Wire, thus satiating my lust for entertainment without the need to leave my apartment. Sixty hours of my my life well spent.
I have been outside though - don't assume I've become a hermit - I've just been more localised. I've discovered chicken hofs. Chicken hofs are great. They sell fried chicken, and they sell beer, that's mostly it. I think. They may sell more, but the menu is all in Korean, and I can read what chicken is because it's the same as English. The one we frequent regularly is the immodestly named Best Chicken Hof, but there's as many, if not more than there are Noraebangs and English schools within a literal stone's throw.

This weekend was cold, very, very cold. Minus figures. This is not unremarkable, nor would it usually be much of an inconvenience: I quite like the cold, in fact my last few holidays have been to Nordic countries, and it's finally cold enough for me to break out my favourite sweater. However when the coldest day of the year coincides with the inexplicable disappearance of running hot water and heating, it gets a bit annoyong. It wasn't just that the water didn't get hot, there was no hot water. When you turned on the hot tap, nothing, literally, came out. Then, after the ouside had warmed up and everything, it came back. If this is going to happen whenever it drops below zero I'm going to have to complain. I mean, tell someone who speaks Korean to complain for me. Still don't have heating.

And it's not only the temperature that's been dropping: so are our numbers at ECC. The kids are dropping like flies, not through illness - not even through overwork which is commendable - just disappearing... to other schools, to concentrate on their elementary school exams, I don't know. The reasons are often unforthcoming and always vague. The kids themselves tell you nothing - they just cease to turn up one day, and after a couple of days of absence you have to go to your Korean partner teacher to enquire as to their whereabouts. Three afternoons a week in November I taught a class of 12 followed by a class of 8. These have now been respectively decimated to 6 and 4. In the first class I lost a lot of good guys, but I can't say I'm in any way concerned about the removal of half the second class. They were shit.

Right now I'm counting the days until the Japan trip, which will finally provide a reason to put some photos up on here. So apologies for all these lines and lines of letters. As it happens I'm meandering along quite nicely. My life is constructed with healthily equal amounts of optimism and pessimism, love and hate. You'll be aware if you know me that I'm very much the misanthrope and there's ample cause for, and opportunity for release of, those sentiments here, but its more than balanced with all the good things. Work isn't that taxing, I still have my grotesquely long lunches which, coupled with the well-structured blocks of between seven and nine 40-minute lessons a day, ensure that the days and the weeks flow with disarming haste. I was asked today what my plans were for next July. My reply was that it's seven months away and yeah, y'know, it'll work out.

But really, I should start weighing stuff up.

Promotion Day

2008-11-23T15:39:00.003+09:00

Yesterday was the school's annual promotion day, and for our manager, the most stressful day of the year. For us, it was just a minor inconvienence that we had to go to work on a Saturday and give a minute-long speech about something to do with the curriculum.

Parents of potential new students were invited to see what ECC is all about, meet the teachers, see the classrooms, learn what books we use and so on, in the hope that they'd open their wallets. The majority of the school's money comes from this day so the manager was keen to make us seem as good as the other schools in the area (because from what I gather, other schools have a better reputation.. damn you to hell, Poly.)

We didn't see many of the potential new kinder recruits, but there were a few there: two boys with boundless energy and a propensity to throw things, a girl barely out of nappies who cried every time a foreigner looked at her, and a pretty odd kid who, while playing in her own little world, balanced a rotating assortment of plastic fruit on her head. The parents, the dads especially, all looked a bit bored, and apparently only a few signed up on the day. So we'll see how that goes.

After promotion day we went to a bar we'd not been to before, only a few minutes' walk away, but pretty well disguised. It's called Hey Hey Hey. I'd seen the sign for ages, but was unaware until recently what it actually was. On the sign there's a picture of seventies cartoon character Fat Albert, as in the one voiced by Bill Cosby, remember? I had to look it up. So, yeah. There's a bar in Seoul named after the catchphrase of a long-forgotten black American morbidly obese cartoon character. Interestingly inside the place there's no further reference to Fat Albert.

Open Lessons, Pepero Day

2008-11-11T12:40:00.009+09:00

For the last month I've been teaching a 'special' lesson alongside my usual textbooks for two of my classes, at a significantly higher level than what the kids are used to, for the purpose of impressing their watching parents. We practiced every day, to the point that everybody became intensely bored with it and yearned for a return to the normal structure. But the parents don't want to see a standard lesson from the standard text book thereby giving an accurate representation of how their child is performing in school. No. They insist that we place them in battery cages and drill into their mushy heads twice a day the same regurgitated lesson for four long stultifying weeks.

Whatever. With my homeroom Cambridge 1 class we did the polar regions. I had them memorise how to spell Antarctica, where penguins live and who the first man to reach the north pole was, that sort of thing. We did the lesson last Thursday and it was a success, I think. No kids have quit yet, and I've been told that in the past, as a result of a substandard open lesson, they have.

Today I taught the prodigies in Harvard class the history of chocolate. They did quite well, considering they had to memorise and incorporate into sentences words like civilisation, conquistador, Xocolatl and Tenochtitlan (they're six). Jenny actually nailed 'Tenochtitlan' but came unstuck on the word 'milk'...

It was also unintentionally prescient of me to choose the history of chocolate as my open lesson, as today in Korea, it is Pepero Day. Although alliteratively connected, Peperos have nothing to do with poppies, and the celebrations are about as far removed from two minute silences as you're going to get. Peperos are biscuit sticks coated in chocolate, made by the Lotte conglomeration, given to "the special person in your life" on this day every year. Lotte thought up this celebratory day a few years ago, plumping for this date as written numerically it's 11/11, which, obviously, resembles four peperos. They're pretty basic to be honest, with little in the way of taste, but the kids can't get enough. And I, being their beloved teacher, have been showered with them. This flash video will explain nothing but click it anyway for further proof that Asia is just insane.

Remember: Dulce et decorum est... Pepero...

Hallowe'en

2008-10-31T19:30:00.000+09:00

Today's Hallowe'en, in case you were unaware. Hallowe'en isn't generally 'celebrated' in Korea, but owing to the North American hegemony in the ESL business, it's become common practice in schools. I dressed up for the 31st of October at uni, most memorably as a vagrant (those were dark times) but never before or since, and was feeling decidedly phlegmatic about the whole occasion. I actually bought my costume, if you can call it that, at the stationery shop in the basement of my apartment building. I was a robot. I had a tinfoil-covered kettle box as a head, wristlets on my forearms, a miner-style headlamp attached to my chin and, dressed in black, I was covered from head to toe in silver stickers.

The stickers proved to be a mistake, as I was constantly surrounded by scavenging children.

Didn't have classes in the morning - instead we made containers to put sweets in, and spider themed cookies. These cookies involved two crackers housing a lump of peanut butter, into which were pressed six bifurcated Peperos, and Skittles for eyes. Peperos will be discussed later, probably on Pepero day. Only one student (Eric, see below) commented that spiders have eight legs, not six. We were short on Peperos.

Then we went trick or treating. Three parents volunteered to open their apartments to and provide bags of sweets for thirty kids (and their teachers), which is commendable. We went to the apartment of the best student from my homeroom 'Cambridge 1' class (Eric, see above) and I was able to see why he's the best student. The living room had a bookshelf filled, floor to ceiling, with ESL textbooks, kids' storybooks, Korean 'WHY?' books: they even had stairs to enable the kids to reach the top shelves. There were the English "useful expressions" we give out pinned to the wall, an extensive magazine rack full of more ESL goodies, and numerous maps on the wall, alongside photographs of exciting and educational days out. I'd describe it as a genius farm. Those kids cannot fail to become whatever they want to be.

Or so I thought. We taught classes in the afternoon, and Eric's 10 year old brother had to give a speech about eagles to his and two other classes, along with numerous teachers. He was the penultimate guy to go and bottled it a bit. I still have high hopes for Eric though, who's so far ahead of the rest of the class it's embarrassing.

Photos were taken, and may find their way on here at some point. Now I have to go out on the town. I have no costume, but I'm considering utilising the surplus silver stickers to create a glam jacket. Considering. I probably won't.

Some things that I do miss from home, and Seoul Land... again

2008-10-19T23:11:00.008+09:00

Intending to follow on from my last post, I sat here for ten minutes trying to think of nine things I miss about home, and all I could muster was my dog, a greater variety of beer and the ready availability of sparkling water. Oh, and my family and friends, I suppose.

Three things I've experienced in the last week, quiz nights (we came third!), a curry and pro evo, would've made the list but I've been satiated. If I think of more, I'll just edit this post.

Thursday was curry and quiz night night in Itaewon, made possible only by the fact that instead of school we took the kindergarteners down to Seoul Land during the day. For more on Seoul Land look back to my post about it in mid-September. While looking after fifty kids meant we couldn't go on any of the big rides, I did get to on the baby-coaster. A guy called Alex wouldn't let go of my hand, so I was dragged on to keep him company. He buried his head in his lap and didn't release his white-knuckled hands from my forearm until I'd assured him that it was over. Cute. It was quite fun watching their faces light up with unrestrainable squealing glee (Harry), but the constant queuing got a bit dull. There were ten times more people there on Thursday than when we went in early September - on a Saturday. Since they were pretty exclusively schoolkids, of all ages, we concluded it was a Seoul-wide-end-of-season-let's-go-to-Seoul-Land-thing. It was still really warm though, as I found out at the end of the day when we took the kids on this huge white rubber hill-like arrangement. I ran around with the kids for half an hour and had literally the most fun I've ever had ever. Ever.

The two boys in the front here, Harry and Noah, look like they're having fun. Nathan (maths video Nathan) in the back car looks terrified. I just thought of another thing I miss a bit. Cheese. I'd love some cheese.

Nine things I don't miss

2008-10-10T19:34:00.003+09:00

Following on from the last post, Hair, here's a list (off the top of my head before I go out this Friday evening) of things I've not missed since leaving the Vaterland. There may be a corresponding list to follow.

1. The aforementioned hairdressers

2. Public transport. You can cross Seoul for a few thousand won, and generally subway journeys are less than a pound. The base rate for taxis is W1900, about £1, which makes it practically cheaper than walking. Plus buses, despite the fact that the drivers accelerate and brake at such intense velocities that I've lost all sense of balance a few times, are every couple of minutes, clean and quick, and all night too.

3. Weather. Self explanatory. I still get home every night and sit in my pants with the AC on. I understand my parents have had the central heating on since July 15th.

4. 1471. It hadn't occurred to me until a friend happened to mention it, circumstances forgotten, but he was right. I don't miss it. Um. Next one.

5. The general pacificy of life here, even on a weekend night is really nice. Even in Woodbridge, my hometown, walking home from the pub on a Friday night was a dice with death. Or at least a dice with a drunk chav pushing you uncoordinatedly in the shoulder. In Seoul, you could walk home at 2am from one side of the city to the other wearing a Korea is Gay thirt and you'd be fine. Probably:
I'm yet to test this.

5. Saturday night TV. No idea what's going on on Saturday night TV here, but at least John Barrowman's nowhere to be seen.

6. British football pundits. Though a year without Lawro was always going to be tough, I'm enjoying the lack of Gray, Pleat, Townsend, Shearer, that BBC woman and Garth fucking Crooks. Here commentary consists mainly of shouting whenever a team gets in the penalty area, which is fine by me.

7. In pubs, you don't have to wait at bars, you sit down and press a button to call the beer providing Korean person. When they arrive with your beverage, they also lavish you with complimentary crisps and, maybe, nuts, because it's bad form to drink without edible accompaniment. Friday night at the King's Head is a distant memory.

8. Living with my parents. Not that I don't miss my parents, I just don't miss living with them.

9. Microsoft Excel.

Hair

2008-10-07T21:26:00.003+09:00

I used to hate having my hair cut. Back home, I went as rarely as possible: it was overpriced, I had to sit and look at myself for half an hour, and I generally didn't get it how I wanted it. Also, the main drawback, I had to talk to a hairdresser.

In Korea, while I still have a big mirror placed inescapably in front of me, the fact that it's half the price of in Ipswich is a bonus, but having my own personal stylist who always makes my hair look good and doesn't speak a word of English means I'm now having my locks trimmed every four weeks. Included in the W14000 (£7) price are not one but two hairwashes, the second incorporating a ridiculously relaxing head massage. The head massage makes me consider going more frequently.

Talking of follicles, just before the trip to Juno Hair I shaved my four-week beard. I'd grown quite attached to it, as I tend to with facial hair, and was weeping as I hacked it off, though that may have been down to the blunt razor I used. My kids were unsettlingly obsessed with it, and demanded that they feel it on a regular basis. That was just weird, so it had to go.

100

2008-10-05T23:38:00.005+09:00

I must stop writing blogs while over the limit.

Sober tonight, so as promised, here's my big, happy, superpositive blog entry. Starting from tomorrow I now have two-hour-long lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays, three hours on Mondays and Fridays, and on Wednesdays there are three hours and forty minutes between my morning and afternoon classes. You may feel that such a bloated break in the middle of the day would be a bit annoying, but I'm quite looking forward to it. Why? I live a few minutes away from school so can go home, if I want. Even after I've planned my lessons for the rest of the day, there'll still be time to read a good chunk of my book, or even watch a film. I mean, on Wednesday, I could fit in Lord of the god damn Rings. I can just get so much more stuff done. For somebody that lacks motivation some of the time, a big period of free time in the middle of the day is just what I need. I might even start going to the gym. But don't hold your breath. Anyway. Tomorrow I plan go shopping for a phone.

Yeah, I've been in a foreign country for three months, made friends and not died, without the use of a mobile phone... in 2008. It's like being in 1997 again. To be honest I've quite enjoyed the ability to go dark when I feel like it, but I now feel it's probably time to get connected. Last night I lost everyone in the stampede at the station before the fireworks, and only rendezvoused through sheer luck half an hour later. There were apparently more than an million people in the area, so I had been preparing myself for a night of solitude. I lost people coming out of a club in Itaewon later that night too, and was about to get into a taxi on my own when they showed themselves. A phone, I concluded, would solve any recurrences of these social quandaries. Just have to find a salesperson with a basic grasp of English now.

New girl arrived last week, and has settled in ridiculously well. On her second night here she forewent galbi, choosing to meet us for sojuing and noraebanging (with, unprecedentedly, the school's manager!) and, following a trip to Nowon, proceeded to be the penultimate man standing at 7am the next morning. I know this because I was the last man standing.

..I think.

To finish on an optimistic high, I'll mention how I feel after what is today 100 days since I arrived in Korea (I haven't been counting the days, I just happened to work it out last night when Sean brought something up). This is how I feel: I feel great. I would list all the reasons, but jesus, if you want to know read the rest of the blog. Bye!!

Tonight

2008-10-05T03:50:00.003+09:00

Tonight, we went to see some fireworks. The fireworks were OK, though I was, as I am with all pyrotechnics, struck by the expensive ephemerality of it all. Bang bang bang. Blah.

It was quite pretty though.

Then, as a result of proximity, we went to Itaewon, which was for some reason nastier than usual. It's never the sort of place you'd take your mum after dark, but tonight there was an unhealthy abundance of cocks. A few minutes after arriving we witnessed a fight involving sticks, head stamping and a man repeatedly headbutting a glass facade until it cracked. Everywhere was uncomfortably busy, and busy not only with your usual revellers, but with unending conglomerations of cocks. Also, I ordered a sandwich with no tomato, and they put tomato in it. Cocks.

This post is rather negative. I'll try to balance out the next one with some ridiculously fun stuff, with which my life in Korea is generally more inclined.

Weather report

2008-09-28T18:48:00.006+09:00

Today (despite what it says above) is the first day of October, and summer's still in full swing. It was, according to internet weather sources, 25°C today, and I just walked to the shops in shorts and flip flops. Still, there are signs that winter's on its way.

According to the same source, last Tuesday it was 30°C. The next day, it had dropped ten degrees. Autumn, it seemed, had arrived literally overnight. The first morning of the mysterious dip in temperature was a bit weird: for the first time in three months I was actually a little tiny bit cold. I soon realised, however, that I was merely experiencing what are normal British summertime conditions. Koreans, meanwhile, were wrapping up like a blizzard was coming. While a good number of jumpers, coats and even scarves were dusted off here in Korea, a quick glance at the crowd at the Premier League game on TV on Saturday and not a long sleeve in sight. I checked the temperature in Liverpool and yep, at 21 degrees it was the same as here.

I'd been enjoying the breeze and finally relenting humidity, but the last couple of days have been pretty warm. Winter's supposed to be bitter here - given the fact that the locals are layering up on balmy 21 degree afternoons, seriously, how bad can it be? (Check back here in about six weeks...)

Catch up

2008-09-18T18:39:00.019+09:00

Since my last post was all about Taiwan, here's some other stuff.

Couple of weeks ago we bought Korean Monopoly. They use world cities as opposed to areas of a city. Mayfair is Seoul, and Old Kent Road is Tripoli. Mild fun, despite not knowing what the cards said.
Next day, we went to a theme park. Korean theme parks are identical to theme parks anywhere else, though this one did have a sex education centre. Seoul Land is at the opposite end of the Blue subway line to us, ie, South of Seoul. Since we live close to the second to last stop at the north of the city, we easily found a seat, and spent the 70 or 80 minute ride in relative peace. We saw all it had to offer, and while it was a bit dated, it fulfilled all that was expected of a theme park, with two rollercoasters, a pirate ship (advertised as "Korea's largest Viking with the largest seating capacity among all Viking facilities in Korea", which is just brilliant), a log flume, spookyhouse, various spinny things and assorted sideshows and attractions. We left well and truly exhausted and a little nauseated, a feeling exacerbated by the fact we had to stand up all the way back. Or at least I did.
Last weekend was Chuseok, which is like harvest festival or thanksgiving or whatever. On Friday all the kids came to school wearing traditional Korean Hanboks, which made the place look like the wardrobe department at a school production of Aladdin, or an early nineties shellsuit shop. I can't decide which. Anyway, all the teachers had to wear one too. We borrowed teachers' husbands' stuff. Again, you'll find evidence on facebook... Here are some kids armwrestling, "chicken-fighting," and er, a bit of millinary.
The bottom two are the enigma that is Jasmine and Eric, both from my 'homeroom' class (I teach them twice a day and give them tests and that). Eric is cultivating quite a remarkable five o'clock shadow for a 6 year old, and rightly so, he's incredibly proud of it. He keeps stroking it and smiling to himself. I've had to grow my beard back to put him in his place.

OK That'll do for now. Tomorrow the kindergarten kids have a field trip which means I don't start until 3pm, hence my posting at 2am in the morning.

Taipei: surviving Typhoon Sinlaku

2008-09-18T18:39:00.008+09:00

My excitement in coming to Korea was increased by the prospect of popping across to other parts of Asia while my geographical position was favourable. Luckily other people shared this peripateticism and on Saturday morning four of us jetted out to Taiwan. Lovely, subtropical Taiwan, I thought prior to leaving, with its palm tree-lined streets and average September temperature of 31C. Upon boarding the plane we were informed that we may experience some turbulence on landing owing to the massive typhoon that was battering north-eastern Taiwan. Great.

After a surprisingly smooth landing (our pilot was called Peter Parker, that would be why) we disembarked and saw the Taiwanese palm trees, only they were blown horizontal in force twelve winds as raindrops twice the size of ordinary precipitation battered the windows. Nothing was open on the Saturday afternoon we arrived. The first hotel we arrived at had slightly over the top storm defences covering their glass entrance, and it took a while to find somewhere to eat, at last deciding on something familiar from Korea: Shabu Shabu. I got through three umbrellas in three days, wetter than I've ever been in clothes, and at times, thoroughly pissed off. Got a bit of a cold too, though it could've been worse. Google "Typhoon Sinlaku video". Yeah not far away from the capital, bridges were collapsing, a hotel was floating away and there were quite a few fatalities. Like I say, I'll take the cold.

Tuesday saw the sun come out and it was quite nice, though we were on the bus to the airport just after lunch. Conclusion? I'm not going back. The thing I was most looking forward to was visiting the world's tallest completed building, the Taipei 101. Guess how many floors it has. The observation floor (also the highest anywhere) was on the 89th floor, but the poor visibility made it a let down. The view was not good when we arrived and only deteriorated until it felt like we were in some sort of milk aquarium. A trip in the world's fastest lift was fun though. Eighty-nine floors in 37 seconds. It takes about the same length of time to ascend seven floors in our school building. To end on a positive note, the Taiwanese people are very nice, and interestingly speak better English than the majority of Koreans in the service industry. It was a novelty for me to have a conversation with the waitress or the bar staff!

Something struck me when I returned to my apartment too: it was nice to be home. Yeah, home. This is very much my home now - for the next nine and a half months or so anyway. I feel very comfortable, very at ease in my surroundings. It's good.

Our next holiday will be the very carefully nomenclatured Japan-demonium on Christmas eve. The countdown begins.

Nobody likes a quitter

2008-09-07T23:35:00.005+09:00

Today is Sunday, and we've just been noraebanging for the past couple of hours. Which means lots of soju and shouting along to such classics as Wuthering Heights and Careless Whisper. Have to teach in the morning. Ow.

A week last Tuesday a new girl arrived at ECC to replace Rachel, the Teessider who went home this week. She'd been in contact with our co-worker and her fellow Canadian Laura for months, and she'd talked to everyone else on facebook prior to coming, so we expected her to slot into the ECC way nicely. On the Wednesday, the day after she arrived, I was out with a friend when Laura had a phone call from the new girl's mum, saying she'd had a bit of a freakout and could they go and see her.

She was staying in the same love motel as I did the first couple of nights, in Suyu, so a couple of guys went down to see her. They knocked, there was no answer, they went home. Apparently she was asleep - at half past 9? The next night we persuaded her to come to see us in Eunhaeng Sageori for some galbi, but she barely ate anything, didn't drink, and generally looked pretty fed up and it was more than clear then that she wasn't going be around much longer. We called our school's manager to tell her what was going on and the next day a replacement was actively sought.

Sure enough, she didn't stay. We invited her out at the weekend but she declined. We invited her out for dinner during the week - nope. She's made it clear that she hates Korea and wants to get back to Canada as soon as possible... and the reason for this? It's "too foreign" here. It's hard to get into her head to know what she must be thinking. I mean, If I'd decided to quit after two days here, my friends would ridicule me, I wouldn't be able to look my family in the eye, it'd just be embarrassing. Not only that but this contract termination means she has to pay for her flights, out and back, which is more than £1000. If she'd worked even for a month she'd have broken even. I can't fathom the mindlessness of deciding to live on the other side of the world for a year when you blatently don't want to. Yeah, if I sound a little bitter, here's the reason: we have to sub her classes until a replacement can be recruited. Which could be a while.

She's been teaching here since last Tuesday and will do tomorrow, we assume, but her flight is on Tuesday. The atmosphere in the office slightly sour, and obviously so. Like I say, if she'd stayed for a month not only would she be fine financially, a new teacher could be recruited, we'd be happy, and she might even have had a good time. But that won't happen when you lock yourself in your room at the weekend eating low fat Pringles, doing laundry and weeping. Which is what happened this weekend.

Let's hope the new new person isn't such a disastrously weak human being.

Too many sandwiches

2008-09-05T20:29:00.002+09:00

Remember my unabashed eulogising of Little Jakob's, the sandwich shop downstairs? For maybe a couple of weeks now, they've known what I'm going to order when I walk in. Chicken-Ham Original, no tomato, kiwi smoothie. Mmm. I thought that was pretty cool. Today, they noticed that I'd had my hair cut. Hmmm.

I'm also on first name terms with the guy that works in the MiniStop next door to Jakob's. Josh. I generally only go in there to buy beer and yan yans though, so not sure what he thinks of me.

Math(s), pyjamas, stabbings, Snikcers

2008-08-31T15:25:00.010+09:00

Now. This video may make me look like a bad teacher. I'm not, really. But I do find this kid hilarious. I used to teach maths every Tuesday and Thursday with my kindergarten (technically I don't now because my schedule changes from Tuesday). And I say teach, I mean I give them books and they generally get on with it. When they need help though I'll help them, and this guy needs lots of help. This was a pretty simple problem, so I wanted him to get it without any help. He got the previous answer without much trouble. This is his attempt to work out eight plus five.

If you want to know what else has happened, read on. On Friday we had the annual summer pyjama day. Pyjama day is a day, well, a morning, when everyone wears pyjamas and plays games and stuff. I mean in our school, not the whole of Korea. It was quite fun, if a tiny bit weird. Not as weird as the birthday celebrations the school puts on though. I'll talk about them whenever we have the next one. This was a game.The girl with the balloon on the left is Jasmine. She's one of my favourite students because she appears to be stoned out of her tree 24/7. High as a kite. Last week another girl got angry at something, and apparently unimpressed with Jasmine's imperturbably chilled out nature, attacked her with a pencil. Missed her eye by about half a centimetre and left a clear graphite mark. Was Jasmine bothered? Was she balls. Having dealt with the offender I asked Jas if she was OK, and was met with a nonchalent smile and a wistful 'mmmmmmm', and she got on with whatever she was doing. If only they were all like that. Hmm. Oh yeah, right at the end of that video, that's Jasmine saying 'I love you!" presumably to her own hands.

The kid on the right is Noah, who, to quote a colleague, is "a total badass who's already cooler than I'll ever be" and he's probably spot on. He's already a hit with the ladies, and his shirts are just awesome.

And finally, this is the greatest pencil case ever. :D

Taxi

2008-08-24T23:00:00.004+09:00

The cat got out. A man came to get it. Hmm.

This weekend has involved lots of drinking. Today I woke up at 5pm. On Friday I stripped. A bit. There were 159 photos on my camera from Saturday night. 159. About 130 of them were shit. There are photos on facebook - I don't have to post them here.

I said I got up at 5pm today. Well I went to bed at around 7.30 am. Itaewon does that to you. Would have been home earlier, only our cowboy taxi driver decided to take us on scenic tour of Seoul. Check the map. Considering that we live in north-east Nowon-gu, imagine our confusion to see a sign for somewhere in southern Yeongdeungpo-gu. Or rather imagine the confusion of the girl who's been here six months. Imagine my obliviousness. We had been out in Yongsan-gu.
So, we got a different taxi home. Here are some photos of the journey.

Cat

2008-08-21T19:26:00.006+09:00

I was all alone in the staff room on my lunch break today when two Korean teachers came in and told me they needed my help. They asked me whether I was good with animals. Perplexed, I was led to the boys bathroom where a stray cat was hiding under the sink, scowling at all who dared approach. OK, so we had to get it out, but the first thing that I had to ask was how... HOW it got there. We're on the top floor of a seven storey building. Six floors in English money. The only ways up are by lift, which would've necessitated someone working on the same floor as me pressing the button for the top floor and sharing the small space with the mangy feline, which didn't happen, or the stairs. Can you imagine a cat climbing seven flights of stairs? Err. Mysterious.

So, the attempted removal. I will make clear now that I hate cats. I don't trust them, with their accusing eyes and constant licking. I made it clear that if I had to grab it and it scratched me, even a bit, I wasn't to be blamed if it was defenestrated. This one didn't trust me either, especially when the failed attempts to coax it out resulted in my suggestion to spray it with water. I thought it would run out of the door when hit with the cold shower. It didn't though. It only enmeshed itself in the pipes under the sink and made it clear it wasn't going to move. So, after more and more people attempted to speak to it and/or prod it with sticks, the door was locked and this deterrent sign applied: Which is just awesome. And incidentally, it wasn't 'a big cat.' It was a cat-sized cat. That sign implied it was a cougar.

What I described above happened at noon. When I left at 6 the cat was in the same inextricable position in the pipes. Ow. I'll bring you cat updates through the night if necessary. Unless it disappears first, or dies. It'll probably die.

Is there a KSPCA?

Olympic fever

2008-08-18T21:23:00.005+09:00

Korea loves Olympics. Maybe it's a consequence of the 1988 games, which if you don't know were held here in 1988, but they are hard to avoid. For me this is a good thing: I love Olympics. I love watching sports I've never heard of, I love flags. Everything... I ignore the politics. People watch the games on the subway on their TV phones, shops have portable TVs behind the counter or outside on a pile of crates, which allows a crowd to form during a really tense point in the ping pong or something. You can watch weightlifting while you eat your galbi or go for a drink and watch some badminton. In fact badminton won out over the Premier League in the local sports bar. Given how popular English football is here I was quite surprised.

Interesting thing is though, every single one of my kids, boys and girls, age 5-11, are transfixed by the games. They can name pretty much all the Korean medal winners, from swimming to archery to women's weightlifting. All of them can. I have to repeatedly stop them from talking about Park Tae Hwan and Chang Mi Ran and get back on topic. I can remember the Barcelona Olympics when I was seven, and maybe watching Linford Christie and Sally Gunnell, but doubt I was aware of what was going on elsewhere. I'm impressed anyway - I think it's good that these guys are aware of what's going on in the world. I made a bet with a kid last Thursday that GB would end up above Korea in the medals table. I was starting to get a bit scared before the weekend, but it's looking better now. Mmmmm.

Feeling olympicsy, I wandered down to the Seoul Olympic Park on Saturday. It being Saturday, it rained. Here are some pictures.

I did say my kids are aware of world issues. Well, not in all aspects. Having read a picturebook about how everyone in the world is fundamentally the same and that, I discussed with my advanced kindergarten class different parts of the world. I asked what people were like outside of Korea, and my kids talked about Britain, America, China and um, Guam. When I brought Africa up, little Jenny piped up: "People from Africa are very very very different and they are dark and I don't ever want to meet them because I don't like them." Had to nip that little bit of racism in the bud...

Here are two of Korea's biggest Olympic heroes: Park Tae Hwan (weiring the world's greatest shorts) and Jang Mi-ran (big weightlifting lady).
One way to humiliate a badly behaved boy is to accuse him of being in love with Jang Mi-ran. One way to embarrass a badly behaved girl is to accuse her of having a crush on Park Tae Hwan. :D

Korean swimming commentry

2008-08-11T19:31:00.005+09:00

To my delight they just played this again (see post from the 10th of August). I had my camera to hand, so here's the last 150 metres of olympic babo-ness* from the swimming cube. The epic music at the end really completes it, don't you think?

*babo is Korean for 'crazy', taken literally in this country to mean 'mentally retarded', but I still call my kids babo all the time.

Post script: while uploading that I saw an advert for a mobile phone company using that footage. They got that out damn quickly - it only happened yesterday!

Misc

2008-08-10T17:02:00.002+09:00

In the absence of anything all that interesting to write about, I'm going to cover several unconnected events that have happened in the week just gone.

1. Today I noticed, when sitting outside Little Jakob's, that there is a bright swastika sign above my window. The whole hakenkreuz as not a nazi thing idea is something you get used to quickly. Still just a touch disconcerting, though.
You'll have to click on the picture for a closer view.

2. It's really really hot. The weather said it was 36 degrees today. I took a nice shady walk to Nowon earlier. Took about half an hour. Wisely got the 1142 bus back. Here's a bus! And some shade!

3. The Olympics. Yesterday I was a bit hungover, and spent pretty much all day supine on the sofa,watching the olympiad. All the best events too: mainly judo, shooting, women's handball, basketball and fencing. When Korea won gold in judo, I had the window open and a roar that was, considering that we're talking about judo, very loud indeed, came up from the galbi place downstairs. We won in the swimming today as well. I'm trying to find a video of the commentary because it was awesome. Reminded me of that commentator's moment of climax screaming when Steve Redgrave won his gold in 2000.

4. I had chicken galbi on Friday. That was quite nice.

5. Woman. There's a woman that works on my road, clearing boxes from the shops, sweeping, generally keeping the place in order. She looks I'd say 70, or older, and I'm pretty sure she works every day of the week from dawn until very late at night. I see her every morning on the way to school, and I can often see her from my window after midnight, still diligently tidying. Here's a picture of her tidying diligently after midnight.

6. Before I finished this post I was invited out to a DVD bang*, but couldn't find it and ended up in a different bang: norae. This of course necessitated soju, which on a Sunday night may prove foolhardy. I'm now watching the community shield.
*As noraebang is singing room, DVD bang is, well, guess. I'll discuss at length another day. This post is too long already.

Food 2

2008-08-03T18:57:00.005+09:00

I was going to talk about dog soup today. We were invited out for a meal last night, and planned to meet all the people in Jonggak. We transferred to Line 1 at Dongdaemun where we were stuck on a stationary train for twenty minutes, so we missed them. Neither of us knew what dog soup was in Korean, so wandered, hoping to see a big dog on a sign. Unlikely.

So we had chicken.

Food

2008-08-02T14:46:00.006+09:00

Now, I'm no chef, but in my old apartment I often rustled up ricey-seaweedy-tuna stuff with a hot sauce from a bottle, and really enjoyed it. In my new place, however, I have hot plates that don't even reach the temperature required to boil water in a pan. Which is annoying.

Food is readily available on the high street though. A roll of kimbap is a pound, or go into any convenience store and for about 35p you can get a triangular prismic block of kimbap-type stuff. I usually get the latter for lunch when I'm at school. In fact here's a photo of my typical lunch.
There's a place that does beautiful bagels down the road, and if you're really in a hurry, street vendors are ubiquitous - you just point at what you want, and hope it's edible. Once I ordered a lightly battered sausage on a stick, and the ajuma asked me if I wanted it with ketchup... or sugar. Er.

My favourite place in the world, though, is Little Jakob's. I live directly above it here, and can get there in about 45 seconds if I jog. They sell chicken and ham sandwiches full of chicken and ham, and fresh lettuce and mustard. And it is good. I had one today.There it is. Half of it.

Yesterday, Sean and I went to Dongdaemun and had food in the large food thing on the top floor of the Doota mall. You order your meal at a till in the middle of the room from a choice of seven menus from seven separate kitchens: western, Korean, western, Korean, western, Korean or Japanese. I chose Korean. So I took my ticket to the relevant kitchen to pick up my meal: a hot plate with a big pile of rice and spicy cheesey kimchi stuff with pieces of octopus in there, side dishes of kimchi, something else and seaweed soup. This cost £2.75. I was happy.

Can't really do kimchi on its own, cold, but hot, with stuff, it's much better. Well, I can eat it without gagging anyway.

Going for something more adventurous tonight. Let's see how that goes.

Football

2008-08-01T11:24:00.005+09:00

Last night Sean and I went down to the World Cup Stadium (see a couple of weeks ago) for the auspicious under-23 international friendly clash between Korea and Australia. When we arrived we circumnavigated the whole stadium searching for somewhere to buy tickets. We found nowhere, and with the match already having kicked off we were considering finding a TV. Then we were approached by a tout exclaiming: tickets! You want ticket?! Man won! Man won!

A fiver? Yes please.

OK, so we get inside, wait around needlessly for a warmish can of Hite and, twenty minutes after kick off, make our way to our seats, high up in the rafters. We sit down, praise the view, lament the empty seats and within about thirty seconds, before I'd even turned my camera on, promising striker Shin Young-rok cuts inside onto his right foot and curls a lovely shot into the far corner of the net: the only goal of the match.

Timing.

The rest of the game was less than thrilling, both sides obviously not wanting to overexert themselves before the Olympics. It did come to life in the last ten minutes, with Australia hitting the post and coming close a couple more times, and one Korea counter attack which resulted in the ball being desperately cleared off the line and the whole crowd rising to their feet.

My camera's battery failed me, but I managed to get some shots. Which are below.
Immediately after the goal. Just look at the.. euphoria.

Me playing spot the Leeds player. Then I realised Neil Kilkenny only came on at half time.

The maniacal fans with their flares and flags and chants of 한국! 한국! (Hanguk! Hanguk!) (Korea! Korea!) to the tune of Go West. This was where most of the volume was coming from. The majority of the other spectators were families and young couples, each with their complimentary commemorative paper fan, which when wafted by 20000.. uh, fans.. in unison, gave us from our viewpoint the impression of flowing water. Erm, yep. Bye!

Video

2008-08-01T01:00:00.004+09:00

I'd forgotten that I made this video a couple of weeks ago. This is the class of brainboxes I have every afternoon. In order of appearance: crazy Mark, super-smart Kelvin, shy Jackie, moody Jenny and Clara, for whom I can't come up with an apt adjective. They're so much fun, and they work hard too, usually. I sometimes have to use my ninja tae kwon do moves on Mark but he gets on. On Monday Kelvin was teaching me about the American revolutionary war. I mean come on! You're Korean and you're nine! He couldn't grasp the fact that I was pro-William Howe, and called George Washington a pussy. But what are you going to do?
Video:

Holiday

2008-07-30T13:20:00.004+09:00

I've been on holiday since Friday. Technically I had 4 lessons on Monday afternoon but they consisted mainly of oral tests and hangman. I haven't done a great deal in my time off. More Noraebang, a spot of bingeing, and I had some soup. Oh and I moved out. I'd been in the old place for a month, and as is an ECC tradition, I move into the room of the departing teacher. It's bigger, the air con is better, the shower is better, I have (free?) cable TV and my commute to school is slashed by about ninety seconds. However, it's a bit noisier, there are no hobs, only hot plates, and no drawers. No drawers! My cutlery is just lying all over the place. I'll post pictures when I've unpacked and tidied up a bit.

Here, meanwhile, is my view. The other side of the building to my last place. The happening side.

And look! We had sun yesterday! Awesome. OK. I'm going exploring now.

Drink

2008-07-27T18:35:00.003+09:00

Listen: Koreans like to drink. The first night I was here I went for a walk down the road and back, and stepped over several guys in suits passed out on steps. This was a Sunday. After a 80 hour week at the office though you'd want to pour as much as you could down your neck. That was in Suyu, and while Junggye has less of that, there's still a very tangible culture here. Despite this the bars, in this area at least are pretty thin on the ground and never packed, which in my books is a good thing.

But this is the thing: you can buy alcohol 24 hours a day from any convenience store, and to give you an idea of their prevalence, there are at least 10 of them within a five minute walk of my apartment, open all day every day. The majority of these stores have tables and chairs outside, inviting you to buy a few bottles and enjoy them bathed in the neon lights of the store. The selling point is that you can get a 1.6 litre bottle of Cass or Hite for about £2.50. And soju is even cheaper. I've resisted going down the soju route so far, though. I've seen the consequences. Plus it tastes like toilet duck. I just read this on wikipedia:
More than 3 billion bottles were consumed in South Korea in 2004.[3] In 2006, it was estimated that the average adult Korean (older than 20) had consumed 90 bottles of soju during that year, with each bottle equivalent to seven shots.
And this sounds like suicide: Despite tradition, soju is not always consumed in unmixed form. A poktanju (lit: "bomb drink,") consists of a shot glass of soju dropped into a pint of draft beer (like a boilermaker) and is drunk quickly. The reverse equivalent, a shot glass of draft beer dropped into a pint of soju, is called suso poktanju (lit: "hydrogen bomb drink").

Nowon is a short bus/taxi ride away and has a lot more going on. Though when I went last night with my coworker Sean with the intention of finding a club, we wandered haphazardly and fruitlessly around for a while before getting turned away from a place because we weren't Korean. Rather than making the point that that's a bit racist, we just went home. It would seem that the GI-saturated meatfest that is Itaewon is the top choice for a proper night out. Not that I'm much of a clubber anyway, as you probably know, but you crave the bright lights once in a while.

So, OK, wrap this up now. Conclusion: I drink more here than I'm used to. Had a couple of stinking hangovers at first, lost whole days after getting in at 6am and it really can't be beneficial to my health or my skin, but, interestingly, I think I've lost weight. Work that one out.

Rain

2008-07-20T17:24:00.007+09:00

It's wet season. I have seen some sun since I've been here, and always when I'm in a classroom, but the sky has generally been monotonously grey and ominous. What's mildly irritating is that it's rained both days of all three weekends since I've been here, so whenever I've been out looking at/for stuff, I come back clammy and unfulfilled. Can't say I've seen Seoul in the best light yet. Literally.

This was the demoralising view from my window on Saturday morning:

Today, I boarded the subway intending to go one stop to Nowon, because I hadn't been there during the day and sober yet, and it's just on my doorstep. It was actually even a bit sunny when I left. Umbrellaless, on arriving at Nowon I saw the rain tipping down and stayed there on the nice dry train. So, plan B. Except I didn't have a plan B, so I kept sitting. I eventually ended up on the other side of the city at the World Cup stadium. This:

Plus, it worked: it wasn't raining here! Not much anyway.

Koreans really loved football for four weeks in 2002. It's still popular, but the interest has subequently waned, meaning there's little demand for a however-many-thousand-seater stadium. So they made it into another mall. I walked around it, thinking I might be able to have a look at the pitch or something, but unless I missed it, you can't. I did walk around the concourse surrounding the stadium, which was nice as it was only raining a bit, and for the first time pretty much ever in Seoul, I was all alone. Grey, wet solitude! Look!

The upshot of all this climactic inclemency is that I have a bastard cold. My health's not exactly been complimented by the lifestyle either though. Alongside eating lots of spicy food and junk and few vegetables, realising too late that I'd eaten month-out-of-date noodles was quite unpleasant. Couple this with the regular needless all night benders that I'm slowly getting used to here, means that I'm glad I brought all the drugs with me... Mmmm Strepsils.

Oww, negative talk. OK, it's mainly the weather that's causing this mild ire. Despite all that complaining I'm still enjoying it all. This could change: from Monday for a month the older kids are on school holidays. This means they still come to us in the afternoon, but also in the morning, so we all have several extra classes to teach every day. Overtime though. Think of all the lovely wons.

Lastly, spare a thought for all the people at Seoul mud festival this weekend. I can't decide if lots of rain is good or bad for a festival of mud.

Like Japan? Yep, a bit. But no.

2008-07-18T19:33:00.004+09:00

I'm currently listening to TMS, eating Marmite on toast. Only when I look outside and notice that it's dark and there are Koreans everywhere do I realise I'm actually not in England. I had kimbap for dinner too. You don't get that in East Anglia, no.

Kimbap. It's sushi, but it's not. If you've been keeping up to date with the Asia-Pacific region news in the last week or so - and if not why not? - you will know that Korea-Japan international relations are, and have been since the bloody bastards occupied us, shit. So elements of Japanese culture, despite being prevalent here, are kind of disguised... Koreafied. Kimbap for one, and also the aforementioned Noraebang. Singing Room: it's Karaoke, but it's private. Even I've been known to belt out several tunes a night, safe in the knowledge that my hideous ululations will be heard by nobody but the few people I know, and who I know are as drunk as me. They're open 24 hours too. Ever get the normally unquenchable urge to sing Eleanor Rigby in a small dark room into an echoy microphone, and then get percentage score for your efforts, at 5am in the morning? Come to Korea.

There's a Noraebang in the basement of our school building, so obviously whatever time of the day I walk past the stairwell I can hear the offensively loud K-pop that is played to entice people in. What's disturbing is that since I arrived on the 30th of June - that's getting on for three weeks ago - the same song has been played, on a loop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Or at least whenever I've been past. It poses several questions about the psychological state of the people that work there... Does the Clockwork Orange's Ludovico Technique not spring to mind? If you heard the song you'd agree: it's pretty horrific. If you heard the song more than ten times, you'd be dashing your brains out on the steps. A ten hour shift, six days a week? Hmm.

I was going to post some pictures today - I went to Dongdaemun market this morning - but my camera didn't work. I guess the battery is empty. I hope that's the problem. So apologies for the blocks of faceless text. I'm going places this weekend, so will provide photography. If I can't fix it, I will draw what I see.

Job

2008-07-13T23:22:00.004+09:00

I've been here two weeks. As requested, some (rather bland) notes about working conditions.

My job is broadly, and given other jobs I've had, comparatively speaking, good. I work from 9.30 until 6, though I usually get in early to plan my first few lessons, and I have, depending on the day, several free periods, on top of a 40 minute lunch. Basically Mondays and Fridays are busier than the middle of the week. My first lesson is fine. I suppose the kids are still half asleep. Then I have a double lesson with a bunch of wankers: unruly boys, unfocussed girls, one oddball that cries every single day - pretty much no likeable characters in that one. Finish with that though and I'm over the hump, especially on Tuesday and Thursday. I then teach a class of four five year olds who are pretty damn clever. Sometimes when they do go a bit mental I have to remind myself they are actually only five in western age. I probably couldn't spell 'xylophone' at their age. They can.

In the afternoon the kids get older. They come to our place after they finish normal school. Older does not equal better behaved, or necessarily smarter. I generally enjoy teaching all of them, all except one class that I have every other day, a class of 4 boys and 5 girls. I either have the four boys in four separate corners with their hands in the air, or take them individually outside and give them the hairdryer treatment. The girls pay attention usually and I feel bad that I can't give them enough attention because I'm repeatedly handing out admonishments of increasing volume and desperation to Matt, Ben and Aaron. Forty minutes a day though. I can handle that.

I have a better class after these - I can chat with them about anything and they always have interesting things to say. Last thing, I either have a class of 10/11 year olds who hardly speak any English, but aren't bad guys, or a 1-1 with a 16 year old girl who's lived in Tunbridge Wells for the last few years, so is near fluent in conversational English. We practise writing and talk about England. Fridays, I have a 20 minute lesson at 6pm which, since I couldn't find the right place on the tape, we have yet to actually do anything. I'd better get the tape sorted for next week, really.

I leave tired, but feeling surprisingly good. Still, I haven't been teaching for two weeks yet. Things will change in the next fifty. So er, watch this space.

I drink ESL Milk

2008-07-13T16:49:00.003+09:00

How many other professions have their own milk? Other than.. farmer? Few.

Had to share that.

I don't have kidney disease

2008-07-11T21:46:00.002+09:00

Last Tuesday I went for my medical, which every teacher at ECC has to undertake. Wednesday this week, I went to collect my results. Upon arriving, I was ushered away up the stairs and told there was a problem. The nurse knew no further explanatory English; I waited for the doctor. A few minutes later I went in to see the doctor, and the first thing he said was "something something something hangul?" I shook my head negatively. The second thing he said, after a pause, was "ah, you have-uh kidneydisease-uh." And smiled. It turns out I had to have more tests at a cost of 50000 won. 25 quid. Had no money on me. Had to go home.

Because I was so long at the hospital my manager rang them to find out what was happening. I ascertained more from her than I did at the hospital: I probably didn't have kidneydisease-uh - my urine sample showed a slightly higher than usual creatinine levels, probably just an oxymoronic normal abnormality, which meant I needed to go back.

Anyway, I did and I am OK. I knew that anyway, I mean I feel fine. I was pretty certain that if I had renal failure I'd have noticed. I may know the reason my results were a bit skewed, too. When I went to have my test last Tuesday, I didn't, as requested, eat or drink anything for 12 hours. Anything. Not even water. Food, booze, fair enough, but water? I assumed this was a Korean thing, didn't complain. Blitzed my eye exam, dental check, hearing test, BMI, X-ray and blood, but got around to the sample stage, and there was nothing doing. Countless little disposable paper pockets (no cups here) of water, and forty five minutes, later, still no dice. I managed to squeeze as much as I could into the cups, the pressure of doing so blatently led to my cultivating a small amount of kidney disease, but just at that particular moment. So says Dr Michael-Teacher.

Anyway, that's disgusting. Next time I'll talk about noodles or something.

Love motel

2008-07-06T22:14:00.004+09:00

My first two nights in Seoul were spent in the odd but quite comfortable Four Seasons motel in Suyu. When I got there I was given a brick of a keyring with no key attached. The reception man knew no English, but my manager Miriam told me I didn't need a key. After Miriam had left it took several animatedly gesticulated explanations to convince them that I needed to lock my door.

The ceiling was adorned with a space scene, and there were glow in the dark paintings of landscapes in the hallway. Still the aircon was amazing and I had a 42 inch plasma tv. Jetlagged, I didn't sleep well, and with 100 channels of people I couldn't understand advertising things and partaking in odd gameshows (and having sex) I spent most of the early hours glazed-eyesedly channel flicking. Eyesedly? I did manage to find the Euro 2008 final at quarter to 4, so it wasn't all bad. Finally got to sleep at around 6, and was up at 8 to go to school. Mmmm.

Settled

2008-07-05T01:23:00.003+09:00

Since my last post, some things have happened. Today, I bought a fan. I have an air conditioner, but it's positioned around the corner and at the furthest point from my bed, and is aimed down the side of the fridge. I also started teaching properly, but more on that later. I cooked my first meal on my gas dual hob. Unfortunately, it was no gastronomic masterpiece. Here is what happened: there was some food on my shelves when I arrived. I assumed, since the previous occupant had moved out the day I moved in, that this was for eating. No. It was off. Some of it went off in 2006. I only found this out after I'd returned from the Korean Tesco - Home Plus - for basics. Bread, beer and Frosties. So I arrived home, expecting to cook up something tasty, like noodlesoup or stuff, and was confronted with a feast of expired food, and... Spam. I hadn't eaten all day. I made Spamghetti.

I did, luckily, buy some hot sauce, though. Hot sauce makes everything edible.

Last night, the six ESL teachers at our school met at the local meeting place, a 24 hour convenience store on the main street, with the intention of going for something to eat. We didn't, in the end. We just had soju, and went to noraebang. Noraebang is Korean karaoke, only you hire a cosy room just for you and your friends, and soju is a little green bottle of hate. More on both at a later date.

Teaching. I've had two full days of classes now. Mixed bag. I have a class in the morning - twice in a row - who try my patience like nobody has tried my patience before. They are shits, the lots of them. They're either fighting, running around, shouting at each other in Korean and talking back to me, or the other extreme, lying prostrate and motionless on the floor or crying. They're by far the worst. Every other class has its redeeming features. I have the pleasure of talking with some ridiculously advanced 5 year olds twice a day, and a class of mischievous but extremely intelligent and focussed-when-they-need-to-be elementary school dudes, who I have to say are my favourites. Or as they'd say: favorites. I can't get them to spell the correct way. They laugh at how I say tomato too. Curse the North American dominance of the ESL business. It's 50/50 at our school incidentally (although the other two Englishers are a Liverpudlian and a Teessider. Poor kids. They already look confused..)

We've not had the sun here for a few days, and the smoggy-ish blanket of cloud enveloping the city is making for humidity akin to that of a sauna that has just won the award for being the most humid sauna in Sweden. Muggy. Tomorrow I'm going to go exploring. I have my tube map, I have my Oyster card-type-thing, and I have a Palinesque sense of adventure. I'm going searching for a three-holed adaptor plug!

Hi Seoul

2008-07-01T23:20:00.005+09:00

I'm in Seoul. I'm currently stealing wifi, which is a positive, but - this is the negative - I have no power, so I'm squeezing every drop of energy goodness from the laptop's battery. Quick typing... I'm having trouble finding a Korean-UK conversion plug. I may have to wait until the weekend to get to downtown Seoul where western goods are plenty.

Odd that I should start the blog with such a trite thing, as in the just-over-48 hours that I've been here I've done more than I could have managed into a week anywhere else.

First impressions. Seoul is good. Seoul is humid, very humid. People are many. If you like lights, you will like Seoul. No stars here. First two nights I stayed in a motel in Suyu. Pretty shoddy, but, paradoxically, came with a 42" plasma screen TV. Today I moved into my proper apartment in Junggye, which is also shoddy, but it's mine, and it has everything I could need: toaster, sink, cupboards, shower nozzle, leather chair, hobs, air con, mezzanine floor with bed, 'fridge-freezer, a door, toilet, window, table, smaller table, non-functioning television, and a hammer. Yep. In a month somebody in a better apartment is leaving, so I can move to their place. Quick note on Koren hotel TV. Channel 89 appears to show soft core pornography, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can literally watch jiggling breasts and a hairy bobbing man ass while you eat your breakfast, which, as a novelty is fun, but.. thinking long term it's probably best that I'm out of that place.

Work is fine, so far. I had been observing lessons, but today I was asked to teach my first class alone. I say class, it was in fact one girl, in for her first ever lesson at our hogwon, who'd lived in Surrey for the last few years and was as a result pretty fluent in conversational English. Because I had to do what the book said, we talked abut Harley Davidsons. Mmm. That was fun. When I take my first kindergarten class tomorrow, that, I'm guessing, will be far more challenging. But bring on the hyperactive 5 year olds. I'm ready.

As I type, a cockroach has just scuttled over the floor and under my chair. I got him with a can of HITE, one arm of what appears to be a duopoly of Korean lagers, along with CASS: 'sound of vitality'. That is the tagline. Hite's, 'Clean, crisp and fresh,' is far less quoteable.

My co-workers are all cool. No psychos. I replaced hirsute Floridian Chris. They are mostly American and Canadian, and one girl is from Middlesbrough. Another guy from blighty is arriving in Korea tomorrow. He was supposed to be on the same flight as me. Simiar visa problems apparently.

I have more to say, and photos to post, but two things are hindring me. Battery life and time. It's midnight here and I haven't had the best of sleeps since arriving. Come back to find out how Michaelteacher gets on with the kindies. That is, providing I can find a UK plug adaptor somewhere in this country.

Countdown

2008-06-05T13:21:00.000+09:00

So. My documents are in Seoul, being looked at by immigration. The only stumbling block now will be that minor, miniscule, infinitessimal little blot. I've been assured this won't be a problem, but no chickens will be counted until I've got the plane ticket in my hands. Saying that, I've already made this blog which is a bit premature, but Alan Sugar's on the TV and there's nothing else to do.

Next update, Korea.