Today is Teacher's day (whether it's all of Korea or just my school, I'm not sure), a day where all the teachers in the school get the day off. We still have to be at school, but the kids parents have actually come to school and are teaching all the classes today. They've brought us flowers and food, and this afternoon will take us all out for lunch. The kids are all wishing me happy Teachers Day, bringing in a steady stream of flowers for me. Wow, what other job can you think of where the people you're working for will come in and do your job for you?
Being a teacher here means you're a professional employee, and while most of us foreigners don't quite pick up on just what it means to Koreans, you can generally see what a big deal being a teacher is. Many teachers wear full suits to school, and people will generally refer to a teacher as "honourable teacher" whether their kids are being taught by them or not. And the parents are always around to show their appreciation.
Last week was the big volleyball tournament. All the schools in town got together to play at the local sports centre in a big single elimination tournament. It was such a big deal to everyone that there was a one hour opening ceremony to go with it, with speaches, an orchestra and a middle-school student choir. And of course, all the students' parents came. Every game that was played had all the parents and non-playing teachers cheering, and at lunch they laid out massive picnics for everyone and served all the food for the teachers. It was quite the production, though it helped me understand that while most of these parents might want to be putting forth all this effort, a lot of it has to do with society and social customs dictating that they should be doing such things. Teachers were expected to stay and cheer with their schools when not playing, parents brought us drinks and moist towelettes during every break in our games, and despite our inability to play anything remotely close to "good" volleyball, they cheered our every move.
I shouldn't say that our team (and others) were actually that terrible, but no one ever learns to play volleyball until they become a teacher I think, so they've never had a chance to learn much and the curve at getting to be a decent player is pretty slow. There's nine people on the court for each team too, so it gets really crowded when playing. Anyway, my team did pretty good in the end, winning our first two games before losing in the quarter finals.
Oh, and with 29 teams playing and only two courts available to use, to play my three games took 8 hours. It was a loooooong day.
Here's a picture one of the English teachers in town took. The colour's a little off, but you can see just what the sunset here can look like sometimes. The smog isn't always quite as thick as this, but there are days when you can watch the sun set for an hour without burning your retinas off.Anyway, back to sports. Our school had it's second sports day a few weeks back, which was a great day that I spent most of the time avoiding. It's hard taking part when I can barely understand the schedule and never really know where to go, so I hid in my classroom most of the day. The parents, as you may have expected, came out and cheered on the kids (and teachers), then took out all the teachers for lunch. What really made it an unusual day wasn't so much the day itself (it's pretty much like a sports day back home), but the preparation day. We actually had a full day of preparation, running through the schedule and activities so the kids would be ready for the actual sports day. Now, I suppose this makes some sense to alleviate any lengthy explanation delays the next day, but it still strikes me as funny to go through so much effort to get ready.
A few weeks ago, I also made a trip, with a dozen other teachers from Mokpo, to an island called Jeju, the "Hawaii of Korea". Here's a picture of the island, though honestly I never got to see any of the nice beachy parts of the island.
I spent the entire weekend playing ultimate in one of the more exciting ultimate tournaments I've ever been to. To see more pictures of the weekend, you can check out http://koreaultimate.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3710 though there's not really many of me in there (which I'm sure is all you'd really like too see). 
What's really strange though about the island is the "love park", which is like a cross between an art exhibit and a public park, made unique by having all of it's art pieces as graphic sexual sculptures doing all sorts of things that won't be discussed in this PG rated blog.It was quite a weekend though, and while I don't normally get into details on money for my adventures, this trip was amazingly cheap. For $40, plus travel to and from the island (another $45), every one who came got - free food all weekend long, a free frisbee (a good one too), a weekend of ultimate, free beer all weekend long (not just at night, but all day too), a free hotel room for two nights, and a whole whack load of prizes, including $1000 for the winning team. My team, The Ajumma's (which mean's elderly or married woman) came in 15th out of 19.
Well, that's all for now, apparently there's cake to be had, so I'm off to have it! Till the next blog.
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