Mysteries

There's a lot of every day it seems that I spend doing nothing. I usually have a 10 or 20 minute gap between classes at school, which is a nice chance to get ready for the next class, check email, or just waste a few minutes surfing the internet. It usually ends up being a small waste of time, but there's never that much time to begin with, so I don't really mind. What kills me is the times when that 10 or 20 minutes stretches out to half an hour or more, and suddenly I've wasted 30 or 40 minutes doing nothing, all because I never knew if anyone was going to show up to my class or not. It happened this morning with a class not coming, and it's happening right now - my after school class, with 24 kids signed up, has 2 kids in the room. I'm trying to take advantage of the 30 minutes of nothing to do, but most of the time it's pretty tough and I find I waste as much as an hour or more a day with these small breaks of time that I could do so much more with (like write in my blog). Well, I'm doing well writing in the blog now, so good for me.

The other day I was coming home from school, and two Korean men were riding their bicycles on the road in front of me. They were side by side, and taking up a good portion of the street, and every car that drove by was honking at them as they had to swerve into the other lane around them. It got me wondering what these two guys were thinking, and I realized that with a huge degree of regularity I have no idea what is going on in people's minds here in Korea. I don't understand why these guys wouldn't even consider shuffling just a little more off the road, if they even noticed the car horns honking at them, and if they felt their actions were right and that the cars should just slow down and let them do their own thing. And it's like that everywhere. While I've been at school here long enough to know some of what's going on, I often have no clue whether teachers here are pleased with my work, think I'm doing poorly, or if they have any expectations of me other than what I'm doing. A few shots of soju will usually help clarify things, but I don't think alcohol necessarily brings out honesty, just an excess of drunken banter and emotion.

I had a great chance for a bonding experience with my teachers the other weekend, as we had an overnight teachers' trip planned. Unfortunately the weather got pretty nasty and we just did a one day event, but it was still a good time with them. Of course, if I don't think I could handle taking another of these trips for at least 6 months, but I'm glad I did it. Here's a breakdown on how Koreans like to travel:

Get an early start. Our trip began at 7am on Saturday morning.

Bring heaps of food. We had a massive cooler, stopped for food regularly and everyone got a little snack pack for the trip.

Stop repeatedly. Every hour we stopped for something - a tourist sight, a food break, a bathroom break, whatever.

Drink. While no one drank heavily, they started drinking at 8am and didn't stop till around 10 that night. Just little drinks or wine, beer, etc. And always with food.

Sing We had a noraebang (karaoke) on the bus. While it was only running for 2 or 3 hours, it was a tough thing for me to deal with.

The trip was filled with plenty of odd behaviour and moments that befuddled me and were typical to the rest of the staff. We went to a herb garden that had a giant rock that looked like a penis (or a dinosaur depending on where you were standing), for snacks everyone was given a whole octopus and squid, and somehow during the trip a softcore pornography movie ended up playing on the bus. I think the bus driver put it on by accident, since it only lasted 5 minutes, though it seemed to shock even some of the Koreans when it happened.

This would have been a perfect blog to put up some pictures of my teachers' trip, but unfortunately, I can't right now. Shannon and I are moving, something I didn't really expect to be doing in Korea, and the camera stuff is packed. Our landlord sold the apartment, so we've packed up and will be moving this week. It's not as bad as it could have been, though it was rather sudden and the moving date is something we're arguing with our schools about. They want us to move Saturday, we want to enjoy the Canada Day weekend and move Friday. Maybe we're being a little pushy, but this whole moving thing was pushed on us and we'd like to get some say in how things go. Anyway, next time I blog, I'll have a new home. Thanks for reading.