Contrast and Strangers

I've started teaching at a gifted school every Monday from 5-8pm. It's a nice little job that pays $30 an hour, so it's worth the loss of my Monday nights, but it's proving to have some unexpected challenges to it. These kids are indeed quite ahead of the rest of their age group, and for the first three weeks, they've quickly devoured everything I've thrown at them. My 3-week lesson plan on phonics I had developed was handled in a single class, with hardly a single mistake made in both the grade 5 and 6 classes. The students at my school have trouble correctly determining the difference between right and left, while yesterday I did a lengthy "Deserted Island" lesson plan with the gifted students, where they had to come up with what they would bring with them to a deserted island and explain why they would bring it.

The other little money-maker Shannon and I have been doing, the text-book voice recording, has possibly wrapped up,
but no one really knows. See, we go into the recording booth, and are given instructions 4th hand by the sound booth technician. See, the people who decide what to do work on an island school out of town. The administrators tell Shannon's school what they want, Shannon's school tells Shannon's co-teacher, and Shannon's co-teacher tells us and the technician over the phone. Any questions we have take about 2 or 3 days to answer properly, and so after 3 or 4 weeks now, we've only gone into the studio three times, and we still don't know if we've recorded it satisfactorily.
Despite the strange manner of communication, it's a fun job to be working, and I hope I get to hear myself on the finished product one day.

Strangers

Being in a new environment can leave you a little more aware of the things and people around you, especially when those people are a little strange, demented or outright creepy. After my trip to Busan last week, I've also found that when you enter a new environment, those strange creepy people are also quite good at noticing you.

I arrived early to the beach on Sunday, and sat down alone to eat some breakfast. While fixing my bag, a guy leans over my shoulder, and says to me:

"Water hey? That's great." I think he's talking about the ocean, so I mutter yeah and go back to my bag. He points at my oranges and says:

"Tangerines too. That's really nice." Ahhh, so he's complimenting me on my bottle of water and my fruit for breakfast. Thanks I say, but still don't turn to face him.

"Are you Australian?" No, Canadian. "Oh good, I don't like Americans. You sound so different. You must be a good Canadian. Very friendly."

He goes on like this, talking to my back for another minute about accents, when 4 more ultimate players show up. He mentions something about my friends coming, then darts off.

Next comes a guy in a soccer jersey and filthy pants. He's shaking everyone's hands, asking names and forgetting them, dancing a little bit and trying to give out hugs. He also talks rather briskly to one of the Korean ultimate players, Ki Boum. "What did he just say?" I ask Ki Boum.

"He told me to keep my mouth shut."

Over the rest of the day, the soccer dude would continue to scurry around us talking to whomever he could, another man would walk on the field repeatedly then just watch the games while we tried to shoo him off, and a lady with nothing to sell tried to sing along to some English songs with us hoping we would buy some of the things she didn't have.

Mokpo, being a smaller city, doesn't seem to have as many prominent crazies, but there are definitely a few characters out there. How all these people though managed to learn English so well is a little beyond me, but you gotta hand it to them for finding a way to get their point across, no matter how pointless it really is.