For anyone who's talked to me in the past few weeks, you'd probably have a hard time pinning down exactly what days off I have over the next two months. Even friends here in Korea, whom I've talked about this in great detail with, will probably have trouble being sure about what exactly is going on with my schedule between now and March. That's because I don't really know exactly what's going on, and I'm pretty sure my school doesn't either.
Here' what I do know. I have to work for 10 days in January, but I'm not 100% sure when. Probably near the end, with the last 3 or 4 days being an overnight camp on Jeju Island, 4 hours south of Mokpo. The rest of the time working is still a muddled mess, and may not be sorted out till the day before I come in, which is most likely the 14th of Janurary.
After that, I come to school for two days on Feb 4th and 5th, during which time I'm sure I will do zero work, and then I'm off on vacation until March 3rd when school starts again. It's that long February break that Shannon and I will use to do something exciting, though we havne't found anything that's got us really pumped to go do. I think we just need to find some cheap flights to a warm beach.
Christmas is over now, and the kids are bringing all their fun toys to school. So many foriegners here in Mokpo have mentioned how little it's felt like Christmas lately, and I've been trying to come up with a few reasons why. The lack of cold is one reason, as even for Korea it's been unseasonally hot. No visits with extended families are happening. There's no malls to go to, which I never realized how much a crowded mall made me think of Christmas until now. And Wham! That silly Wham! song, "Last Christmas" is the most played Christmas song by far here in Korea. The only problem is, it has so very little to do with Christmas, it doesn't bring out any holiday or festive feelings at all. But, Christmas is in the title, and people here seem to love it, so I'm sure next year it'll be the #1 Christmas song again.
Anyhoo, today is the last day of school before the holidays, so I thought I should finish off the blog before I leave. I've got 3 hours of free time now which will be sent entirely on cleaning my classroom. It's not too bad of a disaster, but it's messy enough that I'll need all 3 hours. I'm off to Seoul again for New Year's Eve. I don't expect to be blogging again until a few days after then, so I should have some more exciting tales from the big city when I return! So long, and Happy New Year!
Friday, December 28, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Bright Lights, Big City
"The sounds of the city, somehow they comfort
me, on mornings when I am lonely"
A litle musical quote to start off this weeks blog seems a little fun. I'm a week behind again, and my apologies for that, but hopefully I can deliver on a modestly enjoyable blog-reading experience for you.
Last weekend was a great one, with a whole wack of teachers from Mokpo heading up to Seoul. I'm sure most everyone out there has heard of Seoul, as it's one of the largest cities in the world and has been ranked as one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in as well. 1 in 5 Koreans live in or right around Seoul, and while I've been to it a few times in the past, this was the first time I'd had a guide with local knowledge of the city.
I wasn't able to make it up until Saturday evening, as I was stuck at school working during the morning. Friday night had seen a major flurry of snow roll through Seoul, and I was sad at having missed out on the very Western wintery feeling everyone had had. Still, it was good just being able to get out of town for a while, whether it's for a few days or just a few hours.
We had a reservation for 20 at a Indian restaurant that night, and geez-oh-my was it amazing! I've never really had Indian food very often until this past year, and this was by far the best I've tried. I managed to make a complete wiener of myself trying to speak Korean to the Indian staff working there too, but that didn't seem to bother anyone and made for a good giggling at me with everyone. I guess the idea of traveling to Korea to try Indian food and using English as the means to communicate just seemed a little odd to me at the moment.
After dinner we got a good sampling of the night life away from Itaewon, the infamous tourist/foriegner district of Seoul. Itaweon is not really a bad place to go to, but it really loses any feeling of being in a foreign country, and quickly feels more like a backpacker hostel mixed in with a US military base. Speaking of US military, I learned that there are some 30,000 of them living in Seoul, and that they have a midnight (or maybe 1am) curfew every night. It seems excessive alcohol, late nights, and foreign militiary boys from the US don't go over so well in Seoul.
Anyway, we staying in the Hondae district, which is where (one of?) Seoul's major university is. I'm not sure if all night-time venues are overflowing with foreigners, but wherever we went there was an excess of Western faces sights and sounds. I don't think I needed to speak Korean to get a drink all night. Though speaking it better than I do would have come in handy at around 5 that morning when we went looking for somewhere that would serve us some food.
The next day had a moderately slow start to it. Two of our friends are moving to Seoul, so we helped move some things to where they could be stored till March, and grabbed some breakfast as well. We hit up a small diner, a "greasy spoon" I'm told is a good word for places like this. I hadn't had a big meal of eggs and hashbrowns in ages, and i made a moderate pig of myself scarfing down all the exciting morning goodies I hadn't had in so long.
The rest of the day was spent shopping, which was relatively unintersting. Everyone had hit all the neat touristy artsy spots the day before, so on Sunday we stuck to foreign (Western) food markets and cheap electronics shops. By the time we got home, I was deathly exhausted.
It's almost Christmas now, and while Canada is pumping itself full of Christmas music and commercial marketing schemes, it's pretty quiet here. There's been a few times out for dinner that I've heard some Christmas jingles, and every church has christmas lights strung around them. Still, it's not the same overwhelming cram-it-down-your-Celine-Dion-Jingle-Cats-what-would-Jesus-do-throat kind of experience. There has however been a different Christmas party every few days around town, with lots of singing and various forms of merry making. So even all this distance away, it's still very holiday-ish here too.
Well, I'll let everyone know how the actual Christmas day went down later. Till then, have a fun holiday!
me, on mornings when I am lonely"
A litle musical quote to start off this weeks blog seems a little fun. I'm a week behind again, and my apologies for that, but hopefully I can deliver on a modestly enjoyable blog-reading experience for you.
Last weekend was a great one, with a whole wack of teachers from Mokpo heading up to Seoul. I'm sure most everyone out there has heard of Seoul, as it's one of the largest cities in the world and has been ranked as one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in as well. 1 in 5 Koreans live in or right around Seoul, and while I've been to it a few times in the past, this was the first time I'd had a guide with local knowledge of the city.
I wasn't able to make it up until Saturday evening, as I was stuck at school working during the morning. Friday night had seen a major flurry of snow roll through Seoul, and I was sad at having missed out on the very Western wintery feeling everyone had had. Still, it was good just being able to get out of town for a while, whether it's for a few days or just a few hours.
We had a reservation for 20 at a Indian restaurant that night, and geez-oh-my was it amazing! I've never really had Indian food very often until this past year, and this was by far the best I've tried. I managed to make a complete wiener of myself trying to speak Korean to the Indian staff working there too, but that didn't seem to bother anyone and made for a good giggling at me with everyone. I guess the idea of traveling to Korea to try Indian food and using English as the means to communicate just seemed a little odd to me at the moment.
After dinner we got a good sampling of the night life away from Itaewon, the infamous tourist/foriegner district of Seoul. Itaweon is not really a bad place to go to, but it really loses any feeling of being in a foreign country, and quickly feels more like a backpacker hostel mixed in with a US military base. Speaking of US military, I learned that there are some 30,000 of them living in Seoul, and that they have a midnight (or maybe 1am) curfew every night. It seems excessive alcohol, late nights, and foreign militiary boys from the US don't go over so well in Seoul.
Anyway, we staying in the Hondae district, which is where (one of?) Seoul's major university is. I'm not sure if all night-time venues are overflowing with foreigners, but wherever we went there was an excess of Western faces sights and sounds. I don't think I needed to speak Korean to get a drink all night. Though speaking it better than I do would have come in handy at around 5 that morning when we went looking for somewhere that would serve us some food.
The next day had a moderately slow start to it. Two of our friends are moving to Seoul, so we helped move some things to where they could be stored till March, and grabbed some breakfast as well. We hit up a small diner, a "greasy spoon" I'm told is a good word for places like this. I hadn't had a big meal of eggs and hashbrowns in ages, and i made a moderate pig of myself scarfing down all the exciting morning goodies I hadn't had in so long.
The rest of the day was spent shopping, which was relatively unintersting. Everyone had hit all the neat touristy artsy spots the day before, so on Sunday we stuck to foreign (Western) food markets and cheap electronics shops. By the time we got home, I was deathly exhausted.
It's almost Christmas now, and while Canada is pumping itself full of Christmas music and commercial marketing schemes, it's pretty quiet here. There's been a few times out for dinner that I've heard some Christmas jingles, and every church has christmas lights strung around them. Still, it's not the same overwhelming cram-it-down-your-Celine-Dion-Jingle-Cats-what-would-Jesus-do-throat kind of experience. There has however been a different Christmas party every few days around town, with lots of singing and various forms of merry making. So even all this distance away, it's still very holiday-ish here too.
Well, I'll let everyone know how the actual Christmas day went down later. Till then, have a fun holiday!
Friday, December 14, 2007
A Busy Week of Nothing Much
It's been a slow week here in Korea, and it's nice to finally have Friday come around. I hinted at having a pretty big week coming up this week, and in some senses it was, but in others, well, I've basically spent half of it or more just sitting at my desk again. Allow me to explain.
I'm going to be working during my vacation in January. How much I'll be working isn't enirely determined yet, but it will probably be at least 2 1/2 weeks. So, to make up for that, Shannon and I have requested an extra week off in February, which means we'll be traveling from Feb 6th-Mar 1st (not sure where quite yet). To make up for the lost week (during which I'll probably only teach 10 hours out of 40) I've been scheduled to have an extra 10 classes per week for three weeks, plus a Saturday of work. Basically my workload has nearly doubled from now until Dec. 27.
So, why have I been just sitting at my desk? Because no one is coming to class anyway. I've actually taught less during this week of "hell" than I did the week prior when I had only a regular workload. Most of this has to do with my grade 4's off at the English Village all week, but even then other classes haven't been coming. So I've spent X hours preparing for 30 classes and only 15 have actually happened. It's a lot of busy work with very little reward.
My computer also crashed this week, which made for some interesting scrambles to get teaching done. The curriculum is based around textbooks and CD-ROM's, and in each class I'll use it for 60% of the time, so I had some mad dashes making up new materials as well as some long boring waits when classes didn't come and I had nothing to work with. Anyway, I'm whining, let's chat about something more interesting.
I've been learning a little more about driving and liability issues on the road in Korea. Not that I'm planning on getting a car or scooter anymore, but it's pretty interesting and bizarre stuff. For example, liability is always split when it comes to an accident in Korea, usually 60-40, and rarely more than 80-20. You could be in a parked car, engine off, having a snooze, and if someone hits you, you'll have to pay for some of the damages. In fact, if you don't have enough insurance to cover it, you have to pay out of your own pocket to cover it. My one friend who was in a car accident (a very bad one where someone ran a red light and creamed him off of his scooter. His superman-esque tumble was eventually stopped by a refrigerator) found that he was still liable for 20% though he did nothing wrong, and he had to fight very hard even to get that amount. His description of the law was that:
"Say you're sitting in your living room, watching TV and a car comes crashing through your wall and pins you underneath it. By the law's rationale here, you're partially at fault, since maybe you shouldn't have been sitting watching TV at that time or maybe you should have had a fence up around your house."
Here's a couple of links if you're interested in reading more about this,
Anyway, it's Friday afternoon, I may or may not have one more class to go today. I work tomorrow then I'm off to Seoul! Should be some good times. See you next week.
I'm going to be working during my vacation in January. How much I'll be working isn't enirely determined yet, but it will probably be at least 2 1/2 weeks. So, to make up for that, Shannon and I have requested an extra week off in February, which means we'll be traveling from Feb 6th-Mar 1st (not sure where quite yet). To make up for the lost week (during which I'll probably only teach 10 hours out of 40) I've been scheduled to have an extra 10 classes per week for three weeks, plus a Saturday of work. Basically my workload has nearly doubled from now until Dec. 27.
So, why have I been just sitting at my desk? Because no one is coming to class anyway. I've actually taught less during this week of "hell" than I did the week prior when I had only a regular workload. Most of this has to do with my grade 4's off at the English Village all week, but even then other classes haven't been coming. So I've spent X hours preparing for 30 classes and only 15 have actually happened. It's a lot of busy work with very little reward.
My computer also crashed this week, which made for some interesting scrambles to get teaching done. The curriculum is based around textbooks and CD-ROM's, and in each class I'll use it for 60% of the time, so I had some mad dashes making up new materials as well as some long boring waits when classes didn't come and I had nothing to work with. Anyway, I'm whining, let's chat about something more interesting.
I've been learning a little more about driving and liability issues on the road in Korea. Not that I'm planning on getting a car or scooter anymore, but it's pretty interesting and bizarre stuff. For example, liability is always split when it comes to an accident in Korea, usually 60-40, and rarely more than 80-20. You could be in a parked car, engine off, having a snooze, and if someone hits you, you'll have to pay for some of the damages. In fact, if you don't have enough insurance to cover it, you have to pay out of your own pocket to cover it. My one friend who was in a car accident (a very bad one where someone ran a red light and creamed him off of his scooter. His superman-esque tumble was eventually stopped by a refrigerator) found that he was still liable for 20% though he did nothing wrong, and he had to fight very hard even to get that amount. His description of the law was that:
"Say you're sitting in your living room, watching TV and a car comes crashing through your wall and pins you underneath it. By the law's rationale here, you're partially at fault, since maybe you shouldn't have been sitting watching TV at that time or maybe you should have had a fence up around your house."
Here's a couple of links if you're interested in reading more about this,
Anyway, it's Friday afternoon, I may or may not have one more class to go today. I work tomorrow then I'm off to Seoul! Should be some good times. See you next week.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Rather Proud
So I'm a week late here on the blog, my apologies to any regular readers out there who find it's the only way to be sure I'm still alive here in Korea. Last week was the first time it got and stayed cold all week long, and I've been freezing in my classroom with no motivation to do anything but sit near the heater. I also was a little short on sleep last week too, which made it less enjoyable to get motivated and write on the blog. And why was I lacking sleep? Well, that's what this blog is all about today.
As you may already know, I work on my own without the aid of a co-teacher. It's not a very desirable way to teach from a Korean standpoint, but it gets the job done and saves money for the school. Shannon works with one of the best co-teachers around. Her co-teacher is an amazing teacher, highly motivated, and will most likely be principal of a school one day (still a very impressive and unlikely achievement for a woman in Korea). The two of them have been doing such a good job lately, that their open classes (classes put on so that other teachers can come and learn from them, something many schools will do) have been noticed by the provincial education board and are being done more and more often. Most teachers in a year will do one or fewer open classes - Shannon has now down maybe a dozen.
Anyway, things were going really well with their classes, and they were asked to start traveling to other cities outside of Mokpo to do these classes. In fact, Shannon and her co-teacher (Chu Su Yeong) are now the example for the entire area on how team-teaching should be done, and will travel to schools hours out of town to help them instruct. They were also the ones chosen to put on a demonstration for all the elementary teachers in the city, which, after watching 5 or 6 other open classes, was by far the best teaching example I've been shown. Someone also video taped this class, and sent it off to Seoul to the National Board of Education. And so, from a selection of 40 entries from around the country, Shannon and Chu Su Yeong were chosen as one of the 4 finalists.
Last week, everything seemed to come together all at once. The final travel day for teaching around the province was on Saturday, and the Education Board was coming on Friday. So, everyday for the entire week, Shannon was at school, sometimes till after midnight, preparing with Chu Su Yeong for the big day on Friday. Once that was finished, they spent all night Friday preparing for Saturday. When it was finally all wrapped up Shannon slept for over four hours Saturday evening just to try and feel back to normal again.
So that's pretty much all wrapped up now. The semester is almost finished, Chu Su Yeong is moving to another school in March, and life will be back to normal - except that there really hasn't been a "normal" in life since coming to Korea, which I absolutely love. It's funny though, since Chu Su Yeong is now that much better off when it comes to her career, and will probably be a principal even sooner now. Shannon on the other hand hasn't really gained much other than a new and interesting experience from it all. We talked about how she could probably get her pick of jobs next year with this on her resume. I would bet she could make as much as $60,000 or more next year (legally too) if she played it right and ended up with a job that had her working most of the time. But, she's pretty much done with teaching, so she'll have to be happy with the experience.
Oh, I almost forgot - they gave out awards to everyone involved in this, some nice glass plaques to put on the mantle at home for the hard work the teachers put into everything. Except they never gave one to Shannon. Ooooh, I was (and still am) so mad about that! She was right there in front of them, and they gave these nice plaques to every local teacher as a thank you and not to her!
Anyway, this blog is dragging on here, and I'll end it quickly. Before I go though, the one big bonus that did come from all her hard work is, she's going to get an extra week off in February, which means from Dec. 28th to March 3rd, she only works for two days. I'm in a little bit of a different pickle, which I'll talk about in the blog later this week. Till then, it's back to work for me - the heater's running, I've got a thermos full of hot chocolate, and I've got double the classes to go through till from now till January. So long!
As you may already know, I work on my own without the aid of a co-teacher. It's not a very desirable way to teach from a Korean standpoint, but it gets the job done and saves money for the school. Shannon works with one of the best co-teachers around. Her co-teacher is an amazing teacher, highly motivated, and will most likely be principal of a school one day (still a very impressive and unlikely achievement for a woman in Korea). The two of them have been doing such a good job lately, that their open classes (classes put on so that other teachers can come and learn from them, something many schools will do) have been noticed by the provincial education board and are being done more and more often. Most teachers in a year will do one or fewer open classes - Shannon has now down maybe a dozen.
Anyway, things were going really well with their classes, and they were asked to start traveling to other cities outside of Mokpo to do these classes. In fact, Shannon and her co-teacher (Chu Su Yeong) are now the example for the entire area on how team-teaching should be done, and will travel to schools hours out of town to help them instruct. They were also the ones chosen to put on a demonstration for all the elementary teachers in the city, which, after watching 5 or 6 other open classes, was by far the best teaching example I've been shown. Someone also video taped this class, and sent it off to Seoul to the National Board of Education. And so, from a selection of 40 entries from around the country, Shannon and Chu Su Yeong were chosen as one of the 4 finalists.
Last week, everything seemed to come together all at once. The final travel day for teaching around the province was on Saturday, and the Education Board was coming on Friday. So, everyday for the entire week, Shannon was at school, sometimes till after midnight, preparing with Chu Su Yeong for the big day on Friday. Once that was finished, they spent all night Friday preparing for Saturday. When it was finally all wrapped up Shannon slept for over four hours Saturday evening just to try and feel back to normal again.
So that's pretty much all wrapped up now. The semester is almost finished, Chu Su Yeong is moving to another school in March, and life will be back to normal - except that there really hasn't been a "normal" in life since coming to Korea, which I absolutely love. It's funny though, since Chu Su Yeong is now that much better off when it comes to her career, and will probably be a principal even sooner now. Shannon on the other hand hasn't really gained much other than a new and interesting experience from it all. We talked about how she could probably get her pick of jobs next year with this on her resume. I would bet she could make as much as $60,000 or more next year (legally too) if she played it right and ended up with a job that had her working most of the time. But, she's pretty much done with teaching, so she'll have to be happy with the experience.
Oh, I almost forgot - they gave out awards to everyone involved in this, some nice glass plaques to put on the mantle at home for the hard work the teachers put into everything. Except they never gave one to Shannon. Ooooh, I was (and still am) so mad about that! She was right there in front of them, and they gave these nice plaques to every local teacher as a thank you and not to her!
Anyway, this blog is dragging on here, and I'll end it quickly. Before I go though, the one big bonus that did come from all her hard work is, she's going to get an extra week off in February, which means from Dec. 28th to March 3rd, she only works for two days. I'm in a little bit of a different pickle, which I'll talk about in the blog later this week. Till then, it's back to work for me - the heater's running, I've got a thermos full of hot chocolate, and I've got double the classes to go through till from now till January. So long!
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