Communication Through Song

This week I'm keeping the blog short and letting someone else do all the work. For a great musical and visual Korean experience, here's a video put together by some English teachers from the English in Paju (I wrote about it as the Disneyland-like English centre).

EV Boyz - Kickin' It In Geumchon

They do a great job of describing things in Korea without being too cruel or obnoxious. The chorus they're singing uses the Korean words "Kamsahamnida" (thank you) and "Annyong Haseyo" (a general greeting, or "peace be with you" roughly).

I may have to post another blog this week - we just had a murder mystery party over the weekend, and while it has very little to do with Korea, it was still a ripping god time with some great costumes. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Nice To Meet You!

There's a teacher at my school who says to me "Nice to meet you!" every day we meet. My students do the same thing to me, and no matter how many times I tell them it's wrong, they just don't quite get it.

Whether you're old friends catching up, or strangers walking past each other on the street, "Nice to meet you" has become the quintessential greeting Koreans use when speaking English. There is very little deviation from it (until people become quite fluent), which I can't quite understand. I think it stems from a bad translation of the Korean word 반갑다 (bangabda), meaning to be pleased, which is a general greeting used in all sorts of situations for Koreans. Since this verb can be used for both "Nice to meet you" and "Good to see you again" people here seem to have stuck with the first one they learned. And so I've begun taking pain-staking process in each of my classes to differentiate between "Nice to meet you" and "Good to see you".

The next miracle I perform on my students will be to stop the use of nouns to describe feelings. This, however, I find hilarious, and I'll be sad if I do ever teach them to stop answering questions like "How are you?" with "Teacher, I am smile." or "Teacher, I am pizza!" One of my favourite responses when I ask how students are comes from one of lower level students. Wang Jeong Uk (왕정욱) is in gr. 5 and has about zero English skills. Even 5 extra hours a week with me still didn't get him anywhere. But now, after two years with this goofy kid, this is how he answers me:

Me: Jeong Uk, how are you?

Wang: Teacher, my angry... (waves his hands) Kim Jin Geon punch-ie! (makes a punching sound.) My (korean ramblings)... My teacher (falls out of chair) yes? O-K? Yes!

Me: Good job, Jeong Uk.

So it goes.

I'm off to make some legitimate extra money after class today. You may or may not be aware of many teachers making extra cash teaching private lessons in Korea, which is quite illegal and can get you booted from the country. In the last week however, I've gotten myself some legitimate overtime with the city education office at $30 an hour, plus Shannon and I did the voice recording for a small island English text. The city job is pretty straight forward, but the recording was quite unreal. I don't think there was much emphasis put on getting it done "properly" when it came to this book. Besides the savage amounts of spelling mistakes, Shannon and I were put in a recording booth with no one who spoke English, given no direction besides "stop" and "go" and asked to read various paragraphs and dialogues. Some of the dialogues invovled as many as 5 separate characters, and while I tried to do some voice "alteration" to fool some of the more deaf children who might listen, all you get is me sounding like a horse and Shannon giggling in the background. And our Korean soundman?

"Good. Go." he says.

Anyway, they may call us in to re-record it, they may just give us $150 each for 2 hours work. I'm not expecting any further interest in my talents, but it sure would be fun to do again. If anything new happens, I'll write about it next week. Thanks for reading.

Expansion Of My Horizons

I just took my first sip of a cool, refreshing McCol. http://www.ilhwa.co.kr/english/english.asp?m=detail&v=biz&c=beverage&sid=00054&sp=00053&l=2&pid=300050
I didn't even know what it was when I took my first sip, but it smells like a
sterilized stainless steel barnyard, yet it tastes like, well, barley cola I guess.It's been a while since I've had my socks blown off by something so unexpected, so I had to write about it quickly. Anyway, I'm off to play volleyball now!

오늘 어떠요? How Are You Today?

I don't think that's a very "Korean" thing to say (안녕하세요, "peace be with you" is really the norm for greetings), but I wanted to write something Korean in my title today.

It's a quiet day today, and I'm spending my afternoon listening to Bob McDonald on the Quirks and Quarks CBC podcast. Today he's talking about the possibilities of finding life on other planets, which may be much more likely than people think - the downside is that anything found would probably look about as lively and animated as a bucket of mud. So, with the loss of all possibilities of my visiting life on other planets, I'm glad I've taken the time to see all the alien-worldly things here in Korea. Here's what's been happening lately.

I've taken a liking to going rock climbing these days, and just did my first Korean 암벽드유ㅏㄴ (ambyeokdungban), or rock climbing, trip. My fingers felt like I'd ran them through a cheese grater for 5 hours by the time I was done, but it was a great time.

Have I talked about my new co-teacher at school yet? Well, she doesn't really help me teach, but she does aid me in other matters, and being the young eager-to-please teacher that she is, she's super helpful for me. Everyday we sit down for an hour studying Korean (for me) and English (for her), and for the first time since I've been here, I'm actually spending a good deal of time speaking Korean. I was feeling so confident today, when I needed to head to the bank for a minute, rather than sneaking out of the school like I normally do, I actually went to the office and asked my vice principal for permission. Another teacher in the room burst out laughing, but I said everything pretty correct, and he didn't make me sign the multiple sheets of paper discussing why I need to go the bank, how long I'll be, then gather the 3 signatures needed before leaving. Pretty sweet.

Here's another shot I took of Shannon climbing while in Thailand. It's one of the best action shots I took all month, I just got my shoes delivered in the mail this morning, so pretty soon it'll be me ripping up the rock like that. In the meantime, I'm sticking to ultimate (frisbee). If anyone's interested, there's some tournaments happening in April here in Korea. I'll be sure to save a roster spot and even buy a beer for anyone who makes the big trip over. Till next week!

A Whole New Ball Game

A little change can go a long way, and my school just went through a massive change, making this semester completely unlike the last 17 months I've spent teaching at school. I'm not sure whether things are going to be better or worse, but they certainly are different now.

For starters, I'm now the 3rd longest tenured teacher at my school. Of course, I still have to get help when I need toilet paper for the bathroom, but all but two of the teachers who were here when I arrived have since rotated schools, something teachers do here on usually a 4-year basis, but I guess working at Jungang Elementary speeds that up a bit. Mostly I don't mind, some new faces are nice to see and meet at school, and no one gets tired of my strange English teacher antics this way. Unfortunately, my principal has left, and I'm now faced with a new, much more "by-the-traditional-book" kind of guy.


My New Principal

It took two days for my principal to speak to me (he has zilch for English skills). Before that, he asked others while right in front of me "Does the English teacher not have a cell phone?" and later on (while I wasn't around) make sure I was given proper instructions for saying hello and bowing in the morning. I now need to not only ensure I say "Please be peaceful honourable sir" each morning, but I was given a second round of instruction to remind me to enter the room fully, face my principal, and bow directly at him. I also need to do this for my vice-principal, and again for both when I leave school.

My vice-principal, who gets along much better with this new style of leader, now feels more comfortable guiding me towards becoming a better and honourable Korean. All ready he's begun informing me at lunch that I must eat everything given to me on my plate, something he would only mutter under his breath last semester. In reponse, I've changed times I eat lunch, and am much better at preventing the cafeteria workers from putting nasty foods on my tray.

Volleyball has also taken on new levels of importance, which is awesomely horrible since our teachers are even worse volleyball players than before. Last week we played 3 or 4 times, and most staff meetings revolved around how to improve our volleyball skills. When we do play, I'm trapped in this grey void of not knowing whether to impress the few male teachers and play hard, or have fun with the female teachers and not violently crush balls at them. It's degenerated for me into this silly dance where I spend 80% of the time with my hands in my pockets, then leap up to knock one or two balls down so I can get a high-five from my principal. Then, back to twiddling my thumbs and trying not to act too ridiculous on the court.

Well, I should wrap this up here. I didn't teach at all last week, setting a new personal record for internet surfing and time wasting. The British term for it is WILFing (What was I Looking For?) when you surf online without any real direction. I'm teacher a few extra classes per week now though, so perhaps I'll be moderately busy this semester.

Oh, while I don't mean to drag this out into another epicly long blog, but here's a funny tale from teaching. Last year my students were getting a little... over-excited... about certain body parts and human activites that start to get interesting once you're around 12 or so year old. During my teaching of parts of the body, they demanded very much to know the words for "penis", so they could use it in ways not ideal for speaking to me or other students. Well, I didn't feel good having them saying penis so rudely, but I didn't want them to be clueless or wrong about body parts, so I just gave them "groin" as a suitable and useable word. Now I've got kids yelling groin around the school left right and centre, making strange hand gestures and talking about "groin-groin-go", it gets so ridiculous I end up laughing with them and at them at the same time. That of course only encourages is, but hey, whatever gets them speaking English, right?

A Few More Pictures

Here's some more photos I wasn't able to add in my last blog. While most should be self-explanatory, the one with the crab is a little strange. During our beach camp-out, Shannon noticed this massive crab hiding in the corner beside the toilet while she was sitting down, causing her to let out a horribly loud scream and nearly break the bathroom door down as she flew out.

No Country For Tall Men

It's a short man's world out there, and I've got the divots in my head to prove it. 30 days in Thailand has only cemented the fact that people over 5'10" are not normally given the kind of consideration we deserve, and bathrooms, hostels, restaurants and nearly anywhere there's a doorway can be a treacherous place.

Yep, my month vacation in Thailand has come to an end, and it was a wonderful and exciting time that I'm sad to see go, yet it feels good to be back home in Korea where things are a little more stable.
Besides all the whacking of my head, I also contracted food poisoning twice, so it has been very refreshing to sit on my couch or bed after a long hot shower and not have to worry about doing activities or catching buses any time soon.

To recap the last month, Shannon and I spent 29 days in Thailand, 13 days in the south and 15 up north.
I know that only equals 28, but traveling ate up at least one day, perhaps even two. In the south, we went to Tonsai/Railay, where we rock-climbed and relaxed for 8 days solid. I had my first incident of food poisoning there, which kept us a day or two longer than we wanted, but it's about the most beautiful place in the world to be stuck at.

Our next stop was in Koh Pi Pi. This was another mega-beautiful tourist destination, where we went scuba diving and then spent a night camping on the beach where that late '90's movie, "The Beach" was filmed. Looking back, I realize that both Tonsai and Koh Pi Pi were incredibly tourist dominated remote locations, with no locals living there that weren't there to make money in tourism.
Foreigners, or "farangs" outnumbered Thais by as much as 5-1, and while we did get to experience the geography of Thailand, there really wasn't as much Thai culture to be found with so many foreigners muddling about.
Still, it was an amazing, magnificent time, and if nothing else, we got to see a 5 or 6 metre whale shark while scuba diving, which definitely had my eyes bugging out of my skull.


The north was much more varied, and I enjoyed it in an entirely different way than the south. Instead of beaches and rock climbing, we had mountains and hiking; most of our stops were only for 2 or 3 nights, and we covered an incredible amount of distance by bus, foot and bicycle.


In Tham Lod, our first major stop, we went caving. I never thought much for caving, but I certainly do enjoy it more now. Our first 7 hour hike took us through three caves, one lengthy deep one with vertebrate fossils in the back, one with 2000 year-old Thai coffins, and another that was a tiny stream cave. The stream cave was something I never imagined doing, and probably wouldn't have if I had stopped to think about it before crawling in.
For most of the 25 minutes going into this cave, you had to crawl on your hands and knees, sometimes even flat on your belly, through a small stream and it's muck to get along the cave. It was only wide enough for one person, and it terminated with a 20 meter waterfall where 5 years ago a Dutch person had fallen to his death. The cave was so small and awkward, it took two days to find a way to get the Dutchman's body out.

The second caving trip we did was a kayak tour through a massive cave filled with birds and bats. The bat poop was several centimeters thick on the ground, and gave off an incredible odour that wasn't terrible, but not at all pleasant either.

After Tham Lod, we went to Mae Hong Son to hike through the mountains. There's many different tours, packages and means to go hiking in Thailand's hills, and we wanted to do it in a way that exploited the people and animals of Thailand the least. One of the tribes living in Thailand are the "long-neck" tribes you may have heard of. Women generally in these tribes will put those metal rings around their necks, extending them over time as a beautification things. Well, at first we thought, "wow, how neat, a cultural event we should probably see." Well, that's not really what it is. See, these people are historically Burmese refugees who have fled Burma and now have started being exhibited in Thailand for the "neat" way they decorate themselves. The neck decorations they do probably would be gone by now, but the people are kept in small villages just off the main road so foreigners can pay $10 to go have a look at them. It's kind of like a human zoo, and while plenty of travel offices/writers seem to think it's okay, every local we talked to and newspaper we read said it was a sad example of exploitation of people in need of help and money.

So, our hike went through more traditional, less exploited villages from other people more closely linked to rebel soldiers than human zoo colonies. We hiked for 5 or 6 hours every day and would spend our nights sleeping in big bamboo huts, raised off the ground. Pigs, dogs, chickens and cows strolled around the huts, and the entire human population of these villages never was more than 10 or 12, and the fist night it was only 2. The second of our three days hiking, we crawled into another cave, which I know distinguish from the others by the animals lurking inside. Our guides, who knew what they were getting into, brought sticks with them to keep any trouble away, which at fist I may have thought was the bats. This cave, being much smaller than the previous caves with bats, had bats flying only a few feet from our heads (or into our guides head at one small point). But, it was the snakes that had everyone on edge by the end - poisonous cave snakes, which I was told will kill you, live in the caves around there, and we came across two of them. One stopped us from going any further, and the second was a good sign for us to get the heck out of the cave ASAP.

Our final event from the north was the self guided bike tour Shannon and I did. This probably would have been one of the highlights of the north if we didn't both get food poisoning again only 60 km into the trip. We spent the next two days and 100+ km struggling to make it to our next destination, ignoring all the beautiful scenery and side trips we could along the way. By the time we got back to the finish in Chiang Mai, I was ready to denounce any and all forms of physical activity for the next few years of my life. In the end, it took only a few more days to get my back on my feet feeling good, but by the time a few more days rolled around, I was in Korea again.

(I'll have a few more pics to add soon, I couldn't get them all of the camera in time for this week.)

And so, tomorrow is Monday, which means I'm back to work at school. I'm not dreading it as much as I thought I would be, but I'm not terribly excited either. I know I'll probably not teach any classes, and spend most of the day on the computer or studying Korea, then have a moderately fun dinner out with all my teachers, full of strange food that even after 18 months I still can't identify it's origins. It does feel very good being back in Korea though - after so much time being sick in Thailand, the familiar foods and feelings, sounds and smells, it all makes me feel quite strong and healthy again. I even ate two big chunks of kimchi (pickled spicy cabbage) at dinner last night and enjoyed it intensely. I may make a Korean out of myself yet.