In Korea!
04 August - Day 01 of teaching, day 04 in South Korea
or
Korean Mountain Dew is not as sweet as the US stuff
So! We made it! Wow.
Our journey started off okay, which lasted right up until we tried to check in our baggage at the airport. Regrettably the Engrish on the airline’s website led us to believe we were allowed a twice as much luggage as we were. With Becky’s parents already driving home, and the excess weight fare costing £40.00 a kilo (!), we were off to a bad start. Praises to go Aga though, the lovely lady working the desk, who was patient and helpful. We scurried off and hastily re-packed, leaving behind loads of stuff we’d rather not have, before returning to the airline desk where we got our first taste in Korean que etiquette. I.e. *push* *shove* *elbow* *ignore*
We finally got onto the plane, wishing we hadn’t just eaten as much garlic bread as we had, and settled in. The flight wasn’t too bad; I slept for about an hour and a half, Becky slept for about 4 hours, of a 10-hour flight. The in flight magazine promised such movie delights as Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda, 21, etc., a lot of modern, western films that are only a few months old - pretty damn good selection. However, the western ‘blockbusters’ selection was only accessible through a menu that was in Korean. We spent most of the flight thinking the magazine had lied to us, settling for the exciting Korean channels. I watched some movie called, I think, My New Partner. It was a gritty movie about a bent cop who teams up with his estranged son, a police internal affairs officer. And here comes the angst, now. It was pretty cool. The guy who was the dad was also on the Unicef advert at the end of the flight. Anyway, I figured out/chanced upon the ‘blockbusters’ about 2 hours before we landed - not enough time to watch most of them, running at about 2 hours and with the movies being turned off some 15 minutes before landing. Ah well - the flight could’ve been a lot worse.
We collected our paltry baggage (travel light - move fast! Whaaaoo!) and were picked up by some dude waving a sign that had our names on it. Then we were bungled into a taxi that drove us to our apartment. The journey in the taxi is worth mentioning for humorous reasons. The guy was about 60 and was impossibly near sighted, always leaning forward and squinting. He had no idea where he was going, his satnav was not working and he was unable to reach our school on the phone. This, combined with the Korean driving style, made for an exciting ride. Their driving style is much like their queing style - but also involves the idea of ‘traffic light equality’. This translates as “Well they can all drive over there by that green light, it’d be racist to say I couldn’t go just because mine’s another colour.” Yes, it is a different colour - that’s because red means STOP! To be fair to him, he did at least squint a bit before running the lights. It sounds dangerous, but at this point we were both really too tired to be concerned.
So we got to our apartment and were met by someone from the school. It’s a nice place, I’ve made a short video ‘virtual tour’ on the psp cam and I’ll upload it as soon as I can. We’re using/hopping the unsecured wireless networks in the area at the moment and don’t want to draw attention to it by uploading or downloading too much at once.
After being shown the apartment and the location of the school, we were taken out for dinner (by the school) - we were told previously that this was in apology for the various mix ups that happened while we were trying to sort our placement out. Out of all of the places they could’ve taken us, they took us to a spaghetti restaurant! If there’s one food in the world that continually makes you look like an ass, it’s spaghetti. Dinner was kinda fun; we were asked a lot of questions and told a little bit about what was expected of us. After a time, the headmaster/owner of the school joined us - he has a very dry and sarcastic sense of humour that our host was having trouble translating for us as she was obviously worried about offending us. It went okay.
Then the headmaster decided that he was going to take us shopping. We’re not sure why, but he insisted, drove us out there (to Tesco of all places! Fucking Tesco!) and paid for everything. He also was the one putting everything into the trolley, which means we have a LOT of eggs for no reason we can think of, seriously, too many eggs. We also got some bbq minced stake things, meat of an unknown origin. Days later, we figured out he was trying to buy us things that he thought were ‘English’. We think the meat was supposed to be hamburgers. Suffice to say our next shop was a lot more ‘English’.
Here’s a puzzle for you; the Koreans eat rice with everything, right? So, when asking for the directions to the rice, we thought things would be pretty simple. Apparently not. See, they don’t actually cook their own rice, in a pan, rice-cooker etc. Instead they buy these little boxes of pre-cooked microwave rice, like Uncle Ben’s. Buying ‘normal’ rice was a bit of a challenge as it’s usually sold wholesale. We were looked at pretty strangely for that purchase and the desire to cook it ourselves - although I’m not sure that we were understood when we explained we didn’t have a microwave. Worrying considering we were trying to explain this to the people who furnished it!
So, shopping aside, we had Saturday and Sunday mostly to ourselves. We were taken about a bit, shown where to shop, how to work things etc. (although the bin bag thing still seems a bit complicated).
On to Monday - our first day of teaching! Wow. If you thought the NHS was poorly organised, you haven’t seen anything yet! Basically, our ‘training’ consisted of a grumpy Korean woman slamming a book down, waving her hand in the general direction of page 24 and then shoving us into a class of 15 or so 7 year olds. Fuck me was it a trial by fire! We learned, pretty quickly, that the school is the very definition of the word ‘maelstrom’ and that chaos is the order of the day. Usually after an event, you were informed that they should’ve told before, but don’t do it that way etc. Mostly things are tough because what they mean by ‘co-teacher’ is ‘person you will piss off by just existing, that you should not approach under any circumstances and does not/refuses to speak English’. So we’re pretty much on our own, I had to teach 3 classes today WITHOUT textbooks or lesson plans of any kind; that was tough. The kids are the exact mix you would expect, some bright and enthusiastic, some would really rather not be there and some want to act up.
The biggest obstacle both Becky and I are facing is that we don’t speak Korean, so we have no way of communicating to the class. I can’t say ‘Sit down and shut up!’ because they’ve not learned ‘Sit down and shut up!’ yet. They have this crazy scheme in place where our co-teacher teaches them stuff, like “This is a cat”, then we take over, in a different lesson, and are expected to make “This is a cat” last for 40 minutes. Yeah, 9 year olds get pretty bored of that (pretty quickly too - damned X-Box generation!). So mostly we get shouted at by the kids, who keep shouting things like “Cat!” at us, really proudly, before ignoring us and drawing lines between things in their work books (which didn’t know they had until one of the class spoke up and asked if they could complete it).
It’s difficult to accurately describe the sheer chaos of the school. The closest I can get to would be a across between that bit in Jumanji with the monkeys in the kitchen, crossed with The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, but with less fire, less water and a lot more monkeys. It doesn’t help much that our school has decided to pimp me out to another school near by, which is pretty similar, so it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire, then back into the frying pan. Then back into the fire. They even gave me a timetable that has me teaching two classes at the same time in the different schools. Quantum English teacher!
My thoughts seem pretty negative, but they’re not really. You can never really tell too much from a first day, although one of the other TESOL teachers there, from Canada, is really nice and said that everyday is like that, so hey. We’ll see how it turns out. I’m looking forward to getting into the swing of things and getting a feel for life as a teacher here. Oh - and did I mention that the school is completely chaotic?
I wonder if there are any emeralds or giant rings about?
South Korea itself is pretty cool. Actually it’s fucking boiling and very humid. The temperature is well over thirty and the weather girl said (in English!) that the humidity has been around 75%! From a cold Cardiff summer, that’s a real fucking shock! We’re constantly sweating, changing our clothes and taking showers. Still, apparently, it’s going to end in about a month or so, getting cooler all the time, so we’re just battening down the heat hatches.
Everything has English on it, seriously. There are products in the supermarket, I have no idea what they are, other than the fact that it’s fresh, fun and convenient! Also, much like all the fools about town in Britain have trendy Kanji on their shirts, everyone here has English on their shirts. It’s funny to be able to read everyone’s shirt but not any of the signs. And based upon some of the words on these shirts, you should probably donate any foreign script T’s you have to a charity shop. If the translation is as bad as it is here.... Well, put it this way - we saw a girl who’s shirt said ‘Pee all you can pee’. Yeah.
That’s all for now, we’ll try to get that video of the flat youtube’d as soon as possible. But until then, sorry if I’ve not got an email out to you, and wish Becky a happy birthday for this Sunday. I’m going to spend the rest of the week practising how to order a pizza for her. We were both relieved when we saw that we were living across the road from a Pizza Hut.
PS - I’ve been too busy/tired to work on episode 04 of the Psionic 6, but I still plan to get it up. I’ll post about it when I do.
or
Korean Mountain Dew is not as sweet as the US stuff
So! We made it! Wow.
Our journey started off okay, which lasted right up until we tried to check in our baggage at the airport. Regrettably the Engrish on the airline’s website led us to believe we were allowed a twice as much luggage as we were. With Becky’s parents already driving home, and the excess weight fare costing £40.00 a kilo (!), we were off to a bad start. Praises to go Aga though, the lovely lady working the desk, who was patient and helpful. We scurried off and hastily re-packed, leaving behind loads of stuff we’d rather not have, before returning to the airline desk where we got our first taste in Korean que etiquette. I.e. *push* *shove* *elbow* *ignore*
We finally got onto the plane, wishing we hadn’t just eaten as much garlic bread as we had, and settled in. The flight wasn’t too bad; I slept for about an hour and a half, Becky slept for about 4 hours, of a 10-hour flight. The in flight magazine promised such movie delights as Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda, 21, etc., a lot of modern, western films that are only a few months old - pretty damn good selection. However, the western ‘blockbusters’ selection was only accessible through a menu that was in Korean. We spent most of the flight thinking the magazine had lied to us, settling for the exciting Korean channels. I watched some movie called, I think, My New Partner. It was a gritty movie about a bent cop who teams up with his estranged son, a police internal affairs officer. And here comes the angst, now. It was pretty cool. The guy who was the dad was also on the Unicef advert at the end of the flight. Anyway, I figured out/chanced upon the ‘blockbusters’ about 2 hours before we landed - not enough time to watch most of them, running at about 2 hours and with the movies being turned off some 15 minutes before landing. Ah well - the flight could’ve been a lot worse.
We collected our paltry baggage (travel light - move fast! Whaaaoo!) and were picked up by some dude waving a sign that had our names on it. Then we were bungled into a taxi that drove us to our apartment. The journey in the taxi is worth mentioning for humorous reasons. The guy was about 60 and was impossibly near sighted, always leaning forward and squinting. He had no idea where he was going, his satnav was not working and he was unable to reach our school on the phone. This, combined with the Korean driving style, made for an exciting ride. Their driving style is much like their queing style - but also involves the idea of ‘traffic light equality’. This translates as “Well they can all drive over there by that green light, it’d be racist to say I couldn’t go just because mine’s another colour.” Yes, it is a different colour - that’s because red means STOP! To be fair to him, he did at least squint a bit before running the lights. It sounds dangerous, but at this point we were both really too tired to be concerned.
So we got to our apartment and were met by someone from the school. It’s a nice place, I’ve made a short video ‘virtual tour’ on the psp cam and I’ll upload it as soon as I can. We’re using/hopping the unsecured wireless networks in the area at the moment and don’t want to draw attention to it by uploading or downloading too much at once.
After being shown the apartment and the location of the school, we were taken out for dinner (by the school) - we were told previously that this was in apology for the various mix ups that happened while we were trying to sort our placement out. Out of all of the places they could’ve taken us, they took us to a spaghetti restaurant! If there’s one food in the world that continually makes you look like an ass, it’s spaghetti. Dinner was kinda fun; we were asked a lot of questions and told a little bit about what was expected of us. After a time, the headmaster/owner of the school joined us - he has a very dry and sarcastic sense of humour that our host was having trouble translating for us as she was obviously worried about offending us. It went okay.
Then the headmaster decided that he was going to take us shopping. We’re not sure why, but he insisted, drove us out there (to Tesco of all places! Fucking Tesco!) and paid for everything. He also was the one putting everything into the trolley, which means we have a LOT of eggs for no reason we can think of, seriously, too many eggs. We also got some bbq minced stake things, meat of an unknown origin. Days later, we figured out he was trying to buy us things that he thought were ‘English’. We think the meat was supposed to be hamburgers. Suffice to say our next shop was a lot more ‘English’.
Here’s a puzzle for you; the Koreans eat rice with everything, right? So, when asking for the directions to the rice, we thought things would be pretty simple. Apparently not. See, they don’t actually cook their own rice, in a pan, rice-cooker etc. Instead they buy these little boxes of pre-cooked microwave rice, like Uncle Ben’s. Buying ‘normal’ rice was a bit of a challenge as it’s usually sold wholesale. We were looked at pretty strangely for that purchase and the desire to cook it ourselves - although I’m not sure that we were understood when we explained we didn’t have a microwave. Worrying considering we were trying to explain this to the people who furnished it!
So, shopping aside, we had Saturday and Sunday mostly to ourselves. We were taken about a bit, shown where to shop, how to work things etc. (although the bin bag thing still seems a bit complicated).
On to Monday - our first day of teaching! Wow. If you thought the NHS was poorly organised, you haven’t seen anything yet! Basically, our ‘training’ consisted of a grumpy Korean woman slamming a book down, waving her hand in the general direction of page 24 and then shoving us into a class of 15 or so 7 year olds. Fuck me was it a trial by fire! We learned, pretty quickly, that the school is the very definition of the word ‘maelstrom’ and that chaos is the order of the day. Usually after an event, you were informed that they should’ve told before, but don’t do it that way etc. Mostly things are tough because what they mean by ‘co-teacher’ is ‘person you will piss off by just existing, that you should not approach under any circumstances and does not/refuses to speak English’. So we’re pretty much on our own, I had to teach 3 classes today WITHOUT textbooks or lesson plans of any kind; that was tough. The kids are the exact mix you would expect, some bright and enthusiastic, some would really rather not be there and some want to act up.
The biggest obstacle both Becky and I are facing is that we don’t speak Korean, so we have no way of communicating to the class. I can’t say ‘Sit down and shut up!’ because they’ve not learned ‘Sit down and shut up!’ yet. They have this crazy scheme in place where our co-teacher teaches them stuff, like “This is a cat”, then we take over, in a different lesson, and are expected to make “This is a cat” last for 40 minutes. Yeah, 9 year olds get pretty bored of that (pretty quickly too - damned X-Box generation!). So mostly we get shouted at by the kids, who keep shouting things like “Cat!” at us, really proudly, before ignoring us and drawing lines between things in their work books (which didn’t know they had until one of the class spoke up and asked if they could complete it).
It’s difficult to accurately describe the sheer chaos of the school. The closest I can get to would be a across between that bit in Jumanji with the monkeys in the kitchen, crossed with The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, but with less fire, less water and a lot more monkeys. It doesn’t help much that our school has decided to pimp me out to another school near by, which is pretty similar, so it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire, then back into the frying pan. Then back into the fire. They even gave me a timetable that has me teaching two classes at the same time in the different schools. Quantum English teacher!
My thoughts seem pretty negative, but they’re not really. You can never really tell too much from a first day, although one of the other TESOL teachers there, from Canada, is really nice and said that everyday is like that, so hey. We’ll see how it turns out. I’m looking forward to getting into the swing of things and getting a feel for life as a teacher here. Oh - and did I mention that the school is completely chaotic?
I wonder if there are any emeralds or giant rings about?
South Korea itself is pretty cool. Actually it’s fucking boiling and very humid. The temperature is well over thirty and the weather girl said (in English!) that the humidity has been around 75%! From a cold Cardiff summer, that’s a real fucking shock! We’re constantly sweating, changing our clothes and taking showers. Still, apparently, it’s going to end in about a month or so, getting cooler all the time, so we’re just battening down the heat hatches.
Everything has English on it, seriously. There are products in the supermarket, I have no idea what they are, other than the fact that it’s fresh, fun and convenient! Also, much like all the fools about town in Britain have trendy Kanji on their shirts, everyone here has English on their shirts. It’s funny to be able to read everyone’s shirt but not any of the signs. And based upon some of the words on these shirts, you should probably donate any foreign script T’s you have to a charity shop. If the translation is as bad as it is here.... Well, put it this way - we saw a girl who’s shirt said ‘Pee all you can pee’. Yeah.
That’s all for now, we’ll try to get that video of the flat youtube’d as soon as possible. But until then, sorry if I’ve not got an email out to you, and wish Becky a happy birthday for this Sunday. I’m going to spend the rest of the week practising how to order a pizza for her. We were both relieved when we saw that we were living across the road from a Pizza Hut.
PS - I’ve been too busy/tired to work on episode 04 of the Psionic 6, but I still plan to get it up. I’ll post about it when I do.