A while back, Lee did a writing game with his students and posted their work. My students had a lot of fun with this as well. Some of the themes were similar, but others were just a bit strange. Here are their stories:
"The airplane was going to crash!
Suddenly, batman came and held the breaking airplane.
Then, He eat them.
However, they are poison.
They are die.
They became Angel.
But they're fried soon.
After all they died."
"It was raining outside. I had never seen rain before."
So, I went outside, and I played soccer with my friend in the rain.
A thunder came down and hit me.
So, I was sick.
I caught a snake and boil.
Then, make a delicious snake soup.
It tastes very nice.
Man say 'Oh, I'll take it. How much is it?'"
"The dangerous rabbit was eating a carrot.
At that time, pig was watching the rabbit.
Rabbit runs away.
The rabbit falls down to a hole.
In the hole, there was a big ugly prince named Pride.
Pride became a King Kong.
King Kong loved Pride to see her.
He is a Casanova.
She caught King Kong and went to zoo"
"It is midnight. I have been studying for 10 hours.
I often have trouble signing up for things in Korea because I have a foreign name and it's either too big to fit in the 'name' section of the website or it just simply won't except it.
Sarah and I once tried to go to our local library that opened up last year. We went in, walked up the stairs, found an empty booth and sat ourselves down. About 2 minutes later someone walked over with a ticket in their hand pointing at the booth. Sarah talked to them and apparently you had to reserve the booth. We later discovered that you had to book tables and basically any little space in the library in advance too.
'OK, no problem. Let's get a ticket,' we said.
Well, apparently, you have to sign up to the library in order to be able to get a ticket.
'OK, no problem. Let's sign up.'
So after about 30 minutes of filling out forms, which were all in Korean, and talking to the librarian, who wasn't helpful, we discovered our names could not be accepted by the system and so there was no way for us to use any of the library's resources. I got so angry at the time because I thought I had finally found a quiet place to study only to be rejected because the guy who coded the library's system hadn't thought that any one but a Korean would think to visit.
For me, it was less about going to the library itself than trying to be a part of normality. As a foreigner, things are difficult enough, but try to do anything outside of 'popping to the shops' and it's a fiasco, every time, without fail. I understand that part of living in a foreign country is having to deal with not being able to fully participate in society or even really feel part of that society, i.e. you are foreign. I'm just saying that it will be nice to return to the UK and feel part of daily society again.
I won't miss how everything is at the last minute. It's almost a cliché to complain about how last minute things are here in 'dynamic Korea'. But it is certainly something I won't miss.
Only this week did I feel slightly annoyed by this. Sarah and I had to go to a different school for half a day this week and talk with Korean teachers about a number of different topics. My class was on Tuesday morning and, even though I've known about this for a number of weeks through my co-teacher (actually Sarah told me first), I only got a call about it on Monday afternoon detailing how many people will attend my class, if there are computers in the rooms, where the school even is. As it turned out I had roughly 11 people in my class, but what if I had prepared a lesson for 30 people? And say I had created it on powerpoint only for there to be no computer in the room? Despite there being weeks to tell us these things, telling us the day before left very little prep time.
Happens all the time, too. Not just to me, but Sarah and most, if not all, native teachers. Do Koreans themselves complain about this? I'm not sure.
Koreans don't like to give feedback and if they do it's rarely critical. I believe this is down to the whole 'not losing face' thing. Basically, the idea here is not to allow anyone to 'lose face' i.e. not hurt their pride or dignity through various ways. They consider 'being critical' as one of the ways a 'losing face' situation may occur.
Now, at first glance, this sounds like a good thing, and in some ways it is. People are very nice here, my co-teachers always tell me that my classes are 'great' or they tell me how I did a 'good job' at the end of class. The problem I have with this is that when I know my class has failed or when I haven't been able to control the students, my co-teachers have still told me that my class was good, when I was just looking for a bit of constructive criticism on a class that I could see had failed.
'What can I improve?' I ask.
'Nothing. Good job today,' they say as I try to wake up my students to tell them that class is over.
How can we improve when people's opinions are restricted by culture? By the way, I'm not sure what Korean-on-Korean criticism is like, this is just what I have experienced.
How I get excited when things sound like stuff from home only to be disappointed that it's often something completely different.
For example, when my mate Chris visited me in Korea, he ordered 'cider' in a restaurant thinking it was the alcoholic cider we enjoy at home, only to be served Chilsung cider, a fizzy drink that tastes like Sprite... 'What a let down...' he said.
'Toast' here is often not just single slices of bread spread with jam, marmalade, butter or the like, but it refers to grilled bits of bread with sandwich filling inside - salad, ham, and cheese are the most popular fillings (for me :P). Actually I love this place. The food is cheap, fast, and tasty :) These pictures show a shop similar to my local one: [1], [2]
I also got excited when Sarah told me they had sausage rolls in Tous Les Jours - a Korean type bakery with endless supplies of cakes, bread, and pastries. When I stormed into the shop in search of the elusive sausage roll, I discovered that it was just one really long frankfurter-type sausage wrapped in a helix of doughy bread... It was tasty, but still a fail.
The global community has a constant eye on the goings on between North Korea and South Korea. The media get excited when anything happens, be that Kong Jong Il dying, the recent prisoner amnesty, or the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Admittedly, if I were anywhere else but Asia right now, I too would get excited about any North/South news. I'd see it as 'history in the making', a spectator to something I might one day tell my grandchildren about.
But actually being in Asia, being in Korea, you want the news to be littered with K-pop or how the price of kimchi is soaring. The last thing you want is any 'eventful' news about the North.
It's all good and well being thousands of miles away and watching Kim Jong Il's funeral on TV, but here in Korea I look upon such news through cautious eyes. Questions begin to arise, scenarios go through your head - all of which would be absent in the mind of a foreign spectator. You begin to scrutinise daily things with elements of, I think, justified paranoia.
A plane goes overhead - 'Was it a military plane? Could something be happening?'
A siren sounds - 'Is it the monthly drill already? Where are the closest shelters to me right now?'
An unusual and loud noise outside the apartment - 'What was that?' I say as I rush to the window (it's more often than not the Tous Les Jour van unloading... but it still gets me in a panic).
When the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island happened, I told myself that I wouldn't panic, that there would be plenty of options if the situation escalated. Nowadays, I'm not so sure. I think being with Sarah has made me wiser and that I look upon things with more maturity and sense of reality than I once did. Nothing has really changed from that day in 2010. Sure, Kim Jong Il has since died, but I'm not sure how less unpredictable the North has become. If anything, the situation remains the same: anything could happen at any time. I mean, we all knew the Dear Leader was crazy, but we know very little about this 'Great Successor'. I doubt the apple falls far from the tree...
It's being worried, hoping that today's news is uneventful and boring, the feeling of teetering on the edge of a danger that you can do nothing about - those things I will not miss.
Today was the last day of a week-long winter camp at a different school. Their school doesn't have a native English teacher so I was asked to create some fun lessons for a week. After I handed out prizes and wrapped things up todays, I said goodbye to my students. Many of them were sad and told me that they wished they could have spent more time with me. As I was cleaning up desks and organizing papers, one of the boys came up to me, handed me a fairly expensive Caramel Chocolate Kitty, and thanked me for teaching him this week. I was so touched by his words and actions. :D I know it was only a week, but I'll miss them.
I love Korea, I love my school, I love my students, but not everything is perfect - it never is - and I know I could write a list at least double the size of this about things I have not missed about England. But with the good comes the bad, therefore I've felt like I had to write this to bring some reality into this blog.
Actually, what has ended up happening is that I could only really think of nine things, so I've had to fill it out a bit with little gripes that have no real significance. But I've still had to split the article into two parts of five because some of my thoughts, although they are shared by a lot of native teachers here, I've felt like I've had to explain in detail why I think certain things and it's taken up too much space.
It's number one on my list of places to visit, but despite it being a stone throw's away from Korea, I am yet to realise my dream of visiting Japan ㅠㅠ I won't miss being so close, yet so far... Maybe sometime in the future, eh?
I won't miss the frustration of drilling common English phrases into my students like 'How are you?', 'What's the weather like?' etc only for them to be too shy to respond to me when I try to talk to them...
Someone coughing in your face is rude, right? Someone coughing in your face when they're sick and you can feel spittle spray on you is even ruder, right? Well, Korean kids think it's completely normal just to spray their germs everywhere without a second thought. Sitting on the bus during winter is like the few days before scientists discover that there is a contagious disease that is threatening to wipe out mankind and that it could've been prevented if people had simply covered their mouths when they coughed. My students are the best at coughing, for sure. They even go to the lengths of stretching their neck out and aiming their long, drawn out coughing fit right at you. I'm sure they're not doing it for a laugh, I just think... actually I have no idea why they don't cover their mouths. No idea.
This leads on to something else I won't miss: being in a state of perpetual illness. I knew coming into Korea that I would initially get sick because you're around new people. But 2 years of having a stuffy nose, feeling tired and other cold symptoms, is a bit much... I was hardly ever ill in the UK to the point that I would hassle people for being sick. Rarely took a day off school, only really had a couple of days off work. Here? Ill all the time. Can't stop going to the doctors, medicine fills up the cabinets... it's annoying. Sarah's the same, and other people I know seem to always be sick, too.
I know why number 4 occurs, too. In fact, it's obvious to any native teachers here. Being sick in Korea is a faux pas. Actually, being sick is OK, it's taking time to rest and recover from being sick that is the faux pas. I've been lucky that when I've been sick, my school are understanding and allow me to stay at home with no bother or at least ease my work load for a day. But some of the stories I've heard about the hassle native teachers get for trying to take time out to deal with legitimate medical conditions is absurd. Serious things too, not just colds and migraines, things that they have to visit the hospital for like surgeries and scans. I shake my head to think what Korean's have to put up with.
People have told me how their co-workers come in with the flu, high fevers, you name it. These aren't small things either, they're contagious and the whole school ends up getting sick. Then when no one goes home in isolation to recover, it just draws the whole thing out until a year has passed and you look back and wonder when the last time you were healthy was.
I'm not sure how typical this video is, and I'm sure it's exaggerated slightly, but it helps me sum up a bit what I am trying to say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKfFooy0QTY
Sometime my students have their head on the desk, asleep obviously. Some of the time it's because they're lazy or they were up late studying or playing video games, in which case I make them stand up until I think they are awake enough to participate. But most of the time it's because they are sick. Why don't they go home? I spoke to a student and they said that they get a black mark on their record for every day they are sick and this could affect what high school they go to. FOR BEING SICK! It's not like they have skipped school or had a fight or thieved.
Gas masks in the Korean subway. I propose that they have these in schools to combat Korean kids coughing in your mouth. (Photo by Miss Amy Sargent. Robbed from Facebook by Mr. Lee Whatling).
Winter camp is finally finished....for my school at least. Native teachers usually have to teach a one to two week camp course during both the summer and winter vacations. I got off lucky in the summer. I only had to have class for three days and only for an hour and a half. No prep needed, it was games the whole day. :D Work was a breeze. This time, I spent days and days wracking my brain and the internet and whatever other sites I could find looking for activities for the students. I have to say though that the past few stressful weeks truly paid off. I couldn't have asked for a better winter camp experience. My 24 students, all girls and 3 boys, did everything I asked and more. Their camp focused on speaking and writing skills so I tried to incorporate a number of speaking and writing activities. The one thing I enjoyed the most though was their journal writing. At the end of each day, they wrote an entry about their camp day, and I would take it home, read it, and revise it. Some of their entries were just amazing and so sweet. They put so much time into writing them. They even stayed way past quitting time just to finish writing in their journals. Lee would say "They're well keen!" :P Most of them were so absorbed in their journal entries that my coteacher and I had to finally drag them out of the classroom after 4:40.
Some pictures of my students working on their projects
The girls were working on their script for their news broadcast.
3rd attempt at making a paper microphone
Looking up nature sounds to use for their weather segment
Wanted a 'Handsome' shot in front of the 2nd grade story projects. "Teacher, I need girlfriend!" :P
My girls were so sad to leave today. One girl even asked if the school could have winter camp every day for the whole vacation period. O_O Just thinking about the prepwork makes me dizzy. :/
Some of the most memorable things about my camp were their country posters and today's acting lesson. For their country lesson, I had each group of girls create their own countries i.e. political leaders, laws, climate, etc.
Union world was my favorite. The girls in this group got a bit confused at one point and thought that union meant unicorn, so they put a unicorn on their country's flag. Ha ha :) They were so cute! They spent ages drawing and coloring in bits and pieces. They were so sad when they lost the class vote for best country. Of all the groups, these girls were the best. I felt sooo bad that they had not only lost the country vote, but that they had ended up losing all 4 games I played the rest of the day. The one sentence that kept popping up in each of their journals that day was "Today, I'm so irritating, every game we lose so feeling bad. OTL." Ha. Turns out the next day, they won all the major games and cleaned out the prize bin. :) It's funny how things just happen to turn around sometimes.
Hye Yeon Country was another interesting country. They had the standard same laws as everyone else: No Killing, No stealing, No Homework, School for only four hours, and then there was one that stuck out...Every baby born must be beautiful or handsome. Uh...
In the end, they all did such a good job. The teachers who helped out with the winter camp were so impressed at the end products of each activity.
I was going to put up pictures of the country posters, but I accidentally formatted the memory card. I'll retake the pictures and post them up later.
The last day was definitely one of the funniest days. I showed the students two spongebob episodes. Then I gave them bits of the script to act out. I didn't know if it would go over so well mainly due to the fact that Korean kids absolutely hate to get up in front of class, but they were great. They got really into their roles as Spongebob characters. I'm going to try to put the videos here so you can see a few. I still can't get over one of the girls yelling "Pickles! Pickles! I forgot the Pickles!" We all had such a great laugh at the short skits. You can watch a video of the best group on Lee's youtube account.
The girls finished the camp today with a long long journal entry. Class was supposed to end at 4:10 today and none of them left til almost 5. I read the last entries of most of the students, and I got a bit teary. Most of them had written how much they had loved English camp and me. It was so heartwarming and an experience that I know I will keep for a long time even after I leave Korea.
So it doesn't happen often in Korea, but there are occasionally days where really strange things happen.
The first day of work at my school, I was given a set of keys, one for the office and one for my desk drawer. It turned out that the key to my desk drawer was the wrong key, and no one knew where the actual key had been placed. I was told that I was out of luck and not to put anything valuable in my desk. So all year I've had an unlocked drawer.
This morning, I did the usual. I walked into the office, put my bag in the small cubby below my desk, and was about to place my ipod into my drawer when I realized it was locked. O_O No one had a key, and I hadn't locked it. My coteacher and I tried to use a bit of elbow grease and some muscle to get it open. Let's just say that didn't quite work. :/
We ended up calling the head of the math department who just happened to also be the school handyman. You have to understand that married men in Korea over the age of 40 are called Adjushis. Adjushis tend to be quite opinionated and funny. When the math department Adjushi finally came to our office, he spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out why the wrong key was not turning let alone fitting in the drawer lock. He spent ages wondering out loud about the key. Then he spent another 20 minutes commenting on how the previous native english teacher smelled and looked like he never took a shower.
My coteacher looked like she wanted to throttle him. I thought the whole scene was just really funny.
He ended up leaving for lunch after a while only to come back with a drill. While he was drilling holes out the sides of my desk, I was busy signing stacks of completion certificates for students. He finally got my drawers open and then proceeded to comment on all of their contents.
Eventually, I left him to fix the drawers and then I heard it, a very distinct munching sound. I looked up and the math Adjushi had eaten the oranges that were on my desk! I was gutted.... OTL
(Lee edit: "OTL" is a Korean thing that is supposed to look like an exasperated person bending down on the floor - the "O" being the head, the "T" being the torso and arms, and the "L" being the bent legs)
First week of my school's winter camp is finished and I hope my students had fun. Yawning is a good sign, right?
The first day was a bit chaotic, the second graders didn't really listen to my instructions, left trash on the ground, among other disruptive things. I nipped this in the bud the next day by enlisting the help of one of my co-teachers who went in and told them something along the lines of 'Oh, I'm so disappointed in you. Lee is an amazing teacher. How can you do this to the golden jewel of the British Isles?' - he told them in Korean, but I'm pretty sure that is what he said.
Once they decided to behave themselves, I realised that they were actually better at English than they let on... The shy, quiet girls were better than expected, anyway - I always knew the boys to be relatively decent at English because of the random stuff they blurt out in class.
With this in mind, I decided to play a collaborative writing game with them to finish off the week.
What I did was split the class into three teams of four. I then gave two pieces of paper to each team. The paper had a sentence written on the top that I had typed prior to the lesson. I lined the paper into eight sections in which they had to write whatever they wanted to continue the story. They then had to fold over the previous sentence so that the person they passed it onto could only see what they had written and not the whole story. They passed both papers around their team with each member writing on the paper until the sheet was full.
I thought it might be a bit challenging for two reasons:
1. Korean students are not used to being given creative control over the English they use, i.e. they mostly take the form of 'I'm fine, thanks. And you?' robots that freak out and literally run away when anything that doesn't fit the textbook template is thrown at them.
2. Some of them might struggle with forming any sentences at all because even though most of them were high level, some simply did not have a big enough vocabulary bank to draw upon when we did these kind of activities. To counter this, I let them used their phone dictionary (all Koreans have Korean-English-Korean dictionaries on their phones). A downside to letting them use their dictionaries were sentences like this one one of my girls wrote today: 'to be born destiny' - no one knows what it means.
Anyway, here is a choice selection of their final stories (the text in bold is what I wrote to start them off and all spelling and grammar is left how they wrote it), see if you can find any themes...:
First story
The man was looking out of the window.
Oh! Bird is die!!! I'm sad ㅠㅠ I have to eat!! Oh~ deliciouse!!
"Mother! What do you eat?"
I am eating your finger.
And I am eating your toe.
Second story
The scary dog looked very angry at me.
I killed a dog.
But the dog didn't die.
Because the dog is phoenix.
However, the dog is dying.
Suddenly, vet come and save a dog.
But he is killer.
The dog said "What is happen?"
Third story
Super Mario got a 0 (zero) on his English test.
Oh! No~ So, I eat English test paper, because my mom very angry.
So I go to bathroom. And I poo.
It smell is very dilicious.
And, I eat poo.
Oh! It's deliciouse!
I will eat them every day~
So I have stomach ache but I'm happy.
I'm die.
Fourth story
Oh, no! That whale just ate that chicken!
Chicken said "I'm not delicious!" in the whale's stomach.
Actually chicken was prince of chicken world.
But his bad uncle killed the chicken prince and destroyed the chicken world.
So chickens leave their world.
But whale try to eat chickens again!
Then chickens explode!!!
People eat the chickens.
Fifth story
The woman put socks on her hands.
She making a snowman.
but, There was no snow.
There was stone, That was beautiful! I will to eat The Stone~ It's delicious!
But I have stomach ake.
I'm not sure if this is a good example of creativity or just the scribblings of oddball teenagers. Probably a bit of both. Clutching at straws a bit, but I actually like the story about the whale and the chicken prince... The one about cannibalism made me feel a bit ill.
I really hope that the one about pooping out an English test and eating it everyday isn't a metaphor for my English camp... ㅠㅠ
I asked my students if they celebrate Christmas. After about a week or so of asking every one of my classes, I found that the majority of them said 'yes'.
Now, I don't know whether they really understand the implications of the word 'celebrate'. It usually means doing something extra special for the occasion, whether that includes meeting up with family, having a special meal, going to church, or whatever.
One of the third graders I spoke to said that he ate with his family. Another said he had a nice meal. Another was wearing a new, sharp looking v-neck sweater underneath his blazer. Promising, I thought.
It turned out that the first guy was just eating a normal meal with his parents and brother with no discernible element of celebration apparent. No cake. No party poppers. Nothing remotely special.
The second guy's 'nice meal' was a pepperoni pizza that, after talking to him for a bit, I found out he eats relatively regularly anyway.
And the last guy went out and bought the sweater himself - he said that 'it wasn't good value...'
Not much celebrating going on then.
There wasn't a great deal of celebrating going on in the Gray-Whatling apartment either, to be honest. Without being with our families during the holidays, what we do is a watered down version of Christmas. We tried our best like we always do and it ended up being pretty good in the end.
We had a lovely meal, a genuinely lovely meal, on Christmas eve. It was delicious. We journeyed to a place called Uno Chicago Grill in Ilsan about 30 minutes bus ride from Gyesan. I'll tease you with some pics:
Before
After
Only the pickles and the coleslaw got out alive.
This is Sarah looking beautiful at the restaurant:
This is me looking rough:
The meal involved Sarah and I massacring a 10 ounce New York steak and a large rack of baby back ribs lashed with a BBQ sauce. Throw some chilli, nachos, bread sticks and fries into the mix and you can guess we never had to eat until the next day (we ate this around 2:30pm).
On Christmas day itself, we woke up, gave each other presents, then went and had a buffet lunch at a restaurant called Ashley's in Home Plus, had some coffee and finally chilled out at home until we it was time to chat to our family in the evening.
Sarah got me an excellent Swiss watch, which I can't wait to wear - the strap needs adjusting because I have the wrists of a toddler. She also got me a smart looking coat, but that needs exchanging - again, I'm too thin. I got Sarah a ring and a nice jumper. She's already worn both in public, which is a good sign.
It's taken about 22 months, but it's finally here... pictures of our area: Gyesan-dong, Incheon! Sarah took the pictures during the daytime and I, Lee, took the pictures at night. For almost 2 years of living here, you would have thought I could have taken better pictures. You wouldn't believe it, but the ones I uploaded are actually the best of the bunch. Sarah's photos are good though, as usual.
This is my (Lee) building. I guess it's a standard apartment building for people who live alone and like to get hassled by nosey superintendents.
This is the view from my apartment window. You can see Seoul tower in the distance on a clear day, of which this was not. I love this view :) The brick building is a technical high school and the tall tower blocks are larger apartments for families or for people who need a lot of space.
No, this isn't a scene from the movie 'Scum'... These are just doors leading to people's apartments. None of these doors are mine. My door is in a dingy, unphotogenic corner behind me by a drafty stairwell.
This is Sarah's apartment complex where we both live together (we just use my place for storage now). We moved here because it's better situated. Instead of walking 8 minutes to get to Home Plus or Angel-in-us coffee shop, it now takes 2 or 3, depending on how fast the elevator gets to us. Takes people days to walk to the nearest well in parts of Africa...
View from Sarah's apartment window. The bright lights keep us awake at night.
Someone's stall on the side of the road selling grain and things. Also a woman wearing a mask.
The legendary Home Plus on the right of the picture and some of what you can see through Sarah's window on the left. Also some buses.
Street stand selling red bean paste cake snacks (I'm sure someone knows the proper name for them). I love these cakes. Really tasty and you're reminded the next day that you've eaten a packet of them because of the burns on your tongue.
This is Gyeyang-gu office, the district office. It's quite big and imposing, but I like it. Better looking than Portsmouth civic offices anyway...
No, not an aquarium. Incheon is a port city so you see these kind of 'choose your own fish' restaurants everywhere. I've seen them in Seoul, too, I just assume they're just more common in port towns. Never eaten in one.
This is the start of my little series on how I feel about returning home to the UK in March.
Didn't know I was coming back?
Well, come the end of March, my mug will be paraded around the streets of Portsmouth once more. Hide your pork pies... I'm a-coming!
10 Things I Will Miss About Korea
The things I will miss about 대한민국 (South Korea... I'm just showing off) are plentiful to say the least, but I will try and think of the things I will miss most and somehow form a kind of list. It's not a 'top 10' or anything, just a list.
제육덮밥 (Jae ook deopp bap (sorry for the rubbish romanisation)) - a kind of spicy pork dish. The meat is quite fatty but cut like thick bits of bacon. Drenched in a 'Korean spice' - a name I use for that spice that Koreans seem to use on everything that I haven't really bothered to remember the real name of - sauce with a fist full of rice. There's some veggies in there, but they are left in the shadow of the slices of pork. Disclaimer: Sarah's restricted me from the wonders of tasting the 제육덮밥 because it's 'bad for my health'. She's right, of course, and I can get it 'once a week', she says... She cares more about my health than I do :) I suppose I can throw many Korean foods under this bullet point: donkatsu (actually Japanese), the cheapness and availability of sushi (also Japanese...), bibimbap, jajangmyeon, kimbap, kalbi among other foods that I don't know the name of because I've let Sarah order for me too many times.
Home Plus... Oh wait, it's basically Tesco's... I only like it because it's literally yards from Sarah's apartment complex.
In fact, that is what I will miss about Korea, more specifically, Incheon. Looking out of the window of Sarah's apartment, I can see literally everything that I need to live. There's a bakery, two bakeries, actually; a bank downstairs; restaurants, bars (western and Korean), coffee shops; dentist round the corner, doctors in the building next to hers, opticians, pharmacy; a gym... I could go on. Actually, the above is a bit pointless when you can get everything delivered... I don't even have to leave the apartment to get fully cooked meals on plates with cutlery, side dishes etc. Everything is so convenient here that we moan about having to wait a couple of minutes for the elevator. Actually, it does take a long time... it can be quite frustrating.
My students. Enough said, really. My students are awesome, well... most of them anyway :)
The internet connection. My monster internet connection has got entire HD movies downloaded in minutes. We use ethernet cables plugged into our laptops, too, which makes the transfer even quicker. When I get back to the UK it'll be like those Star Trek episodes when they go to those lame little planets with budget technology and they have to act all impressed. 'Oooo you're downloading at 1MB a second? Big whoop, bruv... had 4MB/s back in 대한민국' - will be a statement I'll have to try and avoid using in an attempt to not sound like a total jerk.
It's going to sound bad, but I'll miss being able to play the foreigner card. A great example was the time when I forgot to bring change for the shopping trolleys at Home Plus. Instead of simply cutting down on what I bought so I could carry it myself or use a basket, I made eye-contact with an employee and tugged at the chained up shopping trolleys as if I didn't understand what was happening. The employee, at a slight jog, came to my aid and unlocked them for me :) What a pro.
No.5 on my list actually touches on this item: the kindness of the Korean people. OK, they might be a bit xenophobic at times, the dirty stares etc, but that's a different story. I believe that Koreans are inherently kind and welcoming. I'm not sure if this applies to Korean-on-Korean kindness (Sarah and I have seen many a Korean vent their stress and anger upon one another), but Korean-on-foreigner kindness? Sure. The stories I've heard of people being invited around random people's houses for dinner seems to crop up every now and then. I seem to get 떡 (ddeok) every other day for when teachers go through some kind of hardship, like a death in the family, or have something to celebrate, like a marriage. I've had 3 packets of the stuff in the past two days and a can of some sweet rice drink, which I don't really like but I'm saving it to pawn off to some kid if I run out of candy.
How anime and manga is the popular art form. When I was a kid, I remember doodling weird shapes or stick figures hitting each other with giant swords (hello, Freud). The kids here? They're doodling anime characters or reading manga under the desk. If you want to see more of what I'm talking about then check out my blog on what I've called 'Kool Korea' here [1] and here [2]. But that anime/manga stuff is everywhere! If only I could read Korean...
The transport here is so handy... and interesting. If I want to get to Seoul I have the options of bus, subway, or taxi - all of which I can pay for with a single wave of my T-Money card. All three options are cheap, too, compared with England at least. Taxis are obviously the most expensive option, but even then I have gotten from Hongdae to my place in Incheon for about 30,000 won (20 quid) - a 30 minute journey, about 40 minutes by bus and about the same by subway, even less now the airport line is open. The bus I take to school is a banged up wreck that I'm surprised is even allowed on the roads to be honest. But it's my wreck. I've seen people running for the bus fall flat on their face through my position on the back seat (I sit there by choice, it's not 60s civil rights deal). I've seen car crashes, arguments, midgets, old people get elbowed in the head by people falling on them because the bus driver drives like a maniac. I found a phone on that bus and stressed out all the passengers while I tried to communicate with the owner's father when he called the phone. I used to take the bus to work all the time back in England, and the only interesting thing I remember from that was when the bus driver wouldn't let me on because he had driven 3 feet past the bus stop already...
I'll miss the places we've visited. Places like Muuido, Seoul, places in Incheon that we've visited, Busan, Gapyeong, Mokpo for the F1. Those are memories, but you still miss it. I regret not seeing some things like the Tripitaka Koreana, Jeju-do, the north Eastern region, but you can't do everything... and anyway it's a mission to get to those places :P Who knows, maybe we'll return in the future?
When you're in Korea, in this country where hardly anyone speaks your language and as a Guest English Teacher (GET) you are treated as such: a guest, you get into your own little bubble. When you're here it's difficult for anything to affect you. I look at the news and politics from America and the UK all the time, but if I didn't want to then I don't have to. I don't have to read a newspaper or watch the news, which is inevitable when you're in your home country. Seeing a headline or have something happen to you can make or break your day sometimes. If I get dirty looks on the subway here, or I see a bus driver literally get out of his bus just to shout at a passer-by and consequently get into a fight (happened more than once) I can just put it down to 'it's their culture. I can't help because I can't talk to them. There's literally nothing I can do, so I'm just gonna sit back and soak it up and enjoy the interesting experience'. It sounds harsh and non-conflict but it's true. If a Korean is looking at me strangely, what am I really going to say to them? What can I say? If it was in England, I'd have to deal with it. I'd be like 'erm, can I help you?' and then take it from there. Here my tactic is to stare back at them until they feel awkward and look away. Tip: old guys don't usually feel awkward like this and it will take a lot of staring before they look away... Obviously when things happen to your family at home or when you miss a birthday or Christmas, it has an affect, but that's what you've signed up for. There's nothing you can do but feel that way. But I'm talking about having to deal with rubbish on a day-to-day basis, not the far-reaching effects of missing family events. Although isolation can be draining sometimes, I will miss not having to deal with the rubbish you get thrown at you on a daily basis at home. From little things to the big, in your 'Korean bubble' it's often your choice what you can let into your life. (Unfortunately, Sarah, as a 교포 (gyopo - a person of Korean descent who was born and/or raised outside of Korea itself, e.g. Korean-American), does not have this luxury. She speaks enough Korean to know when people are saying things.)
I write from my metal box/apartment in Korea about the second half of our great trip to Vietnam! (Only kidding - I love my apartment :P).
The Trips
The White Sand Dunes
We began organising our excursions like anyone else would: by inquiring at the reception in our resort. As it turned out, they had cancelled all their excursions for some reason and recommended we take a taxi... Great service there Amaryllis! If we hadn't have been into town the previous day we wouldn't have noticed the 10 or 20 different local tour operators nearby and so through ignorance we might've been forced to take a ridiculously expensive taxi ride for a good 3-4 hours. As it happened, we did notice these tour operators and after another painful conversation trying to interpret their 'English' we managed to squeeze that blood out of the stone and finally got the resort to call and book a tour for us.
We decided to go for a jeep ride instead of a van, purely because I thought it would be cooler. It was cooler, much cooler, and I even got a good picture out of it:
Sarah in the jeep minus comb
So, after a 30-40 minute drive through the rural dust of Mui Ne we made it to the beautiful white sand dunes.
We had read that there would be loads of kids trying to sell us stuff, which after China we had a lot of experience in, but there wasn't really. I mean, there were some kids but they didn't really hassle us like I thought they would. My theory is that they thought Sarah was local - a reoccurring theme during our trips to both Vietnam and China - and so decided we were too wise to their ways be bothered with.
As we walked up the stifling hot sand dunes we were excited by it's beauty. With it's vast, rolling pits of sand with a blue sky backdrop on one horizon and a large lake with slight forestation on the other, it was great to behold. But we were also curious as to how out of place the whole scene was; a giant patch of sand dune, with an oasis-like lake nearby, set within eyeshot of the sea - it was all rather odd. Definitely worth the trip :)
Sarah even got something for free! I mean, the sand was quite difficult to walk through so Sarah thought it a good idea to take off her flip-flops... Two minutes later she stepped on gum; GUM in this vast expanse of beauty all caught between her toes:
Unlucky
Lee and the white sand dunes, plus cool Saigon t-shirt.
The Red Sand Dunes
... weren't that special. Stayed there for about 15 minutes before leaving. Still cool to see though, but after the white sand dunes it wasn't that great.
Not that red.
Fishing Village
Apparently we couldn't actually get down to the fishing village itself in the jeep, so the driver just dropped us off at the side of the road to take a few pics.
Me and some fishing boats.
Some fishing boats.
Fairy Stream
Now I wasn't sure what to expect from the Fairy stream, so I didn't question anything when we turned up at a little trickle at the side of the road next to a convenience store.
Some kids told us to follow them down a precarious looking bunch of steps that led into the river itself. They were knee deep in the river and were beckoning us in. We stopped, looked around and asked if they were serious. They were and we were thankful that we wore shorts that day (there were some Germans behind us that wore jeans... not sure why; it was sweltering hot). Here's a video of the first few minutes into the stream:
From my experience traveling (Turkey comes to mind), I knew that we'd probably end up having to pay these kids something for helping us, but we had no idea where we were going so we just let them lead us into the unknown and we'd throw 'em a bone later.
The stream was actually very beautiful, much more than I expected, and I could see why it was on the tourist map. Now that I think about it, it was probably one of my favourite parts of the whole holiday. The kids were guiding us away from particularly deep parts of the stream which was nice (there was a Korean couple in front of us with a toddler and, because they didn't recruit the help of the local street urchins, they were struggling a bit - it was funny to watch at times :) ). We saw some beautiful butterflies lit up by the sunlight streaming through the gaps in the trees. The rock formations nearer the end of our little trek, but by no means near the end of the stream, were gorgeous. Here are some pictures:
Lee and Sarah in the Fairy stream
Fairy stream
Nice rock formations.
Sarah and the rock formations.
It was great :)
On our walk back to the jeep our child guides, as predicted, asked us for cash. Now you can buy a pretty decent meal for around 100,000 Vietnamese dong (around $5 (3 pounds)) and we thought that was a generous amount to give.
So I said 'Yeah, thanks for your help, kids!' revealed the 100,000 dong and they looked at me as if I had just called their mother something rude!
They were all saying 'Oh, no sale! No sale! We need to go to school! We need more.. Come on!'. (Inside I was thinking 'No sale? We don't actually HAVE to give you anything..')
I felt sorry for them so I picked up a little bit more of the small change from my pocket and said that's all I could give them and they walked off as if it wasn't even enough to bother with!
I turned to Sarah and said 'Well, beggars can't be choosers,' and put the cash back in my pocket.
They kept turning around and asking for more but I was like 'Nope! It's that or nothing.'
They kept walking off and coming back. By that time, I knew their game...
I said to Sarah 'We could've gave 'em 500,000 dong and they still would've reacted like this. Good tactic but we're no fools.'
As we we're nearing the jeep one of the kids finally came up to me and said 'You're good. 100,000, OK.' So I gladly gave them the cash, because they were helpful to be honest, and they said thank you and waved us off.
Cheeky little gits ;)
Takou Mountain
Another day, another excursion. We went through the same company and rented another jeep. This trip was a tad more expensive because it took longer to get there (about an hour and half) but it was definitely worth it.
The entrance to Takou mountain was almost theme park-esque. The mountain was actually quite large so despite Sarah's slight apprehension we took the cable car to the top.
On the cable car
At the top in the semi-wilderness.
Reclining Buddha
Above is a video of the reclining Buddha so you can see how big it was.
Lee in the clouds.
When we left the mountain area, the jeep driver dropped us off at one of the MANY dragon fruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_fruit) groves we passed on the way there. It was quite random just wandering onto someones dragon fruit patch :S
Random dragon fruit grove
Random dragon fruit grove with Takou mountain backdrop.
The dragon fruit was grown by the Vietnamese in a very interesting way; I mean, I'm not an expert on how it's grown, it could be grown like this all over the world for all I know. Anyway, they stick a pillar of concrete into the ground and the dragon fruit plant is forced to grow around it. I guess it makes it easier to harvest or maybe they do it so each plant doesn't have to compete for sunlight or ground space with it's neighbouring plant... Guesswork.
After being randomly dropped off here, we got randomly dropped off at this place:
The place we randomly got dropped off at :S
Don't ask us where it was, because we couldn't tell you, but we got directed to a market area for some reason. I thought the market was quite cool actually. A bit too smelly and graphic for Sarah, I think - there were all kinds of animals and fish gutted and up for sale. Things that stick in my mind was the tail of an unidentified animal and these strange fish that I've never seen. We didn't stick around long enough to take pictures, as you can probably guess :P
Next stop was the Poshanu Cham towers that were actually quite close to our resort. Can't remember much about them except that they were from the 9th century. They seemed well preserved and were nice to look at :) We were surprised they hadn't weathered more, especially considering the powerful winds from the sea and the horrendous monsoons they get there.
Ancient-ish tower
Final words
Overall, we loved Vietnam. It would've been nice to have seen more of it actually (Hanoi, eastern coastal cities etc) but we definitely made the most of the area we stayed in :) I know one thing for sure, the shock of returning back to work was real... We sure relaxed out there in the 'Nam :P
Me having a sip of my coconut juice.
It was Pho-bulous :)
(If you want us to send you any pictures in particular then just let us know :) )
During a jeep ride back from the White Sand Dunes in Vietnam, I had this idea for a travel blog. I wanted to write a blog with Lee about the times we've shared both abroad and in Korea. Lee and I both would write a post about different parts of our trips. I thought that we could use the blog for two reasons: as a record of our memories and as a way for both our families to get a bit more insight into the other's personality. I hope that we will be able to post on the blog continuously throughout the remainder of our time here in Korea. Lee and I had a paper, rock, scissors match to see who would have to write first and...I lost, so I'm writing first. :/ Here goes..I hope you all enjoy!
WELCOME TO VIETNAM
After a short 5 hour flight, we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. What were the first things we noticed? Besides the heat and 100% humidity, one of the first things we noticed was the huge disproportionate ratio between men and women. In the airport and out in the town, there was a noticeable lack of number of young women around. Everywhere you looked, there seemed to be nothing but men. Another was the sheer number of motorbikes on the road and the lack of proper timed crosswalks. Buildings in Vietnam were also very unique. All of the buildings that we kept seeing were very narrow and very few seemed to have more than 5 floors. Despite the fact that the buildings were quite narrow, we were both really impressed with the way the Vietnamese maximized space.
We were able to find our hotel pretty painlessly. After we settled in to the hotel, we decided that we'd have a bit of a wander around the city. Our hotel was in an area that was central to a few site-seeing stops including the famous binh than market, a couple of art museums, a large Catholic church (Vietnam has one of the largest Catholic populations in the world), and a few communist memorials. We decided that we'd take the short walk to the Binh than market first. I swear that short walk felt like one of the longest walks in my life. Travelling in Vietnam or rather walking around in Vietnam especially Ho chi minh city can sometimes feel like a fight to survive. There are so many motorbikes and very few cars. The problem is that people park their motorbikes on walking paths (so you're forced to walk on the street), and there are no lights at all at any crosswalks. So the rule here is walk fast...very fast when you see a gap and don't stop moving or you WILL get hit by a bike.
Here's a clip we recorded of just what it felt like to walk around in Ho Chi Minh:
We bravely managed to get to Ben thanh market where we had an interesting chance to experience arm-tugging and haggling to its extreme. The market also had an area where they served food. I think most people would have been a bit shocked to eat inside the food area, but I thought it was amazing. Lee and I picked a random corner shop, grabbed stools and ordered rice paper summer rolls like pros. The food was amazing and we loved every minute of soaking up Vietnam.
Ben Thanh Market
After the market, we played a bit more human frogger to get to the art museum a few streets over. It's always interesting to see the different types of art that are displayed in different countries. In Korea, we've seen a ridiculous amount of Celadon pottery in various museums (as a result Lee will now instantaneously walk out of a room if it contains even one pot). In China, we saw stack upon stack of water-color paintings. Lacquered wood paintings seemed to be the Celadon pot and water-colored paintings of Vietnam. There were many different scenes that had been painted onto wood, but the most common seemed to be of workers in rice fields or fishermen. The first floor of the museum held various paintings of faces that didn't really appeal to Lee or me mainly because of the fact that each face looked as if it had come straight out of a horror film.
We were a bit scared to walk around at night with all the motorbikes so we went back to our hotel. Since the hotel offered amazing deals in their spa, we decided to get a Vietnamese massage. We enjoyed a nice 2 hour foot and body massage, manicure and pedicure (which Lee loved by the way although he'll deny it to this day ;) ), and fruit plate for roughly $25. I think that is to date the cheapest that we have ever paid to be pampered.
The next day we took a bus to Mui Ne. We spent about 5 hours traveling to our Resort. I'm so glad I looked out the window around the 5 hour mark to see the sign for our resort. If I hadn't, we would have missed our stop and who knows where we might have ended up. It seems that in Vietnam, the bus doesn't really stop at designated stops or at any particular stop. Instead you're supposed to stand up and flag down the driver when you want to get off.
Our room was beautiful and had a small terrace with chairs and a view of both a garden and the beach. We were a bit worried about the weather forecast, but the weather was lovely all the same. We definitely took advantage of the pool quite a bit.
Here are a few pictures of the resort, our room and the surrounding beach area:
The view from our room
Our favorite reading spots
The Amaryllis resort was quite isolated so we ate most of our meals either at the main resort restaurant or at the beach bar.
Summer Rolls
The weather took a bit of a turn for the worst during the first couple of days we were at the resort. The rain came down quite heavily, and the wind blew strongly as well. It reminded me of hurricane weather back home. It was interesting to see how the resort workers dealt with the weather. Every time it started to rain they pulled down these thin bamboo blinds that were supposed to block out the rain in the open hallways. They worked surprisingly well. We spent a couple of hours in their cafe reading with the doors open enjoying the cool breeze without getting wet. The other times when it rained heavily, we stayed in the room watching episodes of the dog whisperer.
On one of the days when the weather let up a bit, we decided to venture out to Mui Ne city. The taxi driver dropped us off at Mui Ne Market. The driver said he would wait for us (I guess he knew that we wouldn't be staying very long). We didn't want to take any pictures of the market mainly because it just felt wrong in a way to take pictures of people in poverty. There were many people selling bits and pieces of what they could, great slabs of raw meat and fish covered in flies, and others lounging against the walls. The smells also were a bit more than either of us could handle so we decided to head back. As we were driving back, we saw families living on the side of the road in very small, open sheet-metal boxes. It was hard for both of us to imagine life in a metal box with the rain and hot humid weather.
Overall though, the first half of our trip to Vietnam was relaxing and very nice. Lee's going to talk about the second half of the trip.
10:21 PM
Sarah
