Fun Pictures

My Mosquito Net.


I think this might be a kid's Mosquito net.



Flower tea? Tastes like water.



I think they eat these things!!! They're worms and they were still alive in this basket.

Bad Kids

Not sure whether or not I've mentioned this but my rural farm school is similar to the Compton of Pusan. Don't get worried, this is comparatively speaking. Pusan is really safe but I think my school might be one of the worst.

Half of the kids smoke. They are always getting in trouble for smoking. I asked a girl what she was interested in during a speaking test and she said smoking. I asked a class what the want to do and a kid yelled smoke.

Right now there are about 10 kids with casts or wraps on their arms. half are from soccer. The other half are from fighting. This includes girls. Last year there was a brawl near my school. It was 30 students, all girls!!

You would never know it by looking at them. They all look so innocent. Their school uniforms might add to the innocent persona.

Empathy training

They (whoever they are) always say that you can't really understand a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes. Teaching in a foreign country is like walking cross country in a teacher's shoes. Not only are you thrust into teaching with no experience or background, but there's the little issue of the language barrier as well. Not to say that teaching abroad is more difficult than teaching back home. I am more like a guest lecturer every week, I only see each class once per week. I don't really have to grade or assign homework, so that is nice.
Also unless I start breaking Korean laws I'm not going to lose my job. Plus the pay for teaching in Korea is better than it would be back home. I guess this post is serving as my apology to teachers. Any teacher I ever annoyed, any class I ever acted out in, any teacher or potential teacher I ever belittled or envied for their easy job.

My Experience as a Teacher so Far: There are good classes and there are bad classes. It's weird being an FT because none of the classes are really mine. The behavior of the class is directly related to the home room teacher or co-teacher that I have with that class. The first year middle school students are exempt from that logic. They are awesome. Attentive, enthused and they love to participate. They are not quite "too cool for school" (I finally get this saying) yet like many of the 2nd and 3rd grade students. The bad 2nd and 3rd grade students just lack discipline. The good 2nd and 3rd grade classes are ruled with an iron fist whereas the bad classes have little to fear from their homeroom teachers. I'm glad that I'm not the primary teacher for that very reason. I'm not very good at being mean and I sometimes relate with the troublemakers in class so I do not make a good disciplinarian. All in all, there are good and bad days and when I remind myself that I've only been teaching for 3 months there is nowhere to go but up.

Sailing, sailing

I joined the foreigner sailing club on Saturday and went out on a dingy and a Hobie cat with my friend Dave.

It's a pretty good time. Someday I would like to sail the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, and then the world!!! Our next conquest will be the J24 (first picture).

We were scheduled to go out on one Sunday but the police weren't letting any boats out due to high winds. This is the most paranoid country I've ever heard of. It's really safe, due to the fact that they don't let anyone do anything exciting. Most Koreans can't swim so they are really protective around the water. When the waves get decent size for surfing here the coast guard shuts down the ocean. It then becomes ILLEGAL TO SWIM/SURF. I'm not talking about enormous scary waves either, I'm talking 10 foot max. The funny thing is that I've heard some surfers go out to surf on those days and the Korean coast guard can't swim out to get them!!! They try to get to the outside but never make it. Haha.

Mosquito update: I got a mosquito net and it is awesome!!! It is a sea life themed net with cute crabs and whales on it. Everything in Korea is "cute". It feels like an underwater camping trip every time I go to bed. It's a lot of fun, I'll post some pics soon.

Holy Cow

Remember that "crazy cow" thing I mentioned a while back? It is a huge deal here. Most of the President's cabinet has resigned and there are more resignations coming.
There's an article about it here:

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/

Check out the picture of the protest. There are thousands of people in the streets and riot police too. I think a big aspect of the protests is that the American beef is taking the place of Korean raised beef. I'm pretty sure someone told me that. Of course mad cow doesn't sound too appetizing either.

Here's a Wonder Girls video. This is typical Korean pop music, or K-pop.



They love to throw random English in their songs. The English rap at the end is kind of funny.

My typical weekday in Korea

6:00 wake up to classical songs done with electric guitar played from my computer alarm clock.
6:40 Actually get up this time after snoozing for 40 min.
Shower
Make some cereal and a smoothie
get dressed
eat and check the news/e-mail
7:55 Head off to the train.
8:15 arrive at my sports park subway exit
8:25 arrive at school after a brief walk through the irrigation areas of the local farms.
8:30-9:10 mess around on the internet, maybe copy some worksheets for my first class.
9:10-12:40 usually I'll have a couple of classes before lunch. About 40% of the time I will find out that one of my classes for the day was either canceled or rescheduled to conflict with a normally scheduled class. My classes are 45 minutes long.
12:40 Korean lunch. We load up our metal prison trays with the meal of the day. Every meal consists of some kind of:

Kimchi - Spicy pickled cabbage or turnip
Side dish A
Side dish B
Rice
Soup

1:40-4:30
Teach my other 2 classes with a lot of prep time in between. Once a week one of my co-teachers will tell me 1 hour before class that I need to make up a random lesson because she already taught the part of the book she told me to prepare for.
5:00 Hit the store near my house because I am a man and I never remember to get everything at the store.
5:30
Push ups and sit ups while watching an episode of some random TV series I've downloaded. Right now it's the wire.
6:30 Dinner, usually homemade including rice or eggs (or both).
7:30 a little guitar.
8:30
chores
9:00
One more episode of TV series or a movie while I let my brain rest.
10:00 kill mosquitoes*
10:05 go to bed.

*Our apartment building has a weird mosquito infestation. I close all of the windows but they still make it into my apartment. I discussed this with a couple of neighbors and they have the same problem. I think they come in through the floor drains of the laundry and bath rooms. I've started covering the drains with garbage can lids and it has gotten a little better.

This is just a mid week day. I'll often wander around my city and eat out or hit the street market. Weekends I'm usually at the beach playing in the sun.

If you would like another perspective on Korea here are a couple of my friends blogs:

Skye, a girl I went to OSU with, she lives in Gwanju which is a couple hours away:
http://skyesunshine.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

Dave, my buddy that I came with. He doesn't update it very often because he is lazy and not as awesome as me.

http://www.ilovedavenunn.blogspot.com/

He has some good pictures, follow the link at the bottom.

The Weather

The worst thing about Oregon is the weather. 7 months of gray can really start to alter your mood and effect you. Living there for a majority of your life you learn to live with it and really appreciate the sun whenever it comes out. Over here I would say that the weather has been the best thing. So far it has been warm and sunny 70% of the time. I've spent most of my weekends at the beach. I'm pretty far away from it , about 40 minutes on the subway. I could complain about that but life's about perspective. In Oregon it me an hour and a half, driving, and the weather was unreliable at best. Here if I want to go it costs me $2 round trip and all I have to do is sit there, maybe read a book or listen to music. It could be a lot worse.

I finally finished Moby Dick. Don't mess with him, he's one tough whale.

I got a music sythesizer/editing program for my computer. There is so much you can do with it, it's a little intimidating. I'm guessing that in about a year I might be able to make a song. It's a complicated program. It's called Cakewalk SONAR.

School has been getting easier. 7th graders suck. 6th graders are great, 8th graders can be difficult at times, but 7th graders never want to pay attention and are constantly chatting amongst themselves. I'm always yelling at them, sometimes it's fun belting out a QUIET as loud as I can.

I'm so mad that the Lakers are good again. I think I really dislike Lakers fans more than the Lakers themselves. I feel like half of them are transplants and therefore not legitimate fans while the other half only talks about "how good" the team is and not about how good the games are. This is the same way I feel about the Ducks. Half of the Duck fans in Oregon didn't even go to U of O. That's why it feels so good to beat them. 2 years in a row!!!

OK, weird sports tangent over. Go Blazers (next season of course).