Pierre's Korean Adventure 

Birthday Party!

Sometimes just being me is an adventure in itself. That is often the case because I tend to make assumptions, and sometimes, okay rarely look for other possible answers until forced by circumstance to do so.

I have been waiting anxiously for bills for gas, electricity, and cable to arrive. My apartment has a inside door, a tiny little foyer, and then the outside door. The outside door has a small round porthole type thing and has something that looks like a cover on it. Now I have never touched it to see if it actually opens at all, but I assumed that my mail would be shoved through that and would be waiting for me on the floor when I got home one day. But no.

Then, this morning as I was locking my door and leaving for school I saw a woman checking for mail at what sounded like a mailbox opening and closing. Sure enough - I went down the corridor and low and behold there was a box with #107 on it. Assuming (again) that like back home, mailboxes are locked, I tried putting the key for my apartment in it open it. That didn't work, and just as I was about to go back to the apartment to get another possible key, I noticed that the opening in the mailbox was big enough for my hand to fit inside and retrieve the letters. As I put my hand in it I could feel that it was hinged and it just opened up. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from taking my mail except what seems to be a very, very strong, almost genetic honesty. From what I can tell it just would never occur to a Korean to take anything that isn't his. I could, and have left my wallet on a desk and gone elsewhere and never had any doubt that the wallet and its contents would be there when I got back.

Anyway, there was a pile of mail waiting in my box including what looked like a couple of bills. There was a couple of Christmas cards from my friends, Ian and Nancy, and another one from one of my students who happens to live in my building. There was also a stack of postcards. At first I thought, "Great!" But that was until I saw that they were postcards I had send to people in Canada (sorry about that). Yup, I put the addresses in the wrong place and had mailed them to myself. In relative terms that was an expensive mistake. There were 9 cards, and each cost about $2.00 in postage. That may not sound like a lot, but it is when you consider that a substantial meal here costs me from $3.00-$5.00 (no alcohol) and the combined total of my gas and electric bills was less that $2.00. Live and learn, eh!

Yesterday was my birthday (sort of). It was January 11 here, but not back in Canada, but January 11 is only my legal birthday anyway. That's what's on my passport and driver's licence, but I was in fact born on the 12th which is the date here today, but not till tomorrow (Friday) in Canada. The kids in the English Camp all sang "Happy Birthday" to me in Korean and in English, my co-teacher, Gyong Jin gave me a tin of almonds that she had wrapped with coloured twine and attached a note wishing me good health and happiness. Someone I know was supposed to go with me to a bar for a beer or two, but he never showed up, so at 8:00pm I decided to go by myself. My first such excursion since being in Korea. There's a bar called "Tolstoy", but it reminded me of something unpleasant, so I decided to try a place called O.K. (for O.K. Corral I guess). What I noticed right off the bat was how small the place is....two booths on the left side, two tables for 4 people each on the right, a bar only big enough for two stools and that's about it. As soon as I sat down at the bar I realized that being inconspicuous here would be a challenge to say the least. A really, really drunk guy sat down beside me and started talking right away. I understood a few things...he asked me where I was from, I told him Canada. He gave the thumbs up sign and said something about Canada. After that he became less and less comprehensible, but undaunted by the fact that the person he was speaking to had absolutely no idea what he was saying, he kept talking. I, being a stranger in the country, and in the bar, didn't want to be rude, so for two hours I sat there and occasionally nodded and said, 'Yeeeeeh', answered questions that I understood and generally wished he would find someone else to talk to. He was nice, just a little annoying, but I was just as undaunted and determined to drink a couple of beers. I succeeded!

I left the bar after shaking hands with the guy who was sitting beside me, and then as I walked towards the door, the biggest Korean guy I've seen stood up, and said something like, "You're an ace!" or maybe, "You're an ass", hmmm. Anyway, he stuck out his hand, and so did the waitress standing beside him and a couple of other people. When/if my "celebrity" status starts to wain, all I have to do is walk into someplace I haven't been to yet and "Boom", it's back. Anyway, I went to the PC Bang for an hour or so to check my email. It was after 11pm when I went to bed.


My Birthday Party

Today at school there was sort of another birthday party. One of the ladies who works in the office downstairs at the school bought a cake for me. I decided that I would share it with the class. So around noon, the lady brought the cake into the class and set it on a table in the centre of the room. All the kids in the English Camp surrounded me for a picture (which I have to ask her to email to me tomorrow). She left about six forks, and a knife to cut the cake. I was going to cut the cake into slices for everyone, but there weren't any plates. So, people just picked up a fork and started going at it. I guess it's traditional for the birthday person to wear some of the cake, so one of the kids came up to me and put some icing on my nose.

After school I went home to get my swimming stuff, walked towards the pool and stopped at the bank which is on the way, to pay my $2.00 gas and electric bills. I did my 20 laps, well sort of. After about 10 a bunch of kids came into the pool for their swimming lessons, but they were early and were just all over the pool and a few of them recognized me and before I knew it I was throwing some of them around in the pool as they laughed. Once their lessons began I finished my swim and went back home. Some of the students came over and we played gin rummy for an hour or so. After they left I ate my supper, watched some tv, and started typing up some stories for tomorrow and then started writing this blog entry.

One little bit of cultural info or rather a bit of a curiousity....the day I went to see the tombs of Aragaya Kings with my friend, Hyawn Yung, we were talking about religion. I was under the impression that Korea is about 50% Buddhist and 50% Christian, but he said it's more like 10% Christian and 90% Buddhist. Okay. He is Christian, and asked me what I was. I told him that don't really hae a religion, but that I was born Catholic. He said that Koreans don't think of Catholics as Christian. I thought that was interesting.

Almost 11pm again. I'm going to be tired tomorrow. G'night all.

Happy Birthday Elvis!

Greetings from the land of morning calm.

It's January 8...Happy birthday Elvis!

You know, I always thought, and I think was led to believe by the western media that everyone, everywhere in the world knew of "Elvis", but that of course was really very naive of me. Sure, it's a small world in some ways, but it's also a big world with billions of people who neither know nor care about the people we hold as cultural icons. In Korea some of the older people (50+) might know of people like Elvis, and The Beatles etc. Korea has its own cultural identity and the icons to go along with it. They have their own actors, thinkers, writers, and singers. While many may have some familarity with some of the more famous stars of the west, i.e. Brad Pitt, and Britney Spears, generally speaking they have had little or no exposure to the older ones. I suppose the same is true even in the west and there's a whole generation back home that has never heard of The Beatles. You know you're old when....

On January 4 I bought a three month pass at the swimming pool here in Haman-Gun. It's a standard olympic size swimming pool and best of all it's open seven days a week. I've been swimming everyday since I registered. It's been a while since I've done laps and it sure feels good! I've long known that I'm a water person; it gives me time to think, and is both relaxing and energizing. On weekdays I go in the morning. I'm usually in the water by 6:30 and have my 20 laps done by 7:00. Then, I might spend a few minutes relaxing in the hot tub or just hit the showers and then go home for breakfast before heading off to school.

Things at the pool are pretty much as someone coming from North America would expect:
- I have a pass that I give to the attendant when I come in,
- he gives me a key to a locker attached to a rubber wrist band
- I go to my locker, and change
- have a quick shower
- put on my bathing cap (eeek!)
- find a free lane and dive in

I have seen Korean men coming into the pool and some of them do it slowly as if the water is cold, but I don't find it at all cold, and usually dive right in. I do nine laps, usually Australian crawl, and then do a lap underwater. I was surprised to find that I can still do that...go from one end of the pool to the other underwater (20+ meters). One thing about pool etiquette that differs from home... I haven't seen it myself but when showering it's apparently very common for a perfect stranger to offer to scrub your back. It's unlikely to happen to me since they understand that foreigners don't generally follow that custom.

I still haven't gotten together socially with the other ESL teachers in the Haman County school district. I was thinking of going to Masan today to wander around and maybe buy a casette walkman to play the tape that goes with the Korean language book I bought last weekend. But, I found a perfectly acceptable player at the "Whole Sale Mart" just down the street...$12.00.

After my swim at 10:00 yesterday mornig I went looking for a place to get a haircut. I was a little apprehensive because my sense was that Korean hair stylists don't know how to cut hair for non-Koreans. But, as I walked towards home I found a place, walked in and got a great haircut. It only cost $7.00 and I was so happy with it I tried to tip the girl, but she refused.

I had forgotten to let the kitchen faucet drip a little overnight to stop it from freezing and yup, it was frozen yesterday morning. I met one the superintendant as I was going to the pool and had luckily looked up the words for 'pipe' and 'frozen'. He guess he understood mje because when I got home after my haircut, the water was running again. I just dropped off my stuff, grabbed my school bag and went to school to do the email thing.

There were a couple of guys I know in the classroom I usually go to to use one of the computers...they have high speed connections. I managed to explain to them that my phone wasn't working. One of them kindly called the phone company which luckily is open on Saturdays, and arranged for a technician to come to the apartment and fix it sometime between 1:00 and 3:00pm. Then, the three of us we had lunch together and I left for home. I had to get back to wait for the phone man, and some girls from last week's English Camp said that they would be coming over for a visit at 1:00pm.

The phone guy showed up sometime between 1:00 and 1:30. It took him an hour to fix whatever the problem was. The girls, four of them, all around thirteen years old came knocking around 1:45pm. One of them brought me a book..."The Little Prince". The great thing about this besides the fact that it's one of my favourite stories, is the fact that the book has both Korean and English versions. Half the book is the Korean version, and the other is English. That's great because already being familiar with the story I'll be able to read it in Korean - well, eventually. At this point it would take me a couple of months to read it in Korean. Luckily I had some things for the girls too. I had contacted the Canadian Embassy in Seoul and those nice people sent me some cellphone holders with the Canada logo on them and some big Canada buttons. The sixty plus Canada flag pins that I brought with me from Canada are all gone and I haven't yet been any of the other four schools where I'll also be teaching. I've contacted M.P. Marlene Jenning's office to see if they send me another two hundred pins, but it's unlikely...they don't usually send them overseas. Anyway, I gave each of the girls a button and a cellphone holder and will save the rest for other friends and kids from the last two weeks of English Camp. We did some phonics, I showed them how to play some stuff on the guitar, had popcorn, juice, tea and they left around 5:30.

So now, here I sit on my heated floor, well coifed, phone connected, tapping out this little thing on my keyboard and listening to music from speakers connected to my PalmPilot, "Bat Out Of Hell" by Meatloaf. I always wondered... do his friends call him, "Meat"? He was appearing at a place in New York City when my son, and I were there in early August of 2005. Personally I think the guy's a genius, and I should have seen him when I had the chance. Oh well. I just fried a couple of eggs, and ate them with toast, a tomato and a couple of cups of coffee. Oh ya! After English Camp on Friday I went downstairs to the teacher's room, the one with high speed internet access, and the head cook from the school's restaurant was there. I had finished all the kimchi she gave me a little while ago, so she gave me more, lots more, more than I can probably manage to eat before it goes bad. I figure if I eat kimchi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus maybe more for a bedtime snack, I might be able to finish it. While I do love it, and eat it everyday, I really don't think I'll be able to eat it all. Hmmm, maybe I could have a party and give away containers of kimchi away as door prizes.

I was planning to go to the school after lunch today, but it was closed. No one told me the place is closed on Sundays. Damn! I must have missed the memo on that. Maybe it's closed on account of it being Elvis' birthday? Well, maybe not.

New plan...lunch, PC Bang for an hour or so to write some emails, second hand smoke a pack or two, digest lunch and then go for my swim.

Hey, I'm not sure if they're crazy about it, but I just found a USB port on the front of the tower in front of me at the PC Bang. And it works!! That means I can come here (at the expense of my lungs) and update the blog. Well, I guess I'll do this unless they come and tell me I can't. I'm a dumb foreigner, and can plead ignorance.

Now, all I need is a printer and I can also print the new dialoges I wrote today. I had the idea last week of creating dialoges that the kids can do every day. They really need practice speaking. So, I wrote some dialogues, but they needed improvement. This morning l wrote some new dialogues that more closely follow the main topic I'll be teaching each day, i.e. nouns, homonyms, months, days of the week etc. I can format and print at least the one I'm going to do tomorrow, tomorrow morning before class, and then do the rest at 1:00pm when I'm done for the day.

I'm going to take a little pole in class this morning. I'll ask them to raise their hands if they've heard of :

- Elvis
- The Beatles
- Muhhamed Ali
- Bruce Lee

I have a feeling that few if any have heard of the first two, but Ali and Bruce Lee...I'll bet many know of them.

Well, time to hit the pool! Cough! Choke! Sputter! Hack!

Apartment

Sorry, I finally figured out how to manage pictures on the 'blogeasy' site. To put the pictures from my apartment back though I had to recreate the article which of course puts things a little out of sequence. This was originally written Dec. 22, 2005.

Three weeks ago, on Dec. 19th I moved into my apartment....#107 at the Dae-ryung Apartments. It has a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and a living room It also has small laundry room and another room with no furniture in it that I'm using to store things I don't need on a daily basis, i.e. empty luggage, vacuum, empty boxes etc. The place is pretty sparse at the moment.

There's a small table in the kitchen with two chairs, a small fridge that of course has all my fridge magnets and a picture of Rocky on it. Inside the fridge? Not too much yet. Yesterday the head cook at the school's restaurant gave me two jars full of a couple of my favourite Korean delicacies....kimchi, and some other fermented spicy vegetable that I really like. What a sweety!!


The Kitchen

Continuing with our tour of the kitchen...as you can see from the pictures there isn't much counter space at all. Small appliance wise I have a rice cooker, a toaster, a kettle, a microwave and a gas range. I usually keep the toaster up in the cupboard when I'm not using it. The kettle of course gets a lot of use from me, so it stays out. I used the rice cooker for the first time today and it was amazingly easy thanks to Cyprian's easy 1-2-3 directions. He however forgot to add one step...make sure that there's no plastic lining the inside of the rice cooker before you use it. What possible side effects are there to eating a bowlful of rice that's been coated with melted plastic film? I thought the rice was supposed to look like that...hmmm. What's the worst that could happen, eh?

On the upside, I haven't blown myself up yet with the gas range. Could be because I haven't used it yet. It's a largish portable thing with two burners and it's connected to the gas line. I have to turn the gas on for the range and must remember to turn it off when I'm done. The heat for the apartment, my hot water comes from gas boilers. In Korea the heat comes from lines in the floor. I'm going to miss the heated floor thing when I go back home. I don't pay rent here, but I have to pay for the utilities....water, electiricty, and gas. The water costs $50/month. The cost of the other things will vary I imagine with use.

Because of the lack of counter space I put the microwave at one end of the living room, the end that borders the kitchen. That'll get some use...noodles, popcorn and maybe some other stuff. Other than the microwave in the living room I have a 4 seat sofa, a little table that the manager of the apartment lent me, a tv on a stand. I was told that I'd only have three or four channels on tv, but I have quite a few including the channel that has "The $6,000,000 Man", "Cosby", "The A-Team" and some others from the 70s. There's also a couple of stations that have some pretty good movies in English. This morning I woke up to watch a bit of the movie with Woody Harleson where he portrays Hustler magazine founder, Larry Flynt. That was pretty good! Courtney Love was surprisingly good as Flynt's wife! I guess I must have some basic cable or something.

My guitar sits in its case across from the microwave.

The bedroom...well, it's got a wardrobe, a queen size bed, and a desk. I haven't used the bed yet. I fell asleep on the couch last night. I won't do that again though...my neck won't take it.


Bedroom


Desk

My Christmas vacation started today after lunch, but I'm going to the school tomorrow to finish up the booklet for the English Camp that starts next week.

I don't have much in the way of pictures on the wall. I have some postcards from Nova Scotia, pictures of my sons, Cyprian (from his wedding) and Ryan, a picture of my favourite horse, Tequila, and of course my favourite dogs in the world, Rockie and Shep.

What do I need? I think I'd like a table or something for the microwave which now just sits on the floor. I'd like to get a few paintings or something for the walls. The living room could stand another chair.

Today I ventured out for some groceries and a few other things:
- ginseng tea
- honey (made from acacia)
- noodles
- ritz cracker sandwiches (peanut butter)
- microwave
- orange juice
- popcorn
- green tea
- a toilet brush and cleaner
- dish towels
- plastic wrap

I don't have a phone now in the apartment, but the school may pay for me to have a cell phone. That's weird! In Canada I swore I'd never own a goddamn cell phone, and here I am about to get one (well, maybe - it's not for sure yet). Back home I was just so annoyed by people yaking on the bloody things and talking about stuff I just didn't want to hear, and then I simply don't want to be that accessible. When I'm in transit for instance, I mostly don't want to talk, I want to read and listen to music. I know people say you can just turn off the cell phone, but in my case it would be off more than on and most times I'd forget to carry it with me. Hell, I hate to wear a watch! I'm a technocrat, a formerly rabid technophile who uses technology only as much as he has to.


The Living Room

I was thinking of getting a high speed internet connection in my apartment, but have since reconsidered. This evening I went to a "PC Bang" (pronounced "Bong" and it means "room"). Like its name suggests it's a room full of PCs that all have high speed internet access. These are mostly frequented by young people who go to surf the web and to play games against one another. I spent an hour answering a couple of emails and it only cost me $1.00. Between the PC Bang and the internet access I have at school, I don't really need it at the apartment. The only thing I really needed it for is to upload pictures to my blogsite, but I think I can just put resized pictures on my flash USB drive, bring it to school and use the connection there to upload them. I'll save myself $30/month.

Tomorrow I'll buy myself a good Korean-English dictionary. I'll be a more effective teacher if I can express myself better in Korean. I have a co-teacher that comes into the class with me sometimes, but quite often she's too busy with other things to do that and I have to do the class on my own. The first time she did that, and that was on my very first day, it scared the bejeezus out of me. I think that's when I thought of playing "Hangman". They enjoy that. At first everyone would just shout out letters, but gradually I'm getting them to raise their hands and be acknowledged before I indicate whether the letter is in the word in question.

Well, that was my day in Korea. Take care everybody

Haman History

Today one of the teachers at Chilwon Elementary School, a really nice guy by the name of Jeh Hyawn Yung, came to the school for the express purpose of taking me on a little sight-seeing trip. What a guy!



If I understand it properly, Korea was once two kingdoms, Shilla, and Arakaya. The ancient Arakaya kingdom, which goes back to 10,000 B.C. was located in what is now Haman-gun. A "gun" (pronounced goon) is a village or town with a population of less than 50,000.

The district of Haman is a basin, low in the south and high in the north; it is surrounded by the Nakdong river in the north, but the Nam river in the south and mountains higher than 600m in the south and east. The mounds you see in the the pictures are tombs. These groups of tombs are located in Gaya-cup, which was the capital of Arakaya (the kingdom of Anla) and they vividly demonstrate the resplendent Kaya culture.



Most of the tombs are dispersed on a north-south axis of the 60m main ridgline and on eight small ridgelines stretching to the west. More than 100 large tombs, believed to be the tombs of the Arakaya Kings, are in rows in the higher area, and situated below, are more than 1000 small and medium size tombs.

After walking up a really, really steep set of seemingly interminable stairs we arrived at the central mound/tomb. It didn't look like anything special. I mean it's a mound. But, to think of the history, that people living millenia ago lived, thrived and mourned on that land made me pause.



From up where we were the view was magnificent!



We walked around a bit and then drove to the nearby Haman museum to see some artifacts recovered from some of the tombs. There were arrow heads, earthenware jars, armour, horse saddles with gold ornamentation, and many, many other vessels dating from the 1st century to the 6th. I really love this stuff!

As we descended from the highest tomb we came to a buddhist temple - the first one I've been to since coming here.



This one is only 50 years old or so, but perhaps next week, Jeh Hyawn Yung who wants to be my official guide to Korea, will take me to an anicient temple not from from Chilwon.

Over the next months I plan to visit virtually every major city and site in this country. I'm hoping to do some kind of tour in the summer. I'll have two weeks off. I'll take one doing a sort of whirlwind tour of Korea and the other on Cheju Island. Well, that's the plan.

On Friday I'm hoping to meet with the other Haman County ESL teachers in Masan. It'll be nice to catch up, maybe get some cultural tips, teaching ideas and just spend a little time with some nice people with who I can more easily communicate.

English Camp Week #2

I've just finished the first class for the second group of English Camp kids. They're a lot different from the group I had last week. They are older; the kids last week were in grade 5 and this group is grade 6. What a difference a year makes! They are quieter, less willing to dive in and try things.

What I discovered from last week is that the kids have a pretty good vocabulary and grasp of grammar. What they need is practice and the willingness to try without being afraid of making mistakes. So, on the weekend I wrote up some short dialogues for them to do with each other. We'll do a different dialogue each day this week.

I went to Masan with my co-teacher Gyong Jin on Saturday (New Years Eve). She came in by bus from Masan, and we went together back to Masan to see "King Kong". It's a long movie, about 3 hours, but well worth it! When I saw the original movie with Fay Wray when I was a kid, I cried at the end. This movie was equally as powerful. Peter Jackson really captured the romantic side of it!

After the movie we walked around an underground mall where I bought myself a book/tape on Learning Korean for $15. Then, we went back to street level and had lunch. We went to a little out of the way hole in the wall type place, but the food was really good. I can't believe some of the stuff I regularly eat here! It's food that I pretty much wouldn't have touched with a ten foot couch back home...cabbage, spinach, and quite a few things that I can't identify. Cabbage I eat almost daily in the form of Kimchi. It's a staple here that Gyong Jin tells me Koreans started eating a long time ago because it's a good source of vitamin 'C'.

After lunch we walked a bit more, had a coffee and then I took the bus home alone. My first time doing that. Perhaps this coming weekend I'll take the bus from Haman alone, and go to Masan to explore a little bit on my own.

Sometime this week, maybe tomorrow, I'm going to start swimming 20 laps in a pool everyday before school. The pool is maybe a ten minute walk from home. So, if I'm in the water by about 7:00am, I could be done by 7:30 or so, walk home, change, have breakfast and be at school well before 9:00. I was thinking of taking TawKwonDo, but think it would be wiser to get into better shape first before attempting that. The problem is that if I do too good a job of getting into shape, I'll need to spend a lot of money on clothes because nothing I brought with me will fit anymore. The good news is that I didn't really bring that much in the way of clothing.

Korean cultural tidbit of the day: When speaking on the phone Koreans often, if not habitually abruptly end the conversation with a 'yeeeeeeh' and then hang up.

P.S. Anyone wondering why I'm wearing a coat in class? Well, it's cold in the classroom in the morning. That thing in front of me as I'm playing the guitar is a heater, but it takes a while to warm things up. You'll notice that the kids in class are wearing their winter coats.

English Camp Week #1 Down

The first week of English Camp is now histroy. It went well, but there are some things I will change next week when I do it all again for a different group.

Hightlights this past week...
- English Camp
- I was on TV!
- I took a bus here for the first time. I just went to Masan...a 30 minute trip by bus.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I'm going to see "King Kong" with my co-teacher, Gyong Jin. Hope it's good!

That's about all I have to say for now. Here are a couple of pictures from the English Camp...






Bye for now.
Pierre]

A Star Is Born?

I didn't see it myself, but apparently the film of the class, and me singing was on the news at 9:00pm last night. It was only the local affiliate of KBS, but still, the 9pm news is very popular here, so I was probably seen by thousands of people. Sheesh!

Today I took my first bus trip. I had to go from Haman to Masan, a bigger city about 30 minutes away, to the international bank. I needed to go there to cash my traveler's cheques.

Luckily I had a good guide, my friend Dong Jin, the guy who picked me up at the airport when I first arrived. What a guy! He left his car at work, came with me on the bus to show me where to go, what bus to take, what to say to the bus driver, and what stop to get off at to change buses. Then, he helped me at the bank, bought me some Korean junk food, and showed me how to get back. I'm taking him out to lunch on Thursday.

Korean junk food? There was a stand right beside the bus stop in Masan that had, hard boiled eggs, various kinds of deep fried kimchi, and some other stuff I really can't identify. But as with just about everything else I've eaten here - it was delicious! Or as they say in Korean...Mashissossoyo!

Thursday after English Camp is done, and after I take Dong Jin out to lunch, I may go back to Masan to meet the other 3 English teachers in the area. I've met them before, well, two out of three, and they're very nice. But, I made it pretty clear that I want to meet them and spend some time with them, but that I'm here to meet and get to know Koreans. I don't look for places where foreigners hang out and don't want to hang out with them. If I wanted to hang out with North Americans I could have stayed in North America and saved myself a 14,000 mile journey.

Another little bit or Koreana...when I say to them, "So you're not going?" They say, "Yes". It's a little confusing to us, but they mean, "Yes, I agree with your statement that I am not going." rather than we who would say, "No" and mean, "No, I'm not going". So, I find myself having to make sure I'm on the same page with them.

I found out that there's a movie theater that shows movies in English in Masan. Yes, I really want to see "King Kong"! I hope it comes out here soon.

Well, my hour at the smoky PC Bang is almost up. My eyes can only take about an hour in this place before they really hurt. My contract includes some medical and dental insurance I think, so I may have my eyes tested here. I may come back to Canada with glasses. Just for reading of course.

G'night.

English Camp!

Last Thursday I finished the booklet for the English Camp, which started today. My co-teacher, Gyong Jin added some Korean explanatory text and that’s it. Friday I took it pretty easy, got up when I got up, had a leisurely breakfast and then, a shower. Then, I went to the school to check my email. The weekend was quiet. There are no malls here that play the same old Christmas songs over and over and over again and Christmas day it was +10 or +12 and sunny. So, it really didn’t feel like Christmas and for me that was a good thing. On Saturday night I was tempted to go buy a bottle of wine and have a glass for Christmas Eve, but decided not to risk it and another bout of criminal poetic vomitous.

On Sunday I did do something a little different…I practiced playing “You Are My Sunshine” on the guitar because I knew I’d have to play it in front of the class on the first day of the English Camp on Monday morning. I must be insane! I’ve never played and sung in front of 25 people before! What’s the worst that can happen? I won’t be singing alone anyway – the students will be accompanying me.

The first day of the English Camp went very well. At first I was nervous because as I had it scheduled there didn’t seem to be enough to fill the first 40 minute session this morning, but I thought on feet and came up with some extra stuff to pad it out. We started with them singing the A-B-C song, and then doing a slow run through the alphabet concentrating on their pronunciation. They have a particular problem pronouncing ‘R’, ‘F’ and ‘V’. To them ‘V’ sounds like ‘B’, and ‘R’ just doesn’t exist in their language, so it’s alien to them. They are doing better than I am with Korean…there are some sounds in Korean that I doubt I’ll ever be able to get my tongue around. As I was going through the alphabet and having them come up with words for each letter, hard and soft, long and short, I came up with words and expressions that I thought might interest them, i.e. To be fond of something or someone, and homonyms like ‘son’ and ‘sun’.

I managed to pad things out so that there wasn’t any dead air. After that we covered nouns and verbs, definitions and examples. Then, we came to the entertainment part of the thing. I went to the nearby teacher’s room and got my guitar. They “Oo-ed and Aw-ed” when they saw it. I sat down and started warming my fingers up with “Greensleeves”, then started singing “You Are My Sunshine”. We all sang it a few times and then towards the end of the class and the day, at 13:00, a film crew from the local affiliate of KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) doing a news story or something came into the class and filmed me and the kids singing. Oh great! Now there’s conclusive evidence of my condition. They interviewed one of the students but the language barrier prevented them from interviewing me. Too bad I had learned to say, “I like it here” in Korean (Naw moon-a maoolmeh tuhr-awyo). Oh well!

After the big Korean Tv debut the vice-principal of the school took a few of us to lunch. I’m still eating a light, but mostly western breakfast, like cereal, or toast. For lunch I usually eat a larger meal of traditional Korean food. Supper I usually make, but it’s usually something really simple like noodles in a cup, or some rice and kimchi. The head cook at the school gave me a couple of jars of kimchi and some other fermented vegetable. Sometimes for a snack I’ll have a rice cake or bag of microwave popcorn. One more note about eating Korean style...it's communal. That is, a dozen or so dishes are put on the table, some of them are just for you, like the rice, and the soup, and some of them are for everyone.

The kids are basically on holiday till February. If there wasn’t an English Camp they would stay home I think. Their parents may have paid for them to attend the Camp. I’ll have 4 groups of roughly 20 kids in each. 1 group each week, (5 days a week for 4 weeks) from 9:00-13:00. After that I’m on winter break from January 21-31. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’d like to take some kind of a tour of Korea or at least of this area in Geongnam Province.

After that it’s back to regular classes except I’ll be going to a different school every day. I haven’t been to any of the other schools yet, but think that this one, Chilwon Elementary, will always be my favourite. We’ll see. I’ll take the time I have from 13:00 to 17:00 to develop or find some lesson plans. How to keep things from getting boring?

Time for bed. I've come to love my electric blanket. My bedroom is a comfortable 15 degrees, and while that's pretty good for me to sleep I find it even better when the bed is nice and warm. I set the blanket on high about 15 minutes before bed and then on 3 when I'm ready for bed. Perfect!!

G'night.

Domestic Activities

Not much news today. The booklet for the English Camp is finally done. My co-teacher, Gyong Jin added some Korean instructions to it and we're good to go on Monday.

I've been practicing a couple of songs on the guitar and will make my debut on Monday doing, "You Are My Sunshine", then sometime during the week I'll do "Amazing Grace" and maybe something else. I hope the kids have fun and learn a lot! I've packed it with nouns, pronouns, homonyms, verbs, frequently misused words, poems, stories, and various activities to keep them busy. Next week we'll polish things up and by the fourth week it'll be a "walk in the cake" as a friend of mine once said. I there's some slack time in the schedule maybe I'll do something to help the kids write letters, and then present them with the opportunity to have penpals in Canada. Hmmmm.

And if things are getting so quiet that "you can hear a pin on the floor" and I find myself running out of normal stuff I can always wow them with some "Paulisms".

After finishing the booklet, I went to the post office and mailed a few postcards. Then it was off to bank to open an account; all the teachers at the school do their banking there. I'll have internet access, but no ATM card. So, I actually have to find the bank again to be able to take money out. Could be a while.
We get paid on December 25, possibly on the 24th and the money may be direct deposited into my account.

Then, I went to a whole sale market and bought a few things, like a new toilet seat, some tomato sauce, some yogourt, and some garbage bags. Still haven't really found out where the garbage is supposed to go and when. They have different coloured garbage bags for different things. Everyone told me to get the pink ones.

Now for the domestic stuff! Tonight I really went all out. I washed the bathroom. It's done a little differently here...there's a drain in the floor of the bathroom, so I removed everything off the floor and the counter, washed it all down with a cleaner I bought, and then just sprayed everything with the shower nozzle. Handy!

While I was washing the bathroom I had the rice cooker going. Just for a change of pace I decided to leave the plastic wrap out. You would think that would be enough, but no. While all that was happening I also had started a wash. It had been a couple of days since someone told me how to use it and I didn't write anything down. But, miracle of miracles I did it. I was wondering where I was going to put all my clothes to dry, but last night I found that out. One of the ladies who came over to finish the molding in the living room opened the doors in my living room and I saw that it was a porch, sealed off from the outside by a hard plastic and there is a rack hanging from the ceiling with hangers on it. Ah Ha!

It all came together. The rice was good. The wash was clean and put out to dry and the bathroom was clean.

Tomorrow, I find out how to use internet banking here. The only thing I'll use it for though is to check on my account. At some point I may get an ATM card for convenience.

The one problem with these PC Bangs is that everyone smokes and it's hurting my eyes. My hour is almost up anyway. G'night Canada.

Neighbours

This is my third day at the apartment. Tonight I went where no Pierre has dared venture…I tried the gas range. I just used it to boil a pot of water for noodles. I’m not planning to do much cooking here. I generally eat toast, peanut butter and jam for breakfast with a cup of coffee. I can’t find Nescafe coffee anywhere around here, only “Taster’s Choice”. It isn’t bad, but you know. Coffee is pretty expensive. After this jar is gone I don’t think I’ll buy another – I’ll drink green tea.

Something nice seems to happen just about every day to confirm my decision to come here to Korea. Absolutely everyone I’ve met has been so kind!

Even though Christmas vacation officially started for me yesterday afternoon, I worked all day on the booklet for the English Camp. With getting over the jet lag, getting sort of settled at the motel, then moving, I’ve been really just winging it in class. We play hangman (they like that!), and a game I guess you could call ‘Ring-a-letter’. I’m finishing the booklet tonight, and will just go to school to print it and coordinate things with my co-teacher, Gong Jin. There were four of us at the office today, two ladies who I’ve seen before but whose names I don’t know, Gong Jin and myself. The ladies took me to lunch at the same place I went to my very first day here. I’m learning that groceries aren’t actually that cheap, well the things I buy, i.e. peanut butter and coffee. But, eating at a restaurant is pretty cheap. I went to lunch at the same place last Saturday and Sunday and it cost me $4.00 for quite a lot of food. It was certainly enough for me.

Tonight a couple of nice neighbour ladies (O Soon Ok and Ju Hyawui Ja) came to my door. I let them in and they made hand signs to indicate that they live next door. They brought me a bag of apples! For some reason they had come to put the molding at the base of my living room walls. It’s just a wallpaper type thing that looks sort of like wood and is designed to look like a baseboard. It looks okay. I just don’t know why these ladies came to do it…maybe they work for the owner or something.

After they were done I invited them for tea. They sat on the ondol (radiant heated floor) while I sat on the couch. We talked, well, sort of. They understood some English, I understand some Korean, I just bought myself a better Korean-English dictionary today ($34) and then of course there’s always pantomime. My shower doesn’t work very well. When I turn the tap to hot, the water basically stops. I hate cold showers! Luckily I can wash my hair in the kitchen sink. Anyway, one of the ladies called someone and he came over about an hour later and fixed it. Yes!!

As we were just about finished our tea, a man came to the door. He turned out to be the husband of ‘O Soon Ok). His name is Jon Gyawng Sok. I offered him a cup of tea, but everyone was ready to leave. O Soon Ok invited me for supper, but I explained that I had already eaten. So, she said (I think?) that she’d invite me again some other time.

Anyone know any 9-13 year old boys or girls who would like a penpal in Korea? No, I don’t mean via MSN Messenger, or email! I mean the old fashioned kind of penpal where you have to depend on the postal services of the countries involved to get your message across. I know many of my students would love to correspond with kids in Canada! I could spend a lesson or time after class helping them understand the letters and writing replies. Let me know and I’ll send you the address of a boy or girl here!


One last things before I sign off for tonight…anyone who knows me knows that I am more comfortable in the company of women than men. I've always been drawn to women. I'm sure it was true from the start. I thought it was about time I pay a little tribute to the women who have played the most important roles in my life.

Mom
Who taught me the importance of 'moxy'.
Muriel
Who made me see that I have value
and without whose help I have not have lived past 13.
Margie
Who showed what true strength is and who gave me room to explore.
Lisette
Who showed me the importance of joy and enthusiasm
and not letting anything keep you down.
Cam
Who helped put me back together and showed me what true love is.

Thanks and Merry Christmas to all of you!!!!!!!!!
Love
Pierre