Bad Habits

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So I haven't really been updating what's been going on in school, mostly for the reason that it's the same old same old. But over the last few months there's been a few changes, and a few things that have made me laugh a lot, so figured I may as well share some of it with you.

The beginning of July was our open class, and the time leading up to that was largely taken up with preparing for it. So the headteacher dropped a bit of a bombshell the week before when she announced that she was quitting, and would be leaving a few days before the open class days. She had offered to stay until after open class, but the director decided instead to find a new headteacher straight away and drop them right in at the deep end. Logical. But the open class days came and went without any real problems. I was a bit worried going into the classes that the kids wouldn't want to talk in front of their parents, but I had the opposite problem and couldn't shut them up. They also decided they wanted to come up to the front a lot and point at stuff in my book. Bit of a tough one to deal with, as we weren't really supposed to get angry with them in front of the parents. But at least it looked like the kids were enjoying themselves and were interested I guess! I was also a bit concerned, as whenever I ask them how they are, a few of them have got into the habit of saying they're angry. Whenever I ask why, they usually start hitting their heads and say that their mummy has been hitting them. I'm pretty certain this is entirely untrue or massively exaggerated, but I really wanted to avoid them saying that in front of their mums! Luckily for me they behaved themselves and just said they were happy, probably because they were scared their mums would hit them again if they snitched on them. I've had absolutely no feedback about the open classes, which I think is a good thing, as in my experience in Korea, no feedback is good feedback!

The last day of school before the summer vacation was our Summer Camp with the kindergarten kids. We were going to the waterpark. Or so I thought. We turned up, and started going towards a building with two statues of a man and a woman bending over into the side of the building, with the name 'Birth Story' printed above. I knew we were going to hit gold here, I figured there were definitely going to be some cultural differences teaching this kind of stuff to the kids. So it started off with an employee describing the various parts of a man and woman to the kids, explaining pregancy, and then getting a couple of the kids to come up and try on a big pregnancy vest. We then wondered round the exhibition hall a bit, and to mine and Chris' amusement, found a whole section on 'Etiquettes in Masturbation', with a bunch of rules and hilarious cartoons to reinforce them. I think my favourite was 'Be careful not to get hurt', with a cartoon of a boy sitting in front of a computer with a look of excrutiating pain on his face, and a picture of a penis on crutches next to him. I mean it's good for kids to learn about these things, but bear in mind we were here with a bunch of 4-8 year olds! In fairness, I don't think any of them noticed that section...Anyway, after walking through a massive uterus to watch an educational DVD in one of the ovaries, we actually headed to the water park. It was a pretty lame waterpark in all honesty - I was expecting big slides and stuff, but it was essentially just a big swimming pool. They did have some entertainment on for the hundreds of little kids that were there that day though. I went over to look at one point, and found that somehow they had managed to convince a bunch of nuns from one of the religious schools to join the two Korean dancing girls in their short shorts in the middle of the ring of kids and start grooving away to K-Pop. They were surprisingly good though, wouldn't have looked out of place in a nightclub! Well they would if they were still wearing their habits. But I'll add that to the growing list of things that I doubt I'll ever see again. It was a fun day though, we spent the whole time slam dunking the kids into the water, and generally being used as human climbing frames. Amazingly I only made one kid cry I think, that's not too bad all considered! The little blighters did keep trying to pull my shorts down though which was a bit annoying.

The kids all brought their little packed lunches with them, which is always a good time for the teachers. Eating food in Korea is all about eating with other people and sharing what you have. So on these little trips you always have a constant stream of kids coming up to you with a handful of crisps, drinks, little pieces of gimbap (a popular snack of rice rolled in seaweed), or whatever else their mums have packed for them. Questionable hygiene, but you can hardly turn it down. Going on these trips really reminds me sometimes just how different things are in England (and the West in general), and in Korea. Some of the stuff that happens here would definitely not fly at home. Like on this trip, two of the girls had got separated from the others, and one of the Korean teachers asked me to take them to the toilet. What?! For real?! So I had a nice awkward couple of minutes where I stood outside the girls toilets shouting in to make sure they had actually gone and making sure they had washed their hands!

So anyway, the new headteacher seems to be fairly nice. Although the other Korean teachers keep mumbling something about 'big changes'. So far these have turned out to be completely getting rid of phone testing, and changing progress reports to once every two or three months instead of every month. So I'm not entirely sure what they are worrying about, but half of me is still expecting something bad to happen...

I've continued to enjoy the bad English you see here on signs and t-shirts and stuff. You often see and hear about people wearing some uncoventional slogans, such as old women walking round with caps saying 'badass', or t-shirts with 'crack fiend' plastered on the front. Maybe they really are and they just don't want people to mess with them, I'll never know. One of the 8 year old girls came into school the other day with a t-shirt saying in huge type: 'I haven't been the same since the dog bit me here', with a massive arrow pointing directly downwards. Someone really needs to check these things! Or if you buy it, at least chuck it into Google translate to make sure it doesn't say something ridiculous!

Other than school, since coming back from the Philippines I haven't done a great deal. Me and Courtney went up to Insa-dong in Seoul one weekend, and spent most of the time in tea houses as the weather wasn't the best. And last weekend we made a foolish decision to go to one of the more difficult temples to get to up on Geumjeongsan mountain in Busan. We got the cable car up to the top, and then started the hike to Seokbulsa, which we had heard was one of the best temples in Korea. Well we couldn't have picked a more humid day to do it, and before long I looked like I had just taken a bath and even Courtney, a self-proclaimed 'no sweater', wasn't doing much better! We spent hours climbing up and down steep trails, and eventually made it to the temple. And it was great, very peaceful and with great views across Busan. There were huge stone carvings on the sides of the cliffs, and plenty of little cubby-holes containing shrines to Buddha. As nice as it was, I was beginning to doubt whether it had been worth it when we realised we had to retrace our steps all the way back to the cable car.

Anyway, I'll leave it there. I'm sitting in my room right now waiting for Typhoon Bolaven to hit. There's been a fair bit of hype about this one, apparently it might be the worst one in a decade. But I doubt it will be, there's no sign of it yet anyway!

Hope you're all good at home, stay in touch!

Ross x

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Comments

[Luke Carroll]

Nice
Glad your doing well mate. Blogs a good read. Bit about the T-shirts is so true. I had one with "pimp" on. He was 5. Anyway hope your good mate. Look after yourself.