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Dubious
The butchers in Boeun. My eye-line went from left to right. Good....good.....what the hell is that?Dear Blog Readers,
I write this blog fresh from another hair cut from my ‘stylist’ Hye Ri (remember her from my last haircut? It's pronounced 'Hai-ry'.) on a beautifully warm spring, or should I say, worryingly summer-like, day in Cheongju. Laura and her Mum have gone shopping. I’d rather run into a brick wall so a blog writing session will suffice. I pretty much had a week off from teaching because the students had exams last Thursday and Friday and the first and second graders went off camping for the first three days of this week.
For most of the time I was helping the English teachers try and decipher how to mark the student’s answers from the exams. Some of them were truly exceptional in their imagination and creativity. Furthermore, some of them used pretty good sentences but completely not related to the question. My two favourite answers were this:
Correct answer: I like my English teacher who is from England.
Student answers: I’m from England with my English teacher.
Correct answer: Do you know how to use the computer?
Student answer: Take all my money.
Maybe it was the fact that hardly any students
Obama Bin Laden
My faith in the BBC website was flawed with this breaking news! were around and there were very few lessons to teach or maybe it was that the vice principal had gone on a ‘business trip’; but the atmosphere in the teachers room was a combination of relaxation and jubilation. What better way to celebrate such an atmosphere than to have a pancake day. For those at home expecting sugar, lemon juice, Nutella and bananas should think again. This was Korean pancake.
A Korean pancake (and sometimes even more ridiculously called Korean pizza) is all the initial elements of a real pancake but add into the mix spring onions and vegetables. It’s bizarre but doesn’t taste too bad. Anyway, with gusto, the teachers tripped back and forth to the cafeteria to pick up pans, stoves, bowls, plates and made the biggest quantity of pancake mix I’d ever seen. About 68 pancakes later, I was on the verge of being sick when a couple of sheepish third graders came up to me, “Simon Teacher. Soccer. Play. Today. Our class.” I replied, “Do you mean football?”
To a hero’s welcome, Simon Teacher marches out sporting a circa 1997 green York City away kit onto the sand and rock filled football pitch on
Working Out 1
Testing out the spinny-thing and bike-type-thing. the school grounds to the elation of class 3-2 who had not won a football game for quite some time. The looks of elation were in stark contrast to the looks on the faces of 3-3 who were disgusted that I should be allowed to play. The game started and I was already beginning to wilt under the heat and the possibility of Korean pancake making a reappearance (although I doubt it would look much different to the initial pancake batter). If only the student’s English ability was as good as their football ability because there were some awesome players on the field. My aim was to try and not embarrass myself. However, an attempted overhead kick in the first two minutes and completely missing the ball ruled out that possibility.
I recovered quickly with a defending header and a threaded ball to our only good player, the centre forward. He slotted home the opener and 3-3 looked even more displeased than at the start of the game. By the end of the game, class 3-2 had, ironically, won the first game 3-2 and I was now hated by class 3-3.
I needn’t have bothered setting an alarm
Boeun
View from our Children's Day Walk. on Wednesday morning as King Boeun flexed his town announcement muscles bright and early at 6am. It wasn’t that the strawberries were on sale this time though, today was the National-If-North-Korea-Attacks-What-Should-We-Do-In-The-Event-Of-A-Fire-At-School-Day. It sounds better as NINKAWSWDOITEOAFASD. The students didn’t seem to take it as seriously as King Boeun’s announcement sounded. They lined up outside and got shouted at by the teacher (not too dissimilar to Fulford Secondary School’s fire drills because the cafeteria woman had burnt her morning toast). It was the first time that I saw the school ‘captain’ do something other than telling the students to bow at the correct time in assemblies. He was the ‘chosen one’ who got to use the fire extinguisher. It would be, for this job alone, a good enough reason to be school captain. However, all hope that I, and probably, he, had on mastering the fire extinguisher were extinguished as soon as he pressed the lever and nothing came out in front of the entire grade. Gutted.
Thus far, NINKAWSWDOITEOAFASD had been disappointing but we did have the final of the grade 3 football tournament to complete, 3-2 vs 3-4. The students seemed more bothered that I was tall than
Sunset
Sunset in Boeun viewed from a temple. the fact that I was terrible at football. It didn’t matter that they could run rings around me, the fact that I was “one head” taller than them meant I was infinitely better at football. Also, “one head” seems like a good measurement size. Feet, inches, centimetres, metres and head. The game was great, and much like after eating a dodgy piece of kimchi, there was action at both ends. I’d been repositioned to centre forward rather than centre midfield. It was good tactical play from the class because it meant that three defenders would crowd around me thinking I was good, leaving one defender on our only actual good striker. He slotted home one but just before full time, a poorly defended corner resulted in 3-4 snatching a draw from the jaws of defeat.
After much palaver, it was decided that 15 minutes of extra time would be played. The students, and I admittedly, were disappointed. I would have preferred penalties so that I could rekindle my Under 9’s Dunnington Primary School Penelty Shoot Out Competition Champion prowess. With minutes to go, Gadaffi was fouled just outside the area leaving Moose to take the free kick. Much to
Ajumma
Laura morphing into an ajumma mid-walk. the anger of 3-4, my “one head” made all the difference as the ball skimmed the top of my hair and past the diving goalkeeper. I was now the most hated teacher in grade three…apart from class 3-2 where I was now a hero.
If cleaning up after their snotty little children, diffusing temper tantrums, feeding and clothing them wasn’t enough for Korean parents, they also have to celebrate their presence on May 5th for Children’s Day. Apparently it’s like Christmas and the children get presents, and without doubt, the best perk being that it’s a national holiday! The weather was perfect and we initially planned to climb Munjangdae in Songnisan but we bailed because it would mean getting up ridiculously early. Instead, we found a great walk around the outskirts of Boeun before trying out some dolsutbap and seeing the other foreigners for a BBQ. All in all, a great day off!
Oh, by the way, Osama Bin Laden got shot by some Americans if you haven’t already heard. I’m loving the CNN coverage. By loving, I mean absolutely despising with a passion. I am, however, astonished at
how they are still finding things to talk about
Fan Death
Seriously. I'm surprised the shop-keepers are still breathing. FIVE days after he’s been shot. I had all of my hopes pinned on the BBC coverage, however, I took a print screen of the website just after the news broke. Maybe the expression, “whoever did that should be shot,” probably shouldn’t be used in this case…unless the culprit was Osama himself, or is it Obama?
Talking of hide and seek champions, we got a knock at the door at 11pm on Thursday night from a worried Michelle because Giselle (or Evelyn) the cat had done a runner. Leonard had finally had enough of Giselle being on heat and keeping him up all night so he tactically left the window open. Giselle took her chance to fill his sexual desires and escaped! However, we were all worried, cats aren’t seen as pets here and horrific things are done to them so we were all keen to get her back safe and sound. We scourered the apartment block and checked all the floors before going out to the streets surrounding it. After an hour of searching, and nearly catching what we thought was her on three different occasions, they eventually found her hiding between some bins on the fifth floor
Kraze Burgers
Good advertising. Korean Craze Burger makes about as much sense as Kraze Burger. Secondly, Kraze is not fast...so expect at least a three hour wait for one burger. of the apartment! Phew! It was lucky they didn’t get three Giselle lookalikes!
Just a couple of things I’ve been wanting to mention for a bit but not really found anywhere to put them. Firstly, there is a 70-something year old ajumma who is at Laura’s elementary school. She’s basically just joined the school from the start and does all the lessons like a normal elementary school child. Amazing. Secondly, when I went to the bank to pay some bills the other week I had to wait for the bill paying machine to reboot after a technician was fixing it. Bear in mind that our bank was recently hacked and taken down for
three days! As the machine was being rebooted, the start-up screen began and to my horror, I saw the Windows NT start-up screen. Windows bloody NT! No wonder it got hacked! The software it’s using is over 15 years old!
So until next week…unless I’m bankrupt!
Tink and Laura
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Tink's Mum
non-member comment
Dubious butchers?
Could it be a goat? (or is that just wishful thinking??)