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Chuck Berry
Taking it seriously.Dear Blog Readers,
Maybe titling the blog ‘Password Protected’ wasn’t such a good idea last week so I apologise to anybody who panicked upon clicking the link, such as my mother. The week started off alright. My cheeky second graders weren’t so cheeky after Mr Oh made them stand up and sit back down again for the first ten minutes of our lesson on Tuesday. I didn’t bother putting any wax in my hair in the morning because it had got to a length where it just clumped together and I looked like an idiot. This, of course, meant mockery was coming my way from a couple of second graders during the lesson:
Cheeky: “Simon Teacher. Today. No wash hair?”
Simon Teacher: “What?”
Cheeky: “Simon Teacher. Dirty.”
This seemed ironic coming from a classroom which, quite often, has a smell not too dissimilar to BO mixed with cow manure due to some of the students working hard in the fields, or mistaking the long jump sand pit for a cess-pit. I carried on with the lesson but Mr Oh, unsure with how I was taking the ridiculing, felt it necessary to defend me. He speaks some Korean to
The Last Supper
Good samgyeopsal. the students who follow it up with, “Eurgh!!” Mr Oh turns to me and says, “I wash my hair once a month.”
Laura opened her class asking the students how they were. She’s a good teacher so the, “I’m fine thank-you, and you?” were kept to a minimum. One student said she was terrible. Bear in mind that this student is 12 years old (or maybe 11, or maybe 10), Laura could only suspect the worse. She enquired, “Why are you terrible today?” The student, as many of our students do when they hear the dreaded, “Why”, word, looked stunned. She turned to her friend and asked something in Korean. She turned to Laura and said, “Fight!” Laura acted out being punched and being shocked. The student quickly corrected her, “No, no! A speak fight!”
One thing I’ve noticed is that the students are absolutely fascinated by pretty much everything that I do. I went to play basketball with some other NETs and we happened to be playing at the courts in the school grounds. My friends smoked, and consequently, the rumours went flying around the school that I smoked. Strangely, the next day, there was a no-smoking
Cardboard
It's like a weird version of the Brady Bunch. Maybe the Boeun Bunch? ceremony taking place at the school and the corridors were filled with graphic no-smoking posters that the students had made. I went to the toilet to relieve myself of the two coffees and three green teas that had been given to me during the morning and turned around to find three students huddled around the door fascinated by the fact that I can, amazingly, urinate. If I could urinate amazingly then they probably would have something to be fascinated about.
I had a group of third graders congregating around my desk on Wednesday afternoon. They wanted a good name for their football team. I began, “How about Boeun…” before two students simultaneously snapped, “No. No Boeun. Boeun is terrible.” Damn, I was going to have to think hard. Off the top of my head I came up with:
Football’s Finest (in homage to Fulford’s Finest, the FF)
StrikeForce (I’m sure there is a StarCraft reference in there somewhere)
The All Stars (evidently, I was running out of ideas by this point)
Bizarrely, they chose the third one. I told them it sounded like a baseball team. They didn’t seem interested in my objection to my own suggestion.
That would be a good name for a team…
On Wednesday, Mrs Han wanted to go out for lunch so we brought a couple of other teachers along with us for some samgyeopsal. It was delicious. The High School food is beyond terrible. I suggested making it a weekly occurrence and the other teachers agreed. I wish I’d got it in writing. Unfortunately, the problem with having samgyeopsal for lunch is that you get meat fatigue followed by a food coma. Consequently, I was nearly narcoleptic during my afternoon extra classes.
On Thursday afternoon, the students with special needs had a cooking class. The teachers in the office were waiting in anticipation of their goods due to the amazing smell emanating from the rooms below. The students proudly presented their cookies to the office and placed them on the table for us all to try. I think all the teachers agreed that the smell was much better than the taste, but we didn’t want to critique their efforts. I got half way through one of mine before pulling out a piece of plastic from the middle. Hopefully nobody noticed.
In the evening we had a BEST meeting.
The Elephant
Lots of phallic shaped objects. We’ve made a Google Map for Boeun showing off all of its highlights – such as the dry cleaning shops. It’s so informative that anybody looking for information about a town in Korea may be surprised at the level of detail that Boeun now possesses. Afterwards, we bought some pizza and fried chicken and sat by the river. It was great relaxing with everybody, sharing stories and becoming fascinated by revelations.
Friday night was an emotional rollercoaster as it was Chris and Betty’s last Friday night in Boeun. Our ‘usual’ gathering will have a big hole in it in the forthcoming weeks. They might not be so deafeningly loud, but that’s not really such a good thing. We went to have samgyeopsal before hitting norraebang. Requests were made and some new ones came out of the woodwork. Chris’s ‘Forget About Dre’ was notably brilliant. Even though we were now into Saturday, Baskin Robbins was still open so we were able to finish off the night on a Banana Crunch high.
Our initial plans to spend the long weekend were scarpered because of news that the buses, trains and motels were fully booked. Instead, we went to Cheongju. Korea
River Swimmers
Luckily we weren't shouted at for taking a photo. is constantly being reconstructed. The main road in Cheongju is actually carpeted over at the moment because it’s being dug up. Laura’s endeavour to look like one of my middle school boy students was taken one step further as she got her hair cut again. This time it’s even shorter. I keep getting horrific flashbacks to a time when we flew to Ireland and one of the security staff pulled Laura aside and asked for her passport. This was odd because it was after the metal detector scan, so our passports had been checked at least three times prior to her asking. Laura asked why and she said, and I quote, “I’m sorry. We have to inspect any passports where the passenger is unaccompanied and looks under the age of 14.”
Sunday was a day where we got to see the best and worst of Korea. Clare, Laura and I ruined Leonard and Michelle’s romantic day together as we went swimming in some rivers near Miwon. All along the pathway were signs for no swimming but many Koreans were sat on the river bank eating and paddling in the water. The weather was great and we asked the shop
Waterfall
Songnisan. owners if we could swim and they said it was fine. Leonard climbed up some rocks and jumped off them before some idiot started shouting at him from the path. Leonard marched out the water like a man possessed. The man’s English suddenly turned from fluent to non-existent. We got back in the water and sun-bathed on a rock on the other side of the river. Again, a man shouting at us blowing his whistle was telling us to stop…doing nothing. Fed up, we got out and the whistle blowing man had disappeared by the time we got there.
It was one of those days where it seemed like we were getting stigmatised for doing something slightly different to the norm. It wasn’t that we were endangering ourselves or anybody around us. It was that we were doing something that nobody else was doing, which in their opinion, is something wrong. We found a nice spot a short drive away along a river. It was filled with people having samgyeopsal and enjoying the good weather. We had a great time for the rest of the afternoon with no park rangers, or over-confident passers-by, telling us what we can and
Gate
Songnisan. can’t do.
Tink and Laura
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