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Mokpo
Looking out over Mokpo.Dear Blog Readers,
I’ve been doing a lesson on England, cultural differences and gestures this week. It’s been fascinating for the students being given the exposure and I’ve been fascinated by some of the brilliant answers that they’ve given.
Me: Who is the current Prime Minister of England? His initials are DC.
Student: Washington DC.
Me: What is the most famous river in London?
Student: The River Nile.
In Korea, the gesture to tell somebody, “Come over here!”, is basically making a limp wrist repeatedly. They find it hilarious that we have our palm up or use our index finger for the same purpose because you only do that do a dog or if you want a fight in Korea. I find it hilarious that they all look quite camp when they do it.
I showed them some famous landmarks in England. They got a lot of the ones I expected, such as Big Ben, the London Eye, etc. but every single class, without fail, knew about Stonehenge! I was impressed. Either it is in the textbook, or Spinal Tap have a serious cult following among the middle school boy Korean population. They also called it
Admiral Lee Sun-Shin
The master of industrial sized powder snowballs. ‘gas range’ because it looks like a hob on a cooker.
We had a lesson on feelings and I gave them a few situations and asked how they would feel. One of the Korean pop stars who all the boys fancy over here is IU. Some of the responses to, “What would you say if you met IU in the street?” were pretty obvious, “I love you!” “Can I take a picture?” etc. but then a couple of students said this:
Student A: Nothing. I would hit her.
Student B: I would drag her into the forest.
A couple of interesting Google Translate messages came through on the messenger service at school. The first was about the lack of clean toilets but at the end there was a strange sign off, which translated as:
” Our ultimate goal when you are so good I’m sorry baby. Blue springs always get a minute. Ha!” Then a stranger message appeared:
”I love to meet your child’s teacher to participate in her sexual all want to ask you sir: but I think they just are going to be packed, watched, see.” I turned up for work
Mount Yudalsan
Laura and Clare recovering from the gruelling hike. on Thursday wearing some smart trousers, a shirt and tie (the usual) but instantly felt like the kid who turns up on non-uniform day in his uniform because
all the teachers were wearing sports kit. It was sports day. The day started off well. The students had to do the really funny dance routine at the start for a warm up. I joined in at the front much to the amusement of the front row of students. The games then began. There were football matches, tug of war, 100m, 200m, 400m relay, basketball, dodge-ball and ssireum.
The first football match began and Mr Pak handed me the microphone. I was the MC for the day. It was great. The students loved having their name or number called out when they had the ball, the teachers were laughing their heads off and the impromptu interviews with the students went down a treat. Some things which amazed me during sports day were the fact that none of the students seem to sweat. Even though it was 28 degrees outside, the students would be wearing trousers, t-shirts
and coats but still not sweat a drop. Ssireum is Korean traditional wrestling, or as
Me
Laura mastering the depth of the shot with the new camera. ‘Gadaffi’ said in an interview, “Sumo. Ssireum. Same same. Ssireum better.” Clearly my English teaching has gone well.
However, disaster struck just after lunch. Some old ajumma near the school had complained about the volume of the MCing. If I’d been genuinely annoying and disruptive then I would take this complaint like water off a ducks back. However, all the students and teachers were loving the commentary and trying to catch some English that they understood. The atmosphere was great and everybody was having a good time. Now we were watching sports day in near silence because one person complained. Before sports day begun, I spoke to Mr Pak who told me that about ten years ago, sports day was a huge event in Boeun. Parents and families would flock to the school to watch the day’s events unfold but this had decreased dramatically over the past few years. I counted 8 parents had bothered to turn up for the sports day this year. It was a truly sad state of affairs.
The subdued atmosphere turned to an air of controversy when the climax of the sports day came – the final results. Class 3-3 and 3-4 had
Port
Port in Mokpo. both drawn on points with a total of 77. Initially, 3-3 were declared the winners because they had won the tug of war which had the whole class involved. However, the head of PE looked at the results and declared 3-4 the winners because they had won 4 events when 3-3 had won 3 events so this meant 3-4 were the winners 4-3. By the time I’d worked out what was going on I felt like I’d aged 34 years.
I spoke to one of the parents during the day who said she’d been to England. I’ve had this conversation numerous times during the last nine months. Basically, it is common for Koreans to go on package tours where they visit ‘Europe’. When asked where they have travelled, they will say, “I’ve been to Europe.” as though it’s a country. This is because the package holidays mean that they spend a day in each country visiting the capital city. It’s truly mind-blowing the amount of travelling they can accomplish in two weeks. I was impressed that the parent I spoke to had
actually visited England. She’d spent a week there travelling in and around London rather than the customary
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Shortly before being banned. day trip seeing the London Eye and getting the flight back to France.
Laura went over the Stephanie’s house in the evening so that they could watch the season finale of Gossip Girl together. This is a truly nail-biting experience for them because both are notorious find-out-what-happens-at-the-end-on-Wikipedia-before-watching-the-programme-watchers. She gets back home and excitedly tells me what happened as though I have any idea who the people are, “Is he the one I want to punch repeatedly in the face?” was one of my questions feigning an interest. She then texts Michelle:
Laura: “Oh me Gee! I can’t believe what happened! Whose pregnancy test do you think it is? Whose baby will it be?”
Michelle: “I haven’t watched it yet.”
Neither of us had been looking forward to Friday. We both had to let our co-teachers know that we wouldn’t be staying for another year. It’s been a really tough decision. Coming out to Korea, we’d mentally only planned for it to be a year-long adventure. I guess what we hadn’t expected was how good friends we would make whilst we’ve been here, particularly with our co-teachers. This made it particularly tough, particularly at my school, where they
Sports Day 5
The tug of war! have had a succession of truly awful native teachers. I could tell by the tears in the eyes of my co-teacher when I was breaking the news that this is one of the biggest concerns – our successors. We genuinely love the country, the lifestyle, the teaching, the students and our co-teachers but we have responsibilities back at home, potential careers to carve out and family and friends that we miss so the decision was difficult but the right one in the end.
Mr Oh begins the day with, “I have a problem.” Cue my ominous mixed with impending cringe worthy apprehension facial expression. “I’ve got three cats. I found five kittens in my boiler room. The mother has gone missing. They won’t drink my milk.” Should I be more worried about the kittens or Mr Oh’s apparent admission to lactating? I got straight on the phone to Michelle and she heroically came to the rescue and now has a month of sleepless nights that she only has me to thank for. However, we now have five healthy kittens and the search for the mother continues!
On Friday afternoon we had a volleyball tournament. It was supposed to
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Ssireum - can you imagine getting away with this at home? be held at Samsan Elementary School – they’d even put out three courts on the playing fields. Unfortunately the thunder and lightning meant each school confined their games to the gym. Our star player, the PE teacher unsurprisingly, had done his back in so we were in trouble from the off. I didn’t disgrace myself but didn’t do our team much good as we sailed out of the first game and tournament. We commiserated over samgyeopsal in the evening instead. I felt my samgyeopsal eating ability was miles better than my ‘spike’.
Laura and I had been going out for four years on Friday. I’d remembered, but Laura went one stage further and downloaded an application on her phone which gives us the exact number of days that you’ve been going out (1464 days to be exact). Ridiculous. Anyway, I’d managed to get some flowers ordered to her school so they arrived to cheers and claps and much embarrassment on Laura’s behalf. Hooray!
On Friday night, Laura’s friend from University, Clare, came to Korea to spend some time visiting this magnificent country. Laura and I had arranged to buy a new camera from a guy in Mokpo in
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The controversial scoreboard. the South of South Korea on Saturday so we headed straight there in the morning. We met a couple of guys who were passionate about photography and were upgrading their equipment. Laura and I had been planning on buying a good digital SLR camera for some time and the opportunity came online with an offer we simply couldn’t refuse. It is a Canon EOS 550D and it was only 5 months old and it was selling for 780,000Won (about £400). In the shops, and even online, it costs at least £200 more so it was a steal (pun definitely not intended).
Weighed down by a superb new camera, we decided to venture through Mokpo on a horribly drizzly day. The city itself was nearly as uninspiring as the weather, unfortunately. The city itself is relatively small. It’s basically a port for people passing through to get the ferry to Jeju Island. It is shadowed by the colossal Mount Yudalsan at a staggering 278m. 278 meters! Ok, so maybe we should call it Slightly Larger Than A Grassy Knoll Yudalsan. On the way up we took a picture of the Nelson of Korea, Admiral Lee Sun Shin who single-handedly stopped
Kittens 1
Mr Oh's kittens saved by Michelle. a Japanese invasion in the 1500s. He also had two hands which makes it slightly easier. We also saw Opodae which is a cannon. The sign next to it compares it to the cannons in
“Edinburgh, England” (I can see the Scots fuming from here). The guidebook informs us that
“the cannon was filled with gunpowder, newspaper and tissue and fired at the Japanese. It continues,
“Mokpo was covered with pieces of paper flying everywhere.” I envisage it being like when you throw a snowball that you think is going to be great but just turns to powder mid-flight. I’m now wondering whether it was Lee Sun Shin’s excellent commanding, leadership, power and tactics that forced the retreat, or whether it was the Japanese dying of laughter.
The Tourist Information also guided us towards trying some of Mokpo’s culinary delicacies. The first was ‘Hongtak Samhap’, which we avoided because the description has the words ‘delicious Kimchi’ next to each other. Oxymoronically, we nearly gagged at the thought of eating ‘Thin Tentacle Octopus’ or the ‘Mi-iuy Croaker’ which is made tempting by, “If you want to taste an elastic and sweet croaker…” The ‘Hard-boiled Hairtail’ is, “a spicy taste beyond
Kittens 2
Cutest kitten ever? comparison when you cook a fat hairtail.” We ended up going for galbi in the quietest restaurant in Korea. It had the atmosphere of a funeral parlour and it’s anybody’s guess how long the seafood had been left out for.
For a country set about making the best first impression, we weren’t exactly doing it justice for Clare. Luckily, the £15 Love Motel that we stayed at changed that. The wallpaper was a neon stellar concoction and the room was superb. Huge TV, computer, drinks, whirlpool bath but no beds. After a surprisingly good night’s sleep on the floor, we went for a walk around the harbour in the sunshine before getting the KTX back home. It puts Virgin Trains to shame on price but doesn’t have the speed of the bullet train. Also, I think we’ve accidently booked first class seats…
Tink and Laura
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Dom
non-member comment
Bets on mum coming home with a kitten this evening then? Or at least send one in your next package... And good over-usage of the word 'particularly' :P