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Published: October 10th 2010
Dear Blog Readers,
Wow! What a mental week! I’m sure you’re all pleased to hear from me amid the drastic ‘kimchi crisis’ currently hitting Korea - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7680371.stm. So as my champion volleyball status flows through the gossip and talk of the middle aged Korean women of Boeun, Laura and I decided to get out for the day and got a bus to Cheongju. It was about 10 minutes before getting off that we didn’t actually have a clue how to get the place that we normally go because the previous times we have been with our co-teachers! Laura got a taxi from the bus stop to the ice rink to get some skating done. The map that we had in our guidebook showed that the downtown area was straight down a road from the bus stop. After about 30 minutes of walking I decided that either the downtown area of Cheongju had miraculously moved or that our map was wrong. Logic told me it was the latter. I got into a taxi and asked to go to HomePlus (or “HomePluser” as they call it!) since I knew that the shop was in downtown. After 3000Won he stops the taxi outside a tiny HomePlus Express. I decided it was time to call in the troops so I text my co-teacher to ask for the road and she texted back amazingly quickly and I was on my way! (Why didn’t I think of doing that earlier!?)
Anyway, whilst Laura was skating, I was doing my best to get lost. I nearly ended up entering myself into a street dancing competition which was going on (unknowingly, I was sat in the backstage area with a drink). It’s a shame though, many of the people dancing were ‘attempting’ to do the robot but I know Pete would have wiped the floor with his moves. I didn’t dare bust out ‘the slot machine’ in case my streak of winning competitions continued. We then got a Mr Pizza (basically a cheap, and arguably, better version of Pizza Hut) and did a little bit of shopping. Laura was buzzing after her ice skating and is already planning her next trip.
On Monday I was teaching at Wonnam which is currently under destruction and renovation so I was teaching in some Portakabins (who used to sponsor York City FC - brilliant.) We had the same problem as last week in that the TV and computer’s weren’t connected. I re-planned the lesson but within two minutes of being in my first classroom I realised the TV and computer were in fact connected. I kept with the changed plan and it worked an absolute treat so every cloud has a silver lining.
Next week, my students at Boeun have their mid-term exams. Part of their English exam is a speaking test which I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to not only decide what the test was going to be on but I was actually making the test! My first experience of setting an exam was quite nerve-racking as I had to make sure that all the material I covered in the previous two lessons was examinable. On Tuesday and Thursday I had my students sit the speaking test. Of the 130 students that I examined, I had about 5 who didn’t speak a word of English in an English speaking test, which was quite remarkable. What is even more remarkable is that the lowest possible mark I could give them was still a respectable 4/12. My favourite category was a group of about 25 students who came into the speaking test saying, “I don’t speak English”, in English. This got them marks instantly just for the irony. The next category of students would have just rehearsed the very basic questions and answers with their mates just before the exam was about to begin. Since one of the lessons was titled, “What do you want to be in the future?” I think many of students anticipated that this would be a question in the exam - and they were correct - however, I also had 19 other questions that I could ask them. For example:
Me: “Hi, can you describe what a teacher does?”
Student: “I want to be a police officer.”
I also had some absolute classics:
Me: “Hi, what do you want to be when you are older?”
Student: “26.”
Me: “I enjoy flying airplanes. What job should I do?”
Student: “England.”
But I have to say that a lot of the students blew me away with their answers and I was really impressed. I had students that wanted to be architects because they wanted to build traditional Korean buildings in other parts of the world! I had one student who wanted to be a rapper! My personal favourite though goes to the following student:
Me: “What do you want to be in the future?”
Student: “I want to be in The Mafia.”
Me: “Why do you want to be in The Mafia?”
Student: “Because I enjoy killing things.”
Me: “Oh.”
I was pretty pleased on the whole with the English on show and pretty much all the students took the test seriously and gave their all and even the kids who didn’t speak a word of English in the test were trying so hard to think of something that the 4/12 is justified I think.
I also got a present from Eun-bi this week - a self-learning book for teaching myself Korean! Initially, I was reasonably discouraged by the introduction which states, and I quote (!), “learning the Korean alphabet can take an intelligent person a few hours, and a foolish person, about ten days.” Having been here nearly two months and still not knowing most of the alphabet, I’m presuming that makes me one of the more foolish of the readers. However, Eun-bi stressed that it wasn’t a self-learning book because she was going to help me. I’ve been plugging away at chapters 1 and 2 and my Hangul vowels are on top form now. We spent some time together on Friday afternoon going through my work and she taught me a load which was great - she’s even set me up some homework!
On Thursday afternoon I teach at Naebuk Middle School. It’s in the middle of nowhere but the kids and the school is great - it’s probably my favourite day of the week for teaching. My co-teacher, Mrs Ma, is the sweetest woman and the past few weeks she waits with me for the city bus to get back home but on Thursday she had an extra class so she couldn’t wait with me. The panic that this ensued was quite astonishing. They worrying that I wouldn’t be able to catch a city bus back home so they wrote on a piece of paper what to show to the driver. It was really kind of them, and I’m sure they will be amazed that I managed to catch the bus home when I see them next week!
In the evening, I went to the high school where my co-teacher Mr Shin works. He introduced me to Lee Sang Taek, the captain of the Boeun tennis club. After an hour of rallying with him, he invited me back the following day. After school, I played tennis with three other men, one of whom had pretty good English. At the end, he invited me for a game at 10am the following morning at the Boeun courts near my school which I accepted gratefully!
After a good game, I went round to Chris and Betty’s house. Chris had cooked an absolute feast for myself, Laura, Angela, Michelle and Lennord. He had managed to do a curry complete with naan bread, apple chutney and rieta. It was absolutely phenomenal! The man is a genius. I can’t express to you how difficult it is to do something like that in Korea! It was almost a taste from home which was really really great!
The following morning, I started walking to the courts expecting a quick game of tennis before spending the day doing absolutely nothing. Laura was going to Cheongju to go skating and shopping and I was planning to do nothing for the first time in ages. I turn up at the courts and there is an actual opening ceremony going on! I’m ushered to the front of about 60 tennis players and there are a bunch of men on a stage in suits…at 10am…on a Saturday morning! My short time in Korea tells me that these people are important! The speeches begin, followed by a waving and transferring of tennis flags and finished with a singing of the national anthem! I used my Korean lesson with Eun-bi to decipher the huge banner on top of the stage and it soon dawned on me that I had unwittingly been entered into the 22nd Boeun County Tennis Tournament as part of the Boeun tennis team! We were playing against a number of different tennis clubs in the surrounding area. After finishing the opening ceremony, I get introduced to the men in suits and find out that I’m shaking hands with the chief officers of the entire county who have come to support the tournament!
We soon whisked off to our other courts near our apartment to begin the first round. It was a doubles tournament and there seemed to be no choice in who you partnered, not that it would make much difference for me! I didn’t know anybody there! Anyway, my first match, we won comfortably 6-1. After the thrashing, I was given a new partner for the next few matches and we got destroyed. All in all, it took over 3 hours to get through the first round before we travelled back to the newer courts where the opening ceremony took place. Luckily, the captain of the club had phoned a member who was an English teacher who was to act as my translator for the day! I felt very guilty and sorry that I was pretty much wasting his day but I later find out that he was planning to come anyway, and he actually is married to the Chinese teacher at my middle school and lives in the apartment opposite us!
We had an awesome lunch at the newer courts, it was a spicy beef stew similar to what I had in Busan so I was chuffed! We then played in the second round and even though we lost our set, we secured enough games to get through to the final! Now after my volleyball exploits the week before, I thought my luck had run out, but no, we went on to win the final and the entire tournament! There are now pictures of me with ‘my’ tennis club with the trophy (I will try and get some copies!). Bear in mind that we didn’t finish playing until about 6pm! We then had the biggest raffle I have ever seen - it lasted about 45mins! Embarrassingly, at the end, I had an entire speech dedicated to me because I was the only foreigner playing, and as a guest to the country, I was given the prize of a duvet! Another member of the club won a raffle prize and gave it to me! So not only did we win the tournament, I’m now a proud owner of a duvet and a new pair of tennis shoes! Afterwards, we went out for some barbequed pork where there was another succession of speeches, including a toast of my own. As I stood up, I realised that not only was the entire tennis club staring at me, but also a table at the back of the restaurant, surrounded by 10 of my Grade 3 students - you have to love being a teacher in such a small town! Norrebang followed and what was meant to be a day of doing nothing turned out to be a great day of tennis, good fun and meeting loads of new people!
Today, we went to an animal rescue centre for cats and dogs which Michelle helps run. We got to play with the dogs which crave any attention! Some of the cruelty on show was truly shocking. I know that from our perspective back at home, the fact that Koreans eat dogs is something of a funny novelty, I guess, but when you see what has happened to some of these animals; it gives you a completely new sense of perspective. We took some of the dogs out for a beautiful walk. I had a large Alaskan dog and Laura had a small ginger one. It seemed that Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un (in homage to the North Korea parades that have been plastered over CNN this morning here - it even stopped the regular news showing!) loved their walk through the forest and to the reservoir. Jong Un had an incontinent bladder and went to the toilet every other minute. Once back at the centre, we realised one of the dogs hadn’t returned. Lennord and I went back and found one of our friends walking with this old golden Labrador that was struggling so we tried to carry it back to the centre. It was absolutely knackering but at least it got there eventually!
I’ll stop now because this has been a big one! Sorry for the lack of photos - we’ve completely forgotten to take our camera to places so I will make sure I keep hold of it now so I can take some pictures. Luckily our friends have their cameras so I’ll make sure I get them from them as soon as possible! See you next week!
Tink and Laura
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Tennis
One of the very few tournaments I've missed sorry I couldn't get - I was washing my hair. Congrats anyway, my support not needed Love to both speak soon