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Published: October 17th 2010
Dear Blog Readers,
I’m glad that these blogs are typed rather than spoken because all you would hear now is a croaky old man voice which is sometimes comically interweaved with the odd very high pitched note which comes from nowhere. Unfortunately my throat has been getting progressively worse during the week and the rock concert in Daejeon last night may have finished me off. More on that later!
Monday at Wonnam was great. I did my lesson on ‘What Do You Want To Be When You Are Older?’ - although I have since changed this to ‘What Do You Want To Be In The Future?’ because Koreans find the word ‘older’ really hard to pronounce. The school is currently being demolished because next year, Wonnam, Songni and Naebuk are merging together. The new school will look amazing if the pictures are anything to go by. I don’t know if I’ll be teaching there or not yet but I’d hope so since I’d know at least two thirds of the kids there. I also found out my current co-teachers at Naebuk and Wonnam are finishing at the end of this year which is a bit gutting. Both of them
Festival
Tents lining the main river that runs through Boeun.are great but unfortunately, in Korea, the teachers cannot work at the same school for longer than 5 years so that they get rotated so they have to finish.
The mid-term exams were occurring at Boeun school this week so my two classes on Tuesday were used for revision - which the students took graciously. Our classes on Wednesday and Thursday were therefore cancelled and the schedule on Friday was all over the place because only Grade 3 had exams. On Wednesday, I went to Laura’s school because our friends Chris and Betty were doing an extra class where they were teaching the adults how to cook roast chicken in English. The food was absolutely amazing and reminded me of home but with a slight Korean twist! I think it was my first meal here without kimchi served as standard. Amazing! On Thursday, the teachers from Boeun went for a hike up Mt. Songni but I was teaching at Naebuk so I could only join for the meal afterwards which was great fun. The other teachers stayed the night there after heavy drinking and managed to make it in for the morning after! I went back home after a
Naebuk
The view from Naebuk Middle School. couple of hours at norrebang which was great fun.
After school on Friday, Laura, Michelle and I went into Boeun. Over the past few days, there have been preparations going on for the annual ‘jujube’ festival. Now the ratio of the size of the festival to the size of the fruit that is being celebrated is ridiculous. A jujube is a small fruit which is pretty much a really small apple. It tastes quite sweet and they are just beginning to ripen, hence, the festival. We had a quick wander around and Michelle told us that the big vans with blacked out windows have celebrities inside them. She told us ‘the bloke with the hat’ is apparently really famous in Korea…so I got a photo with him (upon further enquiry, apparently his name is Tae Jin Ah). We listened to some of the music for a bit and got some food from one of the many stalls around the site and it was pretty impressive…considering it was in Boeun!
On Saturday, we met up with Eun-bi after she finished work and went into Cheongju. Eun-bi has just bought some new ice skates and wanted to test them out
Celebrity
A famous man in Korea stood with a man in a green jacket and a hat. so she came with Laura and I. Laura was able to give some expert tuition whilst I grabbed hold to the side for dear life as the small Korean children laughed as they skated past. Laura was busy doing some twirls and jumps in the centre, much to the admiration of the little girls who thought she was the next Kim Yuna (basically Korea’s most famous sports star) and the manager of the rink who wanted her to do some coaching. After that, we got a well-deserved Mr Pizza and their dodgy tagline (see picture) does the quality of their pizzas no justice! I then braved my first Korean haircut which was definitely a success! The cut was great, and they even shampooed it for me all for the measly sum of £3.50! Bargain!
The bus stop was just outside the hairdressers so we hopped onto the bus to Daejeon to meet the rest of the crew for the Rock Festival! After dropping our bags off at Bobo’s (see previous blog entry), we got a taxi to the convention centre to the rock festival. We met up with Sam, Rohan, Angela, Kim and David from our EPIK group which
Jujube
The fruit of the festival! was great and managed to catch up by screaming into each others ears over the top of the rock music. The music itself was pretty good, the rock bands were OK (www.myspace.com/thefallenyork would have been much better!) and my favourite band of the night was the ska band just before ‘Ska Sucks’ came on. I particularly enjoyed the stage invasion for the last song.
There was also a selection of different food to be eaten from around the world. Ironically, I preferred to go for the sugogi-gook-bob which I first had in Busan. However, I also went for some tortilla wraps from the Israeli counter. People kept coming and going and it was good to see more people from the EPIK group come together for the first time since we all left each other back in August. Time flies!
I’ve added tonnes of photos to this blog so take some time to have a look. I’ve tried to put as much description as possible for you!
Tink and Laura
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Lauren
non-member comment
hi
Cool photos again. Its cool reading your blog. We"re currently in Warsaw heading to lithuania tomorrow after some very early Epik Skype interviews! eek! So are you getting used to kimchi? xx