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Published: November 21st 2010
Bowling
The competition heats up.Dear Blog Readers,
Thus far, it has normally took a couple of days to get going with potential events to put into the blog but 8am on Monday morning I had already had a couple of classics. Monday morning’s aren’t too bad actually here. Laura gets her most difficult lessons out of the way with early doors and I teach at Wonnam where the kids are great fun and my co-teacher, Jinny, is really good fun (she is now the proud owner of a new iPhone!). Unfortunately for Laura, the bus ride to school is a point of awkward contention since a little girl who she teaches gets the same bus and wants to sit next to her. Does she let the girl sit next to her and have a bus ride of awkward silence or does she sneakily bag one of the single seats?
As I chuckled at Laura sitting comfortably in her single seat across the road at the opposing bus stop, a woman sitting on the bench nearby smiles at me and then passes me her newspaper to keep. This would be great in England, a free newspaper to peruse during the bus journey. Unfortunately, it
Eun-bi Bowling
A quick bowling lesson for Eun-bi and she's on her way! was plainly obvious that I am not Korean so the newspaper in Korean wasn’t much use for me. I wasn’t about to be ungrateful and the 4 year old in me thought it would be polite to just look at the pictures and pretend I knew what was going on. The front page was a picture of Barack Obama and David Cameron conversing so I was able to amuse myself with typical dialogue between the two:
Obama: “How’s it going Dave?”
Cameron: “Not bad.”
Obama: “Not bad? It took 2 years for people to start hating me, you lasted 2 weeks!”
The G20 summit was held in Seoul last weekend. We considered going but figured that we wouldn’t miss much, and we were right.
Mr Oh, another English teacher at Boeun Middle School sat me down for a talk on Tuesday. He said I was looking tired and unhealthy. Normally I’d take offence, but this is Korea, and I like Mr Oh, so I took it with a pinch of salt, and anyway, he’s probably right, I’ve lost weight whilst I’ve been here and need to get eating more. Mr Oh then wrote down a recipe on
Strike!
Sorry, no professionals allowed. a piece of paper for a boiled pork dish with the words, “delicious dinner” above it. I hadn’t noticed it at the time but when I had another look at the piece of paper he’d given me, he’d also deceptively put at the top, “You live like a monk.” Brilliant. My friend Chris came into school soon after to observe one of my classes so we had a good chat about the food in Korea with Mr Oh.
Laura (or should I say Ruler since she has been called this on at least three occasions) had her first volleyball experience in Korea on Tuesday as she inadvertently made herself available to play when she had only planned to go and watch. You may recall that although I’ve hardly ever played volleyball, I was part of a school team that won a tournament in my first month in Korea. Well any impression that was made on behalf of the two of us was well and truly destroyed by Laura’s shambolic performance on Tuesday. Her description of her game became a catalogue of errors and I began a succession of winces for her own embarrassment. Apparently she didn’t actually make contact
Chinese
Mmmmmm. with the ball in game time and it took three attempts to get the ball over the net from a serve…from a serve!!! She did get one over which was met with jubilation for the crowd who had now turned up to view such a spectacle.
One of the science teachers told me in broken English that they were going to be observing the Moon with some telescopes in the evening so I went down to the school in the evening to satisfy the astronomer in me. It began with being handed two mandarins and three cough sweets (essential for any astronomical event) and I took a seat in a hall surrounded by parents and their primary school aged children. I felt slightly out of place so I sat myself between two parents to try and fit in. The hour long presentation that followed was pretty good but it was all in Korean so he could have been telling them anything, I imagined that it went something similar to this, “This is the Sun. Current research suggests that a quasi-biennial signal in the natural oscillation frequency of the Sun is distinct, separate, but nonetheless susceptible to the influence from
Co-teachers
Laura with Yuni (centre) and Ms Kang (right) the main 11 year solar cycle.” Ok, well, maybe that is a bit too detailed for 11 year olds.
There is no consonant sound in Korean for ‘v’ or ‘f’ so it normally comes out as a ‘p’ sound, for example, ‘sofa’ in Korean is ‘sopa’ so I chuckled to myself at the repeatedly spoken Korean version of ‘Venus’. After that hilarity, I went outside and met the science teacher who told me about the event earlier in the day. She was really nice and had surprisingly good English. She’d also brought her two sons along with her which was amazing because she was amazingly thin! Her sons were really cute and funny with one of them needing the toilet regularly so I looked after the other one and gave him my sweets from earlier in the hope he wouldn’t catch a cough in the cold. We had a look at a twin star system in Pegasus and two clusters in Virgo. We then got chance to look at the Moon which was phenomenally detailed which was a testament to the perfect observing conditions.
We then moved inside to have a look at the telescope in the dome
Co-teachers
Me with Sunny (centre) and Eun-bi (right) which sits on top of the cafeteria. I’ve been wanting to go there since I started and this was my first opportunity. I was expecting something similar to that at Wast Hills Observatory in Birmingham, England, which was a remote controlled 0.4m Cassegrain telescope. I was slightly surprised to find that this huge dome was actually filled with one 20cm refractor and a 0.35m Meade telescope which was about a hundredth of the size of the dome. The refractor wasn’t actually pointing at the sky, although this didn’t stop every other person waiting in the queue to have a look at a very detailed image of the wall of the dome. The Meade was a good quality telescope so we got to have a look at Jupiter which was pretty good, although I don’t think the image was actually in focus which was strange because the technician was checking it quite regularly so maybe it was my terrible eyesight.
On Wednesday I did my ‘At The Restaurant’ lesson where the students design their own menu. I’ve been impressed with the ideas that people have come up with and the different food that they have wanted on their menu. This
Pizza Man
New pizza place. Respect. week included caviar, sharks fin, and my personal favourite, cow’s testicle. I also made a faux pas on Wednesday because I’d been spotted on CCTV carrying a black bin bag which contained our rubbish. A black bin bag? For rubbish? Yes, you may be confused at this apparent example of sheer lunacy, but the janitor of the apartments was not happy! Apparently you need to put rubbish in a yellow or white bin bag, definitely not black. Damn, how could I be so stupid?
I waited for my bus back from Naebuk on Thursday. I noticed in the distance quite a large vehicle racing towards me overtaking about 3 cars on the way before swerving into the bus lane and opening up the doors. It was only then that I noticed it was my bus. Reluctantly, I got on because I couldn’t stand waiting any longer. It’s not because of the beautiful scenery that surrounds the area, it’s the necessity for the famers to get rid of the fallen autumnal leaves straight away by burning them. My clothes now smell of burnt leaves just from the walk home from school now. Anyway, I paid for my journey and sighed
Pizza Men
Betty and Laura getting involved. at the extortionate price increase as the driver blasted out, what I think was Celine Dion through his stereo. I put on XY by Coldplay which had some apt songs describing my journey home but then I remembered Mike Bull telling me, “You’re gay.” “Erm, why?” “Because you listen to Coldplay.” I turned off my homosexual-inducing music but wished I’d put it back on even it was just to take my mind of the fact that this lunatic was driving on the wrong side of the road for most of the time. Although this brought back a taste of home, I was hoping to be able to get home in one piece.
On Thursday evening, Laura, Yuni, Ms Kang, Sunny and Eun-bi went to the bowling alley in Boeun. It was great fun and we had a Dongwang Elementary School vs Boeun Middle School game to satisfy the Korean competitive nature. Dongwang won the first game, Eun-bi managed to fall over and throw the ball backwards rather than forwards which was the highlight. Boeun fought back in the second match with Eun-bi making amends for the first game and getting a few spares! The ‘Yuni-point’ to try and make
Tennis
Me with the coach, Tim and Mr Song. the ball curl wasn’t working wonders unfortunately so we were able to snatch the second game. The last time we went bowling, Laura managed to throw the ball into the other person’s lane, so I thought it would be funny to sign her up for the tournament next weekend but she pressured me into not doing it. Gutted. After our childish indulgence, we decided to indulge in the best Chinese restaurant in Boeun. Sunny showed us where it was and it was superb! Team Kongland adventure number three was complete!
Yesterday I had a tennis tournament at the local club I’ve been playing for. It was really good fun. I had to give another speech in front of the rest of the club and the captain, Lee Sang Taek, is still up for a Dunnington Tennis Club vs Boeun Tennis Club match to take place. In between matches we had some food in the club hut and soup boiling on a heater. It was a really good atmosphere and I was told that I ate Korean food very well which I can only assume to be a compliment. I was eternally grateful to Tim, an English teacher, who once
Food
Food and soup in the club hut. again took the role of translator for me for the day. We also got chance to play together in doubles since his tennis elbow has recovered a bit and we played well together which I was pleased with! I took some photos too so you can see who I’m talking about.
I came home and we settled in for the night watching a Midsomer Murders. I never realised how much I hated Barnaby’s family and how much of a gimp Troy is but it does remind us of home, especially when they go to the pub.
Tink and Laura
PS: Some of you have asked about Evelyn the cat. Just to let you know, Michelle and Leonard are looking after it next door for the next few weeks whilst she finishes her inoculations. They have affectionately named her ‘Rubbish’.
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Tinks mum
non-member comment
Free newspapers on buses
Hey Tink! When was the last time you caught a First york bus in the morning? - they've got the free metro newspaper! We're not so much in the dark ages here as you remember!