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Published: April 3rd 2011
Dear Blog Readers,
It’s April Fool’s Day, and as a collective, I was mightily impressed with the students today in their endeavours to truly live up to the day’s namesake. My first class was 3-2 and I marched straight into the classroom to find nobody there and everybody’s gym kit on the desks. Damn. I went into the neighbouring classroom to find my actual 3-2 class sat in the 3-3 classroom. I should have realised that they’d switched the signs outside the classroom since 3-1 had now turned into the Staff Ladies Bathroom. Oh, did I forget to mention that they were all sitting at 90 degrees to their usual position looking out of the window instead of the blackboard?
We had a good laugh though and I went straight into my first PPT slide – “what is today’s date?” A chorus of “April Fool’s Day!” erupted from the students staring out of the window. I then put slide 2 up which said, “In England, we don’t celebrate April Fool’s Day. On this day we celebrate ‘Be Quiet Day’.” The students were stunned into silence as I informed them of this special day, “On this day it is very
Water Park
The water park in Danyang. I bet it's heaving in summer!important in England to be very quiet, particularly in public areas. If you talk too loudly on public transport, restaurants, shops, etc. then you can get a fine.” The students are absolutely enthralled. One of them asks, “How much is the fine?” From nowhere, I plucked from my ridiculous imagination, “Oh, well one of my friends once got a fine for 40,000 Won. He was talking to his friend on the phone on a bus.” They discussed how expensive the fine was. Mr Oh is stood at the back of the classroom on the verge of wetting himself with laughter. Luckily the stunned faces of my students allowed me to regain my composure.
None the wiser, we carried on with the lesson and at the end, Mr Oh and I wrote on the board, “You are all fools! There is no ‘Silent Day’ in England!” The look of astonishment on the student’s faces was priceless. We repeated it in every classroom but each class had a trick up their sleeves. 3-1 nearly got us by planting an open milk carton above the door and 3-4 put the clock forward by 5 minutes so we accidently let them out early
Danyang
The river flowing past the little town. for lunch. 3-3 were my personal favourite. They were all facing backwards but they’d also turned the TV, flag, clock and computer cabinet (which is not only sizably heavy but also intricately tangled with wires) the wrong way round. A great effort.
In the evening, we went out for some galbi at a restaurant which had an inflatable pillar advertising the food with a picture of a half-naked woman behind it. We worried it was one of those ‘restaurants’ but we weren’t disappointed. The owner was fully clothed and the food tasted great. Laura began telling us that she was born in Leytonstone which is where David Beckham is from. Betty then sledgehammered the ‘famous person’ story with the news that none other than Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson of WWF fame (or in the film, The Mummy for all those none-1990s-wrestling fans) is her bloody uncle!! It was April Fool’s Day so I was very very hesitant about believing it but her facts checked out well enough for me to believe her. I know now that both of my brother’s jaws have probably just hit the floor.
A few bizarre incidents occurred this week. I had a first
Caves
Inside the caves. grader start crying because he lost in the game. Mr Oh picked some herbs out of a pot and put them into my top pocket of my shirt to make me smell nice…or of soil. Laura brought a bar of chocolate up to the office to have with her cup of coffee, as she went to boil the kettle, she turns around and sees another teacher take her chocolate bar off her desk and finish it before she gets back to her chair! Lunch has also been equally ridiculous. On Tuesday we had the unorthodox combination of sausages and fish with the saltiest soup I’ve ever tasted. If you could put more salt into sea water then you’d almost be comparable to what I was trying to stomach. I can only think that it was due to the disastrous soup that there were about 4 fights at the school that afternoon so the number of crying first graders and guilty looking third graders occupying the teacher’s office was more than usual. I also got to see a whole host of new punishments which were certainly an eye opener – including my new favourite, the cheek hold karate chop.
On
Korean Style
Lights, metallic walkway and water pipes - all of which were found when they discovered the cave. Sunday I had my contact lenses in and as I took out my right eye lens I went to put it into the solution and it had vanished from my fingertips, and so started, the contact lens rigmarole. I looked everywhere for it. How could it possibly have disappeared? I took my clothes off and FBI-style padded them down for the missing evidence. I even went next door to ask for a magnifying glass. I gave up the ghost and decided that I’d need to get a new one. This proved a little difficult trying to explain to the optician who speaks no English that I only need one contact lens not two. His son came into the shop and spoke more English than he did but he gave me the same blank look when I tried to explain to him…he was only 11. Luckily I got Mrs Hong on the phone to rectify the situation and £10 later; I was clutching my new right eye contact lens. That evening, as I was brushing my teeth, a shrunken, dried up contact lens falls from the underside of the toothpaste into the sink. How it managed to miraculously float 2ft across
Watch Your Head
Caving - not for giants. and slide under the toothpaste and escape being found during my rigorous searching endeavour is beyond me.
It’s back to volleyball season and practice with the other teachers. It’s actually really good fun. Everybody gets involved even if you’re the worst volleyball player on the planet. Armed with new shoes and two contact lens meant that I was more than prepared for the game I’d only played three times before in my life. Things went well though and people were commenting on my vast improvement from last year. They genuinely think I’ve been practicing secretly. Unfortunately, it meant that I forgot to look out for our appearance on KBS News that evening from our dog walking last Sunday. However, a couple of my students spotted me and commented the morning after in our lessons. I’ll try and get the footage for you!
The first grade lesson was pretty funny actually. Last week we learnt about ‘Nationalities’. I asked what we had done and got the usual stare of blank faces and “muliyo.” I wrote the word ‘National’ on the board and three students simultaneously shout, ‘Geographic!’ A follow up question was posed, “What are the citizens of South
Staligtites
Or is it stalligmites? Korea called?” with one student replying, “Beast!” (a famous South Korean boy band.) However, my favourite was, “Is Dom French?” with the reply, “No she isn’t.” I contemplated not correcting him on his mistake.
My co-teacher at the high school is a really nice woman called Mrs Han. She tries so hard with her English and is always asking me for new words or the correct phrase to say. Last week I had to explain the word ‘philanthropist’ so this week was going to be a little bit easier. I taught her the words fortnightly and lethargic which she then used at least 4 times during the morning that I was at school. I told Stephanie and she said she’d never heard or used the word fortnight in her life. Damn!
I received a really great package this week from my older brother. It made me more homesick than I’ve ever been so far in Korea. It wasn’t the bars of Caramel Galaxy, the bags of Haribo or some very suspicious sachets but the DVD he made me which was entitled ‘A Day In The Life’ about my nephew Jacob. It was absolutely brilliant. Laura and I are
Don't Look Back
A stark warning. putting things together to make a package for them but we’re worried we can’t really top that one!
This weekend we decided to visit Danyang. We’d heard nothing but good things about the place but this wouldn’t be the first time that previous expectations have resulted in ultimate disappointment (see Cortina resort in this
blog). Annoyingly, Danyang is quite a journey from Boeun. As the crow flies, or if you can drive a car, it will take about 2 and a half hours. However, for us, we needed to get a bus into Cheongju and then go back on ourselves to get out to Danyang which takes a collective journey total time of 4 and a half hours. We arrived and when straight to Lotteria in protest of the Boeun Lotteria being closed for renovations. We had a wander around and checked out the Water Park and sauna but decided not to bother going because it was a rip off and the weather was great.
We went to a nearby Tourist Information where the women inside didn’t speak a single word of English. Quite odd for a tourist information. Through our interpretation of her shouting Korean, it sounded
The view
View from the observatory. like everything that we wanted to do in Danyang was at least a car journey or an expensive taxi ride away. Our hearts sank. Had we been fooled again by the positive word of mouth? After finding a motel for the evening we decided to venture into the beautiful surrounding landscape and do some exploring. We stumbled across another Tourist Information which had somebody who spoke English inside (and probably Chinese, Korean and Japanese according to the sign outside). She told us we were about 500m away from some famous caves and that we shouldn’t bother going up to the observatory after looking at us and realising we weren’t wearing this year’s hiking gear (aka stilettos).
The caves were absolutely amazing. They were also truly Korean style complete with walkways, fake caveman camp fires and even tubing to put water in the right places to simulate ‘natural’ waterfalls amongst the rocks. I can hear Laura’s Dad, a geologist and cave fanatic, screaming in disgust. It was pretty long though and the views inside were truly spectacular. After reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, we decided to tackle the hike to the observatory. After about 20 minutes,
The Observatory
It was worth the climb. we were beginning to suspect the tourist informant was correct in her hesitation to recommend us going on the hike. The climb was ridiculously steep and reminded us of going up to Machu Picchu with the road turning back on itself every 20 metres. Two hours later, we managed to scale the 1500m summit and took in the breath-taking view of Danyang. The observatory was closed. Gutted. It also wasn’t an astronomical observatory which was disappointing for me although it looked like one. Apparently the astronomical observatory is on the adjacent mountain.
The climb down was much easier and we soaked our aching muscles in a local ‘jimjibang’ – the Korean equivalent to a Japanese onsen. I’m not going to debate who invented them first, but since we’re in Korea, we should probably say Korea. Afterwards, we went to the butchers for some pork and then to the supermarket for lettuce, samjang and garlic. We were making our very own homemade samgyeopsal! We are truly becoming Korean! We had chocolate fondue for pudding to fuse the Korean-French international cuisine that has so far failed to take off anywhere in the world!
Tink and Laura
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