Poker Face

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Dear Blog Readers,

We begin this week with news that has reached us from England that the Radio 1 Big Weekend will be held in Carlisle this year! Laura is gobsmacked that her hometown should be represented on such a colossal scale with acts such as the Black Eyed Peas, Foo Fighters, and Boeun Girl’s High School favourite, Lady Gaga will be performing. Laura’s co-teacher was visibly stunned at the news. As one person said, it’s probably the most exciting thing that has happened to Carlisle since the Roman’s invaded.

Laura’s new hair cut has also been a talking point this week. Apparently some of the teachers at her school have been enquiring where she got it cut. However, my favourite comment has been made by a little girl at one of her elementary schools, who said delicately, “Laura teacher. Your hair. Last week. Very very good. Today. Just good.”

My co-teacher at the middle school thought it would be a good idea to have a lesson outside now that the weather is brilliant. I was dubious at first but it ended up being a great lesson and the students seemed to love it. I set up a sundial outside and we walked around the school talking about the weather, the plants, trees and the wildlife. Spring has finally arrived and our winter clothes are being packed away into suitcases and boxes ready for sending back home. It’s a good feeling but I’m still nervously anticipating the horrificness that is the Korean summer.

In the afternoon, an iPad belonging to a first grader had been found with porn videos on it. An announcement had gone on the school speakers that anybody who had seen the video had to come to the teacher’s office immediately. Clearly the teacher had only anticipated a couple of guilty looking students to waltz in. However, within minutes of the announcement, the teacher’s office was literally heaving with first graders and they were coming in their droves. So it’s not just news that travels fast around Boeun!

One of the girls at the high school has dropped out. My co-teacher at the high school was stunned that her parents have let her drop out of school. She told me that she had left to pursue a career in singing, but she was quick to point out that she thought she had no talent in singing. I wanted to investigate. As I walked out of the cafeteria, a group of girls were together and one of them called e over saying, “This is number 21. She has died.” This basically means she is no longer at school in Korean student terminology. I asked her to sing, assuming she must be hugely impressive to warrant dropping out of school. She declined so I will have to suspect that my co-teachers apprehensions are true.

I asked the classes if they had done anything funny for April Fool’s Day. One class changed into the PE kit, one class told the male teacher that he was flying low and one class put all their shoes on the window ledge and wrote on the board, “We don’t want to live anymore” before going outside and all laying on the ground below their second floor classroom. Oh Korea.

We’re waiting for this so-called ‘yellow dust’ to arrive. Apparently it happens every year and it is basically all the polluted air from China being swept over to Korea for a couple of weeks around about now. I haven’t seen any of it yet. However, on Thursday morning, there were more pressing matters. The teachers looked on in horror as Laura and I walked into school without an umbrella! It wasn’t just that it was raining, apparently, the rain on Thursday was radioactive. I investigated further and found that it’s not actually true, but somebody in Korea said that the radioactive particles from Japan would be contaminating the rain in Korea on Thursday. So much so that some schools even took the day off just because of the rain. Luckily we weren’t affected, apart from the fact that I can now shoot webs from my wrists and my spider sense is tingling more or less constantly.

I’m doing a lesson on jobs and occupations with my first graders. A picture of a police officer comes on and one student says, “It’s my Dad!” I enquired further, “Oh, so what does your Dad do?” Hoping for an answer along the lines of, “He enforces the Korean law and legislation against criminals and protects us, the citizens of this beautiful country, from the hostilities and adversities associated with criminal activity.” His answer was much better, “Erm, he sleeps.”

KBS, the Korean television channel, is clearly making every effort to put Boeun firmly on the map after filming the Women’s football, the dog walking, and now, the wrestling! On Saturday we went up to the gym centre for a swim and realised the national wrestling competition was taking place in our own little Boeun! We probably should have known about it because somebody was blasting it out of the town speakers at the crack of dawn earlier in the day, but then again, we had no idea what she was saying. It was live on KBS HD and we went along for a couple of rounds to see what all the fuss was about. It’s a bit like sumo wrestling, but you hold onto these diapers, the Korean men aren’t nearly as fat as the sumo wrestlers, oh, and it’s definitely not Japanese in any way, shape or form. The atmosphere was electric though and it was a great turn out for the cameras. Unfortunately The Rock didn’t turn up to give a People’s Elbow or body slam the referee through the announcer’s table.

In the afternoon, Angela, Laura, Stephanie, Chris, Betty and I went up to the rooftop of their apartment building and had a BBQ. The weather was perfect and the food was sensational. Chef Chris had, once again, been superb. We even got some hamburger buns custom made from Paris Baguette. I managed to get three burgers down but probably should have stopped at two. I still feel full now writing this blog over 24 hours later. We then had a game of poker. Laura nearly won even though she had no idea what to do, however, in the immortal words of Lady Gaga, she had a great poker face, p-p-p-poker face.

Finally, after a morning of cleaning the house, we went out for some galbi tang. A group of men in the restaurant were clearly talking about us before one of them plucked up the courage to come and try out his English. However, his first line of questioning was one of the strangest I’ve heard so far, “Are you a foreigner?” Maybe we should have replied with, “No sorry mate we’re not. We’re from Korea. We just look a bit different.”

Tink and Laura

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Photos

Chillaxing
End of a week drink.

Ajumma
Tiny ajumma with cardboard. Standard.

Sunset
Sunset over Boeun.

Temple
Nearby temple on the mountain side.

Temple 2
View overlooking Boeun.

Temple 3
Pathway leading to enlightenment.

Boeun
Sun setting over Boeun.