Advertisement
Published: April 18th 2011
Dear Blog Readers,
I write this blog with a twinge of guilt and a splitting headache due to the yellow dust. Yes, it’s finally arrived. It’s horrific because of it is so inconspicuous. It looks a little bit hazy outside but not to the extent of fog, more like the clouds settling down for dusk but during the middle of the day. You barely notice it. However, breathing in the stuff for 20 minutes on my walk to school was enough to give me an earth-shattering headache. However, that’s not the reason why I’ve had the afternoon off work…
I woke up feeling groggy, but that is unsurprising due to it being Friday. I didn’t sleep well and my back was aching a little. When I got to school, it felt a little worse. I told me co-teacher, Mr Oh, in passing about my back thinking nothing would come of it. Mr Oh stood up and started massaging my back in the middle of the teacher’s office. Some concerned teachers looked around and asked what was wrong to Mr Oh. The level of embarrassment was somewhat decreased due to the effectiveness of the massage. However, Mr Oh was worried.
You CANNOT Be Serious!
Unbelievably competitive! Huge argument over a line call causing one person to sit and umpire the rest of the match.Very worried.
He marched me down to the nurses office where the nurse had a look of sheer terror at the prospect of conversing with an Englishman. Mr Oh explained the situation and she opened up a cupboard to get some supplies out. What were they going to get hold of? At an average height of about 5ft 5in, they looked at me to reach up and grab the necessary medical equipment. I was then shown to a bed, an actual single king sized bed, and the electric blanket was turned on. Mr Oh told me to go onto my front before piling on some deep-heat and giving me a massage. This was soon followed by the PE teacher giving me another massage.
As the bell went for first lesson I started to get up to go to the lesson when Mr Oh said I should rest for the morning and he would do the lessons on his own. I tried to assure him that I was OK enough to teach the lessons but he insisted – and any blog readers from Korea will know that when a Korean insists, there is pretty much no chance of getting
Wimbledon
The Boeun Tennis Tournament. your way! So, with that in mind, I spent the Friday morning lying on a bed in the nurses room with students occasionally frequenting to see if I was alright and saying such things as, “Power Up.” My desk was filled with more chocolate, snacks and rice-related-snack-constituent than usual. By lunch, Mr Oh was back with further news – he’d managed to get a permission from the vice principal for me to have the afternoon off so that I could rest! If I’d been faking it, I probably would have died at this point with guilt, but luckily, I knew a day of rest would do me the world of good.
Mr Oh then treated me to a lunch of sundae – this is the pork intestine filled with pretty much anything that constitutes as meat. The soup it came in also had lungs, heart, kidney, and of course, my favourite, trachea - to provide a little sustenance. Mr Oh took me home and told me to get some rest as he was expecting me to be fighting fit for the tennis tournament that he and I would be playing in on Saturday.
Earlier in the week, I
Raffle
The prize giving begins... was teaching nationalities at the girls High School. Some of them were telling me where they would most like to visit in the world. One answer stumped me:
Student: If I could go anywhere in the world, I would go to Schecker!
Me: Schecker? Where is that?
Student and the rest of the class now: No, Schecker!!
Me: Erm…(Maybe I’m doing the classic pronouncing it completely correctly but still indecipherable to the Korean ear.)
Student: Capital city. Prague.
Me: Oh, Czech Republic!!!
Student: Ah! Jincha!
It was also on Wednesday that our bank, NH, was down and out of action. I mean really completely down. Like, your bank card didn’t work anywhere. You couldn’t get money from the ATM or use your card at the supermarket. In fact, Laura bought a load of things from Boeun Mart and her card was refused but they let her go
with her food so she could pay back the next day. Oh trustworthy Boeun. In England, I would imagine if somewhere like Lloyds TSB just happened to ‘stop’ working for a day that it would pretty much collapse. In Korea, however, nobody seemed that bothered. In fact, most of the Koreans
Cherry Blossoms 1
The view was awesome. I asked about it with met it with a chorus of hysterical laughter. As expected, the bank blamed the whole system going down on one man deleting something important on his laptop. One man can bring down an entire bank! If the whole stopping everything working didn’t scare us enough, the fact that it can be brought down by one man and his laptop should concern even the least financially bothered soul.
NH was still in disarray on Thursday and it wasn’t just a black day for the bank, it was also a black day for all the singles in Korea. 14th February is Valentine’s Day, 14th March is White Day and 14th April is Black Day. It’s quite bizarre. Basically all the singles in Korea go out and eat jajangmyeon (Chinese black noodles) to mourn their singleness.
It was also a black day at school because a huge fight broke out in one of the classes causing one student to have his glasses broken. The father of said student came into school absolutely furious. At the end of the class, all the students in the class where the fight broke out crowded outside the teacher’s office trying
White Flower Tree
I have no idea what type of tree this is. to look inside to see what was happening. At which point, the furious father runs out of the teacher’s office shouting and trying to grab hold of any of the now-scarpering students. The PE teacher was even called up at one point to try and defuse any imminent Homer Simpson esque strangling of any of the students. Amazing.
Saturday arrived and my back had been well and truly rested. I was ready for the tennis tournament. I didn’t realise that it was going to be as big as the last one (see this
blog) but I wasn’t disappointed. The opening ceremony consisted of introducing about 15 people who were dressed in suits (on a Saturday morning at 10am outside in the heat on a tennis court), the waving of the tennis club flag, saluting the Korean flag, a Scout-honour-like oath complete with hand raised, and of course, the 20 minutes of speeches. This included one by an important looking man who I was later introduced to simply as, “The Boeun King.” I thought he must be the owner of Baskin Robbins or something.
Anyway, the tennis tournament began! Back at home, our tennis tournaments normally last about 2
Specs
Should have gone to Specsavers. hours, maybe 3 hours at a push and with a lot of disgruntled, “where has my day gone,” sort of looks. However, in Boeun, the tennis tournament starts at 9:30am and doesn’t finish until at least 5pm. In that time, I played a grand total of 4 sets. Four! Sa!! The first three sets were great, we won them comfortably and made sure our team was well on our way to the final. A lunch of hot ham and rice soup went down a treat but we had to wait about 2 hours before playing our final game. Everybody had finished and it was just our set being left to play. We’d got to a tie-break but lost by the narrowest of margins (basically a dubious line call). After finishing, I am then told that if we’d won that set then our team would have won the whole tournament. Absolutely gutted - Korean-competitiveness-attitude-style.
We made our way back for the closing ceremony. It was here that I was cheered up by seeing some of the Korean tennis attire. The sun was out, which the Koreans hate with a passion. Getting a tan insinuates that you are a farmer, which
Winner!!!
Absolutely amazing!!! in Korea, insinuates that you are poor, inept, socially inadequate and possibly inbred. Consequently, they will go out of their way to make sure every possible area of skin is covered. This means that everybody wears long sleeved jackets and trousers and visors and gloves are optional, but not uncommon. I also saw some interesting brands of clothing lines, including ‘Colon Sports’ and ‘Gay Swiss’.
I was also cheered up by the prospect of the raffle! Anybody who has lasted the full day of tennis is automatically entered into the raffle. After a good twenty minutes of giving toilet paper, detchu juice, a gas cooker and a fan, etc. it was time for the big prize. The top prize was a brand new bike. The hand went into the box and out came the lucky ticket. “Saaieemon!!!!” The crowd cheered as I graciously accepted my prize, I bowed the crowd and thanked them in Korean. It really was a brilliant day!
Yesterday we went to Cheongju to see the beautiful cherry blossom trees lining the river that runs through the centre of down. It really was spectacular. The cherry blossoms were only going to be blooming for a
Cheongju
Laura, Yuni and Lily. very short period and because of the rain forecasted in the week, this could be the only chance we get to see them. Luckily we weren’t disappointed. A nice walk around the city in the sun was disastrous for Laura’s co-teacher, Yuni, and her friend, Lily, who didn’t want any sunlight touching their skin. We went to a nearby market which had loads of chickens, hens and dogs in cages which was nearly as unpleasant as the dead dog that was in the butchers cabinet. It looked like a hanging pig that you would see in a butchers at home but it was a dog. Absolutely horrific.
Yuni and Lily were just as mortified as we were. Luckily it didn’t put us off our appetite for TGI Friday’s which was just out of the downtown area. We ate so much we could hardly move and it was a great end to a very eventful week!
Tink and Laura
Advertisement
Tot: 0.259s; Tpl: 0.038s; cc: 8; qc: 53; dbt: 0.108s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Tink's Mum
non-member comment
Shorts
Hey Tink! You're the only one wearing shorts and a T-shirt at the tennis competition! (Dunnington Tennis Club would be impressed!)