Oppa Gyeongnam Style

Blog readers of the world, I firstly would like to bid you all a short apology for the teenie tiny delay of this (last) month's addition to the blog.  But here it is, all revitalised and shiny, complete with pictures in colour.

It's been a rather hectic couple of weeks but things have rolled on rather pleasingly as we've integrated ourselves further into the local community by doing all manner of tedious things just to get them to like us a bit more.  I'll also be talking a little bit about teaching and some of the more humorous aspects of that as this month really has had some absolute corkers of passively offensive comments, racial slurs and poo-based ghost stories.

Getting a board marker for the bathroom
was the best idea of all time. 

Earlier on in the month we were invited by our agent (I like saying I "have an agent", she runs a recruiting agency and she got us our current job so in a sense, she is our agent) to an English speaking weekend of fun and games!  We said yes under the pretenses of free accommodation and a barbecue in a quite nice rural setting.  It was set up so that our agent's daughter and all her friends (aged 9 I think) could get used to speaking to foreigners and not run off screaming at the sight of us (happens more frequently than I'd like, particularly when I don't brush my hair).  We were told to meet at a coffee shop where ourselves, plus the other foreigners, would be greeted by some of the parents and be driven off into our mountainside retreat.  That bit wasn't particularly awkward at all, no no no.  What was even less awkward was when we were separated into the different family cars to get to the guest house; I was in a rather squashed family car with five kids, one baby and a set of parents.  We made the drive from Busan north between the mountainous landscape and rugged coastline towards our guesthouse.  There was some excellent views along the way, peppered with the new development projects we've become accustomed to seeing in Korea: huge sets of high rise apartments still under development, shopping malls all edging towards completion.  The conversation was a bit stinted due to quite a large language barrier.  At first that always made me awkward but now when you've been given the complete assurance they won't know what you're saying but are too polite to do anything other than smile and nod, you can say literally anything.  I ended up talking about water parks and what I hate about kids.  It was a nice drive.

We arrived at the guesthouse and it was as traditional as traditional gets, presumably.  The house itself was up a stony driveway which cut finely between the pear trees.  It was split into two buildings: one for the people who lived there and one for those who did not.  Between the buildings was a small courtyard which came with a delightfully loud drum and a wonderful bastarding organ.  The foreign teachers' quarters were gender specified which meant I'd be spending the night with a South African fellow who I'd only met a few hours previous.  Keeping in with the 'traditional' feel, our sleeping area consisted of a blanket and a cushion.  That was going to be oh so much fun...

Did the accessories for Prince Albert, apparently.

After setting our things down, we were introduced to the kids; six girls, all friends, all very happy, all very hyper.  We were each paired with a child.  There was one girl who had a broken leg/foot/ankle situation who I hoped I'd get (not much running around being my optimistic thesis).  I didn't get her, I got a girl called Violet who was actually one of the most awesome, both in terms of speaking ability but was also quite funny.
Once we'd been assigned our partners we then had another entirely non-awkward car journey down to the beach.  Some of the signposts worried me ever so slightly though as we started passing signs for "Gori Nuclear Plant".  Why that's not been the location for an apocalyptic mutant zombie movie I'll never know.  The beach was windy.  After the humid sweatbox of Korean summer in Yulha, surrounded by mountains on three sides, it was absolutely beautiful.  We played some games and the like before deciding it'd be a good idea to play touch rugby.  It was going marvelously until one of the more testosteroned dads wanted a go.  Fast forward thirty seconds to a rather quickly established HT whilst we tried to get two girls to stop crying.  "Touch rugby Mr Kim, touch rugby"...  We came back and had a barbecue before some more games and settling down for the evening.  We went into our traditional Korean sleeping quarters where myself and Ashley, the South African laid.  A few feet of uncomfortable floor separated us as we made conversation about cricket and such in the pitch black.  I tried to roll over and settle down before I monumentally twatted my funny bone off a (n undoubtedly traditional Korean) CD player speaker.  I made a bit of a yelp before Ashley said it was stupid and went and asked the lady people next door see about rearranging some of our sleep positions.  A straight swap between the Turtle and Ashley resulted in guilt-free spooning until morn.

A door made of paper next to an organ that must
have been made with revenge in mind.

Morn must've been forty five minutes away as the beautiful, sweet, indescribably cute children found the motherfucking drum and organ.  6.20 we were up, cursing the floor for making me ache, cursing the shower for only having cold water, and cursing the selfish swines who wouldn't just wear a sodding condom.  After a quick breakfast of traditional Korean rice bread and traditional Korean cafe lattes we were off melon picking.  This was quite fun until I got lost and a spider headbutted my eye.  I just wanted to go home.

A few hours of pretending to be okay with being woken up at dawn to Greensleeves on an organ to the beat of Night Fever on the drum slid by as slowly as watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, twice.  At around 11am we were treated to traditional Korean chicken soup, which was actually quite delicious.  The owner of the guesthouse then came out and started telling everyone they could stay passed the normal midday time guests usually had to leave.  We, the foreigners, were grateful but said we must get back and would need a lift back to Busan (as arranged) from the parents.  Miss Bitchface began telling us all about this wonderful bus stop down the road with this magic bus that only took an hour and a half of country roads to get back.

Just as I started to consider using a drum as a weapon, she brought out a CD she had made.  The cover was her, this fifty-something Korean woman, in a white suit with a pink fluffy scarf on, sat/laid a bit like Lionel Richie.  We all said how marvelous it was that she'd gone through so much trouble to do that, but really we must be getting home now.  Of course she wanted to treat us though didn't she.  She sat on a ledge, looked down at the ground, looked back up at us, her audience: six kids, two babies, five foreigners (one ran away), and four sets of parents.  Her face full of pain and emotion, heartbreak and the tormenting sadness of love.  She, of course, broke into Yesterday by the Beatles.  Four verses and two choruses later, complete with a few drawn out final notes and I was ready to end it all.  Maybe jump off one of the taller pear trees, or just try drowning myself in the chicken soup...

Saturday was good though.

Chuseok on the beach.

Since then we have had Chuseok, the Korean Harvest Thanksgiving.  This was immense because we had five days not teaching screaming days.  So what did I do to spend my time?  I went to the orphanage!  I love it there, all the kids are a bit weird but entirely awesome.  It was only for one day so I didn't mind going along.  We were told we'd be making Seongpyeon, traditional Korean (I feel I should keep a tab of how often I say that phrase) rice cakes that are sometimes filled with mung beans or even red beans.  DEEEEEEElicious!  I sat there for a while being climbed on and kicked in the face, normal orphanage practice, before we went through to the kitchen area where we helped the ajummas (Korean "aunts" [the old ladies]) with the rice powder/dough.  The kneading took ages!  They use such a little amount of water in the dough I think the only real moisture that went into it was the sweat of the musceless whiteboy who swore a lot trying to get the fucking powder to stick together.  Everyone else managed it though, the bastards.  The putting beans in the dough stage came next which was great fun.  I gave my little cakes a bit of crimping on the edge to give them a bit of fancifulness, a bit of joie de vivre.  One particularly judgemental granny just shook her head disapprovingly.

Twenty minutes or so of intense steaming and they were done!  The fruits of our labour, the prizes of our efforts, the light at the end of the tunnel!  They tasted rank.  I must have got one that I'd made because the outside, whilst gooey and gelatinous (like any kind of steamed rice would) was as powdery as the nostrils of Miss Moss on the inside.  The mung beans were also a bit disgusting too.  I was a bit disappointed so I went to the bathroom, spat it out, and scarpered.  Had a nice time though.

One thing I've definitely neglected in recent blogs is what I actually do job wise.  I'm aware there's a fine line between knowing what I definitely can say and knowing what my directors might decide to search at a later date.  But for the time being, I'll keep it sweet (as sweet as I can given they are spawns of Satan himself).  A few weeks ago my middle school students arrived at a Storytelling module in their books and had to create a a story themselves.  Here is my favourite example of some of the things they created:

"Pleasingly plump"

It was a hot humid night.  A man walked into a restaurant.  When he sat he saw a beautiful woman sitting across the room.  

He asked for her phone number.  She said "no" because the man is ugly.

He was upset so he threw water on woman.  She got angry, so she hit his cheek.  

He prod her eyes with a fork.

The waiter had a fight with him.  The waiter killed the man.  The woman stayed alive and ate the man.

The man was delicious.

They were given the first line or so and were told to go from there.  Truly beautiful work,

Yulha, the new city. 

Our schedules and classes all changed in September so we were each given a load of newly reordered classes.  A few of my new students were a little shy around me at first, now they're right at home in my presence.  I thought that'd be a good thing, it isn't.  I walked into a class last week to "Oh teacher, you look full today" as the delightful cherub got up and started mimicking how a heavily pregnant woman might hold her belly as she walks around.  In another class we were doing a unit on going to the zoo.  Except the Z is incredibly difficult to ten year old Koreans, so a lot of the lesson was spent with me absolutely creased listening to kids talk about what animals they've seen in 'Jews'.  One child, Julia, said she'd once seen a giraffe's head popping out of a Jew before.  The week since the Jew incident, we've had to do both workshops on A) what Jews are and B) how to make a Z sound.  The results
and degrees of success are varied.  On the one hand, they all know what Jews are; on the other hand, one class now calls me Jewdan Big Nose.  Whilst one boy who I was given a particularly hard time about saying Zoo and working on Zs actually has a lisp I'd forgotten all about.  Feel a bit bad about that now looking back.

Anyways, things are still going well.  We've been here exactly 6 months now too and it's all going rather swimmingly.  Still don't like the fermented cabbage arrangement lark though.