Calm Down Candy Teacher!

I've been so unaccountably angry today, and for the past few days (I credit my oncoming period... too much information?). Usually I can see the humour in most situations, and handle small changes in schedule with a shrug and a "meh". Today about thirty men in suits had to come in today to "see Naju English Town". Sigh. It's not the visit that's the annoying part, its that no one knows what the hell is going on, least of all me since I can't understand what is being said at any given time! After changing the schedule, changing the schedule back to the way it usually is (multiple times), being interrupted during a class, fussing again and again over details, people showing up late, etc. etc. the group of visitors stayed long enough to have a glass of orange juice and take some pictures with eachother.

The reason I'm not on a rampage over stupid little things beyond my control:

1. Everyday as I enter the gates at school this little boy runs up to me and shakes my hand. He doesn't say anything, he just smiles in a goofy way and shakes my hand very enthusiastically. Then sometimes as I'm walking away after he's already shaken my hand he'll run up and shake my hand again. Elementary school kids are so ridiculously cute.

2. I was sent a picture of me with the bikers we met on the weekend.

Jeollanamdo Roadtrip

This past weekend Stu superbly planned a roadtrip around the province, so I jumped at the chance to travel around taking pictures. We all met in Gwang-ju where Stu had rented a mini-van, and set out from there on Saturday morning. Our first stop was some sort of train station/ traditional drama set/ theme park. After this we drove through the mountains to Jirisan, a very popular mountain in Korea, and where there are also some bears being raised to populate the mountain because most of them have been wiped out.Then as we were driving around, what did we see? A big gang of hardcore Korean bikers!! I didn't think they existed in Korea!! Stereotypically Koreans are far too reserved to be into motorcycles and leather!! So Stu stopped the van and we all approached cautiously, wanting photos; in no time we were all arm in arm getting our pictures taken with these friendly bikers, and they were equally enthusiastic with their cameras! Sometimes it takes me a while to realize that I am just as big of a novelty to others here as they are to me! At the same stop was an old ajumma that we bought icecream from. I was the first one to approach her, so she was very inquistive. She was stroking my arm, then my leg (I was wearing a skirt). Without words, she was able to say "Damn! You foreigners have hairy arms! And you shave your legs?? Weird!!!" As has become very evident from visiting saunas, Korean ladies don't shave their legs (or anything else... have I gone too far again?).

I believe our next big stop was Suncheon to watch a Gumdo tournament. It's some sort of Taekwondo like sport, but with samurai-esque swords and lots of stomping around. Only the black belts get REAL swords, all of the other levels have wooden ones.

After dinner at The Outback in Suncheon we headed out to Boesong and checked into a love motel for some rest. The next day we were up bright and early to see the Boesong Tea Plantation, which was awesome! The green tea plants are in rows all the way up mountains.

From Boesong it was on to Wando via two ferry's. After a while on the beach we'd run out of time so Stu had to take us back to Gwang-ju so he could take back the car in time. It was nice to see more of Korea. The best part was driving along country roads seeing all the mountains, rice fields and old ajummas!!! The final picture: the group of us that went on the roadtrip.

Metaphorical Oozing and Puss

In honour of Buddha's Birthday, Monique and I decided to take a walk to one of the Temple's near my house. Many thanks to Buddha for providing this wonderful day off!!This is just a "progress shot" as we walked to the Temple.I love this little tree farm. Beautiful, but I'm not sure why.

This is what Moniques refers to as "Disco Buddha". These lanterns have been hung absolutley EVERYWHERE for Buddha's birthday. Kind of the Buddhist version of Christmas lights.

One of the cool demon statues in a temple. You'd better not piss him off.

And me sitting in front of a Temple. In other completely non-related news, it's Friday and we have no class in Naju English Town today. It's 9:10am and I really don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I feel like my attention span has been diminishing recently, due to my mind melting in a horror-film-like-manner. With oozing and puss and fun stuff like that. I need to watch less t.v.

Buddha's Birthday

Tomorrow I have the day off for Buddha's Birthday, which is fantabulous. How do people here get away with celebrating Jesus' AND Buddha's birth? you may ask; I haven't a clue, but I love it!

Crazy Waygooks and the Po-po

On Friday after Sports Day the principal told Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Kim to show me around Naju, so we went to the illustrious Naju Pear Museum!!! I've been meaning to go all year, just to find out what they could possibly put in a pear museum, and strangely enough, they had filled the place with pears. Plastic samples, sculpted pears as art, and my favourite: the "freak pears" in jars that reminded my of visiting a freak show and seeing two-headed babies in jars. Then from there Mrs. Lee and her husband took me to a ridiculously beautiful temple (the name eludes me) near Gwang-ju. At the top of one of the mountains nearby there was a huge reclining Buddha carved out of rock, which was very cool. In Korea there is a superstition that if a pregnant woman steals a piece of a Buddha, she will have a boy. So many of the smaller stone statues were missing ears and their nose. After climbing around the temple (I fell into a thorny bush and almost fell down the side of the mountain at one point... I'm so graceful) we went to Mrs. Lee's house for dinner, which was delicious.

Then on Saturday I headed over to Mokpo for a party being held for some teacher's whose contracts have ended and they're going home. Near Yudal Mountain there is an old abandoned school with a big open field, and that's where everyone decided to have a bonfire. So as we're sitting around, singing and whatnot (guitars are excellent around a campfire), a cop car shows up, flashing it's headlights at us. Afew people go over to talk to the po-po and we find out that the property has been bought by some people. So the police called the owners, asking if a bunch of random foreigners can stay for a while!! So after some bargaining and photo opportunities, the police leave with a warning to leave in two hours and clean up after ourselves!! Nice!! So we sang some more songs, lit some fireworks, cleaned up and left. All in all, a good weekend.

So now I'm back at work, and as of yesterday, I am officially going to be leaving Korea in three months!! Time is flying, but I'm also excited about going back to Canada and seeing everyone!

Sports Day

Sorry Monique!! I've been quite busy as of late... busy downloading songs onto my ipod!! Not too much happening in Cathy land, apart from wonderful class free Sports Day today. OOOh!! A couple of days ago I went out to lunch with all of the teachers to a fish place. As I was biting into a piece of the strange (and really expensive) fish, Mrs. Lee says "this fish is... hmmmm... what is the word... poisonous". My reply: "Oh?" as I continue to chew. "Yes. There is poison in its blood." I was eating blowfish!! All I could think about was that episode of the Simpson's when Homer eats the fish and thinks he's going to die.

So yeah, sports day. The kids were all super-excited about this event. They've been practicing for weeks and today all of the kids came in wearing white, which I guess was their sports uniform. Some pictures. In the first one, you can see my apartment complex in the background. Living close to work is awesome! And the last picture is me (looking like an idiot) and one of my excellent extra class kids, Mi-rae.

Teacher's Day

It's the most wonderful time of the year....

So, since it's teacher's day, there are no classes. This Friday is sport's day, thus no classes (or on Thursday either so that the kids can "train for sports day"). It seems that the spring semester is fraught with days off, sitting in the office trying to figure out my new ipod!! Poor me! I got some flowers from a couple of students, a nice barrette and a really cute note so far from the students in my extra class. They'd better get me presents after acting like little hellions in my class yesterday!!

My note from a student:

Cathy Hi~

My name is Lee Ah-Jung

today is teacherday

Cathy my present~

This is for you

I hope you like it

teacher I love you (heart)

Awwwww.... Just when I'm ready to stop showing up for my extra class (not that I could really get away with that...) a couple of the students have to be all cute.

So yeah, my weekend... originally I had planned on a big party weekend in Wando, but when it was rained out, I went into Gwang-ju wth Monique and Laurel and ended up buying myself a sweet little video ipod instead, since I like spending money so much. The downtown area was extra crowded and busy because there was some sort of concert going on. What really caught my attention was a few old city buses being spraypainted!! Very cool!

Happy Happy Happy

Happy mother's day mom!! Love ya!

Thank You Slaves

I'm not working very hard at the moment, I have to admit.

Drawings From Naju

In the evenings I sit in front of the t.v. and draw/paint in my sketchbook:

Hmmmmm...

Just... You know... Stuff...

- Saw Spiderman 3 in theatre with Mrs. Lee and Mr. Choi. We were all in agreement that the movie sucked. Too many big American flags, not enough story line (at least one that was cohesive).
- Did I move to a foreign country to become an interesting person? I don't think it's working...
- One of my students felt the need to stop class to ask me what size of clothes I wear. I told him "Very largiiieee!!!" In Korea I buy size 100 clothes. Isn't that a scary number?? It's also the largest size you can get over here.
- Alex's mom made me change my mind about bringing a dog with me, since dog's won't be aloud in many places. I want company though!! (But company that won't talk about stupid stuff, whine, or complain about my music).
- Instead of a dog, I think I'll get an i-pod (because apparently I need to spend money whenever possible). Then I can hook it up to my car speakers!!
- A grade two student went missing for a while today. There was a huge uproar over it!! All the kids were outside practicing for "sports day" (aka Track and Field day) when they realized a little girl had gone missing. After looking around for her for a while, they found out she'd walked home. No idea why; I guess she doesn't like sports.
- The "negative Nancy" attitudes of other foreign teacher's over here is starting to make me angry. (Don't worry Monique, I'm not referring to you!) Just people who are constantly bitching about the food, culture, people (EVERYTHING) and sometimes even when Korean friends are around! Come on people!! I just don't understand what they were expecting coming to a far-off country; fluffy clouds with fluffy cloud people saying nice things about you all day?? Hmmm?? Is that what you're looking for whiner?
- Hmmm... awww... I was describing the care bears!! I would like to visit them; if only it were possible...

Thinking Hurts My Brain

On Monday I had one 40 minute class and today I have absolutely no class (the class that came in was too rowdy so Mr. Choi kicked them out!!! At first I thought they would be coming back, but nope...), so I've been doing A LOT of thinking. I've already long exhausted checking my e-mail and poking around facebook, so I've officially begun my "back to Canada" planning!! This is exciting and scary for many reasons. Exciting because I can't wait to see family and friends, but scary because my plans have gotten bigger and more grandiose by the day!! Thus far:


- Contract ends August 20th, so I'll be heading back to Canada sometime shortly thereafter.
- Hang out: harassing parents, visit old friends.
- Put all of my paintings and other junk in storage to get it out of the way!!
- Buy a decent car: I often have daydreams about cruising down country roads listening to music, stopping to take pictures etc.
- Buy a laptop to store my pictures, download music and provide entertainment!!
- Buy a puppy from a shelter to keep me company!
- Destinations: I definitely want to go through Alberta, BC, Montreal, NS, PEI, NWT, etc. Today I was looking at places to go in Nunavut, which may be a bit of a crazy idea but I REALLY want to go... Glaciers, ice floes, and Northern lights oh my!! And I also want to be able to say "yeah, I've been to Nunavut. It was alright." (And I want to re-enact scenes from Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Wouldn't you want jump from ice floe to ice floe naked???).


- When I run out of money, which may happen pretty quickly; find a job and a place to live. Rent some studio space to keep painting, re-apply to schools.


I was looking online, and there are even hostels/backpackers places in Canada! They're pretty expensive, ranging from $25-$50/night, but that's pretty do-able. I'm also thinking of camping at provinicial parks along the way to reduce costs. It'll be fun!

Note: Sorry about the nudity (I know you can handle it mom!! And grandma!!). It's a scene from the previously mentioned movie that was filmed in Nunavut.

Hampyeong Butterfly Festivus for the Restofus

On Saturday afternoon I was sitting around watching another episode of "America's Next Top Model", and I get a call from Stu saying that I should come to the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival. It was hard to tear myself away from quality programming, but I somehow managed, so I caught a bus out of Naju with Monique. When the bus finally got into Hampyeong there was so much freaking traffic that our bus was at a standstill, but we could see balloons and whatnot in the distance, so we decided to get out and walk!

Took a picture of the mahem: us and hundreds of others had also left their vehicles to walk the last little bit, so we were walking along a big highway dodging buses and whatnot!

The festival itself wasn't really all that much to look at; I think it was more of an excuse for parents to get their crying children out of the house for a day. The group of us stood out A LOT amongst all the other visitors, so we also recieved many many stares and "*Gasp* Megook saram!" (American person). And I'm not talking little children whispering it behind their mothers leg, I'm talking run up to you and point. After a while Stu was joking about saying back to the kids "Ahhhhh!! Hanguk saram!!!" ("Ahhhh! Korean Person!!"), but I don't think the kids would've gotten the irony. Eventually we did finally see some real butterflies, but not enough to have a big festival surely!

From there we (i.e. Stu, Mi-ji, Monique and myself) headed out to the barbeque that Hyun-joong and Kristen were hosting in Mokpo. Hyun-joong's cousins have a country house with an actual backyard!! So we all sat out side eating and drinking until there was a big thunderstorm and everyone had to move their guitars inside. Alex's mom is also visiting from Canada, so on Sunday we took a walk up Yudalsan, which was nice, except that the humidity has started over here, which is probably going to make me want to hide in my apartment in front of the fan a lot. I also learned that Alex is a big baby (even more so than usual) with his mom around (hahahahahaha).

So that was my weekend! Now I'm in the office waiting for my ONE 40 minute class that I'm teaching today. Here are some extra pretty pictures of the view from my balcony after sunset.

Enthused

Today's class was SUPER FUN!! Right kids??? Right?? Ummm...

Today the English town had eight kids in from our branch school. Ordinarily a class of eight (usually it's about thirty) would make things much more interesting and fun, but these kids just sat there staring blankly at us. No one knew their dialogues, understood when we said "hello", or even slightly cared. So Mrs. Lee and I are trying to teach them a couple of songs, trying to bring out a little energy... nothing. Sigh.

This week we had a couple days where no classes could come (testing and whatnot), so I had Wednesday off, which I spent doing errands, cleaning my apartment and generally being lazy. On Friday we have no class again, so Mr. Choi, Mrs. Lee and myself are going to watch Spiderman 3 in Gwang-ju. Hahahahahaha... isn't life tough?