Summer Camps, Beijing and Country-Name-Dropping

Okay, the last couple of weeks have been a little crazy! We're now working through the second week of camps, which have been really awesome; in fact the perfect way to end my teaching year over here! The kids have been enthusiastic and entertaining. We just had a "Hokey Pokey" dance competition before sending them home for the day. So cute! Mrs. Kim's sister brought in her grade one aged daughter and she's not shy about dancing at the front of the class!

This Friday is my last day of classes, then on Saturday I'll be heading out to the Incheon Airport near Seoul and flying to CHINA!!! I couldn't find anyone who's going to be going to Beijing at the same time (most of the expats are either back to Canada for a visit or already off on their travels since school ended a couple of weeks ago), so it's going to be a solo mission, which I'm pretty excited/scared about!

Places on the agenda:

- The Great Wall of China!! Dude! There are several "sites" along the great wall to see, so I plan to go a few times.

- The Forbidden City (not really forbidden, actually a HUGE tourist attraction)

- The Temple of Heaven

- T'iannamen Square (spelling subject to complete wrongness)

- Shopping at Wangfujin, silk street etc. Oh, there will be lots of shopping

- Beijing Contemporary Art Gallery

- Mausoleum of Mao Zedong

- Random wandering and getting completely lost

- Sweating my ass off and evaporating into a dry shrivelled version of myself.

When I found out that I'd be travelling alone I had a moment's thought that maybe I should just skip it, then kicked myself in the head! What if I never come back to Asia and miss my chance to see the Great Wall?? That would be just plain ridiculous! After my week of sweating it out (apparently it's going to be ridiculously HOT) in Beijing, I will fly back to Korea to hang out for a week before heading back to Canada! Less than three weeks from now I'll be back in Ontario. It's a little surreal at this point.

I've really enjoyed my year over here, but at all costs I will try not to talk about it so much that people back home want to kill me. There's nothing worse than having one of those friends that is constantly Country-Name-Dropping. "You think that bathroom is dirty?? When I was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro-- that's in Africa-- I didn't even have toilet paper, and the mosquitos were the size of my head... etc. etc." I will try to only talk about Korea when asked directly and keep it brief!

Now, for your enjoymeant, some summer camp pictures! Well, I guess to be honest it's for my enjoyment. I'm sure no one else will care!

This is from the first week of summer camp. The kids pretended they were chefs on a cooking show and made themselves sandwiches. Korean sandwich combinations are a little scary for me-- egg with ham and cheese and strawberry jam. Seriously! But when I tried to introduce olives into sandwiches, the kids acted like I was crazy; they'd laugh and point when I'd pop one in my mouth.

The ladies of summer camp one. This was after we'd finished our "flea market" class and everyone had all of the fake American dollars. These kids are obsessed with money. Everyone had to fill out an introduction form and under "hobbies" five or six of them wrote "I like money". Little punks.

The second week group. The rest of these pictures will be the kids doing the hokey pokey. It was hilarious.
And I'm spent.

To Honour Naju's Spirit

School's out for the summer, so all that's left is two weeks of summer camps in the English Town. So today we played some games, did some drawings, ate lunch and sent them on their way. Summer camp is awesome. After summer camps I'll be heading out to Beijing for a week to see some sights (if anyone has any tips, they are very welcome!). Then back to Korea for just over a week until I move back to Canada! Geez! To honour Naju's spirit, I will now post some pictures of Naju's top regional food (well, the restaurant)! Delicious Gomtang!!
Yep, that's a cow coming out of a bowl! Delicious!

Boryeong Mud Prevents Wrinkles!! Let's Have a Festival!!

Daaaammmnn I'm in a pissy mood today. Of course this is due to the sun, lack of sleep and Soju that I experienced over the weekend. On Saturday morning a big gang of people met up in Mokpo at 8am to meet our own personal bus (Thanks to Crystal and Miji for the arrangements!) that would take us to the Boryeong Mud Festival. The morning started off the right way in the bus with jello shots and much conversation on the way. When we got there, (Boryeong's about three hours north of Mokpo along the coast) I was astonished to find a perfect, smog-free sunny day. Maybe the first one EVER in Korea: very rarely are there clear days without a haze in the distance. When we got to the mudfest it was already in full swing with a ridiculous amount of people partaking in the fun. The beach was huge and beautiful but absolutely packed with people. We quickly found a place to get nice and muddy, and after that I had a sort of anti-climactic feeling. So... I got myself into a mudfight, but what do I do for the rest of the day? At this point I started wondering why this Mud Fest was even started (in 1998). I looked it up today and apparently the mud in this area is special, so the citizens of Boryeong wanted to share it with everyone by having them smear it all over eachother (prevents wrinkles!). Even though the mud frenzy wore off quickly, there was still fun to be had because big crowds equals people watching! There were so many big buff foreign guys (probably GI's from Seoul) without shirts; people in speedos to giggle at; men with pink parasols to protect them from the sun (I'm not lying); Korean ladies wearing high-heel flip-flops; and cute little kids playing in the sand and mud. At night we camped out on the beach watching fireworks and drinking, then all went to our "room" which was very big, but there were about fifteen of us packed in like muddy, drunken sardines. Good times! My face is wrinkle free, but very lobster-like at the moment.
The sleeping quarters. I woke up first, so I took a picture of everyone trying to sleep off the booze!These sharks were in a tank sitting in front of a restaurant! The bigger one is at least four feet long! Can you imagine ordering a shark at a restaurant and grilling it at your table??

General Pandemonium

No word of a lie, at least five students cried today (no jerks, it wasn't after I made a face at them). We've been working our way through the younger students, and they are really cute, but can get VERY upset over the whole "stamp reward" procedure! Today's class was very... high energy. I pulled apart several fights, yelled at kids who were screaming and chasing each other around the English Town, a boy got a question wrong on the quiz and went and cried in a corner; general pandemonium. As of today there are only five more classes of English Town students, two weeks of summer camp, then I'll never be in the English Town again. Holy crap!

Last night me, my co-teachers, the principal, a vp and a few other teachers went out for dinner at Venezia. Even though I can't have a conversation with my principal I found myself getting all teary-eyed when he was telling me that he appreciated my work etc. (translated through Mrs. Lee). I'm really going to miss my school!! Even the evil ringleader and his cronies!!

Sidenote: Our extra class with Elementary school students has gotten waaay bigger, so we split the group into two, which was much more bearable! And I also discovered for the first time that the evil ringleader (Gwang-sun) is much smarter than he ever appeared! Smaller classes are genius. In the past he would spend the entire time asking to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, completely unwilling to speak English EVER. Then on Monday after we'd cut the classes in half I was attempting a ghetto form of Bingo. I got all of the students to name some countries as I wrote them on the board. Then I had them draw a four by four grid and write in any of the countries I'd mentioned. Then I called out random countries and the first student to get a line was victorious. And Gwang-sun actually did the exercise and WON!!! Then at the end of class he actually said goodbye to me (albeit in Korean). Geeez! If I had another five years to teach I might actually win this kid over.

Shuddering Even Now

Ahhhh, Seoul. A fun place to visit, but I could NEVER live there. So on Saturday morning I woke up at five thirty so I could catch the train out of Naju, arriving at Yongsan Station around ten to meet up with Laurel. My mission for the weekend was to buy lots of fun touristy items to give to people back home. So first we went to Dongdaemun, then Insadong, then Namdaemun, then finally Hongdae. Yeesh. It was so freaking hot as well; every chance we got we'd stop in a shop that had some sweet sweet air-con! We went out for some dinner at a restaurant called "Carne Station", which was interesting. For whatever reason there was about forty foreigners all having a get-together there and I had my first reverse culture shock moment! There were just so many of them, they were all drunk and loud and acting obnoxious. The girls were all dressed so very skanky. I've just become so accustomed to small town Korea that I was unaccountably annoyed after seeing all those foreigners. Don't get me wrong, it was nice seeing some diversity, but these people were OBNOXIOUS. The restaurant had an open bar, which would could probably account for them terrorizing the staff.

From there we went in search of a bar called "Tin Pan" (maybe?) that is supposed to be really good. All was well when we were just having a seat people watching. When we decided to get on the over-crowded dance floor, things went a little down hill. This guy came up to me and started flirting, which was a little uncomfortable (he was like thirty-five and more than a little creepy). It started off normally; where are you from? Are you a teacher? etc. etc. Then he decides that it's a good idea to divulge to me that he had slept with a couple of Korean girls but he didn't find them to his liking so he'd "gone back to white girls" all the while stroking my back and holding my hand as I tried to back away.

EWEWWWWWWWWWWW!!! YEEEEECCCCHHHHH!! Why?? Why?? Why would he think that I would want to know??? *shuddering even now* A fellow teacher had a theory about foreign guys in Korea, and I'm starting to believe it's true:

The Characteristics of Foreign Men who move to Korea:
1. Moved here with their girlfriend.
2. Moved to Korea so they could find themselves a Korean girlfriend/wife.
3. Moved to Korea to be bizarre creeps in another country.
(Note: this is a generalization! I know some guys who are none of these things, but for the most part it holds true)

The man I met was a former number two, moving on to a number three. Shortly after our conversation I motioned to Laurel that I was frightened and she informed myself and random creepy guy that we were meeting some friends and had to go. Boys reading this, never try to woo a girl by informing her that she's your race of choice. You may think it, but NEVER say it.

Okay, enough bitching about men! Here are some pictures that summed up this visit to Seoul nicely:

Me, (sporting a burn from shopping all day) in front of the "Luxury Ho Bar". This was one of several "Ho Bars" in the area, and apparently they're just regular bars with unfortunate names.

While walking through Insadong Laurel was just walking along looking at tourist items as an old homeless man walked by slapping her on the arm and laughing. I think he was crazy... and drunk... We were thinking that this might make a good t-shirt slogan so I wrote it down on a napkin and took a picture to preserve the memory. I'm fully aware of how weird I am. (Ruler is Laurel. Her name can be really hard to pronounce due to all the r's and l's, so that is usually what her students end up calling her.)

Veeeerrry Genius!

There are ridiculous amounts of billboards made in Korea. They cover every bit of commercial property and are used for even the most inane sort of advertising. Until now! When I saw this outside one of my co-teachers apartments, I had to take a picture.
Very genius.

Hajiiiiiimmmmaaaa!! (Stop That!)

I hate waiting for my elevator, so every morning I descend the twelve flights of stairs to get out of my building. As I was stepping down to the fifth floor there was an unmistakeable scent of urine. Awesome. Very rarely do people use stairs here, so they also seem to be a receptacle for cigarette butts, empty soju bottles and somewhere to dump pots of water (That's what I choose to believe. Why else would there be a puddle of water in the 10th floor stairwell?) .

I've also decided that my next door neighbours are the Korean version of "rednecks".
- Three or four children, all toddlers. Maybe they practice "natural family planning"?
- The mom is always yelling at her kids in the hallway, in a very public way.
- Instead of wheel-less trucks on cement blocks, all of the kids bikes and tricycles are lying around in the hall/balcony that I walk past to get to my apartment.
- There's a big tupperware container full of fermenting kimchi that's been sitting in the hallway for months. So that's kimchi that must get really HOT during the day. Sometimes I try not to breathe as I walk past.
- They are very nice though! The parents always say hi when the see me, and their kids are really cute (even though they like to play with my electronic door lock. They'll press buttons and wait for me to come out and point my finger at them saying "hajimmmmaaaa!!!". Then they laugh.)

In other news, no classes for the next couple of days since exams are coming again. So I've been preparing power points for the upcoming summer camp. Power point is my friend.

What a Wando-ful Hurricane it Was!

Today Mrs. Lee was checking out my blog and got me in trouble for not writing in it recently, so here I am!

So... this weekend: Stu decided it was a good idea to have a big party in Wando to celebrate the full moon and the birth of Canada, and I was all for it. Yes, it may be monsoon season, but up until now I hadn't experienced anything "monsoon-like"; just a bit of rain and a lot of humidity. So about a group of twenty crazy waygooks decided to pitch some tents near the beach. Saturday afternoon was beautiful! Nice and warm, and even a bit of sun. Once the sun had gone down though, it got a little cold and rainy, but that wasn't a big deal either. In the middle of the night, the wind really began to pick up. It sounded and felt like something was shaking the tent insessantly. I thought to myself "okay, that kind of sucks, but okay". Then the torrential downpour began. I was in a tent with Monique and Alex, and this tent wasn't so waterproof, so I was just trying to stay away from the edges. Then the thunder and lightning began, once striking so close that I FELT the reverberations (yeah... we were all in tents set up around the only trees in the area as well...). The rain was still pounding down soaking our tent so when the lightning let up, we took refuge in a big public restroom. Of course as I was running through the dark in the rain to the restroom I fell down twice, once into a huge puddle. Magnificent. Monique followed shortly thereafter and lost her sandal to the very same puddle I had fallen in! At this point sleep was certainly not an option and the sun had begun to rise somewhere behind the dreary dreary clouds. At about 5:30am we left the bathroom to start cleaning up our stuff and assess the damage. Someones motorcycle had fallen into the mud and broken the clutch, a big tent Stu had erected had fallen down, peoples tents were flooded and broken, and most heinous of all, I couldn't find my Korean won boxers (I'd left them to dry on a bench the previous evening and I thought they'd blown away. I later found them in my backpack). So we left camp at shortly after six (pouring rain still) to catch a bus back to our respective homes.

The guy wearing the Canada hat umbrella is just a random guy. Monique and I were on the beach and he came up to us asking to take pictures, and we gave him a bit of a glare, said no and walked away. Then as we were all sitting around drinking and chatting he came over again, telling us he was an "off duty coast guard", and wanting everyone's picture. So someone gave him a beer and we posed for some pictures.

All in all, a fun weekend! Thanks for the organization (and the curry!) Stu! A true adventure/disaster (there is no such thing as an adventure if there's no disaster!)!

Cathy's "Oh Crap I Fell Down Again!" Count: 2 678 895 and gaining everyday.