Pre-Blogger email: October update

It took me about two weeks to finish this in about 4 attempts. Pathetic.

Cheers
Adrian

PS - I am okay. I should be home in Australia again after Winter camp. I'll stay there for a while then I'll probably go off to somewhere else for a year. I've been thinking about South America, maybe Chile or Argentina. Who knows. I haven't actually looked into the job situation there yet. But South America has ancient Mayan tombs and the Nazca Plateau and general mysteries, crystal skulls for example. Sounds great. We'll see.

Also, we now have a fridge in our apartment - big news worth celebrating. I can have yoghurt and milk with cereal and raisins and walnuts every morning. So good.

[The attached document:]

Yea, here are the images that they wouldn’t let me show you. Only by garnering sufficient goodwill and trust over the last 7 months of my stay here have I reached the point in my relations with the authorities where I am able to send you these never-before-seen (as far as I can remember although I may be wrong) images of life in Korea. Enjoy your privileged photo-montage insight into the Korean world of …. of Korea!

Contradictory Tea Cup

If you look closely, you can see that the words “A green pepper” accompany this picture of a red pepper. Contradictory? Yes. It often seems much more important that manufacturers manage to put English language on their products than the words that they choose make any sense. I have since lost this cup. I am currently using another cup adorned with a picture of a sunflower and the accompanying words “Flower: we present you to simple life”.

Paintballing Crew

I think I might have sent this one already, or one very much like it. At the end of last semester a bunch of us went paintballing near Busan. This would be a great picture but Richard’s head was cut off because he chose to pose standing somewhat Stallone Cobra-style behind us all on the highest sod of turf, and that is a great shame because Richard has a nice head, very British Cockney-like. When I think of Cockney Londoners, I think of Rick. Right now, Rick will be somewhere in Australia, probably wishing that his ancestors had not been so clever in avoiding capture by the constabulary, but instead been shipped off to sunny, beachy Australia, land of BBQs and Tim Tams and water conservation issues.

Teacher’s Day

Rather obviously, I think, teacher’s day is a day where students celebrate and appreciate their teachers. That works out just fine for me, being one of the latter myself. I suspected that something was afoot when I approached the classroom for homeroom class and noticed Yu-Gyeong, the class captain, waiting at the door as if she was waiting for me. As it turned out she was waiting for me. Class 24 had bought a cake and other snacks and some drinks. And then someone went crazy and started smearing cream on me, but that’s okay because it was very tasty cream.

Final TESOL certificate course graduates

Here we have some of Jinju’s finest: the graduating class of the Spring semester TESOL certificate program. TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages by the way. So I guess I’m double qualified to teach English. And I’m going to start capitalizing the name of the language, English, again. I checked it on Dictionary.com’s style guide and apparently you should capitalize the names of languages, for example, Russian, Greek, Hebrew, etc. And now only 3 of these people still work here, including my intransigent self. You might notice that males are over-represented in this sample. I will also bring to your attention that fact that the guy in the light blue shirt at the top left is a bit of an alcoholic. I smile when I think of the many times that our taekwondo instructor had to tell John that his pants were the wrong way around.

I say Final TESOL because that was the last time the course was run. The new management that had come in had problems with it and wanted to scrap the whole thing, and they did.

Dinner with the Public Officials

Every semester there is a camp run at GNU for government employees. It’s an English camp and they have lessons and activities in English from 9 to 5 five days a week for about 6 weeks. The applicants who made it onto the camp are lucky enough that they are sent overseas towards the end of the camp to practice their English in context. This group went to Australia. Why do all the foreign teachers have an attitude.

My friend Paul does another crazy thing. That’s him with his hands in the air. Crazy Paul. And now he’s getting married. Crazy Paul.

My other family

Ummm, did I mention that I started a family here in Korea and I now have two sons? Here they are, Impy and Kronky. Good boys but they need to practice their English.

Week 3 class at Summer Camp

This would be middle school class F. They were a bit annoying because they were so loud and wouldn’t shut up and listen to me when I needed them to…but…at least they were being talkative and loud in English. It was quite a hot day that day and I was really glad I took my hat. This shot is taken on a field trip to Woo-bang Tower Land, so called because of the presence of Woo-Bang Tower in the Park. Mmm, simple. After being at Everland a few times, I have to say that Woo-Bang Tower Land was a bit of a lemon.

Sugary food plus kids plus amusement park rides equals sick!

I remember that there was at least one girl on this ride who was sick. Ha ha. I suppose it’s not really funny, but, ha ha. This ride is called the Viking by the way. There is a similar ride at Everland also called the Viking. Somehow, the Everland version is better. Woo-bang Tower Land just comes across as being a poor man’s Everland. Besides, it’s in Daegu. Daegu is nowhere! I’ve been there – it’s boring. However, I did see a snake in Daegu, the biggest snake I’ve seen in Korea. It was slithering into someone’s garage.

One more…

I am the Quiz King!

Summer camp contains many varied and stimulating activities conducted in English. This particular one is the quiz show we held in the auditorium. You can only see the middle school students here. The elementary and university students are doing other things. Note that when everyone is wearing the same shirt, everyone’s pants look somehow very similar, except for the one kid wearing the shorts with some kind of plaid pattern on them.

Well, that’s it for now. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s probably because the relevant authorities have detained me for questioning regarding allegations of possible espionage being conducted by myself for neighboring rogue states such with nuclear weapons. Hawaii for example. Oh well, enjoy and I’ll see ya later.

Cheers
Adrian

Pre-Blogger email: Summer English camp and Cycling around Namhae Island

I have been a little busy lately.

We finished Summer Camp a week ago. Summer English Camp is an intense immersive english program that runs for 4 weeks between the semesters. The kids on the camp ranged in age from early elementary school to university students. However, there are no high-school students apparently because they are all studying during the semester break for their university entrance exams.

I got up every weekday at 6:45 and quickly got ready for morning exercise. Morning exercise for middle school and university was held in the sports stadium every morning. In the last week I led it and I had made up my own routine of exercises to put the kids through.

Classes started at 9am every day and finished at 8pm. I have to say though that there were many fun classes and other activities squashed into the schedule, like sports time and snack shop time. Three times a week there was a science class and once a week there was a movie which all the students watched together in the auditorium.

After 8pm I would have to prepare stuff for the following day, photocopy stuff and plan lessons or activities. I think I was usually getting about 5 or six hours sleep per night.

On Saturdays we had to test our classes in the morning and then there would be skits and some other stuff in the afternoon.

The camp was great fun but a lot of work. I got paid pretty well for it but you really earn the money.

The other thing I have been doing is cycling. Yesterday I got back from a big cycling tour of Namhae island which is just off the South coast. I bought a bike on Monday and we left early Tuesday. My legs are still sore and my knee hurts a bit. But the scenery was beautiful and you see so much from a bike that would be lost if you were driving. Obviously, you can also get to places on a bike that you cannot get to in a car. Another benefit of traveling by bike is that you are moving slowly enough that people can talk to you or you can meet people easier.

I was walking my bike up a hill yesterday. This truck slowed down behind me somewhere and this guy got out and caught up to me and started talking to me. He'd just finished cleaning his father's gravesite. Apparently he wanted to go to university this year but there was some problem and now he's studying hard to get in for next year. We walked to the very small town just around the corner and he insisted on buying us drinks. We sat down inside a covered watermill monument which was nice and cool compared to the humid hotness outside. We were the first foreigners he had seen in his town. We talked for a while and then his brother and cousin's on turned up on their bikes. They cycled with us as we rode off again.

We saw a lot of the countryside and I got to practice my Korean a lot.

The weather here is currently quite hot and very humid. It can be very unpleasant for any kind of outdoor sports. I'm pretty good. Now I have a week to relax and catch up on thins before he new semester starts. I have been spending (relatively) a lot of time with a Canadian girl I met. I actually met here a while ago and then lately we have been seeing each other. It's good. But she is going back to Canada at he end of next month. Damn. The timing is terrible.

While I have some free time I will try to write to people and make some phone calls. But my time has a way of quickly disappearing in this place.

Well, that's me for now. I don't feel great right now and I think that that is reflected in this article. I just need to relax for a while and eat well.

Bye for now

Adrian

PS – here are some pictures from the cycling tour.

[Click on the images may result in an enlargement pop-up, or not]

Day 1: By the dock, before the bridge crossing.

Crossing the bridge from the mainland to Namhae Island.


I don't know what that thing is but it's cool.


A love hotel of prodigious proportions.


"Garlic Land of Treasure". That's what the sign says.


For the love of large stone monuments to garlic...!


Finally, a dream realised. The biggest garlic research institute in the world with an impressive range of garlic-related paraphenalia inside on two levels. Possibly the highlight of any journey to Namhae Island.


Incredibly, we met this guy in a tiny village (more like a hamlet) whose best friend was in my class at Gyeongsang University.


There was some awesome scenery to behold on our way around the island.


A statue stands watch over a gravesite situated on the side of a hill overlooking the coastal road and the bay below.