Slow Start

Slow start this month with only two posts. However I have been a little busy. I have 3 new classes at work. Three TOEFL writing classes twice a week. Now most people from English countries have never heard of TOEFL, however it the standard test for any student who wants to go to university. It measures your ability to read, write, speak and listen in English in an academic environment. After teaching the writing course a few times I also think it forces student's ability to analyse and write essays.

I also worked a camp in the countryside this weekend which was fun if a little tiring. I'll put up a separate post about that when I get some photos.

Question of the Month: June

As a new project for my blog I am going to pose a question every month which I will encourage friends and visitors to comment on.

This question will be on a number of issues from politics, philosophy, society to food or traveling.

This months questions is something for my immediate age group.

'Is university financially worth it?'

Financially, as in you might of had a great time sipping your £5 Blossom Hill wine or £1 pint for 4 yeas, but has it help your career; or left you crippled with debit in a job you could have worked up to or attained with any BA never mind your specialization.

Writing Class

I just opened a new writing classs for a student who is going to Oklahoma Uni. The traditional goal of our school's sylabus aims at passing the entry English exams for Korean Universities and a possible chance at entering a foreign institution.

The new student, a 19 year old girl, was born in America and speaks perfect English (almost). She needs the same type of education which teaches a native speaker to write an academic essay. This leaves me with absolutely no help from my school. They gave me books to teach this student that would be worthless or repetitive for her.

So being the nice guy I am I have made my own course in academic writing using a selection of books that I found on Amazon. I hope it goes well. It centres around reading numerous newspaper an academic articles, checking for comprehension, and then writing an analytical essay. This is coupled with some in depth (for non-native speakers) look into sentence and paragraph formation and academic necessities such as citation an bibliographies. I also included an English guide book on writing better essays which I might actually benefit from too.

I hope it works.

Work and Drinks= sickness

After some fish and snails the director and co-teachers wanted a few more beers. Hey ok but I was still feeling like an early night. We didnt finish our food till 2am and a few beers meant a late one. The next 2 hours I sat in Norae bang listening to Koreans either singing Korean songs or murdering English ones. It was fun to begin with. I hit out with 'Purple Haze' and 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and I was done. But they kept ordering soju and singing and singing. I resigned myself to beer and soju and dreamt of bed.

I didnt ge to sleep until almost 5am. Luckily my first class wasn't until 1am the next day but it still was not a good one. Luckilyit was my only class so I just watched you tube for the rest of the day. My cold came on ten times worse and I spent Thursday to Sunday sneezing and coughing.

Fish Time...Oh and Snails!

South Korea beat North Korea with a late 87th minute goal in 1-0 win in the World Cup qualifying match. It was a fun game to watch however being a Wednesday meant that the bars were pretty quiet and people would be going home early. Which is what I was hoping for actually. I was already tired from a cold which was hanging over me and I had drank a lot over the previous weekend

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However a light night was not for us. After the match we went to meet our director who was taking us for food for some celebration I was unaware of. It turned out to be a fish restaurant. Now I am partial to a fish supper now and then and a bit of salmon is never a bad thing, but in general I am not a fish eater. Moreover in Korea all the fish restaurants have open tanks outside displaying there live menu. However they are always open topped glass tanks with so many fish sploshing around you can barely tell them apart. They never look that clean and the contents range from eels to zebra-esqued ones, ugly shell creatures and mouldy things I would never like to have set eyes on.

However my first impressions were completely wrong; apart from the starter that is. Our first course consisted of raw snails with wasabi sauce. Now any Koreans reading this will probably see this as completely normal, in fact so would many European countries, but having to clench down on a raw snail (yes raw, pale green, cold and stringy) while yanking away the shell is not the most normal thing during British supper. This was accompanied by octopus tentacles, again raw, with a red sweet and spicy sauce. My worst fears were coming true. A meal in which everything would be raw, strange and highly fishy. Next up was a small fish called chung-oo or something, however this was good and after the myriad of bones I had to navigate through with my chopsticks.

The main course. I was informed, was called 'gin-rummy' which means fin in Korea, pure coincidence but true. Now it was raw, cold, chewy and looked like a pale amalgamy of jelly and egg white. However it tasted.....good. With a bit of chilly sauce or wasabi it was nice. My co- teachers ordered some 'chi-gay'(tofu spicy soup) and showed me how to boil the fish in the soup if you wished. You'll never guess what transformation occurred! After a quick dip in the soup and the pale gin rummy transformed into exactly the type of fish u get in your supper back home. Only without the batter and ten times fresher. I was pleasantly surprised and gobbled up a lot. The last dish was one of the zebra-esqued fish which was barbecued. And that again tasted good, no taste of salt or sea but fresh and thick. I was surprised.

All in all I would try it again. I have been promising Mimi I would go for some Sushi so I might give it a bash some time.

Wake-up Call

Hmmm.... the Director phoned me this morning at 10.30am. Understandable if he had something to say...but he seemed to just want to chat. Now having stayed up till 3.30am so I could talk to my mum I set my alarm for 11.30am the next day. A solid 8 hours sleep. However as you can see I was woken up early by the director. I guess he could tell ia had been sleeping but he continued the conversation anyway. 'So, what are you doing Kevin?'. Eh?! I just told him I was about to get ready for work. Then as the silence stretched he filled me in on his morning, watching baseball and going to the gym.

Being disturbed from my slumber I was stern and was ready for the usual question when an employer makes an irregular phone call,. 'Can you come in early?', 'Work Saturday?' or 'Work late?'. But nothing came, just a description about his morning and a promise to talk about my contract today; something we had already agreed to do.

It was all very weird until it dawned on me an hour later. Was he just trying to be friends? Is he lonely? Now I think that it was this. Not so weird but not altogether normal either.

Passing waygooks,

Foreigners in Korea are known as waygook in Korean. I see so much more white faces living in this area, Ji-san, compared to my first area Ansim. The weird thing is that when you see a foreigner in Korea who you don't know their is a whole expected ritual of introduction. I totally don't buy into it and I find the encounters erroneous and repetitive.

Let me give you the usual scenario. I am on my way to work and I stop at the traffic lights. To my right another foreigner looks at me and is quite obviously hoping i will say hi to them. I don't know them and probably would never converse with them if the crossing was in the UK, Australia or France. However out of mutual respect for professions and immigration I will dutifully nod my head, lift my eyebrows or say hi. What I wait for in return is either the reciprocal action or a barrage of question that I really don't want to get into. Usually it goes 'hi', and they jostle abut for a few minutes before asking 'Are you an English teacher?' , followed by 'Where you from?' When did you get here?''Where do you work?' 'Why Korea?'. Five minutes later hey seem to be running out of conversation and out of pity I'll throw in a few questions or opinions about Korea which usually go down well. Drawing close to my school I offer my good byes and try to scurry of before they ask for my phone number Which inevitably they always do. Lets meet again! Strangely the last question is often , as if forgotten, what's your name (again)? The whole process is so predictable it's frustrating.

Now don't get me wrong I completely understand the need for them. If I moved here to a school which had no other foreigners and I had no other waygook friends then I would pretty much latch on to the first friendly white face I seen. But that's what puts me off the whole thing. It's the whole latching onto someone for no other reason than you need them. I'm not embarrassed by the whole awkward introductions and familiar questions; actually I think I am quite good at it. It's just the whole 'let's be best friends' thing that makes me cringe.

For example, the mates I have now are a good mix f people I worked with, people who worked for the same company, guys I have met playing poker, and a few who I happened to meet in bars or friends of friends. Not one of the people I have met walking on the street have I encountered in a social setting and rarely have I met them again.

Maybe, I'm just in a cynical mood today- sorry.

Herald NIE

Well I received my first pay-check last Friday and also had a staff night out. Another foray into the dark side of Korean drinking culture. Was good night but unfortunately my director wasn't allowed into the club because he was wearing a suit. So we nipped round the corner and he took of his tie and swapped his jacket with mine. Unfortunately it was about 3 sizes to small so i looked like someone out of a 1980s pop video. We tried again but unfortunately it was his age that was the problem so we had to ditch him and I met up with some friends inside.

The relationship at work is going well actually.We are starting to understand each other more and they even printed my name on their new books. They have not altogether stopped but the enquiry into my religion no longer feels like an issue. However they still keep asking me to get married and live in Korea. I don't want to say outright no to them. However, as much as I enjoy living and learning in Korea staying isn't an option. My director even offered a salary of $80,000 a year if I worked with him for the next 5 to 10 years. That would be great but my ambitions lie elsewhere.


I'll up load some more photos tonight.

School night out

Last Saturday was the first official work night out.
I was told to meet at the Yoyo restaurant downtown at 10pm. Easy enough. I turned up and realised that it wasn't a staff night out but only the director MJ and my co-teacher Andy (also a Korean)were there. The female teachers weren't invited and it was in affect a lads night out. We had 3 courses of excellent Korean and Chinese food which we ate communally before my director surprised me by purchasing a bottle of whiskey and explained that his new English phrase was 'Let's get wrecked'.

As I was from Scotland I was to show them how to 'one-shot' whiskey. I don't even touch the stuff back home and my father always said stay off the whiskey as it messes with your mind, Clearly demonstrated to me by Gary when he cried at being called a monkey a few years back.

It wasn't even Scottish whiskey but some Canadian sour mash dressed up in a crystal bottle. Guessing it was expensive I didn't want to spoil the moment, so I dropped an ice cube in, swirled it and performed what the Koreans call 'oneshot'. By the time we had finished the bottle and the meal it was 2am and the choice was between a nightclub or a norae bang. A norae bang is a private room where you can sing karaoke and order drink or food.

Until 5 am I was locked in a room with two forty year old Koreans attempting to sing Korean classics an Englsh pop. I used to love norae bangs. Nights with your friends signing to classics, ordering drink and everybody joining in like an alcohol fueled concert crowd. Renditions of Wonderwall and Yellow were always particularly effective.

This time it was fun to begin with. Trying to teach them the ins and outs of With or without you' or 'My way'. However I look back in shame at my mic hogging, leg shacking dance moves and reckless attempts at singing in Korean. I remember at one point, as the disco ball lit up and I reached the climax or Led Zeppelin's 'Rock n Roll' I was on my knees playing the air guitar.

My boss decided to drive home that night, and it seemed to be completely normal thing to do. I opted for the back seat and buckled my seat belt. My eyes wouldn't stay open much longer so I concentrated on reading the road signs as we drove home at 5am after numerous beers and a bottle of whiskey.

Strangely I find 'Gay bar' by Electric Six an excellent Norae bang tune. Next time I was promised we would higher dancing girls to dance along to our singing.