Barely Travelling

I'm not sure if it's laziness or Jecheon being not quite as sucky as Buan or poverty or what, but Tom and I have several more weekends at 'home' than we are used to, and we haven't really done much. It's actually kinda nice but we broke up the repetition by taking a trip to Cheongpung Lake last weekend. 

Everything I know about Cheongpung I can't find referenced on the internet (that link above goes to info about the bungee jump on the lake) so here's some internet referencing for future people. Cheongpung's a big lake about 40 minutes from Jecheon city by bus. It's one of Korea's biggest lakes, it stretches from Cheongju to Danang (cities in our province) and features hotels, a theme park, a bungee jump and a traditional village. Jecheon has an annual film and music fest which is held on the lake, and apparently it's one of the best places in Chungbuk to see the cherry blossoms. PHEW.

It was pretty nice too, although has the standard Korean mix of gorgeous natural beauty with ugly-ass manmade grossness. CF:

Pretty lake, garishly painted bungee jump (that crane thing) and weird fountain. That fountain was absolutely immense - the bungee jump is over 60 metres, and at it's height the fountain was easily spouting 20m above it. Huge/weird.

We went to the lake with some friends and tried to take a picnic into the traditional village. Unfortunately one of our party was explicitly not allowed into the park. Tom gave her a cuddle to make her feel better.

Undeterred, we headed to a secluded spot and sat chatting and eating, admiring the lake and playing with Talia. At one point a bus pulled up nearby and out poured about 40 assorted old people, who started drinking makkeoli and dancing to a saxophone player. We went and said hi and were lectured about the importance of Gangnam Style. Oh, Korea. 

After filling up on sandwiches and thoroughly tiring out the cat, we piled back on the bus and headed home. A great day out!

Chuseok in Photographs

Last weekend was Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving. I imagine it's similar to American Thanksgiving (or Canadian Thanksgiving) - lots of people travelling, clogged transport, food, family get-togethers, arguments, alcohol, sentiment. For us English teachers it means a few days off work and the last chunk of public holidays before Christmas. Last time we were here we went to Seoul for Chuseok, so this time... we went to Seoul for Chuseok. 

Seoul's actually pretty nice during the holiday as a large portion of the population heads out of the city to visit relatives. I say large portion, I mean 4 MILLION which is pretty much the population of New Zealand. As a result, the streets are clear, the subway is deserted and the transport options are great as everyone else is heading in the other direction.

We caught a train up and tried to check in to our favourite Jongno motel only to find it has turned into a swanky, expensive backpackers. I was more than a little heartbroken as we stayed there almost every time we went to Seoul and had got to know the owners quite well. Nevertheless, we ducked down an alleyway and found another place within our price range (cheap) and it had a circle bed. 

Tom is excited.

Walking back to the subway I had a chance encounter with one of the most dapper Koreans I've ever seen. Jongno is the jewellery district and for some reason it's also populated by swag adjusshis. This guy. I mean, this guy.

We'd made plans to go to a baseball game but before we headed out we went hunting for street snacks. After a tasty chicken skewer we went searching for a place where we'd had really awesome fried fish on the last day we were in Korea last time. The stall wasn't open but a bunch of awesome adjusshis decided we looked alright so they called us over and poured us a few bowls of makkeoli (Korean rice wine.) An hour later and quite a bit tipsier we headed towards Jamsil for the game.

We don't really do baseball in NZ but Koreans go all out. We went to a game last time and this venture was much the same - tickets are a measly 10k, you can buy a tallboy of beer for 2.5k and there's a plethora of fast food joints inside the stadium if you're craving a burger or some chicken. Add to this the amazing atmosphere - the stadium was 70% full of fans who screamed, cheered and danced throughout the match. I think the closest comparision would be a Phoenix game in Wellington - all of the players have specific cheers, everyone bangs their inflatable noodle things together in unison and although I barely understood what was happening I had a fantastic time.

Stocking up

Birds-eye view. Go Twins!

After a stellar evening featuring some great music and cocktails from our favourite Hongdae bar, we rose ... as bright and early as possible.... and made the trek to Seoul Grand Park. The park is a massive stretch of land nestled at the base of a few small mountains. It features a theme park, a zoo, a botanical garden and the Seoul Museum of Modern Art. We opted for the zoo (a little hesitantly) and were pleasantly surprised. Entrance was 8,000 won which included a ride to the gate - 1.5km from the ticket booth! - and chair lift back when we'd wound our way through the grounds. 

Highlights:

This lady and her bitch face, plus we got to feed these deer.

Catching the Sea World-esque sea lion show. 'They're just dog mermaids' - Tom.

Sloth! Super cool. 

Chair lift at sunset.

Sunday night we met with friends and ate an excellent meal followed by a raucous few hours at a great pub. They had an irresistible deal - 15,000 won for 2 hours of cocktails. The score at the end of our time was Anna: 6.5 and Tom: 8, but booze was the victor the next day. Monday brought us hangovers and then to Itaewon where we stocked up on fresh coriander (our patch isn't quite ready for harvest) and some sour cream. Tom had school on Tuesday but I spent the day chilling out, sleeping and trying to shake the cough I've had for about a week. On Tuesday night we had a roof-top barbecue at a friend's place, there's no pictures but I had a wonderful time.

Wednesday was the Korean National Foundation Day so another day off - most schools lump this holiday in with Chuseok, unless your principal is a bastard. Anyway, we had the day to play with and put it to good use. While in Itaewon, Tom managed to procure a cricket bat and thus the Jecheon IPL was formed. 

With the help of a South African and an Australian, Tom taught the American and Canadian contingent how to play and we spend a great couple of hours throwing the ball around... oops.... bowling... and enjoying the autumn sun. Jecheon looked pretty nice that day too - our field was in the middle of the rice paddies and the golden rice looks awesome at the moment.

All and all, it was a fabulous weekend.

Grossness.

A hot new thing in Korea is DIY Chemical Foot Peels. All of the myriad beauty shops have their own version, so for about $9 NZD you can put liquid on your feet that eventually helps you shed like a snake.

I got a 2 for 1 pack from Tony Moly for 12,000 won and it came in a box promising creepy sparkling baby feet. What's not to like?

Okay, I'm just going to put this beautiful picture in here because below there are a lot of images of my feet and they are gross. Here is some cosmos, an autumn flower that blooms along the roadside near where I walk to work.

And here are my pre-treatment feet. Dry, pretty gross, battered.

I strapped my feet into some plastic booties and poured a sachet of liquid into each. The instructions tell you to keep these babies on for an hour and a half, so I trotted around the apartment until I popped a bootie and had to sit down before chemical magic was tracked all the way through the apartment.

Post-treatment my feet smelt pretty good (as feet go) and were clean, but not peely. The waiting began. the box says it takes 4-6 days to completely slough off the grossness and true to form my feet looked like this on day 4.

WARNING: GROSS.

The grossness worsened between days 5-7, and although I was instructed to let things peel naturally I couldn't resist and god damn, it was satisfying.

Day 7, after walking around Seoul in jandals.

I'm now on day 10, and although my feet aren't sparkly they're soft and as pretty as they'll ever be ... ie not very. Totally recommended, if you want a pack and it's legal to post I'll send you some.

Also - photographing the bottom of your feet is really, really challenging.

Lunch!

Now that I've got a fancy phone I thought I could start documenting my school lunches. Here's what I ate yesterday. 

It's Chuseok this weekend, and to ease us into the holiday all classes were cancelled. Most of the kids were on a school trip or having a mini sports/cooking day. The school paid for us to order takeout and as we sat and slurped our noodles, a parade of 6th graders came into the classroom bearing different types of gimbap. Below is the cluttered table, this is food for 5 people. 5 people! Ack.  

After lunch I went back to my job *cough* watching bad TV shows *cough* and an hour later the principal walked in with a large box of apples, followed by my co-teacher and her husband who had an even larger box of rice cakes. Awesome!

Hovel Tour, Take 2

We're going apartment hunting this week (praise be!) but in the mean time here's what our living situation looks like pre-move. If you'd like to refresh your memory, the apartment tour I filmed on the first day is here.

Invisible corner/my wardrobe/bench.

Kitchen - we took the curtain down as it was too ridiculous.

Tom, standing up in our bathroom. 

Bedroom, same-same except we have lamps now.

Living room w/park bench couch. IT IS MADE OF METAL. Metal   ≠   comfort.

Living room part 2.

'Herb Garden.'

Grotesque laundry area.

I cannot wait to move. A note on the pre-clean grossness of our apartment, this is an actual conversation Tom and I had while cleaning:

Me: Is that your blood on the floor?

Tom: *too long of a pause for that question.* Yes, I think it is.

On a happier note, two weeks ago we went to Busan and participated in a scavenger hunt. It was awesome! Our lovely friend Noelle wrote about it and you can read her excellent blog post if you click here.

Google Translating

My school (along with most other schools, I think) has an instant messaging service used instead of email. Last time I was here I didn't sign up for it for reasons I wish I could get my past self to explain. This time I've signed up although my login-name is still 'David,' apparently the last two English teachers were called David and the Office of Education has inconveniently hired an Anna this time.

The messenger system is fairly helpful, although as I don't read Korean well I have to rely on Google Translate. Here are the best translation fails so far:

Check colorectal overtime trail.

Am sludge official letter will be sent out tomorrow afternoon until just ask

1 Rot teachers helper so that students around the school trash Joule life helper map
2 Events when teachers so you can sing along anthem degree

Temperatures big time. Take a healthy note.

Meetings of the Secondary computer security relationship with the computer, 2 indeed change.

Hi executive offices high steal.

Ning?


(clothes that are not loud)
Farmer hat seems to be bad in the eyes of the sports day, parents.

To all of these I say: Indeed.

Scenes from our apartment.

In lieu of an interesting blog post, here are some pictures I've taken recently.

DIY air conditioning - two bottles of frozen water in front of our fan.
Doesn't really work, fortunately autumn is here now and the godforsaken heat is easing off. 

Our apartment block featuring woman drying chillies and noisy-ass children. 

Saucy car at Noelle's apartment building. 

Sunset from our kitchen. 

Kitchen, again. The grate was removed for the moving truck/crane thing, and all of our terrible 'new' furniture came through this window. 

Kimchi mandu (dumplings) steaming on our stovetop. 

Out with the old, in with the slightly less old but just as broken.

Yesterday we got our "replacement" furniture from the office of education. As we've whinged about previously, almost all the furniture in our apartment was broken when we arrived. So yesterday a delivery of some new stuff arrived. New to us anyway, I'm pretty sure they just drove around and took the old stuff from one apartment to the next one and pretended it was new. In one case I had to argue with the supervisor so we could keep our table because it was less broken than the new one. Happy days.

The worst thing we got was the sofa. When we arrived there was a weird one-and-a-half-seater thing that only had an armrest on one end. Also, the vinyl stuff it was covered in came off in little flecks whenever we sat on it. It can't get worse than this, right?

The new one is made of metal. It's a metal frame with rock hard cushions. To give credit where credit's due, the metal does not come off in flecks. But it's still less than we had hoped for.

So we're furniture shopping, which like most shopping here is done online. To anyone who has heard me complaining that Korean couches are like park benches, I offer the following screen shot from the sofa section of Gmarket (a Korean online mall).

Not the general furniture section. Not even seats. Sofas.

The stuff was all moved in using this bizarre crane thing. They lean it against the wall of the apartment building and than the cage thing runs up the track to our kitchen window. Note that we are on the second floor (first floor in NZ). I think two people could've moved all the stuff by hand in less time then it took to set this up. 

Anyway, thanks to some arguing it looks like we may have a new (or at least different) apartment soon. I don't want to jinx anything but I think my co-teacher is taking us apartment hunting next weekend.

      

My Teaching Materials, Part Three

Part one and part two.

It should be noted that this was the FIRST lesson I looked at when I opened up the CD-Rom for 5th Grade. I'm used to teaching students how to ask to go to the bathroom, however I hadn't seen an animated version of them actually going. 

This graphic was accompanied by loud, wet, fart noises usually reserved for stupid movies and ... not educational material. The farting was repeated three times and the scene ended with one final explosion and this relieved face:

Target Language: May I go to the bathroom?

ALSO - a long, long time ago I posted about a lesson where 'a bug FARTED on a small child and made her fall over.' I'm amazed I didn't post more about this as TomTom the evil farting bug became a regular fixture in my lessons. I've finally got proof. In this scene, TomTom's farts broke the TV and the children were forced to stop and clean up his fart dust so they could learn again.

Target Language: The Giraffe is Eating!

Daily Cute

One of my students doesn't know how to spell 'pretty' but sure knows how to suck up to the new English teacher.