Speach Contest
Since I have been at the school there have two speach contests. The first happened when Jenna and I were on our holidays (Japan) from school over new year. The second took place at the very end of March and this time we had the ooportunity to see all are hard work pay off, or in some cases not.
For weeks before we have to practice depending on their level either story book or conversation. This is then drilled for two or three weeks before hand in EVERY single class. As you can imagine we get bored, the kids get bored and everyone is grumpy.
Below is just a few pictures and video's of some of the students I teach peforming in front of a small audience. I also understand that a lot of this will be meaningless to any readers but in years to come this will bring back good and bad memories of teaching at this school.
Super Special
Crystal and Alice
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV03009.flv
Amy and Luna
Arnold and William
Kelly and Anna
Kenny and Kate
Super Special is one of my favourite classes, it consists of all the best students in the 3rd and 4th grades that attend the school. They are extremely cute and love acting out conversations to me. They are also incredable good at hang man and usually guess it within the first few guesses, which makes it an absolutly usless tool to fill some time.
Because of their level each one was given a short speach as well as their conversation. They all did very well and have made definite improvements since me and Jenna have been teaching them i.e. they don't have american accents, just cute posh british ones.
Basic Phonics (Sophia)
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV02995.flv
This is a relativly new class, since the new term begin they seemed to be a lot less older students and so I was given a few younger classes. These were a bit of a challenge as I now teach kids from ages seven to seventeen. The younger ones to seem to keep me buisier but they are definitly more fun. Although none of my seventeen year olds have had nose bleeds, teath falling out, snot running down their nose etc. So there's good points and bad.
Inter Fantasy (Jinny) - http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV02998.flv
Basic Fantasy (Alice) - http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV03003.flv
Basic Junior (Alice) - http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV03031.flv
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV03034.flv
- Posted by k_millington on 24/04/2007.
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Daegaya Kingdom festival
The Daegaya Kingdom festival is held in Goryeong and celebrates the areas history, and their famous iron ware. This is where the second part of our Adventure Korea tour. It was a beautiful sunny day one of the first really hot days we'd had. There were plenty of activities to participate in like, pottery making, dressing up as the Gaya king, queen or other characters in a drama titled "Protect the Gayageum." You could also look at the ironware culture of the Gaya Kingdom, put on armor and play with weapons of the Gaya period.
That weekend Adventure Korea had agreed to let KBS a Korean television show do a documentary style program on us. They had followed us around all day at the Snow Crab Festival and all night at the home stay. It was however getting a bit tiresome and to top it all off they were making next year’s pamphlet and there were hundreds of cameramen roaming the area to catch unsuspecting foreigners, mainly us doing something of interest.
This is the picture of the men taking our picture.
We did however manage to have a really good time, the sun was shining and there was lots of things to see and do, including They recreated a story of an Emperor’s castle being attacked and loosing his one true love. It was in Korean with no translation so it was a little hard to follow but it had fighting, explosions and tears. What any good drama needs.
After leaving the festival and before we began to make our journey home we stopped at Ureuk Museum, for a commemorative ritual in honor of a musician.
Here's a brief history:
Originally, he comes from Garaguk. King Gasil manufactured the Gaya harp after the model of a musical instrument of the Tang Dynasty. Then, he ordered Ureuk from Seongyeol-hyeon to compose 12 tunes, saying that “Since every state has its own dialect, the vocal sounds cannot be unified.”
In the present, only the names of 12 tunes remain. As Gayaguk became in disorder Ureuk exiled to Silla with the Gaya harp around 551 and found favour with King Jinheung of Silla.
After exile he mainly worked in Gukwonso-gyeong (nowadays, Chungju). In these days, there is Geumhyupo under the Daemunsan in Chungju. Tan-geumdae which is known as a place where he played the Gaya harp is also found in the Daemunsan.
The 12 tunes compose by Ureuk were Hagarado, Sangarado, Bogi, Dalgi, Samul, Murye, Hagimul, Sajagi, Geoyeol, Saparye, Isa and Sanggimul. The twelve tunes have a character of local folk songs because most of the names of the tunes are similar to those of gun and hyeon. - Cyber Museum of Daegaya
Click on the link to listen to one of the best Gayagum players in Korea http://www.daegaya.net/english/D/d71.htm
We were each given a traditional but plain hambok when we arrived and were told we were going to be part of the ceromony. When it began we were told to stand in line at the edge of the courtyard.
It went on for a long time as the elders that stood in front of us had to go up and bow to the alter that was laden with fruit and other offerings. Many of the foreigners on our trip bowed out early, took their outfits off and went and lay in the grass. But however much I hated being on display and play a part in something I couldn't really comprehend, it was rude.
Eventually we were ushered in front of the alter and the oldest one of the group, (which happened to be the dad of an Australian girl, that had come to visit her) had to approach the alter and do a series of bow's. We then followed his lead and bowed making are foreheads touch the ground, this was done twice before fully standing up. This was very difficult as every time I attempted to stand up I stood on the back of my skirt. I would make a poor haji ma.
Finally we headed back to the village where we spent the night to participate in my favourite activity, strawberry picking. They had fields and fields full of strawberry patches that were covered by great oval plastic covers. We were each given a punnet to fill and there were a few people that were extremely skilled in that department. The further you got in the hotter it got and by the middle I was absolutely sweltering and it was difficult to move either forward or backward because there were so many people.
Free strawberries!! That's what I'm talking about.
Eventually I got out with enough strawberries to last me a while and we jumped back on the bus to start the long journey home.
- Posted by k_millington on 23/04/2007.
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Traditonal Korean home stay
Home stays are fast becoming the most popular places to spend a night in Korea. For just a small fee you can stay in a traditional Korean house with your host family. We experienced are home stay through Adventure Korea so there happened to be a whole busload of us to put up for the night. We spent it in Kae-sil, which is a small and relatively self-contained village that provides separate houses in and around the village for tourists to stay.The houses had two main bedrooms that slept four people each, a kitchen room and a large bathroom. They had no furniture in and all the duvets, blankets, pillows etc were in a cupboard in the rooms. They had no windows in just sliding wooden doors that were traditional backed with paper.
They also provided a bbq on arrival, a Korean style bbq of Sam gap sal, consisting of pork, leafs, spicy sauce and rice. It was nice although I don’t think the meat was cooked all the way through, so avoided it after I started to see pink bits.
After most of us had stuffed our faces we moved over to the bonfire where we chatted with other people on the trip. They were mostly other teachers and I met one guy called Gavin who was from New Zealand and I managed to grill him about where to go and what to see and do. He happened to then tell me some horror stories about teachers fleeing the country without handing in their notice. This got Jenna, Emily and I thinking as that was exactly what I was planning on doing and I didn't fancy ending up in jail like the guy Gavin told me about.
Since then I found out my contract is illegal and you can read more about that on one of my earlier posts.
After a long day we headed to bed with our nice under heated flooring. We did seem to draw the short straw as our house was the closest to the main square and all the beer drinking, that went on till three in the morning. Plus Sokjin and the other rep's were sleeping in the kitchen next to us and weren't particularly quiet. God I sound old wanting my bed and a nice long sleep.
This was followed by an early start as breakfast was served at our house. Just toast, coffee and tea but enough to get you through the morning. After we got back on the bus we made the journey to the Daegaya Festival.
I recommend a house stay if you are in Korea it is a great way to experience how people lived and still live now. Although we didn't stay with a family so I cannot comment on that, I think you may get a greater experience if you did. If you decide to do the latter here's a tip the Koreans feel a need to give you anything you compliment them on so avoid using phrases like "isn't that a beautiful picture, table, chair, lamp etc."
- Posted by k_millington on 23/04/2007.
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The Snow Crab Festival
We then arrived at the Snow Crab (Dae Ge) festival which is situated at Hupo port, in Uljin city on the east Coast which is famous for its crystal sea during crab season.
As we got off the bus we were ushered over to a number of tables that were set up ready for rolling Gimbap. In fact, we were there to roll world's longest Gimbap, that would be recorded in the Guinness book of records.
According to the Wikipedia:
Gimbap or kimbap is a Korean laver rice roll, similar to Japanese Sushi. Relative to other items on the Korean menu, the history of Gimbap is new. Korea under Japanese rule was introduced to sushi during the early half of the 20th Century. When Korea was was liberated in 1945 through the surrender of Japan to Allied forces at the end of Worl War II, the new Korean government instituted a policy to remove Japanese cultural references from its lexicon. At this time, sushi was re-named Gimbap. Despite this, Korean senior citizens who lived through the Japanese occupation will still often refer to Gimbap as sushi.
Gimbap is a popular "fast" food in Korea. It is made from rice (bap) and sheets of dried seaweed (laver), and various other ingredients. Gimbap is a traditional food eaten by Koreans during picnic or special outdoor events. It is generally served cold, with danmuji (pickled daikon radish).
The insides of a unproffessionally made Gimbap roll
There must of been over a hundred people when we were all finally standing at our station. We were each given a navy apron and then told to turn it round as there was a brand name on the front of it. Finally we were given a number of layers of seaweed to stick together using water.
Then the hot rice was passed round. I was lucky enough to have an haji ma (old woman) shouting instructions at me on how to spread the rice, because it is that difficult. The ingrediants for this particular gimbap included egg, ham, cucumber, raddish and of course some of the festivals famous snow crab (as you can see in the photo above).
Then it was time to roll, which sounds easy but its ver difficult when you have over a hundred people rolling the same thing. Eventually it began to look like a gimbap roll. When everyone had finished we held it up for all the camera's, film crews, journalists and the public to see.
After becoming 'World Record Breakers' we went out into the harbour on a very old and unseaworthy looking fishing boat. Wish on a fish, is a particular favourite activity for the the tourists at this festival. Each person gets to release a number of flat fish into the sea and makes wishes of hope and good health for the year.
Jenna Wishing:
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV03200.flv
Emily wishing:
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV03201.flv
Crab tasting was next on the agenda. Once we were back on dry land we were taken to a food tent where they were serving great trayfuls of snow crab. The prices ranged from about 30,000 won to a massive 70,000 won., which is 37 GBP for one crab. I would understand if you were in a classy restaurant but you were being served in a tent on plastic chairs and tables.
The weirdest thing about Korean food I've found since living here is that they eat absolutly anything and evrything. This includes shells, bones, eyeballs etc. The crab was no exception, they would spoon out the insides, which I think has something to do with the filtering system. Whatever it was, it was green and not very nice. However Emily who is quickly becoming more Korean and braver than any of us delved in, with a little help from her friends.
Did we film it,? of course we did:
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=DSCF5217.flv
Thanks to a quick lesson from Waitrose on 'How to Prepare Fresh Crab' it instructs you to "Pull away the grey gills, or 'dead man's fingers' from the crab's body and discard. In spite of the name, these are not actually poisonous, merely tough and indigestible". The Koreans however think that these are good for your eyes.
- Posted by k_millington on 19/04/2007.
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Haeshindang - A sculpture park with a difference
Easter weekend arrived and although a large number of the population is Christian, they do not have Good Friday or Easter Monday off, unlucky for us. However we did have a rather interesting and busy weekend.
It started as most of them do with a stupidly early start (5am) to be able to get into Seoul to catch our Adventure Korea tour bus. Once we were safely on board we set off.
After a long drive and several rest stops later we stopped at our first destination Haeshindang in Samcheok City. This is where they hold the "World's Penis Crafting Competition" in July. So if you’re interested in participating that is the best time to visit, there is even a professional and amateur category so everyone is welcome.The penis crafting dates back 400 years ago as a traditional folk event. Every 15th day of the first month of the New Year according to the lunar calendar, the local government has hosted the folk event in which the penis crafting works are dedicated to the goddesses of virginity.
The background shows each year of the chinese calander carefully crafted into
a stone penis
I'm the year of the rat!
The funniest thing was walking around watching the usually, conservative and downright moody haji ma's laughing and joking. There were loads of them just standing and laughing at each new statue they came to. It was definitely a surprise to find something like this after living in Korea for this long.
- Posted by k_millington on 09/04/2007.
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A Questionable Contract
This all came about at the weekend when I honed in on a guy from New Zealand so I could pick his brain about where to go. We got onto the subject of work and I told him that Jenna and I weren't particularly happy where we were and were planning on leaving. He then told me of an icident that had happened a few weeks before. His director was a good friend of a policeman that had arrested someone for trying to leave the country, before his visa expired. Apparently they had rung the school and his boss had decided to prosecute, he is still in jail three weeks later.
This obviousy made Jenna, Emily and I concerned. So first thing Monday Jenna contacted EFL which is a leagal website offering free advice for those living and teaching in Korea. The link below will take you to the post Jenna made and the reply she recived highlighting some very intersting points in our contract.
http://www.efl-law.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1323
This link will take you to Jenna's Blog post.
http://www.etribes.com/node/96333
- Posted by k_millington on 09/04/2007.
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700 Yacht Club
This weekend Jenna and I went to the 700 Yacht Club at Mapo-gu Nanji Ferry Dock in Seoul. The reason for this is Jenna had arranged to meet Harold Shim (the owner) to interview him for the Korean Times. We arrived and were welcomed into the members lounge and introduced to a member of the club, who worked for the Korean government in the Korean- Welsh relations department.
The interview lasted a good hour to which Harold shared many stories on how he became interested in sailing and how the club started. It was a very sociable interview and to be honest Jenna found it hard to get any of her questions in as Harold was quite happy to talk.
Due to the club opening it's brand new restaurant the following day we were invited to try the specials, fish and chips. Real fish and chips!I'm not a big lover of fish but it would of been impolite not to eat and they came in chicken nugget size pieces, which were actually quite nice. What made it really delicious were the king prawns, thick chips and a side dish of Harold's home made, secret recipe tartar sauce.
After lunch we were treated to a ride in Harold's Trimaran, he even trusted me enough to steer. Being able to see Seoul from the river was real nice although it does look prettier at night, you did feel like you had got out of the city. Which is hard to accomplish when Seoul has a population of over 10 million, making it South Korea's largest city and one of the largest cities in the world by population.
'Captain Kat'
The club's membership costs four million won a year but that includes lessons, and trips out on the fully equipped yachts. Harold is a qualified lawyer and the club seems to be his weekend passion and it was nice to meet someone that was friendly and so happy to show you around.
Most of his members are business men and we managed to meet a few in the time we were there, one worked for City Bank, which happened to be mine and Jenna's bank. We should have complained to him about our branch while we had the chance, it's not often you get to speak to one of the managing directors of your bank face to face. The other gentlemen we met happened to be the Vice President of Siemens, should of tried to blag a free phone along with our free meal and sail along the river.It was a lovely day and it was so nice to meet Koreans that were so welcoming and hospitable. It reminds you that not everybody wants to stare at you and pretend to ignore you when you ask a question.
- Posted by k_millington on 03/04/2007.
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The Team
On Monday just as we were about to start lesson planning, we were all called into the reception. The reason for this is Mr Kwack wanted to take a photo of all the staff together. I was cringing as with most days I had made absolutly no effort to dress up or even look presentable mainly because its so bloody cold at school. As you can see below most of us are wearing coats, jumpers and extra layering. Henry however took off his new blue leather (questionable) jacket he was sporting for the rest of the day.
The Staff (From left to right, me, Jinny, Sophia, Henry, Alice, Anne and Jenna)
I have found out since then that it is for a the school's hompage that I can only imagine is new because there has been a buzz about it all week. Each of the students have to come in sign up and fill in their details. Only problem is they're going to have to up date it again in the not so distant future. Sshhh!
Mr Kwack aka "God"
Our very charasmatic boss, once the mum's are in he's all charm. How else do you think this school is still a float?
- Posted by k_millington on 28/03/2007.
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A Leap of Faith
This weekend we went on a cycling trip with Adventure Korea, which included the chance to do a bungee jump. We left at stupid o'clock in the morning to meet the bus at Honguk University at 7.30 am.
We arrived at a lake surrounded by half built buildings, and one massive metal construction that looked like a crane with one of those fixed diving board platforms. This is where Emily, Brian and Kristen along with another 50 people would be chucking themselves off of in the next couple of hours.
Emily went 4th out of the group and spent a good few minutes at the top gearing herself up to jump, later I found out she was asking the guy to push her. Everybody began to scream and whoop and then count down, 3…2…1… (She's still up there) and again 3…2…1…she jumped!!
It's Spiderman
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=MOV02915.flv
Then Brian and Kristen went, I was so scared someone was going to hit the metal cage they all came so close and people I've spoken to haven't rated the Korean's safety procedures.
After sitting around for another two hours, watching what felt like hundreds of people jump we got back on the bus. We headed to Gugok Waterfall where the Buddhist tradition is to construct a pile of rocks and make a wish. The waterfall falls 49 meters into a pool at the bottom. Although this was covered in ice and snow so we trekked up it, through a few snowballs and watched as Dave saw snow for the first time in his life (he's from South Africa).
After that we went to Chuncheon and hired some bikes and went on a couple of the courses along the river, up some steep hills and around the town. After returning the bikes Emily insisted trying out one of the two-seated bicycles. First her and Brian and got on and looked very cute together.
Ah how cute!
Then Jenna attempted to have a go and I've never been on anything so scary in my entire life. I hated being at the back because I couldn't turn the handlebars so I just hopped off as Jenna rode off without noticing I was no longer on it.
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s254/katrinaleanne159/?action=view¤t=DSCF4807-1.flv
Who makes the perfect pair?
We then strolled round the town, went and looked at the fair, got hot dogs and ice creams and then got back on the bus for the long journey home.
- Posted by k_millington on 28/03/2007.
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St. Patricks Day
On Saturday 17th we headed into Seoul to Daehangno where the St. Patricks Day Festival was taking place, hosted by the Irish Association of Korea.
I was very excited when I found out there there would be free samples of the all important Baileys and Guiness. We arrived at around 12 o'clock and headed straight for the Baileys tent.
After watching a Korean band sing U2 we went and got our faces painted with some very festive Shamrocks, and then helped ourselves to some Guinness. They had loads of games you could play that included this one where you put on some drunken glasses and had to walk round this course making sure you didn't knock over any pint glasses. I didn't have a go but Kristen was rather good at it.
They had all sorts of things going on throughout the day including folk bands, Western Rock bands, Gaelic sports, and free face painting. They even had some Irish dancing demonstartions but we decided we hadn't had enought to drink to get up and join them. Here's a little taster.
http://www.mediamax.com/katrinaleanne/Hosted/Irish%20Dancing.MPG
At around 2 o'clock they annunced the parade would be starting soon and be working its way up the road. We decided to go find and kind of followed all these people down to a school play ground where they were setting up for the parade. Whilst standing there chating, taking pictures and generally not doing a lot, one of the oraganisers came over and asked us if we wanted to walk in the parade and carry one of the banners. So we said "hell yeah, it'll be a laugh."
Video of the parade: http://www.mediamax.com/katrinaleanne/Hosted/Dancing%20Guinness.MPG
We ended up walking in front of the marching band waving at all the people on the side of the street that had gathered there to watch the parade. There were hundreds of people there and nearly all of them in the parade were white, which was quite weird to so many in one place. It's true, it doesn't matter where you are the Irish always manage to have a party. If only we could celebrate St. George as much as we do St. Patricks Day.
- Posted by k_millington on 18/03/2007.
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