Teacher! Your fur!

Anyeong! Cindy here.

Well I thought I should maybe write a blog about teaching in Korea, afterall it is what we came here to do! Although, so far only one of us can do it!

I work at a hagwan, which is an after school academy for learning English. Since my hours are from 4-10pm, you can imagine that some of these kids have been at school since 8am and that presents some new challenges on top of the regular challenges of teaching. Working 4-10 took some adjusting for me! During the first week, I wondered if I would ever stop falling asleep at 9:00! But now I am adjusted and really enjoy having the days to myself and working the evenings.

My first couple of weeks have been full of learning (FOR ME) and getting to know the kids. I was surprised to find that children here have to pick an English name. Since I cannot remember their Korean names, and when I try to pronounce them it results in a lot of pointing and humiliation for the child whose name I am attempting to say, picking an English name just may be a good idea. However, the students are allowed to pick their own name....and it can be anything. Some pick normal English names. However, I have taught a Marvelous, Mr.Wonderful, Duck, Goose, and today I have my favourite.......Doughnut. Doughnut is a small grade 4 who has braces. He is adorable. Since the class is over full, he shares a desk with me. Last week was my first week with him. As I sat at "our" desk, he smiled a big metal smile and said in a litte squeeky voice "Hello, my name is Doughnut." My heart melted.

The weirdest things have caused problems in my classroom. MANY times the children have errupted into laughter as I say an English word that somehow resembles a bad word in Korean. While reading with some grade 5s, I stopped to explain what the word "shiver" means. Well, apparently in Korean it is equivalant to the f-word, and this caused extreme chaos and children falling off their chairs.

Last week, I was helping a grade 6 correct her writing mistakes. As I pointed to a spelling error on her page, she yelled "Teacher! Your fur!". I looked at her with a blank stare. Huh? "Your fur!" she continued "Why is it so white?" She then rubbed the hair on her arm and said "Black". This lead to me having to explain to the whole grade six class that some people have body hair that is a colour other than black, and usually it matches their hair. HAIR. NOT FUR.

Yesterday I had my most energetic class. Some classes have no energy at all. Some have too much. This class has way way too much. They are grade fives, and I really love teaching them. I was asked by the head teacher to keep an eye on one particular boy, Tom, who seems to be struggling with English and may need to be moved to an easier class. The class went as it usually does. Lots of shouting out answers, rolling of wheely chairs, playfully teasing each other, making fun of the teacher. I called on Tom as much as possible, to try to assess his understanding of English. When I asked him how his weekend was, he explained with a HUGE grin that he had a good weekend because he got a errrrrrrr.....ummmmmmmm.......hamster! A big deal for Tom. We all asked him questions about his new furry friend, and then we moved onto our reading assignment. It took my best teaching skills to get the class to remain still and quiet so that we could read. I picked Tom to give it a go. As he was stumbling through his second sentence, a boy at the back of the room jumped out of his chair and began yelling something in Korean. I started to tell him to sit down, but was overpowered by three other boy at the back who also jumped up and started screaming something in Korean. They were all pointing at the fire extinguisher which is on the floor in the corner of the room. I was at the front......saying "what? WHAT?". The girls then jumped up and screamed. They were not saying anything in Korean, just screaming. Finally I heard one student say "A mouse-uh, a mouse-uh!". Tom calmly put down his book and walked to the back. He moved the fire extinguisher and pulled out a small box from behind it. The box had a hole chewed in the side. He then picked up his jailbird hamster and plopped it back in the box. After a conversation about not bringing your pets to English school, we then used my stickers to patch up the hole. This did not work very well. The hamster escaped again a half hour later. Tom spent the entire class watching the hamster box to make sure the cute little guy stayed in there, and I had to explain to the head teacher why I had not had a chance to assess Tom's English skills.

I wonder what will happen today.

Andong Maskdance Festival

On Sunday we decided to leave the security of the city limits for the first time. We had heard about a traditional mask festival that was being held in a nearby town. We were not entirely sure how to get there, but after catching two trains, a taxi and a bus we made it to Andong in surprisingly good time.

The festival comprised the usually stalls, dried seaweed, ginseng, leather goods, etc. As well as various craft centers where you could purchase puppets and make your own masks. Entertainment included Korean rappers, girls wrestling (don’t get excited guys) and traditional music.

We hadn’t been in Andong for very long when we began to notice that we were getting quite a lot of attention from the Korean festival goers. Even more than usual. We noticed that people were actually taking photographs of us! This rose to celebrity like levels when we started to get involved with one of the traditional activities.


It is a Korean tradition to write a prayer on a strip of paper and hang it on a piece of twine. We don’t know any prayers but we figured we would do our best to write our name. We weren’t to know that this would create a frenzy of Korean Kodak enthusiasts who began to push and shove to get the best vantage spot to take the ultimate snap of what was obviously a very exciting moment for them.

I went first and a few people had began to take out their arm length cameras, but by the time Cindy’s turn came around they were telling her where to stand, what to do and how to do it. One lady even told her to ‘Stop laughing’(which as we all know is very hard for Cindy).

It was actually hard for me to get a picture of Cindy, although I had already decided that the media gallery was far more interesting than what Cindy was doing anyway... The frenzy eventually subsided and we all went on our way, although for the rest of the day we often noted large camera lenses pointing in our direction.

The other part of the festival was traditional maskdance performances. We were enjoying the dancing and the costumes and happily taking pictures of the show. There was around a thousand people sitting in the amphitheater and for some reason... I must have stood out. One of the dancers stepped into the audience saying ‘Sir-a, Sir-a’, took my hand, lead me out onto the dance floor and put a giant mask on my head. I then danced my way around the stage, past the media gallery and back to my seat.

All in all, an exciting day for Korea’s newest celebrity couple....

Home Sweet Home

Curly

*****ONE*****

The number one position on my countdown couldn’t possibly have been awarded to anything or anyone other than my curly haired girl, Cindy!

The past nine entries were only as memorable as they were because I had the privilege of sharing them with someone special. All those fantastic Canadian adventures would not have been the same without the company of the most fantastic Canadian.

Apart from showing me the sights and sounds of Ontario, Cindy has been amazingly patient and supportive through this eternal quest to get my work visa. I think most people would have cracked months ago!

Cindy’s ability to laugh at anything at anytime is possibly the one thing that makes me laugh the most! We can be sitting on the couch and she will burst into uncontrollable laughter because she thought of something that happened three days ago. This can happen a number of times until she moves on to something new!

Cindy is the number one, best thing about Canada!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CURLY

Cindy the Superstar

Hello everyone! Cindy here.
After many weeks of finding excuses to not workout (some were actually legit, some not so much) I have returned to running this week. I have heard that there is a gym on my street, but we have not been able to find it yet. With all the flashy signs here, everything pretty much looks the same and the last thing I want to do is wander into some place odd, thinking it is a gym, and have to use my best charades skills to explain my unexpected presence to the surprised Koreans inside. I have decided just to go running until I have someone to show me where this hidden gym is.

Running in Korea is a strange thing. Anyone who knows me knows I have no sense of direction. Since all the streets here look the same, I am very worried that I will get lost and never ever find my way home. So I simply run in a straight line for now. I have been running up and down the same street this week. It is a long highway, with lots of things to see.....and unfortunately smell. But that is not the strange part. Every time I go for a run here I attract a lot of attention. I think this is for a few reasons. I am a fair bit taller than the women here. I am an "outsider". I am wearing shorts and a tank top, and that is considered to be a big fashion boo boo in September.....shorts and tank tops are only in style until the end of August. And I am running, which I have not seen any women do here.

Today I strapped on my i-pod and headed out into the cooler weather (thank goodness we are getting a break from the humidity). I first encountered a group of women and teenage girls getting off a bus. The women all pointed. The teenage girls yelled "hello", some waved, many giggled and were commenting on my height by using their hands to indicate how much taller I was than them. I smiled and waved, grateful they were not commenting on the size of my behind (or at least they waited until I could not see them). Next I passed a man who was selling grapes alongside the road. He jumped out of his chair and did a half bow and said "hello". A few minutes later another man smiled and waved. A group of older women wearing face masks and sun visors pointed and chatted amongst themselves. As I ran past a gas station a young couple on a scooter was pulling in. The girl yelled "hello", and this made her boyfriend look and then yell "Oh hello hello!".

I feel like a superstar. I have not yet decided if I like all this attention. I miss the days that I could just run without all the stares and comments. I also miss feeling safe on the sidewalk......scooters, bikes, and small motorbikes use the sidewalks here, so running has become somewhat of an adventure sport. My i-pod has to be on low and I have to be ready to jump out of the way at any given moment. What I can say for sure is that running in Korea is never boring. And that's a good thing since I have to stick to the same street.

The White Stuff

TWO

If there has been one thing that I have experienced in Canada that I would want to share with my friends and family back in OZ it would be SNOW! The Canuks reading this are probably cursing and calling me crazy right now but to an Aussie boy who had never seen the white stuff in his 25 years... it was pretty special.

Snow was almost magical to me! I was completely fascinated by it. I even enjoyed shoveling it from the driveway each morning and would actually look forward to the chore that most locals despise the most.

The snow in most people's front yards was around head height by the end of winter. The snow blowers would cut a path through so the sidewalks could be used which left a scene that reminded me of when the “Cat in the Hat” did the same thing in one of the books I read when I was a child.

Driving in the snow was an interesting and somewhat dangerous experience. Nearly everyday you would see people crashing into each other or running off the road. I even passed a transport truck on its side on my way home from work during a snow storm.

The only time I wasn't thankful for the snow was when I locked my keys in the car during a snow storm. I tried for about 20 minutes to brake in with a coat-hanger but after the first 10 minutes I couldn't feel my fingers so there wasn't much point continuing. I had to catch a Taxi to get the spare keys from Cindy who was at school. The worst part was I had left my coffee inside the car!

Other enjoyable snow activities included snowboarding, snowshoeing, snow-ball fights, building snowmen and snow forts, and making snow angels.

Much to Cindy's, and the rest of Ontario's disgust, I am eagerly awaiting the next snowfall!

Cottage Life

THREE

Although we have left Canadian soil I still have three more places to reveal on my count down of Canadian highlights, memories and icons.

Taking the bronze at number three is 'Cottage Country”

In WA many people have beach houses and coast huts most of which are fairly basic dwellings built by old fishermen with whatever they could get there hands on reasonably cheaply or for free. In Ontario, peoples holiday homes are called Cottages. This refers to any residence built on a lake or river and does not necessarily refer to the size of the abode. In fact, some of these so called cottages are more like mansions than anything else. Some people live in their cottages while others use it purely on weekends and holidays.

We we're very lucky to be friends with some folks who had awesome cottages. We have had some excellent times with Leanne and Shaun on the Trent Severn Waterway and Judy on Six Mile Lake. We were even privileged enough to be able to house sit a beautiful cottage on Lake Simcoe for a week. Thanks Nancy!

Most cottages not only have a private waterfront but their own dock and boat house as well. Some people even have there own island. Many cottages are only accessible by boat and therefore remain vacant for the winter until the lakes thaw. Most cottages are connected to power but some do not have sufficient heating to allow them to be used in the winter.

Cottage life is made up of boating, jet-skiing, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, campfires, music, drinking, eating and relaxing with friends and family. It doesn't get much better than that!

P.S. The owner of our school called the agency that lost all my paperwork and they have put me to the top of the pile! Hopefully I may have my work visa sooner rather than later!