Glee In The Park

Oh Korea......it can be a strange place, but more often than not, in a very good way. For example there are many different national holidays, which might seem strange to us, and a little silly, but are in fact fantastic. The one I am most looking forward to is next Friday's Susung-enal holiday, commonly known as "Teacher's Day"! This holiday was created to demonstrate Korea's traditional respect for teachers, and around this time students apparently shower their teachers with candy, flowers, gift vouchers, food, money, and (if you were teaching older students) possibly take you out to dinner. Given the fact that we already receive a fair amount of treats from students, I'm imagining next Friday to be similar to Christmas. Maybe I will record a subconscious mantra of "No Gift, No Pass.....No Gift, No Games.....No Gift, More Homework", and play the tape at a barely audible level throughout this weeks classes.

Other holidays include one to celebrate the Korean alphabet, one to celebrate Kimchi (of course!), and approximately 100 it seems to celebrate the liberation from Japan. Korea and Scotland have so much in common in that respect, with a tangible sense of being the underdog fighting the oppressor all these years. The only difference is that they can at least qualify for the World Cup. Which starts soon, hooray!

Back to the point, .......this school week culminated in the holiday of Orininal, or "Children's Day", which meant that because this is a proper holiday, and schools were off on the Friday, it was our job to spoil the children for most of the week! Luckily, this subsequently meant more fun for us as well.

We had the pleasure of escorting all 5 kindergarten classes (about 60 kids), to Ilsan Lake Park for a picnic and treasure hunt. Remember treasure hunts? They were great fun! First we had to survive the crazy bus driver and his perilous race through oncoming traffic, heartstopping U-Turns, and dubious short-cuts. Seriously, this guy drives the school bus everyday, and it takes him half an hour to get somewhere that is 10 minutes away. When he swung off the road onto a dirt-track, proclaimed us lost, and started nattering into his cell-phone, an inevitable sense of deja-vu took hold, but at least I wasn't vomiting squid this time. Talking of buses, we walked past this one and found it a bit comical.......


On the bus ride to the park, Katy from Sue Class decided she would attach herself to me for the duration of the trip, and held my hand for the journey reeling off random words like, tree, window, car, sky, flowers, house, and anything else we drove past. She doesn't know how to say "Old guy drunk on soju" yet, or we would have heard that one a few times too. Notice the bus drivers pink jumper on the back of his seat, what a guy! Amusingly, we have a video of a fun "discussion" we had with the kids on the bus, but we haven't worked out how to post videos yet. If you know how, let me know. This chat consists of 4 girls saying "Chris Teacher Babo! Lynne Teacher no Babo!". "Babo" means crazy, or fool. Haha! After some Oscar-worthy crocodile tears, they rectified this with a frantic chorus of "Babo anio" (Not crazy), and harmony was restored. The suckers! The Korean elemntery kids, by the way, just absolutely piss themselves at the word "Crazy"! It's honestly one of the first words they pick up. And attaching something like Super, Mega, or Power, to the front will just incite a riot of laughter. Super-Crazy is the clear favourite, if I call a word search "The Super Crazy Word Search" it multiplies the fun factor by about ten thousand! Mad bastards!
Luckily on this week of field trips, dodgeball and treasure hunts, the good weather has really kicked in and it's bloody roasting. Korean kids are pretty good at sharing, so we probably got a snack from all 60 of them during the picnic. Kids snacks are generally the same as home, unless there's a bastard vat of pondeggi in the vicinity. Throughout the next 2 hours we were handed about 30 flowers each as well, which is quite cute, despite the fact half of them were weeds. I hadn't noticed until this picture, just how small they all are, and how big I must seem to them. No wonder they call me King Kong, admittedly I encourage it.

Here, is Elena, Daniel, and Ustina from Cindy class. You may remember Daniel being our early favourite, but he slipped for a while after becoming the worst behaved in the class. Lately though, he has settled down and his cuteness rating has been restored. Check the chocolate all around his gob. However, our new favourite in Cindy is undoubtedly Elena, who is always enthusiastic, happy, and hard-working. She's also mental and spends most of her time making silly noises which is cool.


However, both Lynne and myself are agreed that the favourite overall from all classes is still little Mickey. I think the Korean teachers agree as well, judging by the individual attention that he seems to get from everyone. Hands down, cutest wee kid ever. And absolutely hilarious, mostly from his total amazement at learning new English, and the random words and phrases he comes out with. Constantly asking "What's this?" then repeating the answer you give him with this happy satisfaction in his voice. Believe me, you'd love him too if he just came up and tugged your jeans and said "I like spaghetti, I like cookie!" with a big smile on his face. Also has a groovy little wardrobe, with a fine line in bomber jackets, denim jackets and baggy miniature jeans, which he has randomly dropped in the middle of class on a few occassions haha! The fact that he still calls me "Uncle" might also influence my opinion.



Here's Daniel getting a "Monkey". We have gone through the "Power Ranger", the "Spider-man", and the "Rocket", and this is the new popular reward activity. Note the accurate chin stroking monkey impression, I have taught him well!

Jinny from Sue Class, she's not the cutest of the bunch let's be honest. But she is very random so that's OK. She is fond of marching up to me, giving me a stern look with either her hands on hips or wagging one finger at me. Usually because I don't understand what she's saying. 1....2...3...Kimchi! Sounds stupid, but then we say "Cheese!" so what's that all about eh?

And finally, we have Benny and Joy (pronounced Joey, fortunately, but spelt wrong by the Koreans) from Jane Class. I must have opened about 30 bottles of juice that day, I shit you not. Joy's Mum is an English Teacher, so he is miles ahead of everybody in class, and thinks he can just sit and draw Megaman all morning. Benny is a bit of a pervert and enjoys grabbing Lynne's breasts and sticking his finger up my bum whenever the opportunity arises, he's a wee madman, but very funny.


Our boss took us all out for a meal at a "famous" seafood restaurant this week. Just like the "famous" doctor he took me too! It was a pretty impressive place, and he had booked a private room, which further convinced us that he must be loaded. It was an "All You Can Eat" buffet as well, so another chance to sample some rare and exotic delicacies. The first mistake came when I assured Lynne that the bowl in front of her, did indeed contain Cous Cous, when in actual fact what she was spooning on top of her salad were fish eggs. Yum. The next mistake came when I picked up a little dish containing what looked like a spherical doughnut. One bite of this revealed a disgusting sour taste, which turned out to be a Japanese octopus ball. Absolutely minging. It wasn't all bad of course, and I discovered that I totally love crab meat, and there was plenty of delicious fish and salads. As you can see in the picture, I picked up a couple of ugly looking critters which I assume to be shrimp, I realise stuff like shrimp isn't strange or exotic, but it is to me, I've not really had that much seafood. After peeling off the shell I noticed a line of brown gunk which I wiped off discreetly. As I went to put it into my mouth, I noticed another line of brown, but chomped it up anyway. The actual shrimp tasted pretty good, but there was a strangeness about this brown substance. With horror, I then recalled reading something about shrimp often still having jobbies backed up inside them, which you should clean out first. Can someone clarify if this is true? Did I happily gobble Shrimp Shit??