To desk warm or not to desk warm....that is the question.

For those of you who are not familar with the term "desk warming" let me explain. This is when you have to sit at your desk at school with little to nothing to do. Your job is to be at your desk all day...that's it. This is something that many foreign teachers hate doing as it is a major waste of time and the school's money. The alternative to desk warming is having time off work which is much better than trying to amuse yourself at school.

When I came to Korea to teach at a school I was lead to believe that everyone would have to desk warm for a few weeks over vacation periods. I was happy to hear that desk warming was not an activity that occurs at my school. Apparently the last teacher was never made to desk warm.

A few weeks before vacation my main Korean co-teacher told me that this year all teachers at all schools have to desk warm. I was told that the office of education is enforcing this new rule. After speaking to other teachers from other schools I found that this wasn't entirely true...but I couldn't do much about it anyway.

So once again I accepted that desk warming was something I had to do. I even grew fond of the idea of being able to do whatever I like at my desk all day. But then, from out of no where, 2 days before my desk warming adventure would begin, the head teacher at my school spoke to me. He called me over by saying my name. This alone surprised me quite a bit. This guy speaks very little English and I didn't even think he knew why I was at his school, let alone my name. We exchanged a few sentences in our native languages. After he relised we couldn't communicate he called an English speaking Korean teacher over to translate. He told me that I did not have to desk warm and that I could have all of the vacation time off. I was wrapped. This teacher is far higher up the hierarchy than any other teacher.

The very next day, 1 day before desk warming would start, I had some heart breaking news. It turns out the head teacher was unaware of what my co-teacher was told so the decision was reversed and once again I was told to desk warm. I did not take this news well. Previously I was fine with the idea but after being promised freedom then having that stolen from me, I was pissed.

I am now in my 3rd day of desk warming and have calmed down. There is no one at school with me except one teacher, the gardener and some guys installing new windows in a classroom. I have no work to do and am very sick of spending my whole day doing the little things people do in their spare time (watch tv, play video games, surf the net). This may sound like a good thing, and don't get me wrong it was but one person can only do this for so long before insanity starts to kick in.

Life is normal

Here it is, more than halfway through July, and we have only made 1 post! Slack...

Life in Daegu has become very normal, particularly over June, since we stayed in Daegu (doing normal things like eating, shopping, seeing friends) for about 4 weeks straight.

2 weekends ago we were meant to be going on a beach party trip. The organiser had held the same trip for the first time the week before and the feedback was really negative. We heard that the buses left late, got lost, and there wasn't enough food or drinks. That weekend there were only about 90 people and the weekend we were scheduled to go there was around 500. We decided to go ahead with the trip as we didn't want us cancelling to effect our group of friends. So Saturday morning we were up bright and early and at the bus pick up point at 9am. When the buses hadn't left by 10:45 (after 2 false starts where we drove 100m down the road) Brenton and I gave up and got off. Of course the buses left about 5 minutes after that.

This weekend I went to the Mud Festival with some friends. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boryeong_Mud_Festival
I had a good weekend. The company I went with took us to the actual mud flats first (not the beach where they take the mud for the festival) and we played some games and did an army training course. Then we went to the actual festival where we spent the afternoon and night playing in more mud, swimming at the beach, drinking and eating. These photos are the same as the ones on Facebook, so sorry if you have already seen them!

Chicken Game at the mud flats

Army training

Another game

Fireworks at the festival

Over the next month my parents are coming to visit, we are going to Japan, and Kate is coming to visit, so I promise we will post more blogs!

Things are different in Korea-4

Korea does rubbish a little differently from home. When we first arrived working out the rubbish system was really hard. We were told all sorts of different things, which made me wonder if Koreans even know how the system works. This is what we decided to do (but if you come to Korea, don't take this as the rule it is only a guess!) Firstly you have to separate out your food scrapes and put them in a little compost bucket, which you can put out for collection 3 times a week. This is actually not quiet as disgusting as I thought it would be, and I can even clean out the bucket without dry retching (people who have seen my clean my bag teeth will know this is a pretty good accomplishment)! We keep our food scrapes in the freezer until we put them out to keep them from stinking up the house.

Our compost, waiting for collection on the doorstep.

Secondly, you have to separate the recycling and rubbish (just the same as at home), but instead of putting them in bins you just put the bag out on the street. As far as we can tell there are no certain nights to do this, just when ever you want. Often this results in bags being split open and there being rubbish all over the streets. 

Rubbish on the corner of our street.

I haven't seen it this bad, but it has come pretty close.

Adjuma's and Adjushee's (old women and men) come and sort through the recycling, taking whatever is more valuable to the recycling station??? (this is only a guess). Sometimes Brenton will take our recycling down on his way to work and when I leave 15 minutes later all that is left is a water bottle! They must have a recycling rader superpower.