Our local coffee shop

Coffee is an important part of my day. It tastes great and gives you that boost that you sometimes really need. In most countries, if you only had one coffee per day, you would drink it in the morning. I remember a short 9:30am meeting at work in Melbourne. As soon as that meeting was over the whole team would get a coffee. This is not really how it happens in Korea.

Most Korean coffee shops don't open until 10am so no getting coffees on my way to work which would be ideal. The average Korean drinks coffee after work between 6 and 10 at night. I guess this makes some sense sense the average Korean sleeps 5 hours a night and doesn't go to bed until 1am.
Statistics in above sentence may not be accurate...

Loren and I have found a local coffee shop which is a 3 minute walk from our house. The coffee there is possibly the best I have had in Korea. The girl who works (and possibly owns) the coffee shop loves us. We occasionally get free cheese cake or free brownies. She remembers our exact order so we could go in and just say "the usual"....if we knew how to say that in Korean. Our coffee girl's name is "En-me"....or that's what I think she said it was and what I have been calling her for 2 months.

The coffee shop has those "frequent buyer stamp card" things. After I had completed two of those cards En-me was very thankful and told me she would make Loren and I a present. The next week she took a photo of the 2 of us but due to our language barrier we didn't really know why. 2 weeks after the photo was taken, En-me asked me to write down our names for her. Once again, didn't really know why or what she was making but I wrote them down none the less.

Finally, 4 weeks after she told us about the present, En-me gave us a wrapped parcel. We opened it and to our delightful surprise it was a drawing of Loren and I in our coffee shop. Take a look:

Speaking tests

This week my students had speaking tests. Instead of normal classes they would each come talk to me in my office for up to one minute. I would then ask them a question and give them a score.

Most of my students did very well and told me some interesting stories. However, some students didn't go so well. Here are some of the funny things that I was told this week:

Other English teacher: Who is your favourite family member?
Student: I play the piano.

10:45am
Me: Hi. Ok, please begin.
Student: ...blank stare...
Me: You can start now.
Student:...blank stare...
Me: Did you prepare a talk?
Student: ...blank stare...
Me: 시작 ("Start" in Korean) 
Student: ...blank stare... 
Me: Ok, thank you.
Student: ...blank stare...
Me: Ok, you can go now
Student: ...blank stare...
Me: Ok, time to go (get up and gesture to the door)
Student: (Finally leaves) 10:48am

Student: My mum makes lots of food. Her food is delicious not like her.

Student: My dad is fat and I don't like that.

Student: My friend is very pretty and cute.
I am very intermate with my friend.
I want to be intermate with my friend forever.

Student: Hello Mr Parry. My name is Dum Bit Cher

Student: I was in a story telling contest.
I wait in the line but na ture kell.
The line was very long and I got nervous.
I stood in line a long time but na ture kell.
It was finally my time to story tell.
I got on stage but nature called and I urinated all over the stage.
It was very embarass but I am proud of my acomplishment.

Sports Day

Last Friday there were no classes because we had sports day. For about a month leading up to sports day we have been having classes cancelled all over the place for "sports day practice". I thought how much practice do these kids need to run a few races, do long jump and shot put. Korean sports days have a lot more to them than just that. It started with an entire student body 10 minute stretch/tai chi kinda thing. Apparently this is a nation wide sports day warm up/cool down routine. The P.E. teacher was in his element up on the stage leading all the kids (and teachers).

Each year level had their own 5-10 minute dance performance (now I understand why some much time was needed to practice).

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5 and 6

Between all the performances there were running races, but no other track and field events like discus, long jump etc....

The parents and older siblings even got to run. The grandparents didn't run but they did do a relay where they had to push a giant ball around a pole.

Finally it was my time to shine! The teacher vs parents relay. Ashley (the other native teacher) ran first against a mother we had seen blitz the parents races. Ashley managed to beat her. I ran 3rd last and by that time the teachers team was well and truly behind. I didn't lose any more ground, but I didn't make up much. All this week the students have been saying "Ashley, good runner" then they look at me and either say nothing or say (not very convincingly) "you too....."

The day ended with another insanely cute school stretching session.

Funny students

In one of my after school classes we are going to interview Kate over Skype. This week we wrote a list of questions to ask her. Here are a couple of the questions they came up with:

Do you have a man friend?
What time is it?
Are you pretty?
How old are your parents?
Are you rich?

I was very impressed, my students came up with 20 questions to ask, with me only suggesting 2 and the Korean teaching only helping translate another 1 or 2!

An average day for Brenton teaching in Korea

7:00am Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.

7:30am Wake up for a second time and realise I am running late.

7:55am Leave for school....5 minutes late.

8:10am Get to school and say hello in Korean to which ever teacher is greeting the students when they arrive. Fail to understand what the Korean teacher says next, so I just smile and nod.

8:15am Get to my desk. Check facebook, check email, quickly look over class plans for the day, check facebook again.
 

My office

My desk

9:00am First class starts. These run from 9 till 12:30. I have one or two of these classes per day.

My classroom

The front of my classroom

12:30pm Lunch time. Some days are good....most are not so good. This is where I try to eat lots of whatever food they are serving in the buffet. BUT there are a few things to remember:

1. Avoid kimchi as it tastes like spicy poo.
2. If something is red it is spicy. Avoid very red things.
3. Stock up on what appears to be good...although this can back fire.
4. Rice and soup are always safe options.

1:30pm Back to classes. These run till from 1:30 till 4:05. I only have one class to teach each afternoon.

This is what I see everyday in my classroom....but with all the desks full of students.

The world map, world clocks and flags on the wall of the classroom.

4:20pm Head home. Get at least 20 "hellos"  from students as I leave school, even though I am leaving so it should be "goodbye".

4:35pm Arrive home.

So what do I do when I am not teaching?

1.  - Plan lessons
2.  - Go on facebook
3.  - Play Nintendo DS
4.  - Learn Korean
5.  - Watch youtube

Once all these items have been done I repeat options 2 and 3.

Looking at cherry blossoms and looking at Korean's looking at cherry blossoms

Last weekend I went with some friends to the Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival. Brenton decided to stay home because looking at trees isn't his thing.

The festival itself was really fun. In Korea you can drink in public and there are convenience stores selling cans of beer on almost every street corner. This means we drank quiet a bit of beer while wandering around looking at the cherry blossoms. We also spent a lot of time looking at Korean's looking at cherry blossoms, as there were people everywhere "enjoying the romance".

The Bridge, apparently this is the most romantic spot at the festival.
Although, I wouldn't know because I couldn't get close enough.

More photos of other people at the bridge

As close as we could get to the romantic bridge

 

Makgeolli (Korean Rice Wine)

The trouble started when we decided it was time to go home. We had to get back to a town (Masan) 20 minutes away to catch the bus home to Daegu. All of the public buses to Masan were full and weren't even stopping and there were no available taxis. After walking around for about an hour and 1/2 we finally started finding free taxis but they wouldn't take us to Masan because (we had a conversation in Korean and English, so this is only our interpretation) the traffic was so bad that the 20 minutes trip was taking over an hour. We headed to to train station in the hope that we could get a train anywhere and then get back to Daegu from there. The last train of the day had already left!

We decided it was time to break for dinner. After dinner we were finally able to get a taxi, but just missed the 9:30 bus from Masan to Daegu. The next bus wasn't until 11pm. Finally, 7 hours after we decided to leave the festival we were home, and there were taxi's everywhere! What took 2 hours on the way there took 7 hours on the way home!

Overall the Cherry Blossom Festival was fun, but not worth the 7 hour journey :-)

Bungee

Last weekend ago Brenton and I went on a tour to the DMZ (De-militarized zone) and bungee jumping. I didn't do the jump, I figure that sky diving fulfills my jumping off things from height requirement. Since I didn't jump I got stuck as the official photographer. This turned out to be a stressful job, as I had video and photo requirements from 4 different people and once they were up on the bridge it was really hard to tell who was jumping next. As result I missed Brenton's jump and only got him bouncing around, took about 1 minute of video before everyone else's jump, and took videos of 2 people I don't know.

"Brenton" jumping. Fast forward to about the 1 minute mark, because like I said after stuffing up Brenton's I went the other way and filmed way to much!

 Brenton really jumping.