I will begin with the Suncheon Kids English Camp. This happened from Jan 2nd-6th. A few of my partners in crime included the usual suspects: Carol and Roberta. None of us were really looking forward to the camp because in a meeting the previous week we had discovered 2 things – There would be no beds at the facility and the camp itself seemed woefully disorganized. Anyone who knows me even remotely will understand how I felt, as I am not very tolerant of disorganization. At any rate, we arrive at the camp and began our work. The first two days were only a few steps up from Hell. This was not aided, of course, by our attitudes going in, but can you blame us? For four nights we slept on thin blankets on the floor and taught about 12 hours in a day.
Thankfully, buy the third day things brightened, mostly because we were a) in the “groove” of it and b) over the halfway hump of the camp :P. By the end, I realized that I had had a down right good time! *GASP* And do you want to know why? Because of the kids. Yeah, that’s right. THE KIDS. (Mom, are you still in your chair, or did you fall off?) I did some really fun classes with them: story writing and making a menu for a restaurant. Here is an abstract of on of the funnier stories:
There once was a boy who smoked so much that he got cancer. There were no doctors in
And a completely unrelated group of student wrote this:
There once was a girl who really wanted to meet her favourite singer. She got a chance to go to
Wow. I mean….wow. I better start eating more of that stuff.
I won’t say too much about the menus, except that my favourite is one based solely on armpits. The restaurant served armpit hair, soup, odour, and so much more. The boys who wrote it thought it would make me angry, but they had no idea that that’s the sort of thing I did in creative writing class in school. Mwahahahaha!!
Now onto the next camp. For the past two weeks (and for three more days this week) I have been working at a Teacher Training Camp, where I teacher Korean English teachers. I was super excited about this camp because I like teaching the teachers AND my unit was How to Use Music in the English Classroom. Everything that I had been told was positive. The Korean English Teachers (trainees) stay there for 1 month and two sets of Native Speakers (that’s me) teach them. I taught the second half of the camp. Luckily for us, we got a free trip to Jejudo, an island/province south of the mainland. But I’ll some to that later.
This year the administration started a new thing where the trainees have to write a journal almost everyday on top of their already ludicrous workload. That leaves us, the Native Speakers, to edit these journals everyday and give them back. So, instead of the easy schedule that is laid out for us, where we teach 3 periods per day and have either the morning or the afternoon off, we spent all our spare time marking journals (8 everyday to be exact). After a week of that, I think we started to go a bit batty. I don’t mean “we” as in just the foreigners, I mean the trainees too. They had tons of homework to do and then the journals on top of that. After my time in
I don’t want to give a completely negative vibe here. I LOVE teaching them and I have a lot of fun in my classes. Most of the teachers are lovely, the accommodations are about a bajillion times better than the Suncheon camp (with the exception of the perpetually stinky bathroom), and my co-foreign teachers are great. Given the opportunity, I would certainly do it again. This time I would be more prepared for the amount of work, that’s all. Onwards…
So last week, on Wednesday, we all departed for our field trip to
Before I go off on my description of Korean touring, I want to say that it’s not bad, just different. Any negative connotations may come from the fact that I’m not accustomed to their style of travel, and I’m not so sure they are either ;)
Anyway, the Korean style of traveling I can sum up with the phrase “the fast and the furious”. Go to as many touristy places as possible in a short period of time. Remembering the experience is secondary, as long as you have pictures to prove you were there. As a lone traveler, I may have seen in 7 days what we “saw” in three. A good example is the huge crater that we climbed and descended all within 45 minutes. Just got up, snap a picture of the view and come back down. Crazy. Naturally, by the end, a lot of the Canadians were ready to chew off their own arms and run away. I’m OK now.
We went to many different kinds of places, most of which were breathtakingly beautiful. All of the coastlines and natural places were fantastic. It was my first time seeing volcanic rock and black sand. We also went to a museum, tangerine farm, photo gallery, botanical garden, folk village and so on. I have pictures, but I don’t really remember very much. The last day I got off and on a bus 9 times and an airplane once. No jokes, people, no jokes.
So these next three days are the last of this camp. The day after, I take off for
A few other random things I should mentions, as the weekends were not void of adventure:
New Years: Carol and Bobbi came to Boseong and stayed at my place for the night. We laughed, drank a bit, played cards and watched movies. Low-key, jus the way I like it.
My Birthday: Yep, that happened sometime in there. I turned 23 in Canadian age and 25 in Korean age, WOOT! Roberta, Carol, Shona and I went for dinner and a movie the day before the Adult camp started. We saw Narnia which was ARSOME! Sam, I forget if I told you or not, but if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll love it! It’s almost exactly like the book.
My first Korean Wedding: 
One of the teachers in my school got married recently and invited my to the wedding. There were two parts, the Western-style and the traditional Korean part. The Western style was another “fast on furious” episode where the couple is married very quickly with much noise in the background of crowds milling around the entrance way. The Korean ceremony was much better as there was a tiny audience of just close family (luckily I was allowed to watch). The bride and groom bow to the various members of the family who then give them money and good wishes. My favourite part was when the groom piggy-backed the bride around the table. I want to do that at my wedding!!!
New Glasses!!! Eyeglasses are ridiculously cheap in
Here’s the classy pair first: (ignore the crookedness, my ears are uneven)
And the funky pair: not too noticeable, but they are, indeed, pink.
H’ok! That was a long haul. You may go now, as you probably have to pee. I’ll be back again sometime in February to write about my adventures in southeast Asia!
