New Name

Our English Town has been renamed. We will be replacing all signage to read "Yeosu Foreign Language Experience Centre".

Goodness.

The explanation: "We don't know the reasoning exactly."

Back in Yeosu

Today we had our second "first day back at school after the winter break". We had another one two weeks ago, but were then given a surprise extra eight days of vacation! I quickly e-mailed the travel agent with a request to look into flights to Macao, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Cebu... basically anywhere nearby that didn't require a visa. As it turned out, the cheapest option was to fly to Cebu City in The Philippines...

I definitely want to spend some time discussing The Philippines with my grand-parents. They spent a year living there (about 30 years ago), and I really wonder how things have changed. Or if they have changed. I can't imagine that things are much better than they were, considering the poverty we witnessed. There were armed guards everywhere. I would expect guards to be stationed in banks. Gas stations would be borderline. But we even had an armed guard at the entrance to our hostel. Perhaps this should have made me feel safer, but it instead had the opposite effect.

There were some beautiful sights to be seen. The snorkeling was amazing. The tarsiers were cute. The chocolate hills were impressive. The ube (a purple yam used in sweets and pastries) was delicious. And the fact that they had pastries (thanks to the Spanish influence, I believe) was superb. And mango juice. Mmmm, mango juice. It was an interesting vacation, though I wouldn't call it relaxing.

I'm happy to report that we are both glad to be back in Yeosu. The school administration is still giving us a few headaches, but our apartment is great and we have a pretty good routine going. Also, we found cheap lentils in Seoul on Sunday, which makes life so much better! Dahl and chapatis tonight for dinner, it was wonderful.

My photos of The Philippines are already up on the flickr page (the link is on the left side of the page), and I hope to get the Thailand and Cambodia pics up soon. Maybe Alden will even post a couple stories? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Local Engrish

Plenty of funny things happen all the time here, but I thought I'd just quickly post some local Engrish.

"Glory
my favorite
animal is
bear
doll"
-on a girl's sweatshirt

"Strong team
32-K Rainbow St.
Smile town.
Zip.763810 U.S.B.D."
-on the back of a boy's coat

"Crossroads Produce"
-the name of a car (the official name given by the company)

"Cast Only"
-a warning sign on a company truck

It's starting to feel like we live here...

Thanks for the Christmas and birthday cards! It was nice to receive actual mail... I now have cards on my desk at work.

Work itself is a bit slow this week. We have been at school from 9 - 5 with the sole task of planning the upcoming English Camps. I'm working on several sessions - pop songs, "English Math Fun", arts and crafts, cooking class and a taekwondo session, among others. In case it isn't obvious, some of these sessions were prescribed. Apparently I am going to teach Korean kids taekwondo, which should be interesting. I've been going for less than three months, and there are always a couple kids in each school group that have their black/red belt. My form is... well, let's just say I'm not an expert. Ha ha... oh well! I'm sure it will be fun, or at least funny.

Over the course of the week we'll also be learning a play. Out of curiosity, would you say that most Canadian kids know the story of The Merchant of Venice? Okay, how about Canadian high school students? University students? I would venture to say that a few people may have studied it in high school or uni English classes, but beyond that? Well, I was informed today that the script of a fairy tale that Alden and I had carefully selected and modified (for simplicity of the English, number of characters, length of the play, etc.) would be dropped in favour of a narrative version of The Merchant of Venice. Narrative meaning that the script has yet to be written. The play now needs to be a "very famous" play, and apparently all Korean kids know Shakespeare intimately. This should be fun, especially since our regular kids have trouble with the English Town dialogues ("May I help you?"/"Yes, I would like that red pencil case."). The kids at our first camp will be from the islands, meaning that they will have an especially low level of English. Ha ha... cultural differences. They are starting to become apparent.

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In other news, I had a wonderful birthday in Busan. We had sushi, watched a movie and enjoyed some champagne. That may not sound very extravagant to people back home, but trust me, it was! It was great.

Vertebrae Soup

Yesterday, we had vertebrae soup for lunch, with squid, tough tiny transparent fishies, and two of our least favorite kinds of kimchi. The soup featured large chunks of animal vertebrae. I think it was pig, because cow vertebrae would probably be huge. Joanne didn't appreciate my description of our entree, so she just ate rice. Squid is plentiful here, but I have not grown to like it. I have enjoyed squid in Canada, but the way they prepare it here--often raw or dried--makes it rather unpalatable and very difficult to chew.

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Can you guess what the phrase "magic time" refers to in Korea?

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When evaluating the appearance of another person, how often do you notice the size of his or her head? It may sound strange, but this is one of the first things that Koreans notice. Our co-teacher often refers to students by the size of their heads. "Oh, the boy with the small head." I guess descriptions of hair color don't really work here, as I found out when I described a teacher as someone of "medium height, short black hair and glasses." That could be almost any male teacher at our school. So I guess head size may be helpful. It's hard for me to make sense of it. But I digress.

Anyway, there is an ideal ratio of head to body. I don't know where this ratio came from. I can understand the biological source of the aesthetic appeal of a woman's waist being two thirds her hips, as this generally shows that she's fertile and in a recent study it was also linked to higher intelligence in her offspring (something to do with having enough body fat to nurture them in utero). But I digress.

The ideal ratio of head to body is one to seven, and they measure it using the miracle of perspective. Did you ever watch Kids in the Hall? I didn't, much, but I remember a character who was famous for crushing the heads of people he didn't like. He didn't literally crush them, but he put his fingers in front of his eye, such that they would match up with his view/the view of the camera angle, and squish the heads of his far away enemies. Korean students do this too, except instead of crushing our heads they measure them in proportion to the rest of our bodies, seven times or more. I think I may be the right ratio, but Joanne has had to put up with exclamations of students and comments from co-teachers about how her head is tiny. I feel for her, but I think it is all rather silly.

Special Day

"Today is special day. Today is eat-red-bean-soup day."

This is what I heard when I arrived at school this morning, courtesy of one of our co-teachers. It turns out that red bean soup is made once a year; on winter solstice. It is a reddish brown colour, and is quite thick. It also has rice "balls" in it. There are apparently two ways to make these rice balls - you can buy powdered rice at the store, add water, and shape marble-sized balls from the mixture, or you can cook a certain variety of rice, dry it, put it in the blender, add water, and then shape the marble-sized balls. It's quite work intensive, and the result is... well, sticky.

Now that I've filled up on a lunch of red bean soup with rice balls, fried chicken, kimchi and a mandarin orange, I have an entire afternoon to spend as I please. I'm thinking about working on my taekwondo poomsae (form patterns), since I was taught a new one last night in class. I may actually have a lot of time to work on my poomsae, since our last English Town class of the year will be on the 26th. I'm very excited! After that we have a week and a half to prepare for our English camps, two and a half weeks of camps, and then we'll be off to Bangkok. Should be great!

I'm curious to know what everyone is up to for Christmas and New Year's - please leave a comment or send me an e-mail if you get the chance!

Christmas is Coming...

Despite the fact that it's sunny and 15C out today, it really feels like Christmas is coming. The previous tenants left us some white Christmas lights, so they are now wound around some cedar branches I brought home last weekend.

The Christian churches are also very well decorated here, Korean style. They have Christmas lights and scrolling marquees in red and green, and blare synthesized Christmas carols. The frequency of church services has also increased from the usual five per week to seven. One of our co-teachers attends each of these services - including a Sunday morning and Sunday evening service. (She also spends her school breaks highlighting an English bible.)

Christmas Day is actually only a one-day affair here, from what I have heard. On the 24th, couples go out for a romantic evening, or groups of friend head out drinking. The 25th is a holiday, but everyone has to report to work on the 26th. Everyone back home is asking me what we'll be doing for Christmas. If left up to Alden, the answer would probably be running up the mountain behind our place. We may have to negotiate on this... I'll keep you posted.