Chiaksan!

We just had a hiking/adventure/unexpected snowfall on mountains weekend at Chiaksan National Park. I wrote a description of the trip over on the Shutterfly page. This may be followed up with a longer piece on Korean hiking culture and some of the more tangental and memorable moments of the trip. For now, you get the the basics. And photos:

Click here to view these pictures larger

"All dead"; Kate teaches elementary students

A typical day in Kate's advanced elementary class:

Who else would use an ESL lesson plan with the terms "failed miserably," "symbol," "cultures and religions," "secretary general," and "conference"?

This class is filled with the brightest of our cohort (best is debatable). I had them for two weeks until Kate maliciously stole them from me. I looked forward to this class so much at the end of the day! Now my last class has been replaced with the "My name is Tyren, you die" crowd.

Kate lost her voice (again) today. She's showing the kinders YouTube videos of Feist singing on Sesame Street.

"my name is Tyren. you die."

Oh, the joys of children. I snatched this away from a student a couple of weeks ago. Tyren is a big 11/12 year old who doesn't quite fit into the kindergarten-sized chairs and tables of my classroom. These older kids tend to deal with this ergonomic insult either by completely spacing out or occupying themselves with vocations like the one shown above.

This eloquent and concise statement wasn't directed at me, or anybody else in particular. It's just one of the many broken English phrases that get thrown around everyday in our classrooms. It's the kind of stuff that would send an American public school into lock-down or bomb-scare mode. It would also get students expelled. But here the attitude is, "meh." It's a bit of a different situation (though not very severe) if the transgression is written or spoken in Korean. But Teacher doesn't know Korean, so another common refrain I here from students (pointing at the alleged transgressor): "Ohhh, Teacher. Bad Korean speaking!"

A few more common phrases that should be included in the English-Korean-English Phrasebook for Hogwans:


"Teacher, pinnishwea!!"
translation: "Teacher, I have finished my assignment and cannot contain the urge to inform you of this repeatedly until you acknowledge my accomplishment."

"Teacher, (generic English name assigned to student) crazy."
translation: "Teacher, my classmate is acting erratically and I would like to consipre with him/her in the act by drawing your attention to it."

"Oh my God, oh my God!:
translation (several definitions): 1) "Teacher, I cannot contain my excitement for saying in English that which I cannot effectively say in English." 2) "Teacher, that is unsatisfactory." 3) "Teacher, I cannot contain my feelings of suspense as you reveal the numeral behind the flashcard during this game of BAAM!" 4) "Teacher, I am bored."

Pinoppio
definition: A beloved children's tale character who transcends the wooden fiber of his body to become a real boy.

"Teacher, wha?" (Often annotated to, "ahUH?"
translation: "Teacher, I have no clue what you just said"; or "Teacher, the score you just recorded for the previous round of BAAM! is inaccurate."

"Teacher, No!"; or "No"
translation: The most versatile Korean-English phrase. Can be used to express just about any sentiment from "Teacher, I will not do that," to "Teacher, I have no idea what you just said," to "Teacher, I have no idea how to answer that question," to "Teacher, it is unclear to me whether you just asked me a question or whether you want me to repeat what you just said."

"Teacher my! Teacher my!"
translation: "Teacher, please select me to answer that question/choose the next letter in hangman/select a flashcard for BAAM!" One of the most common Korean English phrases; will be heard dozens of time during each class period. More disciplined Korean students will have the forethought to raise a hand in the air before competing vocally with their classmates.

Photos (and Seoul [long])

Kate and I have been taking turns being sick as hell ever since we got back from Seoul. I lost my voice and had a sore throat on Friday, but I thought I had recovered over the weekend. Monday proved me wrong. Then Kate woke up with the same problem yesterday. No fun. Kate recovered quickly, but I'm still losing a lot of weight through my nose.

Anyway. Kate covered one of my Kindergarten classes today and our boss insisted on covering my others for me, so I was free to do what I would have done had I stayed home from work: edit photos.

This is an album of our first few weeks in Yeoju, including shots from out and about the town:
http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/855

And here's the big batch of photos from Seoul, with a longer description of the trip. It's not quite Kate's timestamped blow-by-blow (not sure if she'll get around to writing that out) but it's still probably more information than most folks care to know:
http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/901

Here are some previews:

For the whole shebang, visit our Shutterfly homepage:
http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/

Farewell.

*UPDATE!

I just figured out how to embed Shutterfly features into blogger. Here you go:

Click here to view these pictures larger

Click here to view these pictures larger

Also, this

Seoul (short)

Kate and I spent early Saturday morning to Sunday evening in Seoul. It was our "if we only had two days in Seoul for the rest of our lives, what would we do?"/basic orientation trip. Kate took exhaustive notes, so I'll leave the full details to her for a later post. And I'll post photos as I edit.

I the meantime though, here are a couple of perspectives on Seoul (short exposure/long exposure) taken from Namsan peak, in the middle of the city.

Sneow-ju

We got a few inches of snow mid-week last week. It started on Tuesday night as Kate and I went into town to go bowling with some other teachers here and it stopped at around 9am on Weds morning. It must not have snowed all night though, because we got two inches at the most.

I got up early on Wednesday to go for a walk down to the river.

The 2010 Yeoju Spring Collection

Here, unfortunately, is a collection of prints and patterns from our apartment. Plastic wallpaper on walls and ceilings. Linoleum wood print flooring (wraps a few inches up the walls).

Beautiful.

http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/847

Home

I haven't posted or send an "I'm still alive, family and friends" email in a while, so sorry about that. But since Kate has been writing a 30 page email all day, I took some photos of our apartment. It took two weeks, but we've finally made it our own. It took a lot of work.

So here's a much too in-depth tour of our new home.

To begin, Yeoju. If you open the larger image (click it) you'll see the building where our school is (Eastern Academy) and on the left (behind trees) is the location of our apartment.

Our street. Not exactly a happening place, but it's only a 15 minute walk/2 minute drive into town, across the bridge:

The neighbors. Yeoju county is big on ceramics, so there are ceramics shops absolutely everywhere. Kate and I call them cerammeries. Our apartment is the building on the right, just above the white SUV. If we don't nail one of those huge kimchi pots with the car I'll consider the year a success.

Our apartment! We live in the unit on the left, second floor up (there's a basement and a top floor apartment unit below and above us. That's our little white Kia out front. Stick shift! $7/gallon gas! We won't go too far, we promise.

Here's the view from the entrance. There's a little vestibule (not shown) between the front door and the entrance to the apartment for shoes. All the furniture you see came with the place. It's all shaky particle board.

Scooting to the left, here's the view of the living room. Kate rigged the christmas light screen this afternoon. It beats the hell out of the bare flourescent tubes in the rest of the house.

Moving straight back into the blue glow at the center of the above image....is the fish tank room. It had a twin bed in it until today, but we took it apart and put it on the back porch. This little room is about 10 by 10. The Barker kids should remember what it felt like to drain the swimming pool every year to scrub the blue pool liner. Standing in this room feels a lot like standing in the empty pool.

For now this room is just the office area, but Kate has designs on making it into an exercise/guest/whatever else room too. 

The entrance to the bedroom is right across from the couch in the living room. Not much to see except for a lumpy comforter, a weird headboard and the most amazing plastic flower print wallpaper you'll ever see.

On to the kitchen. Aside from needing a deep cleaning (And a really weird table) it's pretty nice. Kate's falling in love with metal countertops ("Nathan, the dish drying area has a sluice!). I'm not nuts about the fact that we're missing cabinet handles, but this kitchen is three times as big as our last one, so I won't complain too much.

This picture doesn't do the table justice. The top has wooden inlays and instead of feet, it's supported by a massive carved pillar. It looks like the designer was going for Tudor England inspired Americana. It's a sight to behold. We're thinking of covering the entire thing with a very large tablecloth.

Turning to the left 90 degrees is: the bathroom. I spent more than an hour in there today scrubbing away the mold. It's quite the bathroom--shower on top of a toilet, accompanied by a washing machine! But there's no sink (brush your teeth in the kitchen) and the washing machine drains straight onto the foor and down the shower drain (totally normal for Korea).  

Right next to the bathroom is our utility room, which somehow includes the refrigerator. It's also where we set up the drying rack for our clothes. This apartment is kind of huge.

Moving out the back of kitchen is the back "porch". When we got here there was stuff in it, but now there's a lot more because we moved a bunch of things that belonged to the previous occupants out. 

And finally, the scenic view from the back porch. It would really be lovely if there weren't trash and building supplies everywhere.

So, there it is. Despite the hints of cynicism and Kate's hyperbole (I'm not sure if she's sent her epic-long email yet, but its full of misrepresentations!) we actually kind of like it. And we have more work to do with making this our own place, so it'll just get better. 

Our director told us a few days ago that she wants to find a new place for us in a few months. I haven't really decided how I feel about that yet. It took a lot of work to clean this place up. And it's big. And right next to the river. And theres room out front for me to build a small rowing dinghy out of plywood...

...wait. I'll tell you about that another day (when I figure out where to buy plywood in this country...it's hard!)

-N