So Much for December 23rd.

For the past few years, the tradition went unchanged: Christmas shopping began around December 20th, and ended on the 23rd (or 24th, if I pushed my luck). I wouldn't even think of shopping before December hits (if I recall correctly, at the end of November, it was usually 'Oh-crap-I-have-too-much-stuff-to-hand-in' mode).

Yet I successfully managed to finish all my shopping this year, with a little under four weeks to go. Mind you, all the shipping I usually had to do was fueled by feet. Anyway, this weekend, I went to an area called Insadong - a place in Seoul that's renowned for selling traditional Korean goods. I decided to take a Solo trip for this one, just to prove to myself that i've regained the ability to know where the heck i'm going.

I only got a little lost.

Next up on my list of abilities to regain: How to understand prices, without pointing to the currency! I only ran into a little bit of trouble with that aspect though, and I think it actually turned out in my favour - a storeowner took my look of confusion as a hard-lined negotiation tactic, and when I was pondering over what he said, he went 'Okay, okay.. discount'. So I saved 10$! Whee.

There were also a few 'Cultural Events' going on in the area. One of which I took a picture of, a group of elderly Korean people playing some very beautiful (and what i'd assume to be traditional) Korean Flute music. As you can see, they were just there, in the middle of the street. I don't think this was pre-organized - they just decided to pick that spot to play.

I usually try not to pay too much attention to bad (and sometimes funny) spellings on signs, wherever I go, but I saw one store-sign that was too good to pass up, so I took a picture. It was a Korean Wellbeing Tea and Tea Set store, but the 'e' from Wellbeing was ommited from the original sign - so they added a correctional checkmark with an 'e' on top of the original sign (which is something kids do alot at school, as well). Even though it's hilarious, I have to commend them for the effort to fix their mistakes.

As solo adventures go, this ended up being a pretty successful one. In the end, I made it back to the dorm in Incheon in a little over four hours from the time i'd left. The next step, sometime this week, will be to figure out the shipping details - which i'm really not looking forward to sorting out, but alas, it must be done. My apologies in advance for not wrapping gifts (well, most gifts.. one of them was pre-wrapped), but they'll most likely be opened up by customs anyway.

Speaking of gifts, I received an early Christmas piece of mail from ma Soeur Émilie. When I opened it, there was an envelope marked 'Frère Jacques Alex' - I tried to explain the joke, after I burst out laughing, but alas, it's a bit hard to explain to anglos. With the package came an awesome Sens picture, some lottery scratchers, a keychain, and a great card from Émilie and Nick - thanks a lot guys! As I build up the Korean Senators-shrine, hopefully they'll start having some sort of success again.

They just haven't been the same since I left. Clearly, since the cheering has been quieter without me, they've all taken a psychological hit and are battling depression.

Hang in there, guys. Hang in there.

Where to go?

With Christmas being a month away, our actual 'long holiday' is still 7 or 8 weeks from now. While we do have Christmas day, Boxing day, and January 1st off, that's about the bulk of it. For the rest of the Holiday-week, i'll be hard at work, until the end of January. When the Chinese New Year starts though, we'll have an entire week off.

Prime time for a trip.

I'm still doing some research on possible destinations. With the Korean Won being the equivalent of this year's Ottawa Senators in the International Currency League, even trips in Asia look to be fairly expensive - so my best bet would be somewhere with a low cost of living. Possibly Taiwan or the Phillipines.

We'll see.

Should've been a Bowler

The weekend's already nearing its end over here, and it was a fairly relaxed one. Apart from going Bowling on Friday (and kicking a fair amount of ass, I must say), I stayed in for most of the weekend - apart from a little shopping. I did manage to pick up a couple more Christmas gifts, so i'm hoping to have everything done by next weekend so that I can start shipping.

On Friday, I also continued my secondary-job of 'Promotional Monkey' (I wonder how that would look on a resume?), by doing some extra work at a Korean Art Community Center. When I say work, I use that term pretty loosely.. The extent of what I did was really just stand there, smile, give pamphlets, and do the occasional bow. I'm not really there for the labour, so much as for the image of 'Hey look! We have foreigners!'; and looking foreign is a skill I definitely possess.

Other than that, I really don't have very much to report.. except for things on the Nerd front. So if you don't know/care about what Binary is, and other nerdly items, you can stop reading here for today, I won't be angry.

Okay. Good. The nerd crew: I don't actually have anything to say about binary. But Video-Game wise, i've been representing my French ancestry quite well, by conquering dozens of empires in Age of Empires 3. I've been playing with three other teachers for the better part of a month, and it seems I would've made a pretty excellent Military Strategist back in the day. We've also started installing the original Unreal Tournament on a few people's machines, so we'll have a decent group playing First Person shooters on the LAN soon enough.

It's exciting. Really.

25%

I've now been in Korea for a little over three months. Incidently, it means that my first semester as a Teacher is nearly complete. (They're a total of three months each). Not counting my adult classes, I only have one remaining class for each group of kids- which means 10 classes, to be completed Thursday and Monday.

The experience of teaching has been a pretty great one so far. 80% of my classes are always fun to teach, mostly because the kids are genuinely interested in learning. The other two classes (for those who've managed to do the math), are what i'd consider a waste of time. Kids rarely pay attention, and when they do, it's a challenge keeping that attention for longer than 10 minutes - so instead of having them learn language skills, most of the time is spent arguing or doing discipline. The few in the class that do want to learn, are the ones that end up suffering.

It almost sounds cliché, after having heard this attitude for years and years from teachers and Professors (''those who don't want to be here, leave''), but a negative classroom environment can be incredibly frustrating . While other students might not be directly frustrated at someone acting up, a lot of their time is wasted when one person has to be pinpointed by the teacher (and the general-attention level also drifts away - making the whole class harder to manage).

But back to the positive: The classes that are good are really good. The more they know what to expect, the smoother the classes go. I think there's a period, at the beginning of the semester, where all kids in all classes are just sizing you up on discipline and teaching style.

It's not the easiest balance to strike. My approach is to be silly and easy-going most of the time, but letting the kids know when I need them to be serious. That way it keeps the class fun (and interesting), yet in control. But the level of how easy-going and serious is a shifting scale, from class to class. Some kids may not need any sort of discipline, while some may need quite a bit of it... so the more you know each child in the class, the easier it is to teach them.

Sadly, with the end of the semester, i've been told that i'm going to have to change co-teachers (which also means a change of kids). Generally, the kids stick with the Korean co-teachers, which is a shame... but also an opportunity to start again, and learn from my mistakes. Hopefully I can manage to make 100% of my classes great (or at least, to get the bad ones under a tighter leash).

Anyway, the upcoming weekend shouldn't be anything special - i'm hoping to finish my Christmas shopping (or have it almost finished, anyway) so that I can start mailing things in two or three weeks.

Have a good one

Hockey Night in Korea

Saturday night, I traveled with a few other teachers to Anyang, located in Southern Seoul, to watch my first live hockey game of the year. Who needs the Ottawa Senators when you've got the Anyang Halla?? The commute was a whopping two hours, but I have no complaints. The Anyang Halla were playing the China Sharks, a matchup of the Asia Ice Hockey League. The Stadium isn't very big - it could probably hold two or three thousand people - but the crowds seemed to get into the game quite a bit.

After two periods, Halla was down 2-Zip, but stormed back with three goals in the third, to win the game - which is more than I can say about our 'ol boys back in Ottawa (arrrgh). Tickets were pretty cheap, at 8$ a pop, and we had a central view of the whole thing. The rul.es seemed to be the same as any International game (no-touch icing, two line passes, larger ice) The only strange thing about the Arena was the lack of any concession stand - forcing us to bring our own beer and snack - (and forcing us to pay only 2$ for a tallboy as opposed to 10 - haha).

To celebrate Halla's good result, some of us went to a Chinese restaurant nearby. Although this is like going to celebrate a Senators win at a Toronto-restaurant, for whatever reason, the staff seemed pretty uncaring (I wonder why?). We ordered some Kung Pow chicken that completely kicked our asses. There were dark, roasted peppers that tasted pretty good for the first five seconds - only to induce a state of complete pain and panic moments later. It's the closest i've ever felt to an out-of-body experience. Oiii. And for whatever reason, I thought i'd have better luck eating them the second time, and that I was just kidding myself as to how bad they were.

Nope. Word of advice: Never order Kung Pow chicken in a genuinely Chinese restaurant. Ever.

Friday night, I had gone to a market in Bupyeong (a district of Incheon, about 45 mintues away) to finally go and buy myself a cellphone. It wasn't exactly a fun process, but I managed to find a decent one for around 30$ (a really good bargain). Since it was late, they weren't able to activate it, and assured me it would be done the next morning, and that they'd call the Korean teacher that had gone with me with the phone number. As it turns out, they couldn't activate it. It was a permanently locked phone, because it was stolen. Oiiii.

I returned today (Sunday), and they seemed pretty contrite - and instead of a 30$ phone, they gave me one worth about 70-80$. Score. They just need to activate it tomorrow morning (though i'm keeping my fingers crossed), and I should finally have a Cell. I'll let the bunch of you know the number, once I get it.

Cheers.

Happy Pepero Day

While November 11th is being celebrated around the world as Rememberance Day, Korea has a slightly different 'day' for 11/11. Pepero day. It's the equivalent of the west's Valentine's Day, where people give each other 'Pepero's, chocolate sticks. I was told by my adult students that the reason it's on November 11 is because the number of the Month and Date (ones) are shaped like the Pepero sticks... or maybe the Pepero sticks are shaped like 1s? Ah, it's the chicken and the egg, i'm afraid (i'm not one to start an argument on who came first - the generally recognized Calendar year, or a heavily marketed ploy to sell chocolate).

Anyhoo, I was given a crapload of the stuff by some students - two by adult students, three by my child students, and one from a random student who i'd never seen before. Maybe she just saw me on TV.

Tonight (Friday) i'm finally planning on getting a Cellphone. While it's been a pretty enjoyable three months without one, I have to admit that those suckers are useful. When you're trying to meet up with people somewhere in Seoul, and you're completely lost, it would be preeeetty helpful. The cost of cellphones here is much less ridiculous than in Canada - the initial phone is about 40-50$, but you just do Pay as you Go afterwards. Texting is free, and the most heavy uses will only cost around 20-25$ per month. Eat it, Rogers.

This weekend, i'll be meeting up with Chris in Seoul again, to go watch a Live hockey game in the south. There's evidently an Asian Ice Hockey League, and the Anyang Halla (Seoul Team) is playing some team from China. It should be promising in the hilarity department, but hey, i'll do anything for live hockey these days. Sunday, at this point, is up in the air, but there's talk of going Paintballing and Go-Karting, so it should be another pretty cool weekend. If I get a chance, i'll start my Christmas Shopping as well, since I want to try and get everything done and shipped by the endo of the first week of December.

Cheers!

Back to School for the Weekend

I've just returned from a Teacher's Conference at Korea University, which was organized by the Cambridge University Press. The location was very well chosen; Korea University has a very beautiful campus, and the accomodations were more than big enough for the event (i'd estimate about 500 people in all showed up). There were Five lecturers, in a span of 8 hours - three of which were excellent.


One of the Professors gave an awesome lesson/song to share with any age groups, entitled 'Five Key Steps to Happiness', (there were gestures associated with each 'Step'); Which were: 1- Smile from Ear to Ear; 2- Take a deep breath ; 3- Look at the Sky ; 4- Sing a Melody ; 5- Dare to show your love. He had the entire auditorium Point to the Sky (roof), Smile from Ear to Ear, and said 'Now how can that not make any person happy?'. Possibly one of those 'you had to be there' moments, but it was great.

It's strange to admit, but I kind of do miss lectures, and general University life. Maybe it's just starting to dawn on me that school is over - for now at least. I suppose after doing it non-stop since I was 4 years old, it's strange to be without it. Even in the reversed-role of Teacher, it's not even close to student-life. Ah well - reason more to look into an MBA program when I return.

Friday Night, a few teachers went to see the new James Bond movie. It was pretty cool to go to a Korean Cinema; When you buy your ticket, it's assigned seating, so there's no need to rush to get a good seat. All English movies are actually shown in English, with Korean subtitles - the only part where you run into trouble is when people start speaking other languages (The new James Bond, particularly, likes to have people randomly start speaking Spanish or Italian). Fun night, but not the greatest movie, in my humble opinion.

Saturday, I (unfortunately) had to work from 9:30 to 3 - but really, it was nothing too difficult. There were 9 groups of kids who came from a Private School that our company recently bought out, to experience the 'Experience Rooms'. They were all very, very well behaved - so it ended up being a breeze. During the evening, I made my way with a fellow-Canadian to meet my friend Chris in Seoul, to witness my first Sens Game of the Year, at a bar called 'Rocky Mountain Tavern'. It was a re-broadcast of the previous night's Ottawa vs Carolina game, which we lost. Arrr. The next time I make the trip, they better make it worthwhile (although that's bound to happen when Gerber's finally kicked off the team).

Nothing too special going on during this coming week, but i'll keep you posted. Hope Canada's still in one piece when I come back (seriously, if you guys let Quebec somehow get away, i'll be mad at you).

Cheers.

In Other News...

Well, since every headline has been dominated by Obama's victory, I know it must be refreshing for you to come here and read about something else..

Right?

Heh, well.. Myself and Crian, another teacher (and the only fellow Business Major) decided to watch the election coverage yesterday morning. We watched from 10am (8pm EST) to 1PM (Do the math, lazy person) - while taking a break from 11am-12pm to teach our adult classes. They seemed pretty amused that we were that interested in the results. In the end, it was a very satisfying morning.

The week's been fairly busy, as the semester's winding down. This semester ends November 24th, and the new one begins December 1st. There are several things that happen at the end of a semester: The first is a 'Star' Show - which is tomorrow - where kids from each 'Special Program' (special classes, ranging from Grammar, to Bookclub) get to present things that they've learned to their parents (i'm teaching a Bookclub 2 class). I wrote a song, with their help, entitled 'The Planet Song'. It's pretty awesome, and has great lyrics, including 'Venus is a Planet ; It is Yellow'. You can't find anything truer in today's music. The second event is a 'Global Star Show', where one child from each class is picked to be in a Speech competition, and the last is a Spelling Bee.

It should be a pretty busy weekend, coming up. I've signed up for some overtime work, on Saturday, which will last from 10 to 3 (hooray unexpected income), and afterwards, i'm off to Seoul to meet Chris and watch my FIRST SENS GAME OF THE YEAR. It's in a bar called the Rockie Mountain Tavern. They'll be re-broadcasting the Carolina game at 6pm, so please, if you somehow get in contact with me, don't tell me how it ends.

On Sunday, i've registered to attend a Teacher's Conference from Cambridge University - the folks who authored our Adult books. They have about half a dozen speakers, that give you tips on how to adapt your curriculum, and generally help in developping your teaching skills. It's somewhere in Seoul (i'll be going with mostly Korean teachers), but it should be pretty cool. Hope you folks at home have a great weekend, and for those who still haven't given me their address.. hurry it up, will ya?

Cheers

Fall Back? No, no.

Daylight savings-time is not something that Korea is familiar with. As such, instead of the 13-hour time difference i've growned accustomed to, as of today, the difference is 14 hours. What does that mean for you? Well, not much. Except that now, in the mandatory 6-time-a-day timeslots where you ask yourself 'I wonder what Alex is doing now', when you glance at your watch, you adjust the math by one hour.

Aside from that - it's been a good weekend. I went to Itaewon last night, a very, very heavily 'Foreignized' part of Seoul (one of the reasons being its proximity to the US Army bases). I went to a bar called 'The Loft', for a friend's Birthday party (Kelly, who I used to work with at Midway in Ottawa). Entry was 5$, but included a free drink coupon; Ladies also drank free (damn sexism). But after friday night, I wasn't in shape to do any kind of heavy drinking, anyway.

The ratio of foreigners was incredibly high - the highest i've seen since i've gotten here - with about 3 out of 4 people being non-Korean.

There were still, apparently, quite a few Halloween parties going on, although the majority of the people partaking in them were foreign. I saw quite a few awesome costumes, that seemed to make the ever-conservative Koreans giggle at their sight - including this picture, of a man dressed as a middle-aged Korean Hiking Woman. The curly black hair, suncap, mask, gloves, and pink vest are all things that i've grown accustomed to seeing, but it took a Halloween costume to really nail how different the outfits really are.

Anyhoo, looking to the week ahead: I hear there's some sort of election going on. I'm looking forward to talking with some of my adult-students to get their view of the whole affair. I notice that the Sens have resigned Alfredsson (woooooo!), so I can finally stop wishing for a new contract every night, before going to bed. I'll now tackle the #2 priority that this world should be concerned about; Global Warming.

Have a good one.