If Only I Had CPAC...

These are interesting times right now in the Parliament of Canada. During my three-month break, between School and Korea, I watched quite a bit of CPAC - to the point where I was getting excited for question period every day (reminder: it starts earlier on fridays). I'd absolutely love to have access to it this week. The drama that's unfolding is the stuff that Sweeps TV-weeks are made of. Unfortunately, i'm stuck watching it from afar - but it should be a very interesting week. Will Harper prorogate Parliament? Will the House be brought down? Stayyyy tuned (then you have to wait a whole weekend for the thrilling conclusion!). Whether you're a leftie, a rightie, or a person of bidextrous political leanings, it's definitely interesting stuff.

As for what's going on over here, though... The new school semester began on Monday. I've held on to both of my adult classes (which depend on the adults re-registering monthly), so that's pretty great. I continue to do overtime Monday and Wednesday (by having 7 classes), but i've thankfully been given a break for the Tuesday-Thursday block. On those days, i'm starting the semester with 6 classes, which will shrink to 5, once the Winter Camp classes are over. Winter Camp is an intensive, three-week long class, teaching about three seperate countries - South Africa, Canada, and England.

The kids that I have have been good so far, but it's way too early in the semester to assess who'll be good, and who'll be more difficult. My goal for this semester is to put on a much stricter face to all classes, and loosen up if i'm able to. I've taken a cue from some more experienced teachers, and i'm starting to implement more and more classroom rules. In the long run, it should help with the stability of each class.

I did have a problem i've never encountered before, though. One of my classes, which is composed of only four kids, is deathly quiet. All the time. One of the rules I implemented today was the 'Quiet' rule (where I say 3! 2! 1!, and after one, they're quiet) - but for this class, it's ridiculously unnecessary. I have to accomplish the exact opposite - get them to communicate (not just with me, but with each other). I tried a variation of the 3-2-1 thing, where instead of silence, I tried to have them yell a silly word (just to have them yell something). Nooope.

Ah well. I'm looking forward to the challenge.
Happy December.

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!