The last two evenings, I've been obliged to join the rest of my co-workers - in both English Town and Sangju Elementary - for meals at traditional Korean restaurants. As a direct result, I've got to spend some extended 'quality time' with my toilet. It may be the rainy season in Korea, but the only thunderous, torrential downpours I've experienced have come indoors, from my ignoble behind. A surfeit of Korean cuisine has given me, in Irish parlance, 'an awful case of the scutters'.
The Korean culinary novelty has pretty much worn off. They will eat anything and everything here, including seaweed, dandelions, silkworms, fish-heads, canines... pretty much anything that they can cook and consume without inducing serious liver/stomach damage. They justify consumption of these culinary abortions by claiming that they're 'good for health'. I've (just about) become desensitized to kimchi - the beloved national dish of (seemingly) petrol-fermented cabbage - and some of the spicy meat we get is good and tasty... But the side dishes are always exactly the same, consisting of unbearably strong red-pepper paste, whole cloves of garlic (with no way of cutting or grinding them) and bits of plant stems and grass that they pass as edible by simply dousing them in spicy shit. We also have 'rice cakes' with lots of dishes, which are basically rubber-ish balls of torrid blandness, which are incredibly difficult to chew and digest. But, of course, they're 'good for health' - despite the fact that many of these offending items have a consistent habit of lodging between one's teeth and taking up a long-term residence therein.
Soups are a mandatory part of most meals, a fact which has directly contributed to my anal ailment of late. Seaweed soup, which we get twice a week in the school canteen, tastes exactly as it sounds. The soups here have a tendency to exit the body in roughly the same form that they entered. Korean toilets traditionally do not flush with the velocity of their Western counterparts, so they are ill-equipped to deal with the good, sturdy logs borne of a wholesome Western diet. Maybe it's no coincidence that Korean society is supportive of the scutters.
(I know what you're thinking. Jesus Christ, Greg, enough with the diarrhoea already. I'm aware that this is more information than you need to know, but this blog is a 'warts and all' account, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, who's actually reading this?)
Luckily for me, more 'sturdy' food is easy enough to find. Paris Baguette and Tous le Jours have some nice hot-dogs and pastries if I need to skip lunch, while E-Mart and Home Mart - both a stone's throw from my apartment - have everything I need to cook my own dinners. Chicken, pasta, spuds, noodles, carrots, broccoli, etc. There's decent pizza at La Dicello (shite pasta, though), and a take-away place that can provide the miracle of boneless deep-fried chicken, seasoned with spring onions. Unlike Bulgaria, bread, butter and milk are readily available, though not of the high standard of my extremely agricultural homeland. Good cheese, beef and tea are the only things I miss from home, but still hardly worth pining over. I think I may have found the basic necessities for a decent fry-up, too.
Some of the Korean stuff is genuinely tasty, but if I'm eating it every single day, lunch and dinner, then I do run the risk of a prolapsed rectum before too long.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
12th of July; Footie and tequila
It's been an interesting few days. Last Monday, I got a lift to an English Town meeting with my co-teacher Jio's husband, 'Tom'. En route, he enthusiastically enquired about my willingness to join a soccer team. I replied in the affirmative. When asked 'What is your level?' I thought about saying 'shite', but truthfully informed him that while my technique and shooting are adequate, my general physical condition (i.e. strength and stamina) has been woeful for as long as I care to remember. He invited me to come along to a 5-a-side astroturf game that Friday.
I invested in a pair of boots and a ball, and went along to the session. I scored five goals in a 10-9 win, generally impressing my exclusively Korean team-mates. The pace was decent enough, but the Korean lads tend to be a bit lax on the defensive side of the game. I was able to find much more space, beat men and get my passes away than I would in Ireland, where the style of play is more 'physical'. I did run out of steam towards the end, so I went in goal, where I blocked a late point-blank effort with my genitalia. This left me in some discomfort, but I was amused by Tom's assertion that 'it hurt more for you - European penis very big'!
The following morning, I played a full-length, full-pitch game against one of the other Sangju teams. Still somewhat stiff from the previous evening, I didn't make much of an impact at first. I was playing on the left wing, hoping for licence to drift infield, but our left-back had a tendency to neglect his defensive duties, so I spent a lot of time and effort covering him. I did have a decent shot saved, though, on a rare foray infield. In the middle of the second half, with the score at 4-4, I drifted in behind the strikers, as I wasn't seeing much of the ball. Almost immediately, I got on the end of a lay-off from one of the strikers and drilled it into the bottom corner from just outside the box. We ended up winning 6-4, but I was a passenger for the last fifteen minutes, thanks to exhaustion and blisters on my foot. A good workout nonetheless, and I feel comfortable with the general standard and style of play, which makes a change from my usual timid displays on the UL astroturf/indoor pitches.
On Saturday night, I ended up getting plastered with Joe, Simon and Adam, in celebration of Mr. Leiner's birthday. The beer went down very well, and in enormous quantities, and it was all compounded by some tequila at the end of the night. I ill-advisedly cycled home, and as far as I recall, was all over the road. I lost my bike lock somewhere along the way, which I didn't realise until this morning. Still a bit run-down and tired today, especially after watching the World Cup final last night. One more class to go, though - but I have to do five lesson plans in the next 24 hours. Could be a bit of a disaster...
I invested in a pair of boots and a ball, and went along to the session. I scored five goals in a 10-9 win, generally impressing my exclusively Korean team-mates. The pace was decent enough, but the Korean lads tend to be a bit lax on the defensive side of the game. I was able to find much more space, beat men and get my passes away than I would in Ireland, where the style of play is more 'physical'. I did run out of steam towards the end, so I went in goal, where I blocked a late point-blank effort with my genitalia. This left me in some discomfort, but I was amused by Tom's assertion that 'it hurt more for you - European penis very big'!
The following morning, I played a full-length, full-pitch game against one of the other Sangju teams. Still somewhat stiff from the previous evening, I didn't make much of an impact at first. I was playing on the left wing, hoping for licence to drift infield, but our left-back had a tendency to neglect his defensive duties, so I spent a lot of time and effort covering him. I did have a decent shot saved, though, on a rare foray infield. In the middle of the second half, with the score at 4-4, I drifted in behind the strikers, as I wasn't seeing much of the ball. Almost immediately, I got on the end of a lay-off from one of the strikers and drilled it into the bottom corner from just outside the box. We ended up winning 6-4, but I was a passenger for the last fifteen minutes, thanks to exhaustion and blisters on my foot. A good workout nonetheless, and I feel comfortable with the general standard and style of play, which makes a change from my usual timid displays on the UL astroturf/indoor pitches.
On Saturday night, I ended up getting plastered with Joe, Simon and Adam, in celebration of Mr. Leiner's birthday. The beer went down very well, and in enormous quantities, and it was all compounded by some tequila at the end of the night. I ill-advisedly cycled home, and as far as I recall, was all over the road. I lost my bike lock somewhere along the way, which I didn't realise until this morning. Still a bit run-down and tired today, especially after watching the World Cup final last night. One more class to go, though - but I have to do five lesson plans in the next 24 hours. Could be a bit of a disaster...
Thursday, July 8, 2010
8th of July; English Camps are rubbish
The end of this World Cup will be bittersweet for me. Part of me will be sad at the conclusion of the world's greatest competition, while part of me will be relieved that I won't be compelled to stay up until ungodly hours of the night anymore. With a packed schedule over the next four weeks, I need to be more energetic than it's possible to be after a broken four-hour sleep. Also, my Championship Manager exploits have come to a head, it seems. Having guided Eastbourne Borough to a respectable 13th in the Premier League, I went on a foreign spending spree, in an attempt to take the club 'to the next level'. However, after about three painstaking close-season hours tinkering with the squad, and a successful tour of Turkey, my laptop decided to be a wanker, and froze. Three hours down the drain, and I don't really feel bothered about taking it all up again. Besides, after eight seasons, I think I've taken the club as far as it can go; with my guitar gathering dust, several songs unfinished, and my Korean linguistic skills still in the 'shamefully ignorant' stage, maybe it's for the best that I'm eschewing such an idle distraction. I could just load from the previous saved date, but no, I think that would be just on the cusp of the 'Get a life' realm.
English camps loom large on the horizon, and I would be looking forward to them - except that my two-week camp is making me do boring, rigid 'key expression' lesson plans, which will be pretty much the same as the remedial English they learn from elementary textbooks. The ethos in public schools is 'don't leave anyone behind', so the lessons tend to be excruciatingly boring for the kids who actually have a decent level of English, who go to hagwons and English camps. I generally have more behavioural problems with my gifted kids than I do from the low-level ones. Coming from public schools in rural Wexford, where intelligent, thoughtful students were forced to share classrooms with scores of inbred, knuckle-dragging morons, I have something of a problem with this mixed-level, go-slow policy. My (shamelessly elitist/pragmatic) attitude is; 'Encourage, challenge and stimulate the kids who actually want to learn'. Learning a foreign language is an incredibly difficult individual undertaking, and a child will only learn as much as he/she consciously puts into it. They won't just magically pick it up from sitting in a classroom listening to a foreign teacher. Some kids will just point-blank refuse to participate in the class, because they (a) have no interest, and/or (b) are simply too dumb. I don't generally waste too much time on these kids. If it was a private school, it'd be a different story, because the parents are paying the wages, and there's a real reason for the kids to be there... but these kids are in my classroom because there's nowhere else to put them. If I can keep the dum-dums from disrupting the lesson, and I'm actually teaching rather than babysitting, mission accomplished.
Back to the point, it seems like the English Camp classes will even be mixed from 4th to 6th grades, where the difference in levels in the same class will be ridiculous. It's a shame, because English Camps are a great opportunity for gifted kids to challenge themselves, develop and practice what they know in a creative, open setting - not to be hand-walked through a regimental series of mundane, facile activities.
Just finished teaching my 5th graders. We had a vocabulary game, with the class divided into four teams, and I'm glad to say everyone participated, had fun, and seemed to grasp the grammatical concept behind it all. I asked the kids to make up their own English team names, and among the predictable ones like 'The Tigers', 'The Smartest' and 'Manchester', the 'troublesome' boys chose that inspiring moniker; 'The Republic of Ireland'. And guess what? They won by a point!
P.S. I believe in Paul the Octopus.
English camps loom large on the horizon, and I would be looking forward to them - except that my two-week camp is making me do boring, rigid 'key expression' lesson plans, which will be pretty much the same as the remedial English they learn from elementary textbooks. The ethos in public schools is 'don't leave anyone behind', so the lessons tend to be excruciatingly boring for the kids who actually have a decent level of English, who go to hagwons and English camps. I generally have more behavioural problems with my gifted kids than I do from the low-level ones. Coming from public schools in rural Wexford, where intelligent, thoughtful students were forced to share classrooms with scores of inbred, knuckle-dragging morons, I have something of a problem with this mixed-level, go-slow policy. My (shamelessly elitist/pragmatic) attitude is; 'Encourage, challenge and stimulate the kids who actually want to learn'. Learning a foreign language is an incredibly difficult individual undertaking, and a child will only learn as much as he/she consciously puts into it. They won't just magically pick it up from sitting in a classroom listening to a foreign teacher. Some kids will just point-blank refuse to participate in the class, because they (a) have no interest, and/or (b) are simply too dumb. I don't generally waste too much time on these kids. If it was a private school, it'd be a different story, because the parents are paying the wages, and there's a real reason for the kids to be there... but these kids are in my classroom because there's nowhere else to put them. If I can keep the dum-dums from disrupting the lesson, and I'm actually teaching rather than babysitting, mission accomplished.
Back to the point, it seems like the English Camp classes will even be mixed from 4th to 6th grades, where the difference in levels in the same class will be ridiculous. It's a shame, because English Camps are a great opportunity for gifted kids to challenge themselves, develop and practice what they know in a creative, open setting - not to be hand-walked through a regimental series of mundane, facile activities.
Just finished teaching my 5th graders. We had a vocabulary game, with the class divided into four teams, and I'm glad to say everyone participated, had fun, and seemed to grasp the grammatical concept behind it all. I asked the kids to make up their own English team names, and among the predictable ones like 'The Tigers', 'The Smartest' and 'Manchester', the 'troublesome' boys chose that inspiring moniker; 'The Republic of Ireland'. And guess what? They won by a point!
P.S. I believe in Paul the Octopus.
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