Artwork and Pictures

Here’s something I haven’t done in a while: a picture entry!

Natalie relented and has allowed me to post various artistic endeavours. So here they are:

Done with pastel, I believe.

A combination of Korean traditional art with modern techniques.

Water colour!

Pencil. The detail in this is astounding.

She’s actually studying fashion design in university.

- Yesterday (Friday) night, I went bowling. Natalie came with me for a game, but she didn’t stick around afterwards. My highest score of the night was 137, which is pretty good for me. It was just an informal, have fun, affair. At the very end, we had all the lanes to ourselves, so I took some pics.

Only us! At first, Natalie thought they were students, and couldn’t believe they had graduated and were already employed. She thought they were young.

Once they saw my camera out, they wanted me to snap pics of them. He can speak a bit of English, so he helps me out at times.

Club Legend, represent!

Just another, horribly framed shot.

Ye-lin, age three, fooling around with an arcade machine without any coins. She was with us the entire night. We went to a pub afterwards, and didn’t get out until 2:30, but she was still wide awake.

Her mom and dad. They are very kind folks, as well as very positive. I can’t wait for my Korean to be better so I can have substantial conversations with them.

They’re a couple, so she wanted a “couple’s picture”; I obliged.

We had a fun time together, and they wanted me to stay with them even after we left the bar. I had no idea what time they went home (they probably went to a singing room), but I needed to split after 2:30, because I was teaching today.

- Yeah, my first class began at 2:30, but I woke up at 1:40.

I had to skip breakfast and lunch while I hurried around and straightened myself up, as well as my apartment.

I was supposed to take Caden, Dennis, Emma and Julia to a ballet after I taught my second class. We hurried to a cab and went to the Opera House. There was a huge line of people. We waited for forty minutes or so.

I got a feeling there weren’t enough seats left, because the crowd had no idea what was going on, and the staff was clearly feeling the same way. Eventually, we were told we could watch the ballet if we stood outside in the lobby and looked at the TV screens.

Julia and I looked at each other, and basically said “screw that!”. The purpose of the journey was to say “thank you” to the students’ parents by treating their kids. However standing up and watching a ballet performance in the lobby on a TV screen wasn’t going to be a treat.

My mind changed gears, and I decided to take matters into my own hands (like I do during every SNAFU). I had them walk to E-mart, where we ate some dinner. Julia became my defacto major domo, since she was the eldest (16), and we quickly formulated a plan.

I knew “A Christmas Carol" was playing on the IMAX screen at CGV. I booted up the internet on my phone to see what showing still had seats available. It appeared that 8:25 was going to be the time we would have to take. We slowly ate dinner (to kill time), and I had the students call their parents to get the “okay” for such a late showing. I knew Julia was good, since she and I have had many similar adventures together. Dennis and Caden were good, because their mom knows me, and they’ve been with me before. This was Emma’s first time with me, outside the classroom, so I wasn’t sure if she would get the go-ahead call, but she did.

Julia said we should walk to CGV from E-mart, so we did. That’s a fair bit of walking, but it was a good way to expend some of Caden’s energy.

We had to kill 90 minutes at CGV, so we walked around various stores.

The movie itself was an interesting take on familiar subject matter. Definitely don’t go into the movie expecting a light-hearted, humorous affair. The movie itself was pretty dark and twisted at times, and I was wondering if it would induce nightmares in my students. We couldn’t see the 3D version of course, but I think it would be a pretty wild ride. If you get the chance to see it in the 3D, shell out the extra bucks and do so on an IMAX screen.

After the movie, Julia took the subway home, and I walked the other three back to Wins. Emma’s home is just a few doors down from the academy, but Caden and Dennis had to bike back to their home.

Since then, I have received text messages from the boys and Julia informing me they have all arrived safely at their homes.

So that was my Saturday. Pretty jam-packed, I must say.

-One last pic… moi!

From inside my room. I’m wearing the height fashion, known as “English Teacher”.

November, Where Art Thou Goin’?

On the way home, Yun-jeong (one of my co-workers), commented that November was nearly finished, and she had wondered where the time went. I confessed I didn’t know where it went, other than somewhere in the murky nether regions known as the past.

November flew by pretty quick for me as well. I was counting on that happening. Having spent over two years in Korea, I’m kinda accustomed to weeks passing by in the blink of an eye.

- I finished my reports and tests last night at 2 AM. I was committed to finishing up every last evaluation last night, so I was pleased when I accomplished my mission. It was a lot of work, and I was working on an empty stomach, but I managed to complete it.

- Today’s classes were a hodge-podge of conflicting times and constantly alternating schedules. Yun-jeong and I did our best to put things right, and we survived the day.

The classes themselves weren’t all that bad. The students were in good moods, so that made the teaching all the easier. Natalie (my uni student) told me I looked tired (probably due to the fact I stayed up all night chugging away), but I told her I was feeling anything but tired.

Jennifer and Emma carried on with the exploits we had in the video I uploaded last week. Both kids usually have a serious demeanour, but I manage to put them in a carefree frame of mind despite the fact they had a test with me.

While we were playing a wrap-up exercise, Melanie stormed the room, demanding to join the activity. Just to aggravate her, I told her she couldn’t, but she jumped in anyway. The two of us adopted our familiar routine of belittling one another, which we continued to do until the class began.

Julia also came in tonight. I hadn’t seen her last week on account of tests at her school. She triumphantly told me about her batch of 100% scores on her school tests, which I thought was pretty good. Throughout the duration of the class we gave each other good-natured drubbings. Which is pretty much our standard method of communication nowadays.

There was a lull between some of my classes. Caden had come in to wait for Dennis (his older brother), and decided to ambush my open laptop. He wanted to play games on it, but I side-tracked him with videos of the Muppets on YouTube, which he thought were pretty funny. Then I let him play a game while his brother finished up.

- Not wanting to use what little food I have in my fridge for tonight’s dinner, I decided to bite the bullet and order some food. I haven’t ordered anything in such a long time, but I decided to get a large, cheese crust pizza, with all the toppings.

Why? Just because I can, dammit!

There were eight slices, and I ate six of them in one sitting. Am I pig? I think so.

- Natalie is, I have discovered, quite an accomplished artist. Her artwork blows my puny drawings out of the water. I told her to set up a Deviant Art profile, so she can showcase her paintings and drawings. Maybe I can convince her to show them off in here.

My Little Monthly Visitor

That being code for the monthly test schedule. Tomorrow being Wednesday, the tests are in full swing at Wins. I’m on top of things this month, and I have a majority of the completed ones already graded.

Of course, I still have to make quite a few, and then have the students do them in class…

So when I get home at 9:30 or so, I get started on making my tests for the next teaching day. Once that is completed, I start to correct and grade the tests from the day which the students have already completed.

If I have any time before 1:00, I try to write as many monthly student evaluation reports as possible. I tend to write a lot, so it takes me a while to actually get many done.

After 1:00, my brain is too frazzled to comprehend anything so I put aside my work and settle in for something different (i.e. Battlestar Galactica!).

- Today, Gordon’s (elementary student) grandmother gave me some kimchi (김치). This is my second such present from her, but I have never met her. The last time I got some was after I hosted a videogame party on my spare time. This time comes after I took him skating (on the weekend). That being the case, I put two and two together, and I assume it’s a thank-you.

Funny enough, last night I ate the last of Julia’s mother’s kimchi, and was completely out of it. Coincidence?

- Tonight, I got one of my students to have her speaking test with one of my Canadian pals. I thought that would be an interesting diversion. Dominique was fortunately online, although she was in the middle of feeding her baby. I had her ask Kelly two questions, and then Kelly asked her two (while I scored my student’s speaking).

Kelly wasn’t really sure about the entire process, since it was using Windows Live Messenger, my laptop is running Windows 7, and the mic is two little dots on the top of the screen. She wasn’t used to using a speaking program on a computer, so she wasn’t speaking into the mic at first. Afterwards, she got the hang of it, and she typed with Dominique for a bit after the conversation was over.

I wish I could do that with greater frequency because it demonstrated to the students their English is useful outside of the classroom and away from text books. While they enjoy holding discussions with me, I’m the same ol’ native English speaker. Speaking English to someone far from Korea drives home the point of learning English. The only snag is the time difference. Rarely are there people online at the same time I am teaching classes.

Dominique’s baby boy, Väinö (if you can read Korean, you can pronounce it like 바이너 [with a “v” sound rather than the “ㅂ” sound of course]), was the topic throughout the rest of the class. I showed my students pics of the baby and they thought he was so cute.

[The liked the felting crafts too, Dominique. Especially the snowmen. Open a Korean chapter of your little business]

- Finally, I need to write about something.

Not every single aspect of my life finds its way into this blog. Some things are too boring to be worth the energy of being typed out. Other things don’t necessarily fit the nature of the blog’s primary purpose, so I don’t write about them. Some things are more private in nature and I don’t let them air on the internet.

For two years, I pretty much put everything and anything into here. I shifted away from that type of entry-making when my audience slowly expanded. While I won’t censor myself, I will limit certain things from popping up in here. This is primarily due to that fact my students can easily find this site due to the connected nature of the various websites they like to frequent (my YouTube video channel for starters).

Friends and family who read this blog all the time assume I put everything that happens to me into it. That means if there’s an aspect that seems to be missing from my blog, then that aspect is missing from my life as well.

Lately, I’ve been keeping my social life under wraps. The majority of the people who stumble across this thing aren’t interested in reading about my social life. They want information on Korea, so I tend to write more about my teaching experiences with my students rather than late Saturday nights with friends.

This has lead people to erroneously believe I don’t do much outside of teaching English. While it’s true I don’t have enough free time to be a permanent fixture on the social scene, I do actually get out [I just blew a few minds with that proclamation].

While I’m narcissistic enough to keep a journal website, crowing over ever single thing that occurs in my life is beyond even me. This isn’t meant to be a gossip rag about yours truly. No matter how nosey you are about my social/romantic life, rarely will I indulge you.

So say we all!

S-s-s-s-kating

I took four students skating this afternoon. I had been itching to use my new set of blades (the ones I purchased while I was in Ottawa). Yesterday, I announced the concrete plan (meet at Wins at 1:30, and bring 3000 원). Grant was the first student to meet me at the academy. Gordon came a bit later.

The three of us wondered where everyone else was. I knew Ha-eun was coming, since I sent her a text message last night. Her younger sister, Strawberry had signed her name on the sheet I had prepared, so I knew she would be coming too. Caden had called his mother while in my class to see if he could come, and she had said “yes”. If Caden showed up, I assumed his older brother Dennis would arrive as well. Yet, both boys were no where to be seen. I had Gordon call Caden, but he didn’t pick up. Then we tried Dennis’ number, and he told us they weren’t coming.

We were running a bit late, so I wanted to know if Ha-eun and Strawberry were going to show up, so I gave Ha-eun a call. She and her sister were on their way via bicycle.

Eventually, the five of us caught a cab, and went to the baseball stadium (which is the location of the ice rink). We got there around 1:40, and there wasn’t a big crowd, so we were excited.

The Daegu Friendship Club (on Facebook) has language exchange get-togethers, and this week’s was going to be a skating trip. I knew there was going to be a sizable group of people showing up at 2:30, so I was hoping to get some unfettered skating in before then.

My new skates were amazing. My feet had become accustomed to the big, clunky, plastic skates you rent at the rinks. They don’t get sharpened very often, so it’s sometimes difficult to do anything other than skate in a forward motion. My new skates were so light, sharp, and flexible I was able to do so much more with them. I haven’t been able to skate like that for ages (before Korea, I was in university which didn’t give me a lot of time to skate. When I had the chance, I only had my father’s old CCM skates and pond ice).

The students’ skating was showing signs of improvement. I was really surprised with Strawberry’s performance. She remembered how to skate backwards, and her skating consisted more of a gliding motion than a stepping motion. She was able to skate pretty fast considering her diminutive stature and the equipment she had strapped onto her feet.

Gordon was able to keep up with me for the majority of the day. He hadn’t gone skating for such a long time, but he did well. Grant did too. Last time, he was hugging pretty close to the walls, but this time he was venturing out to the middle. Ha-eun has managed to make her skating more natural, and she only lost her balance when she tried to do a spinning manoeuvre (after I showed off).

The girls were clinging onto my camera back (slung across my torso), and I spent quite a bit of time lugging them around the ice. That was a pretty good work-out. Skating fast, with that much deadweight behind me really got the good ol’ cardiovascular system going. 

We finally left at 4:20, because it was Gordon’s aunt’s birthday. He had skated for nearly three hours, and the kids’ feet were feeling it. My skates are so good, I didn’t even have a single tender spot on my foot, even after three hours of hard skating. I always get a slightly raw spot on the inside of my foot, if not a blister.

Everyone was pretty tuckered out in the cab ride back. Strawberry fell asleep and had to be awakened. My legs were throbbing a bit out of exhaustion, but it felt good after weeks of inactivity (pacing a classroom isn’t exactly exercise). Julia sent me a message saying she would pop into my place once her classes were finished, but I left the rink too late, and by the time I was in the cab, she was on the bus. Once I got home, I watched a few more episodes of BSG and cooked up some grub.

Pretty soon, Ju-ran will call me to go bowling. I need to get 12 games in this month (official club meetings don’t count) to qualify for some event in December. I’ve been resting a little so I can save what energy I have left for bowling. And whatever alcoholic escapades occur thereafter (if any).

Improv News Interview

Here is a video I shot today in one of my classes (make sure you have annotations turned on, so you can read my little notes):



The original interview ran at fifteen minutes in length. YouTube only accepts videos of ten minutes, or shorter, so I had to trim out quite a bit. Some replies were cut in half, and some questions were omitted altogether. On my computer, I made it in black and white, to see if I could get a sharper picture on Youtube.

It took me two hours to edit it, and then another 90 minutes to set it all up on YouTube. So much work for a ten minute vid!

The student in the back is Emma. Emma is one of my newer students. Her parents operate a flower shop, a few buildings down, so I run into her mother at times. She’s 12 years old (outside Korea).
Jennifer is the student sitting next to me. She’s 10 years old or so. For long-time readers of the blog, she should be recognizable since she’s been with me for over a year.

I told them to pretend they were news reporters. They had to write down three questions for each person. They weren’t allowed to see the questions beforehand, so they weren’t prepared for them. They had to say whatever popped into their heads, because the camera was rolling! I told them, the funnier the questions, the better.

What? Me? Cold? Naw!

I’m Canadian! This ain’t cold!

Okay, I’ll come clean. I am feeling the bitter chill outside, even though it’s not really dipping below 0. I’m not exactly bundling up when venturing outdoors, since I only have to walk to my academy, so when I step outside, it seems pretty chilly.

I find it funny that it was upwards of 20 degrees a week ago, and now it’s at the freezing mark. It happened pretty suddenly.

- Last night I went bowling for the first time in nearly two months. I hadn’t seen the club in such a long time, it was great to meet up with them. I sauntered in, and saddled up next to them. They had been playing a quick game, so their attention was on the alley. I broke my silence with a “hi”, which caused them to turn around.

Then I was swarmed by people asking me for gifts from Canada. The had their hands out like beggars, so I called them “거지”.

I thought my bowling would be horrible, since I didn’t get any practise in. My first game was 87, my second was 109, and my final was 99. Not my best scores, but much better than what I thought I would get (I was expecting scores in the 60’s and 70’s).

There were three new faces last night too. One of the new guys can speak a little English, so he was giving me some tips in my native tongue (we usually converse in Korean, which only gets me so far).

- As I walked home last night, I bumped into Bu-geon (Banana) and Dae-gyu (Wade), two of my former students. They were going home after studying at a math academy. They saw me and then wanted to talk and see how I was. I hadn’t seen Dae-gyu in such a long time, so I was surprised by how much he had grown.

- I should probably heat up the water so I can take a shower at some point in the future.

Probably.

If You're Wondering

If you're in Korea, and YouTube has slowed to a crawl, rest assured there's nothing wrong with your system. I can make that assertion because it has happened to me too, as well as other people in Korea (off and on). No explanation as of yet, but it could be anything (technical, financial, political).

I was gonna watch some flicks I discovered, but then the entire site became unusable. How convenient.

- Today has to be the first time this year, that the city of Daegu is colder than the city of Ottawa. Right now, it is three degrees here, whereas it's six degrees in Ottawa. Dong-gu woke me up at 3:00 AM last night to inform me Seoul had snow. That was an important piece of information. Very.

Everyone was bundled up for the weather today, when I was strolling about. Well, mostly everyone. There were still girls trying to show off their lower bodies with miniskirts and short shorts. Puffy winter jackets with minskirts. Chic?

I'm sporting a pair of black spandex thermal clothes (long underwear?). They are pretty great, and I didn't feel  any part of the wind. They look pretty awesome too. If they weren't obscured by another layer of clothes, I'd totally look like a superhero or ninja. Just one without any sort of muscle-definition whatsoever. Or bulk.

- I ate some 떡볶이 with 오뎅 and 만두 for supper. Because I am a pig, I ate the entire offering by myself. I chowed down on it while finishing up the miniseries for Battlestar Galactica. My stomach is currently relishing ever ounce of food I crammed into it.