philippines: LBJ edition

lara beth jones finally uploaded photos from our philippines trip to facebook. just posting them on here to share with frenz and family. she has some good shots of siquijour (of which i have no photos), the cockfighting pit (of which i have no photos), and better tarsir shots. so thank you, LBJ, for finally getting your shit together.

(dave raum picture)

clown tryke.

cockfighting pit

siquijour - the voodoo island. only voodoo type thing are the nawlins' style crypts.

no full grown baby deer but some big ass bats.

marley and me. like the movie. the one with the dog.

looking crazy.

6-a-1, 'alf dozen of an udder

it's a week into march which means i now have over six months under my 'i-am-living-in-korea' belt. which i can hardly believe. when i think back on what i've done it certainly seems like it would fill a 6-month-sized container, yet time, an infamously unreliable unit, feels to have gone by a maddening speeds. i think this six month reflection type post is due as some sort of obligation to the people back home to validate my time spent over here, but i'm having a really hard time wrapping everything up into some kind of 'lessons learned' type summary. the fact is that my thoughts aren't really bending backward into time, they're marching forward. but i'll give it the ole college what for!

i guess the normal thing to do is comment on how much i've changed as a person. the problem with this is i'm not sure i have. my personality, which i assumed would be a crutch coming into this thing, is surprisingly well suited to adjusting to a new environment. on the job, i seem to project a kind, open personality that allows me to be popular with both faculty and students. i give all credit to my parents as i'm simply doing my best to be polite and respectful, and i guess that just comes off as having a good personality. i'm not the most outgoing person, but honestly, you don't really have to be. you're thrust into a situation where people are naturally trying to find you. and when 99% of the people are asian, the 1% is pretty easy to spot. foreigners naturally accept other foreigners, and koreans find you an interesting novelty. its an easy social system even for someone as awkward as i am. it doesn't hurt to have a strong stomach for alcohol, too - it ingratiates you to both foreigner and korean alike. alternatively, i think its more important to be comfortable in your own skin. being able to spend time with yourself being crammed into tiny living quarters. allowing yourself the freedom of just wandering about and diving into any old place and grabbing a drink by yourself. without this i'd think you would need a constant network of support or you'd simply fall off the deep end. which begs the question, am i homesick? well, i don't want to disappoint or devalue any family and friends back home, but not really! maybe its another personality trait, but i don't feel the usual pangs of feeling left behind, which i credit as being the real pain of homesickness. maybe if starr continues to steal all my friends this will be more of an issue...it's not that i don't miss people (or places for that matter), i just have a pretty simple belief that the bonds most missed are also the strongest. except for maybe grammars! which i'm not allowed to go to anyways via friendship restrictions. shucks!

i don't even really want to talk about the job. i sort of did already in a previous post and i don't have much more to add to it. i will add a little bureaucratic addendum though that's newsworthy. gone are my last three co-teachers - goodbye miss yun! goodbye ji-won! goodbye minjin! - and in their place are three entirely new ones. like relationships can be so easily switched out like that, korea...is there nothing to be said about building rapport? is there no championing voice for classroom chemistry? one is a teacher who previously taught 6th grade homeroom at kwancheon, so i know her at least. another is a transfer from another school where she also taught homeroom, and the last is a contract teacher whose previous experience was reading grammar from an SAT prep book for high school boys (the description sounds boring enough, can't imagine what the actual class was like). which is to say, none of them have experience teaching elementary level english. so at 6 months in korea i find myself having a level of seniority among my peers that i never imagined possible, being looked to for advice, having to take on a disciplinary role that i took for granted not having to do before. having just done about 7 classes, i can tell there is going to be what i'll refer to as a 'growing period' where we figure out just what the hell is going on in the classroom. currently its a little bit too much like anarchy to really last. still, all three new co-teachers are incredibly friendly, as seems to be the norm here, and their english is in good working order so im confident we can work it out.

i'm actually pretty excited to get back into the school year. deskwarming for the past 2 months did little more than kill my savings. i could feel myself, and others around me, dipping into what i could only describe as a spiritual malaise. we all knew we were dissatisfied but at what? each other? korea? i think it was just the ridiculous amount of free time we had. it came too easy. with so little in the way of cost. we were, in fact, getting paid for nothing. but it didn't feel good. the classroom, with all the hellish little kids screaming their heads off and refusing to pay attention, feels good. i can't explain it but it's true. i'm sure in a week i'll be praying and begging for more deskwarming, but for now im optimistic about the new school year.

which brings me back to my original sentiment - that my thoughts are more inclined toward the future these days rather than the past. and the reasons pretty simple: if the first 6 months seemed to pass by so quickly, then it seems logical that the next 6 months might do just the same. which leaves me with the big question of "what next?" what next, my dear readership? options are boundless. (grad school for web design? montreal for french pastry school? west coast employment? working visas in australasia? renew my contract in korea? cincinnati...) how does one transition from severe change to something else that isn't equally so? how do you simply "get on" with you life having challenged its borders? these are just some of the sub-set of questions i'm sorting through. and who knows, maybe in 6 months the answers will seem obvious. maybe i'll finally start feeling those pangs of "missing out." maybe i'll be ready for a little bit of normalcy. the answer then will be easy. but right now, 6 months isn't looking easy. its looking like that abyss that looks back at you. and it has those dark empty eyes that some korean girls have. like there's either nothing behind them or they just go on forever. either way its terrifying and i have a hard time looking at them...

videos of koreans dancing

neither are very good. the first is of two "narrator models" dancing in front of an adidas store. they tell a story with their dance! and sell shoes. the second is a (cellphone) video of a korean club. if you look carefully you might be able to make out the steps of the much practiced "daegu dance." (1)

(1*) how to learn the daegu dance:

1. raise arms in the air, elbows bent at a 90 degree angle to the sides. curl you hands into a fist and leave them slightly limp. you should look like you're about to lift some kind of wimpy childs weight. or maybe holding a couple of shopping bags up around your head for some reason.

2. now its just a simple 2 step, hiking in motion type maneuver with your feet. but make sure to put some hip and shoulder action in there. the strong the shoulder pumping the better.

3. meanwhile, your limp, imaginary-shopping-bag-holding hands should be moving from side to side with your head. now it might resemble someone who is flossing incredibly hard so that each tug of the floss jerks their head with it. if you're the type to lose all abandon, now is the time to do so.

4. now find 30 of your closest friends, or just anyone, and stand in rows, everyone doing the same dance like robots in a chorus line. congratulations! you're doing the daegu dance.

philippines

i made a philippines post, but i guess because i started writing it before the last 3 posts, it positioned it down the page underneath them. so, in case you missed it, and are too lazy to scroll down, here's a link: the adventures of jerjer and loklok

and this is my boomstick

you can't own firearms in south korea (unless your part of the military or law enforcement), but if you have an itchy trigger finger you can always go to the shooting range. which is what i did this weekend with another epik teacher. the daegu shooting range (대구 사격장 - located near chilgok in northwest daegu) is a pretty large complex with both indoor and outdoor ranges. i imagine it was a large-scale, 'new deal,' public works type project because its fairly new and seems way too nice for the type of traffic it was getting on a saturday afternoon.

i'm not sure what the full gamut of their services are - we only explored a small section of their grounds but i could tell we were only seeing a fraction of it - but there are three main categories: clay pigeon shooting, pistol target practice, and airsoft pellet guns. the pigeon shooting is the most expensive (22,000W), with the pistol shooting slightly less so (15,000W), and the airsoft being practically free (3000W). in each of these categories you have different options, such as how many meters you want to shoot at, straight on pigeon shooting or from the side, multiple targets, etc.

we started off doing the clay pigeon shooting with a japanese made 12-gauge. it being my first time i wasn't exactly annie oakley (maybe i should say wild bill) but i hit the second one and about half of them after that. still, my shooting partner beat me. probably because he was from texas.

after the 12-gauge, we downsized to pistols at the target range. when the guy was explaining to us the different caliber's he pointed to the .22's and said, "cop" and then to the 3 different 9mm's and explained, "fbi and cia!" when he got to the .357 i wondered aloud, "dirty harry?" but i guess he never saw that one. we went with the fbi option, a glock 9mm. i just assumed i would be a natural when it came to shooting off a pistol. i mean, it's so easy on call of duty, right? so it came as a bit of a surprise when i didn't take to it like fish to water. i think the hardest part to get used to was how deep you had to squeeze the trigger. the first time i shot it, i felt like i was squeezing, and then squeezing some more and then i wondered did i still have the safety on? but then i squeezed past what i assumed was the end of the give and finally it went off, like a fish catching a line. i was way off. in the white. after some adjustment i think i got used to it but there were no bullseyes on my target. not even close. again, my shooting buddy got the best of me.

finally, we tried the airsoft guns. the best part about these was the chance to use a scope. it made me appreciate the steady nerves snipers must have had pre-rifle stands. compared to the pistols, the triggers on the airguns were a joke. i sometimes accidentally shot off a round as i was putting the gun up to my shoulder (yeah i know, don,t keep your finger on the trigger). i think we were shooting at 10 meters but directly across the hall was a 50 meter range. i'm guessing that wasn't for airsoft guns.

hank "deadeye" featherston iv

kyle "young guns" raum

seong-tae "crackshot" kim

whose boat is this, whose it is it?

i don't know why i'm just now getting around to this, but i thought it might be interesting to show exactly the types of things these kids are learning in the english classroom. as i may have mentioned in previous posts, the curriculum is heavily standardized and, for the most part, follows a pre-made lesson plan. therefore, my primary role in the program is not to create what goes on in the lesson, but simply to enact it out with the aid of a cd-rom program. i do, however, provide games and activities that correspond to whatever phrase or key sentence we're learning. so in all, my basic function is that of a parrot and a master of games. no wonder we're being phased out and replaced by robots.

the disconcerting reality about korean english education is that they're not so much learning how to use language as they are learning useful phrases that can be sloppily inserted into conversation. kind of like a plug-and-chug math problem, where they might use a certain equation because what they're hearing fits the right formula. it's useful, but conversation rarely plays out like that. what makes it even worse are the laughable videos and songs they use to learn from. the language is often awkwardly phrased or just plain wrong, and when it is right the intonation is puzzling at best. i was looking at some of the section headers for the new books we're getting this coming semester and one is titled "how about a game of baseball?" who says that? how about a spot of tea, govenah? right-o! on with the post then!

enough of my ranting. have a peep for yourself and make your own judgments. here's a "look and listen" video(1) with an accompanying song from one of the 5th grade sections called "whose boat is this?" (because that's something you're going to be asking people on an everyday basis, right?)

look and listen:


let's sing:


bonus let's sing (just because it's a favorite at almost every communal meal):


and then there's this guy (the reactions we get when we play these videos are hilarious by the way, the only problem is i have to watch them also):


*(1) - each lesson is divided into sections called "look and listen" where they watch a video and answer questions based on what was said, "listen and repeat" which is just what it sounds like, "let's read" (obvious), "let's write" (obvious), "let's sing" (obvious), "let's role-play", "let's review", and "let's play" which is what i'm largely responsible for.

ps. i'll be adding a philippines post shortly, i just wanted to wait and see if i could grab some more photos off of my friends first as i didnt actually take that many myself.

i'm a little embarrassed

stolen from someone else's facebook post: