An update

Well, things are still going well in South Korea. The country's growing on me I guess. I like the fact that I can walk around anytime and feel safe, but I'm not a fan of the garbage everywhere. It has it's finer points and weaker points, just like any other society. I'm still working at Doryang school, there are 6 blocks in which to teach. They begin at 3:40, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40, 7:40 and 8:40. I only teach 4 classes so far and observe the other two. It works out pretty well actually. I observe during the 5:40 and 8:40 blocks so my teachings spread out. I teach three little boys first block. They are all rowdy little boys, but one in particular, Harry, is the one I call the evil little child. He just has it in his eyes, you can see the evil lurking there! I'm not even exaggerating. He is constantly running around class, ignoring me and generally distracting the other boys. He's a smart boy, but he must have ADHD or something, he's wild.

My 4:40 block is my favorite. I teach one little girl named Selina (trust me, not all classes are this small, classes are normally 6-12 students, I've lucked out). She is about 9 years old Korean age, which means 7 years old Canadian. She's a cutie but doesn't speak much english at all. We're going through her alphabet sounds. I'm breaking the rules sort of. Generally we only teach the alphabet names and then the kids memorize words. They are not taught how to sound out words at all. It's stupid I think. Since it's just me and Selina though, I'm trying to get her to learn the sounds as well. It's going good so far, she's got A through P down pat. She can sound out simple words like fun. We're working on Q-S right now. I'm not looking forward to teaching her V though. I've started introducing it a little bit since it's in some of the words she's been learning, but it's hard. There is no V sound in the Korean language. It also sounds a lot like B, P and T to her. Like I said, we're working on it, it'll take time, but I like doing it. I can actually see when she gets something. It's a nice break after dealing with boys running around the room screaming.We intermix our lessons on alphabet sounds with easy concepts like big/little and colours. Big and little is really easy with me in the room. I'm bigger than almost everything. It's also helpful to know that when dealing with capitol letters and lowercase. We just call them big and little. Yesterday we spent most of class looking out the window at the vehicles passing by and saying, "blue truck," "white car," "grey and chocum (little) white van." We also learned the word for tree, sky, sun, moon (comes out when sun says bye-bye), road and street light. You use what you can when teaching! Trees are green chocum brown, the sky is blue but yesterday it was blue chocum white (clouds). Now, we'll just see if she remembers anything today!

My friend Jenn came up this weekend from the city she lives in Masan. Jenn and I knew eachother from University in Abbotsford. It was nice to see a familiar face. She came on Saturday but then we had to head straight to my school for a speech contest. I was the judge. Speech contests are not so much fun. I had to sit there for 2 hours listening to 80 kids tell short stories. Some were really good, some really sucked, all were really boring. Poor Jenn had to sit through it as well. At least I knew some of the kids. After that we went out for dinner at a traditional Korean restaurant. They're really good, you are brought raw meat which you cook yourself in this firepit in the middle of the table. You are also brought out salad, a soup, vegetables and other goodies. It's really filling and reletively cheap. We then went out to one of the western clubs in town. It was a beach party themed night so we wore our summer dresses, and froze our asses off in the process. It still gets really cold here at night. The beach party was fun once inside, but getting there was interesting. It was a good weekend, Jenn went home Sunday evening and I'll be going to visit her next month.

Now, some of you may know this, but most won't. I had started Taekwondo a few weeks ago and was really liking it. It was a good way to get me out of bed in the morning and I was actually feeling productive. Then I went and blew out my knee. I was jumping to kick the bag with my right leg and was supposed to land on my left leg. I did land on it, but totally at the wrong angle. There was a pop, a lot of pain, and I was down. I walked around on it for about a week, staying off of it as much as possible, icing it and keeping it elevated. It had begun to feel better, but as of this last weekend I had lost the ability to straighten it or bend it fully without pain. Not good. So, off to the doctor's I went. An x-ray showed no damage, which means soft tissue damage (ligaments or cartilidge). To determine exactly what's wrong I'd have to get an MRI done, which is expensive. The doctor suggested an alternative for the time being. I now go to physical therapy monday to friday for 3 weeks. I'm on medicine (penecillin and anti-inflammatories) and I have some ointment stuff.....(I don't know what it does, I just do what the doctor says). Physical theraphy was not at all what I expected. When I picture physical therapy (now I never went in Canada, but I'm assuming) I picuture doing little exercises for my knee. Not in Korea. Here it's like going to the spa for my knee. I pretty much lay on my back and nap for an hour. It's great. First a really hot pad is placed on my knee, I sleep for about half an hour while my knee gets really hot. Then that's removed and these four suction cups are placed on my knee. They vibrate and move, send electicity through my knee and pretty much give it a massage. That lasts for about 20 minutes. Then I get an ultrasound done on my knee, then I go home! It's marvelous, very relaxing and makes my knee feel awesome. Hopefully it'll work.

Today as I was getting ready for physical therapy I kept hearing what sounded like someone practicing drums outside. I wasn't too interested in it, because it is always really loud here and I wouldn't be half surprised if someone was just practicing their drums. It kept getting louder though, and quieter and sounded like it was moving. I decided to grab my camera as I headed out the door for therapy and am glad I did. I found an impromptu parade going on. A group of people, obviously all together in a band, had stopped their van on my street and were putting on a performance dressed in all their traitional gear. I ran across the road to take a picture and was waved up by the director to come closer. I stood at the top of some stairs while they played and marched around. Then they stopped, all turned to face me and played another song. There were only about 3 of us watching. I took some pictures and then the director came up to me and asked in really good english where I was from. I told him, he got really happy and told everyone. They all cheered and started to play another song. The director then took my hand and ran me through them as they were playing. I was clapping my hands and dancing in the middle of them with him. It was awesome. Everyone in the band was dressed in really bright colours. There were two directors and one guy dressed up as a soldier holding a gun in the air. I'm pretty sure it was fake, but you never really know here. After this we all bowed to eachother and they started to pile into their van, off to their next roadside gig. The director ran back to me, "Canadian, Canadian!!" and gave me his business card. I'm not quite sure what he expected me to do with it, but I thanked him anyways and he went on his way. Until this point I hadn't really seen much of Korean culture, I was starting to believe that the only actual Korean culture out there was rude people pushing me in stores and people staring at me. I really need to get to a temple or something.

Anyways, that's my update. I'm still enjoying it here, the friends I've made are really nice. I'm adjusting to living amongst the Koreans, I'll never fully undersatnd them, but I am tolerating. Until next time, everyone take care!