ELC DAY

So this is a video and some pictures for a more visual record of our ELC Day on Thursday Night...Our kids are so cute!

원주좋아하요 - I love it here

It's official. I love it here. 

Our school is phenomenal...I couldn't have hoped for a better set-up in Korea...(except maybe sometimes being closer to Seoul would be nice) and I am definitely in love with most of my kids. Even though the are sometimes rude...always ignorant and mocking of foreigners, I have come to love them. They are really cute. 

We had our ELC day today (that's the name of our school) and I have to say I haven't felt that loved in a long time. The kids were so cute...and they all love us....even the wienerlike ones like us deep down. Kind of reminds me of working with teenagers. I always think they are at best, indifferent to me, until bam, you leave, or something happens and then you see you actually did mean something to them. It always surprises me. But anyway, picture like 500 cute kids holding your hand and giving you hugs, saying hi and wanting pictures and waving and giving you flowers...it was like a love fest. 

I guess I should explain a bit more...

It was our "impress the parents with all the english they've learned so they'll keep forking out the cash" event. I have a thousand pictures from it that I'll put up later. I took a lot on Amy's camera with a nice bright zoom, and lots on mine with a wider perspective, so we have got the event covered. If they ever want posters or anything.....done. 

Not that the event itself was that phenomenal...I mean, how good could 3 hours...yes 3 hours....of halting English really be? Especially when the audience wouldn't have understood good english in the first place, never mind Konglish....but anyway...it was long, it was good, I'll show you pictures later, I'm really starting to enjoy it here and to all a good night. 

More Orts (morsels)

No disrespect to my country, or to my family, but I have converted to the Korean way

......of making grilled cheese sandwiches. It's so much better. You have a block of butter, and you don't have to scrape off the rock hard butter and try and force it onto the unwilling, donor slice - ripping gaping holes in the bread. You simple open the top of the block, wipe it around the hot frying pan and then fire the bread/cheese onto the pan. Ends up the same I promise. Faster and Easier. I don't know if they make grilled cheese sandwiches here per se, but they have what basically amounts to a glorified grilled cheese restuarant chain (Isac Toast....their motto? "the happiness together" catchy, no?) So good and so cheap. For $1  (85 cents at the current exchange) for can get egg "toast-uh"  (think egg mcmuffin crossed with grilled cheese) or if you're feeling rich, you can spend $2.50 on the deluxe beef patty/sproats etc egg toast. Hmmmm.

We have voted, and the english word that we hear most here is "crazy". I use it at least 50 times a day. All the kids know that word and love it....if you say it, it sends them into fits of delirium....I think because the Korean equivalent is stronger, they think they're saying a bad word....and the teachers don't seem to care (cause it's not a bad word) so they go to town. 

Don't know if you caught my pouting facebook status, but they added another hour to my workday which sucks. They told us on Friday, surprise, you have a new class starting Monday...surprise, it's adults, surprise it's the bosses son and all his friends (no pressure!). We were assured it would only last two months until March (you figure out the math on that one). 

Actually the class is fine, it's like 10 some-odd 18/19yr old boys who just need conversation practice. So we think of topics to talk about and talk. Not hard. They're quite enjoyable actually. But the surprise factor was lame, and no one wants to do more work for the same money do they? (especially when that same money is like 30% less in CDN than it was in the summer) 

What else? I went on my first Korean date yesterday. There's a coffee shop that I went to with friends and a cute girl works there.  I go there to study Korean with friends sometimes, and now I go to study one Korean. JK. Anyway, she helps me with Korean and I help her with English, and yesterday we went out for the first time outside of the cafe. Saw the movie "Australia"... Her name is 예나 (Yaena) and she's really sweet. But it's really not much of a story at this point and she's going to the Phillipines for two months next week so yea. 

If you haven't picked it up subliminally, I like here now - my school and bosses are excellent, which is a common sore spot for foreign teachers - between a few friends here and some more in Seoul (from Prov and from Church), I'm not feeling as isolated as I was. We go to Seoul pretty much every weekend, and it's good. I could probably go every weekend for the rest of the year and not see everything there is to see. The kids don't bug me anymore really, and I like most of them. Studying, or watching the Canucks, and the gym keeps most of my mornings occupied. I haven't ventured out with my camera for a while....since it started being really cold my motivation has been sapped severely - though my lens wishlist continues to grow and there's an exciting new camera offering from Olympus in January. I will accept donations at my Canadian address :) 

That's all for now....

~ Matt 

High1 Part II

So, after our ridiculously late arrival we stumbled out of bed the next day at 1pm and made our way to a ski shop (after much arm-waving and grunting at the hotel receptionist). They were uber excited to see us, and really seemed to enjoy having us. Apparently our elementary Korean sent them into waves of ecstasy. Anyway, the stuff was ridiulously cheap.....I rented skis, pants, googles (for two days), and BOUGHT gloves and a toque for 45,000w ($38). That and they gave us coffee and oranges and shuttled us back and forth to the mountain whenver we wanted. New favorite store right there. 

The ski resort was crowded and very new, and we were very much the only foreigners. You'd even be noticed under your winter clothes, toques and googles....you can catch their double take when they see the foreign eyes staring back from behind the goggles. I was trying blade skiis (the short ones) and they were a lot of fun - after the first two runs that is, when I had got the falling out of my system. 

After a couple runs it was time for a visit to "top of the top" restaurant. Which, you guessed it, was at the top of the top. It was a swanky place, all glass and revolving as you can see in the photo (just look closely, it will spin...really) Check out the heart eh? Only in Korea. I may have mentioned before their obsession with cuteness.  I posted a photo of the cutesy heart couple photo-op from my trip to Sokcho...but this has that one beat. Only in Korea. 

Anyhoo....in the vicinity of this restuarant, three humourous happenings happened. 

 

Humourous Happening #1 

Moments after taking these pictures, I went inside to join Phil and Andrew in the resturaunt...unbeknownst to me, unlike intelligent designers of most ski resorts, this one was designed by morons. The floor was marble, and the only safe place to walk with icy ski/snowboard boots would have been on the provided thin carpet....I partially grasped this concept as 1 1/2 of my feet made it to the red carpet...but the remaining 25% sent me crashing to the floor of the lobby into a pile of snowboards that fell like gargantuan dominoes. Needless to say, if being a foreigner doesn't get them to stare (it does) spectacular wipeouts in the lobby of the swanky restaurant will definitely do it for you. I slunk into the elevator in shame. My hip is now purple. 

Humourous Happening #2 At the same time as I was wiping out, Phil and Andrew were upstairs ordering beer. I think it was the only sub $50 menu item. They were told there was a rule against drinking and skiing....so Andrew told him we were professionals....and it worked (?!?!) The manager agreed to one beer. I think the other people found out too (either that or they were present for the show downstairs) cause they all kept muttering and staring....probably trying to recognize us from the skiing magazines.  

Humourous Happening #3 This one is my personal favorite. #1 wasn't funny (ouch) and I wasn't there for #2...so yea. Getting off the lift, the elastic of my jacket caught on Phil's pants. I skied merrily in one direction, and Phil the other. We unwittingly clotheslined a Korean girl who couldn't figure out for the life of her what was going on. Admittedly, getting engulfed by a elastic-induced foreigner sandwhich was not likely to jump to the forefront of anyones mind.  Though potentially awkward, I can highly recommend this method to those wanting to get close to a girl but just not knowing how. She was kinda cute too. 

I have done it up in diagram form for those of you who are visual people. 

 

Hah-ee-won (High1) Part 1

Friday Night about 10pm I discovered a couple of my friends (Phil [from Chesterfield, England], and Andrew [from Victoria]...they both work with Kyle) were going to go skiing for the weekend. After much humming and hawing (Insider access Matt's Brain....skiing is fun...I don't have winter clothes...we have friends coming to visit from Seoul...they're mostly here to see Amy....I should do this for the sake of branching out and forming relationships... I don't know either of the guys uber well, they're much more into partying and drinking than I am, maybe awkward, do they even want me to go??...I haven't skied since I was 15....they're probably going to leave me in the dust.....poor Kyle with four girls...you can't live your life to please everyone else....) ...I went. 

We didn't leave Wonju until 3am which those of you who know me real well will know I was real thrilled about. Got to a motel at about 5am and went to sleep. On the way I learned that High1 was supposedly Korea's best ski resort....better than Pyongchang (the runner up to Vancouver for host of the 2010 games) Considering that the mountains here top out at about 2,000m I was skeptical at best. [Motels here are uber cheap.....you can regularly get rooms (albiet of questionable comfort/cleanliness) 

for $30/night. One phenomenon of Korean society which I don't have time to explain in depth is that many young people go to these cheap "love motels" to get away from, um, watchful eyes. So cheap motels are abundant...if a little sleazy. ]

Anyways, I will summarize and write part two (some funny stories) tommorow. It was opening weekend, so the snow was nothing to write home about, half the runs weren't open, and  it was very busy (our second day in 2.5hours on the hill we got two runs in - literally faster to walk up the mountain...which we did) The hill was no better than Mt. Washington in terms of the hill itself. In facilities (a massive Casino, amazing luxury hotel, etc etc.) it was way better. I tried blade skies (the short skis) and it was fun. My skiing skill returned, and though the others were much faster I did fine.  There's something refreshing about the clean crisp mountain air, the bright snow....I love it. Random tidbit...the trees aren't evergreens...so it looked weird with all the dead sticks for trees.