Geumsunsa: Part I

I wanted to leave with lots of extra time to get lost on my way to Geumsunsa temple. All my adventures, except one, have been on train or on foot. I trust the train, in the immortal words of Etienne, my Katimavik project leader, "If you get lost on the metro I will judge you" this was in regards to my biggest apprehension to working at Eco-Quartier was getting there using the metro and the bus -the metro is easy. Like the metro in Montreal, the trains in Seoul are very logical, there's lots of signs in multiple languages and maps everywhere. The bus has always been, once you're on it, better hope you got the right one. Or worse in Brisbane, unless you know exactly where your going you might not even know what stop it is since the stops are no visually displayed or called out. You can tell I put a lot of thought into this.

So here I am an hour early confident I have the right station and the right bus will come. I went into one of these multi-floor coffee shops that I love so much. I skyped to Michelle and Sarah over a green tea latte as the snow fell on the street outside.

When I finally decided now would be the time I got on the 7212 and crossed my fingers.
Good news:

• The payment system was easy, same card as the train
• The next stop was visually displayed and spoken out loud in Korean and English
• I got a seat

Bad news:

• The streets were basically empty so I wasn't confident about the estimate of my stop after 20 minutes
• The English and the Korean name of the stop was just slightly different from what I wrote down, but I go off anyways

I followed the signs up to the temple. First on the main road, and then on a smaller mountain path. No mum, you wouldn't want to come with me, because you wouldn't have made it, there was snow ice and huge rocky steps.

Odds are this trail is enchanted.

Eventually I got to the arch that, I now know, separates the human world from Buddha's world. Welcome to Geumsunsa temple.

That is snow, not rain.

Every step forward I expected to explain myself until I eventually met the man in charge of the temple stay program. He lead me to a room where I could relax until the programming started. Yes, even after hanging out at the coffee shop I was still about an hour early. There were also three dogs acting as a welcoming party.

HELLO!

When the programming did start, I was the only foreigner. I got little translation after the Korean, but I was feeling like a bit of an inconvenience. We got given special shoes and clothes to wear and we were guided to our rooms. At first it was just two of us in the room but over the next 30 minutes my room became four of us. I'm so happy that actually everyone spoke some English and really included me in everything we did.

I was particularly lucky since one woman was actually an English translator and even though she was just a participant she agreed to translate the explanations for me!

The clothes were super comfy! Basically a padded vest and padded pants.

More and more people arrived, most likely delayed by the snow, and now I wasn't the only foreigner! A family from Mexico came to the temple as they travelled Korea to visit with their sun who was working in Malaysia. It's a globalising world when a Korean monk speaks a Korean (who has been living in Germany) translates to English for a Canadian and three Mexicans (one living in Malaysia) and one of the Mexicans turns to another to translate that into Spanish! 

I felt really lucky to be there during the snow, it was incredibly beautiful. Like nothing I have ever seen. The temple in the snow was just a gift for your eyes to unwrap as you walked around.

Included in the programming was a tour where we learned some history of the temple. It's from before the Joseon Dynasty so were looking at early-mid 14th century. The Buddhism here is distinct as it has been blended with cultural Korean spiritualism. Even one temple on the sight has other gods from the original religious deities in Korea. At the far North end there's a mountain spring where you can drink directly from it! ..and it is the most delicious water I have had since I left Vancouver.

We each got an opportunity to ring the large ceremonial bell. Bells in Korean culture are a bit different (or we're different). Instead of having hanging metal inside to clang against the inner wall, a suspended log swings into it from the outside. The result is a deeper drum sound the hums long as a opposed to a more harsh metal sound. I think people would be less inclined to complain about Korean bells.

We had a wonderful vegetarian dinner with plenty of mushrooms! People who know me probably know I love mushrooms. In Canada and Australia you're pretty limited on what kind of mushrooms you can buy. Most supermarkets have the conventional button mushroom, and if their really daring maybe a portabello. If you've found anything else you are probably in an Asian grocery store. Oh rambling me, these mushrooms are delicious, that's what I'm trying to say.

Everyone does their own dishes, cause it's a Buddhist temple, you gotta pull your weight.

In the evening we got a chance to humble ourselves. That is to practice the 108 prostrations. A prostration is a full bow. Hands touching as if you've stopped mid-clap in front of your chest. Bowing down at the waist. Bringing your knees to the floor. Then hands out on the floor and head down to the floor. Hands turned up as if to offer everything you have, raise them, bring them back to the floor. Then get up and do the whole thing another 107 times. The purpose of the prostrations is really to humble yourself in front of Buddha.

I felt great after the whole thing. I did however feel a lot of pain in my knees later.

Later on we did some meditation. I had actually started down twenty minutes of meditation every morning from September to early December. Originally leaving my physical body idle left my mind to work twice as hard.

"Oh! You know what you should do after you're done sitting. Because that's all you're doing, sitting. How about catching up on your blog, hmm? Or learning some Korean already?? Hey, you, if you're done sitting how about figuring out where the jjimjilbang in Ansan is?"

or worse,

"Remember when you said that thing that was offensive and someone called you out on it? Hmm, yeah it was like five years ago, but everyone remembers. And they even call each other like every other week and laugh about it. Yeah, you messed up."

I got better with time. The whole purpose of meditation is rest. They reminded us that there is no goal to meditation, meditation is the goal -if done properly, you finish relaxed. It's all about living in the present, not like a Carpe Diem thing, but a this very second. Not once I've finished meditating, and certainly not in the past, but now, right now. My favourite trick is to think of what are some simple things I find please to each sense. Watching water flow. The smell of cedar. The sound of a crackling fire. The feeling of walking on soft sand. The taste of really cold water. I rotate through them if I'm stuck on a thought that is not in the present. I don't know how long it went for but the meditation was really effective. I was super mellow afterwards.

Before going to bed I went with my new translator friend to drink that cold mountain water. I am going to crave that taste of no taste. Water like that is just refreshing, no flavour.

Before going to bed we shared some real green tea, easily the best I've ever had. It was an incredibly memorable and powerful day.

Inside-urday

It was freezing cold and the streets were empty.

Usually I hear all the cars as they drive by, but today there was almost none. All the way down the long main roads of a city with over a million people, and only a couple of cars.

It was really eerie.

I took Saturday to be productive and get a real head start on.... nah, I played Pokemon.

I played Pokemon Sun under the cover of my electric blanket sipping on the stew I made yesterday.

It was heaven.

Stew Friday

My first day of the long weekend, so naturally it was lazy.

It's not like there was a lot I could do. The city is basically deserted because of the holiday.

The only thing I left the house for was to get some groceries. I was told they would be closed, so I was very relieved to find out they were still open. I bought all the ingredients for a stew that should feed me for the coming days.

So really, staying in and making stew was my day.

Seollal: Lunar New Year

It's the year of the rooster! Although that seems to be interpreted as year of the chicken here...

The morning was dedicated to a New Years party for the kindergarteners. Everyone got dress up in the traditional Hanbok -myself included- and we played some traditional games.

Most important is the game of tug-o-war. As I had experienced at Chuseok, you can't let them win, in fact we probably can't win. I speak of course on teachers vs students. You wouldn't think it, but collectively they can over power us -but it was close.

Similar to Chinese New Year, Korean Seollal has a tradition of lucky pouches. These are those special red envelopes given by the elder to the younger. So this time I was on the giving side. Better yet, I got to be the mean teacher. When everyone else was giving them candy, I gave the a pencil.

It turns out they loved them, which kind of spoiled my plan. I was hoping they would use them at school since these pencil have erasers and theirs at school do not. So much classtime is taken up by "'Raysssser, please!!!!", Then they get all ashamed because everyone knows they made a mistake. These pencils have sneaky little erasers on them! But, now they're probably decoratively sitting at home.

Oh well, maybe next year.

Monthly Test Day!

An Easy day for me, but not so much for them, is a monthly test day.

I mostly just distribute the test and answer the odd question. The questions I most often receive are things like:

"'similar' is what?"

"the same"

"oh! okay"


"'college' is what?"

"that's a vocabulary word, you need to know that"

*long hopeful stare that I will tell them anyways*


"'Mark' is what?"

"A name"

"..."

"From the story we read"

"...ahhhh!"


"How many sentences?"

"Well the other class wrote ten, and you are older, so I'm hoping you can do more than ten."

*look of fierce determination*


I think one of my students actually got perfect. What a day!

Bun Island

We started the day with an incredibly simple art project. The idea is that this bun on a plate is somehow an island in a sea -it takes some imagination. Then our job is to make a little flag to plant in our island.

It's basically a practical course in colonisation for children.

Make a flag, plant that flag, the island is now yours.

It's basically how they got Dok-do.

I made a mash up of the Canadian flag and the Korean flag. The kids mostly did something similar. One student made a flag with Korea on  one side and China on the other (symbolic of trade relations, clearly). Then one girl made a flag for "West Korea" after the video we watched showed the flags of North Korea and South Korea. Like that's what we need in this country, more social divisions?? C'mon. Then one just made like a green version of a Canadian flag (must be a young legalisation activist). I enjoyed this craft the most.

I also did some new posters in the afternoon with my older elementary class. They were supposed to be informational posters about our school, I did one about Griffith as an example. It's very childish, but I think it has some charm to it.

Cute, right?

Gotta Catch 'em All

As with most of my Sundays, I spent this one in Ansan.

I Skyped the family in the morning (love you) and went out on my bike in the afternoon. My sole intention was to get a small stuffed Bulbasuar to go with my Charmander and Squirtle. That's Pokemon, Grandma and Grandpa. Twenty years later and I'm still going on about Pokemon.

I went to Jungang were I visited over 10 different claw machine arcades. First I found one with Amber's favourite Pokemon, Sylveon.

I managed to use the claw to just knock one into the hole, then I used the grabbed on another one, which failed. I did the same thing later which one me a Cubone with my last 1000 won. That lady behind me nearly screamed.

I also found another game nearby with Bulbasaurs. I went to win one, but three tumbled into the hole, so I guess I have three.

Seoulmate: Sacrifice For the Independence - Seodaemun Prison Tour

This kind of marks me doing every Seoulmate tour. The exception being the some of the special event tours and ones that aren't offered anymore.

Today's tour was all about the Korean patriots who fought for independence during Japanese colonial rule. The prison was where far too many of them wound up, and some even died in there. It's almost like a Korean Auschwitz.

Here's the veiew from inside the complex. The snow definitely made it seem eerier.

Prisons lived could be confinded to cells the size of closets. The regular cells were not much bigger. The toilet was basically just a hole that drained to the outside like so.

When it came time for outdoor exercise, the prison keepers were not kind. The area is divided so that prisoner can not talk to each other. Because actually they were never allowed to speak.

They could all be watched from on elevated platform.

The work inside the prisons was a similar story to other prisons. They made bricks. It reminded first of touring the old colonial prisons in Tasmania. The prisoners in both stamped the bricks to symbolise the owner of their labor. Oddly enough it also reminded me of seeing the museum in Singapore where Australian troops held as P.O.W. worked making bricks. In a symbol of resistence they stamped bricks with the symbol for the Queen. Which is also kind of ironic because they're Australian. Here's the symbol of the capital city, stamped on each brick.

Unlike the Australian prisons, men and women were both kept in this facility. There were a lot of women in the prison to. Some were directly involved in the movement, others arrested for cooking for their husband and his friends who were part of the movement. If you needed a hero it would be Yu Gwansun. She's known as Korea's Joan of Arc. She was only 16 when she got arrested for her involvement in trying to overthrow the colonial government. A year after she was arrested, her and the other women in her cell began yelling slogans for an independent Korea. Remember of course that no one was speaking at this prison.  So, like Joan of Arc, she was killed.

The excution area is probably the most heart wrenching. The walls are so high that the area is always dark. Two trees were planted on either side of the wall at the same time. So one got less sunlight, you can easily tell which on is the "sad tree".

That tree has seen things.

The execution area was intense, but no as intense as the torture area. This is where that whole Auschwitz comparison can come in. The were many forms of torture. Being with interrogation you could hear the people in isolation screaming in nearby rooms. They did waterboarding, but worse, sewage and hot pepper was added to the water. Needles jammed under finger nails. A box with sharpened wooden needles jutting out from the walls, and then it was shaken. Closets, like a tight fit coffin, where you would have no room to move. Experimenting and worse. All modern day war crimes and human rights violations.

The difference being that trials were held to keep perpetrators accountable, and punish them accordingly. Here, that didn't happen. In fact most Korean's will tell you Japan never apologized to Korea for these atrocities. Some will tell you the Japan denies wrong doing and even tries to cover up historical records on the abuses.

Dark, dark history.

Putting the tours together you can appreciate that now is the best period of living in Korea. There were warring kingdoms, that then unified under the Joseon dynasty -that fought off further attacks. Then came the Japanese occupation, and the resulting independence movement only stoked a civil war. Ironically, Koreans will tell you colonial Japan modernised Korea, but Korea hold the title for most modernised country in North Asia. 

Now is the best time to be in Korea.

Friday Snowfall

I really stared blankly out the window on Friday morning. I was beyond my comprehension that it had snowed over night. It had dusted snow a couple of times, but this was proper snow -like lots of it.

I thought to myself "hmm, streets haven't been plowed yet," then "do they get plowed".

Answer: Pretty sure they don't. Or at least not this time.

The car drove over the busiest roads so much that the snow turned to black slush.

The sidewalks were different. In North Van we have something like 24 hours after to snowfall to shovel the sidewalk in front of our houses. Here it felt kind of optional. That and the existence of snowshovels could also be debated. That being said, I didn't see anyone using shovels. Instead their were sweeping. Yeah. With brooms.

Culture shock.

Girl Teacher?

This week the kindergartners have been learning about forces, pushing and pulling, in science.

The experiment today was to loop a rope through a gift bag filled with small items, then loop that rope around the back of two chairs facing away from each other creating a pulley system.

Students had to experiment by pushing the rope away, and pulling the rope towards them. The goal was to see which is faster.

It's kind of interesting since I wasn't exactly sure what the outcome would be. Intially I thought pulling might be faster, but then isn't the power pretty much the same, so could they just be the same?

I didn't account for three things:

1. The backs of the chairs didn't have a gap to string rope through
2. Our rope was three karate belts tied together, the knots kept getting stuck
3. Some students didn't know how to push the rope away, so the push took longer because I had to stop them from pulling

One student had a birthday party today since his mom had purchased a large cake to share with his class. Basically every student noticed and ask why they didn't get a cake on their birthday.

I heard one student, in the first time English speaker class, had been speaking to his mom about our school. She wanted to get a feel for how he was doing. She asked him if he was having fun and he said he liked Niki Teacher's class the best! Yay!

Then mom asked if Niki Teacher was a girl teacher or a boy teacher. Fair question, Niki is a pretty gender neutral name. Apparently he responded with "I don't know." I actually thought it was kind of funny.

One of the kindergartners asked me a couple months ago if I was a girl. It sounded kind of mean the way she asked but when I said yes she smiled and said quietly "me too." It was like it was a secret or something -I guess it is to some of them.

Good Sportsmanship

We decided to add shaking hands to the gym routine.

The students had it show up in a lesson and it occured to me that they had never seen it before -afterall shaking hands isn't even that common here. But since everyone seems to think these North American traditions are kind of cute we figured it would be a welcomed addition.

That and my class gets very invested in who wins and who loses. For the students, the biggest insult you can throw at anyone is threatening to not play with them. Almost every class, someone ends up crying because their team lost. It's getting way out of hand.

So we awkwardly lined up the two teams and had them shake hands. Next week I want to get them to start saying "good game" to each other. It should curb some of the post-game attitude.

If I Was A Teacher...

I recall taking medicine as a kid and tell mum I would grow up and become a scientist and invent medicine that doesn't taste bad.

I aslo recall saying if I was going to be a teacher I wouldn't be strict at all.

One of my classes today (I only teach them one subject, two classes a week) had the word strict as a vocabulary word. It was even used in the context of a teacher. Since we usually talk about the word to gain the understanding I had them  rank their teachers from most strict to least strict.

Guess who was the least strict? The teacher who marks their books with pictures of Pokemon if they are well behaved.

Debate?

I love teaching debate. It's probably tied with social studies for my favourite subject to teach.

It's a bit weird with the highschool students in the evening because for a whole bunch of weird reason we only have one student in each class. Debate really doesn't work with one person. The textbook is actually looking for at least six, so...

And no, that whole argue against the teacher thing is a disaster.

We're just going through building arguments so it doesn't matter yet, but until we get a proper class together we can't really have a debate.

Someday...

Charmander

I had several wonderful Skype calls on Sunday. It was a good way to pass a cold day, since almost no sane person would leve the house.

It addition to the calls I did leave the house because I'm insane. I had intended to buy grocery but ended up going itno an arcade and winning two stuffed Charmander. Next weekend I'm going to go find me a Bulbasaur.

Seoulmate: Walking Along the King's Road - Gyeongbokgung Tour

It was a private tour today!

Temperatures plumetted this weekend to minus 16. So most people didn't even leave there house. The streets were almost empty and there were lots of free seats on the train.

It was so cold that the other people didn't even come for the tour!

Haha, no loss for me, it gave me a chance to ask all sorts of extra questions.

This is the third time I'm been to the palace but the first proper tour I've had of the whole place.

Same with the palace museum. I didn't really check it out too much since they didn't off the English tour during the Chuseok holiday.

So here's some highlights..

This it the entrance exam to become a Korean bureaucrat. It's all in Chinese because Chinese writing was seen as the more traditional writing, while Korean writing was for commoners. Stranger still because the language is Korean, not Chinese, but it's written using Chinese characters. Sort of like using the English alphabet to write Arabic words. It can be done, but it's not as accurate or culturally unique.

This is the throne for the King of the Joseon Dynasty. The king's name tells you a little bit about him. A king's name ending in "jo" took power, probably violently. A "jong" inherited his royality from his dad. A 'gun' had the throne stolen from him (probably by one of those 'jo's). So if someone goes to steal your throne he might just be jo-king. Get it?

This is, I think, the room where the king meets with his advisors. I do know for sure that this is one of the only rooms that has not been resore. You can see the original paint -it's faded a bit over time.

This site is where parties would be held for foreign dignitaries. The water around it follows a theme of lets-make-sure-this-does-not-burn. There were two statues of water dragons sunken in there believed to portect the place from burning. There are also two four-footed dragons at the palace gate, protecting it from fire. And most buildings have two gaint blue water containers incase of, you got it, fire. All this preparation for fire, and they lost it to Japanese invasion.

It's hard to even think about fire when it's so damn cold.

Speaking of Japanese invasion, this is the site where the queen was killed, or kidnapped, pretty sure killed. My memory is far from perfect on this.

The Joseon Dynasty last from the late 1300s right up until Japanese colonisation of the late 1800s. Sadly, Korea's history has been very chaotic. When the Japanese came, they tried to destroy every aspect of Korean culture. What survived the occupation was again put at risk during the civil war. Now today's Korea puts so much effort into restoring and maintaining its history.

After the tour I got some of my favourite spicy tofu soup with the Seoulmates.

I quickly rushed home to find it was less that 10 degrees inside my apartment.

I turned the heating on, and the electric blanket.

Hagwons: Gotta Attend 'em All

My older elemnetary class has started a new unit this week and it's all about comparing schools in other countries. This group of students is particularily bright and we can usually just converse about a lot of the new topics that come up, but this one was most interesting to me since I'm so curious about their school life.

These students only come three days a week, I'm their only teacher at our school, but how many schools do they go to?

Our reading came to a section on going to school after school. In my life these are known as after school programs if I think really hard I did:
-Art
-Swimming
-Skating
-Circus trampoline
-Aerial silks
-Roller hockey
-T-ball
-Soccer
-Girl Guides
-Guitar lessons
-Extra help with reading
-Extra help with French

But that was spaced out over the course of twelve years. I don't think I ever did more than three at once.

When I ask what other after school programs they go to the first answer was a lugh followed by "All."

All the students, except one, had a standard set of Piano, English, Taekwondo, Swimming, Soccer, Math, and personal tutoring. Then there were some special one. Painting class, robotics school, some even sound fun right? So basically they go to school and after school they have three or four schools to go to after. The girl who said all told me that she would go home after our class, which finishes at 5:45pm, and have an hour of private tutoring before going to bed. Two of the other students said they were jealous of that since they keep going until 9:30pm. 10pm is the legal cut-off, there are no classes to be taught after 10pm.

This story is actually a really common one here. Writing about this is like writing that milk is white, "yeah, we know." But it occurs to me that my outside-of-Korea audience might find this interesting.

Check out this article. 83% of five year olds are going to academies, and even children as young as two are getting tutoring. It's basically the opposite of Finland's education.

Sledding and Chinese Food

The morning was spent on a field trip to do some "snow sledding".

When we asked what the plan for the fieldtrip was the director had asked if we had heard of snow sledding before. Sensing it could be a Korea-moment and not be what I'm familar with I asked for clarification. Yup, it's sledding. I just figured the snow was implied.

I used my new snowpants again (they' paid themselves off now), and joined the students on the hill. It was a unique experience.

The tow was actually a large conveyor belt at an incline (almost like a flat escalator). At the top there were designated lanes for sledding. The sleds were plastic-bottomed inner tubes. So really, I guess it was snow tubing?

Once everyone was ready to go they would actually blow a whistle and all lanes would go at once, and the next set could not go until the bottom was clear. It was very ... structured. A bit off putting if I had been a kid there. I love the freedom of  free ranged tobogganing at Kilmer Park, no line ups or whistles, and maybe even a jump or two.

But still, I had three good runs with some students. I thought they might be scared to go alone (some were) but actually most just realized you go faster with the teacher.

The kids however did love it.

We breaked for a snack and headed back to the school exhausted. So exhausted that we turned on movies for the kids after lunch instead of teacher to the regular schedule, so that everyone could relax a bit.

It meant I actually only taught three lessons that day. Debate, which is fun, social studies, which is fun, and the last class of my day is really just structured play time in English, so fun.

After work we welcomed a new Korean teacher with a delicious meal of Chinese food. Tasty black bean noodles, sweet and sour pork, and even a dish with jelly fish in it! I felt a little unethical eating the jellyfish since my friends know I make a real effort to befriend the jellies as I suspect they could one-day be our overlords or just in charge of the afterlife.

Phonics Focus

I've been so wrapped up in the whole Michelle leaving thing that I forgot to mention how well my classes did on their December monthly test!

My younger elementary student classs: 96%, 92%, 92%, 85%, and 85%. I was so proud of them.

I had actually seen how bad their phonics scores were (and all their scores really), back in October and I said thought, let's start with getting phonics up. They were doing long and short a sounds and we talked about them all the time. But the test came and used words we hadn't gone over.

So the next month I made practice sheets using the words from the book and we practiced s blends; st, sl, sw, sh, sp. Then sure enough they scored really high on the test.

So during December I tried to get that across for all the subjects, and bam, good results.

Wednesdays are phonics days and they've quickly become a favourite since everyone feels really confident with them. Here we go with long and short 'o' sounds!

Social Studies Class

Every Tuesday and Thursday I teach social studies -which is one of my favourite classes to teach.

I'm told a lot of the students also say it's their favourite class.

The textbook we use is as American as apple pie. Todays lesson touched on national heros and celebrating them, examples included Martin Luther King and George Washington.

I wanted to give the students a little more background information since they used the word "colonization" without really explaining it. Since I had previous given them country themed nicknames we used them to discuss who colonised who.

The boy who was England used to be in charge of some other students, like the girl who was the US and the girl who was Canada. The girl who was Japan did the same to the boy who was Korea. The boy who was France also did the same to the girl who was Canada.

They found this quite funny.

To get more international-relations-y with it, we went over attitudes inclaiming independence. The girl playing US acted out a little skit like "You're not the boss of me! I'm the boss of me! Hmmph!", then the Canada girl was like, "France, England, I think I can do this by myself, still friends, right?", then the South Korea boy was more like "Go away!!" to the Japan girl. They had lots of fun with it.

The girl who played the US told me she wanted to do it again where she could have the colonies. I told her that the US did have colonies, and still does have some! She was really interested and asked me to show them to her on the map.

I love that these kids are gonna be geography geeks by the time I'm through with them.

More map enthusiasts like us, right grandpa?

A Blur and A Shell

I had to say "see you later" to Michelle this morning. Her flight was a 4pm, but I started work at 9am. I couldn't give her enough hugs and kisses to satistfy either of us. We were sort of lingering around the door of my apartment. Then I got in the elevator.

The rest of the day feels like a bit of a blur.

I was so exhausted from all the tears. I just kept my head down and my desk until it was time to go to the classroom. This was my first day I really didn't want to teach. I also didn't want to go back to the apartment where everything would remind me that Michelle has left.

I was just a shell of my regular self. I apolgized to the director since I admitted to feeling so out of it. Lucky for me, for their own reason, the other teachers mostly felt the same way.

I just keep trying to distract myself with everything at my disposal, but I just feel a rock in my stomach about this whole thing.

Even now, I know that the blog is my distraction. I really just hope I can wake up feeling better.

Michelle's Last Day

I think you ought to know I cried. Not all day, but just periodically.

It was really a continuation of Saturday, we didn't leave the house, we just got things in order.

I feel really lucky to have had Michelle come here. All the fun I've had in Korea up until her arrival I just couldn't shake the feeling that I wanted her to see this and experience this. I had jokes ready that only she would get, I want to do things that would be best done with her, it felt incomplete this out my partner in crime.

When she got her I immediately started to see Korea as a totally different place. I felt renergised to do things and to get out and see more of the city. I felt welcome in more places, and I felt happier returning to places I'd already been with Michelle. She is my dream travel companion. 

I feel content with my time in Korea now that I have experienced it with Michelle. I wish I could keep her here, but she does still have two semesters of university to go.

I just keep thinking to myself...

But, I'm also going to cry some more.

Snooze

As you could guess we spent most of Saturday sleeping off the night before.

I don't think I even left the apartment, but I still had over 18,000 steps on my fitbit.

We watched movies and cuddled. The theme of these last few days is to appreciate one another's company as much as possible.

But also some packing and cleaning.

A Gay Night Out

I apologize to any family members reading this where it makes you at all uncomfortable, but I think this is important to write about.

After work Michelle and I took the train to Hongdae, a notorious party district. We were aiming to go to one of Seoul's actual women-only lesbian bars. It's quite unique since South Korea is split pretty much 50-50 on whether or not homosexuality is completely morally wrong, and here there are actual women-only spaces. Stranger still, that countries with good stance on queer right usually don't have places like this -possibly because they want people to feel welcome at any bar. I also feel as though my generation of lesbians is more inclined to do away with the gender binary altogether, so admitting only women would reinforce structuring society are concepts of gender. But we wanted to see this first hand, since it might just become a relic of the past, or remain as a place made possible out of both pride and shame.

We first went to Paul's Kitchen. I have been once before. It's more of a pub style, good food and drinks. It's owned by two women who named the place after their dog. We ate there as to not arrive to early to the bar -since Koreans love to be out late, late, late.

It was really had to find, as most places are. This one had an added level of secrecy since they probably wanted to shy away from any signs indicating their clientel. It's accessible by elevator on the 8th floor of a pretty non-descript retail building on a main road.We arrived at ten. The lady at the desk asked for our IDs. Reflecting on this, we determined it was probably more to see if we were government certified women, and not really bothering with the drinking age.

When we got in it just looked like a plane bunker with a big DJ podium, a raised area full of reserved tables, a dance floor in the middle and a bar opposite the DJ podium. Oh and five people cause "Fridays are slow." We were advised to come back around midnight.

Leaving the club, we went to do what comes more naturally. We might not be night-life kind of people, but we certainly know are way around arcades. SO we toured four different arcades in the area before coming back just after midnight.

In the elevator we talked to a woman who expressed how she was thankful to find some English speakers. Michelle asked where she was from and the woman replied with Sweden, and just like that we all abandoned English for a bit.

Sure enough, it was packed. I then understood why they were checking IDs at the door, so many Korean lesbians just appeared as young boys. There were also plenty of people smoking inside, which didn't surprise me too much.

I could go into great detail with all the people we met, and how we moved around the venue, and whatever, but it's not really too important. What did strike me was how people we so excited about me and Michelle. Not for being foreign (we got a bit of that), but for being together. They wanted to know how we met, how long we've been together, who confessed their love frst (Koreans are dramatic like that), everything. One particulary drunk girl was sort of crying out to the universe asking for a relationship like ours before we helped her into a cab.

The whole experience made me thankful first of all, for Michelle. I am incredibly fortunate to find a person who has all the same interess as me, and a perfectly compatible life and attitude. But I was also thankful for my safety. I mean, I wouldn't call Australia queer-friendly by any means, but it's only the strange few who would go out of their way to make you feel rotten about yourself. In Korea, that's the majority of people, and the historically and culturally dominant opinion. I like that I could tell people that my mum met Michelle when she came to my graduation. They would be shocked, and then blissful that a world exists whee you can be out and accepted just like that. Thanks mum, you're a star.

We stuck around the bar until about 4am, they closed at 5am, but our aim was to get the first train heading back home. We hungout in a 24 hour cafe to warm up and wait for the subway. They don't run all night, the first on departs just after 5am.

On the train my morning alarm went off and it occured to me that I had been awake now for over 24 hours. Wow.

There was something surreal about passing by the school as the sun came up and going to bed after my second wake-up alarm.

Drinking Games For Learning

I accidently used a drinking game to teach, and this isn't the first time.

After eye-ball beer pong at the Halloween party I realized how much drinking games were, infact, games. People feel challenged by their odd simpilicity, and that works well for students. So that's how this all came about.

The first-time English speaker class had been going over a number of concepts, higher and lower, same or different, and colours. SO we broke it down to the most simple basic drinking game ever.

I must thank Mick and Mac for thiis one, because I'm pretty sure it was introduced to me by them at their house back in Australia.

First we established red (hearts and diamonds) from black (spades and clubs). Red or black? The put a lot of thought into their answers, I wonder if they were counting cards. Then they have to predict the colour.

Unlike adults, young children don't necessarily need a reward or punishment system in a game. The reaction of their peers serves for both of those things.

We go around the circle with everyone getting to guess at 50-50 odds. After they all have that card face up in front of them. Higher or lower? The students with face cards were quite clever "Lower!".

Now that they all have two cards, we go around. Inside or outside? Will the next card be between those two numbers or outside of them? Again they gave very educated predictions.

We finished off the day with flipping cards wait for them to match up. Different, different, DIFFERENT, DIFFERENT! SAME! Then thay all freaked out and tried to slap the pile first.

It was a successful lesson.

Three Things About Wednesday

1. One kindergartner student helped to clean up after gym class. She was upset about the game but trying to not show it becausethe rule is that crying disqualifies you from getting one of two gym class stars. Then when putting a ball away she pinched her finger, badly, like there was a blood blister. She couldn't hold the tears anymore. I broke my rule about crying and gave her a gym class star for sacrificing her finger for the sake of cleaning up. It was basically giving her the kindergarten version of a purple heart of bravery.

2. The elementary class read a weird folktale about a lazy kid who turns into a cow, but then it was all just a dream. Which seems a pretty advanced concept for 8 year olds with 7 months worth of English education.

3. The older elementary class is basically playing Boggle. We roll the number cubes and they try to make as many words as they can.  But then, spelling is... questionable.

Two For Tuesday

Just to simple things about my otherwise routine Tuesday.

1. We finally packed up the Christmas decorations. It turns out the Korean word for Christma is just a phonetic translation of the English word. I impressed the Korean teachers by labling the box in both languages.

2. Michelle met me after school for some Japanese food. I had donburi and she had this cutlet in heaven-sauce (like the best sauce). I didn't even know it was on the menu. I will have to go back.

Beat Monday

First day back since the break.

I thought I would pluck a moment of significance from a couple of my afternoon classes.

1. My younger elementary class freaked out over the story about the claw machine game. They began a chorus of  "give" thrusting to hands, palms up, in the air with their heads down.

2. My older elementary class was going over their vocabulary words and the book was suggesting experimenting with different beats. I used an idea from a Katimavik-Global-Stew-Canada-World-Youth-esque warm up game. You overlap arms with the everyone in the circle, then the beat goes around the circle. It's challenging because the hands are mixed up a bit. Then you introduce that a double tap of the hand reverses the direction. They loved it. It was a terrible game for speaking, but I'm positive they will remember 'beat' now.

3. The highschool class enters a new year by moving a grade up. The students have fused into one class, and this was their sampler. Unforunately only two students made it today. And, to make things more awkward, our subject is debate. We went over the definitions of debate terms. Then I asked if they felt confident with them, they said yes just to move along with the lesson. Then I surprised them with cut outs of the definitions that they had to match with the words. It became really funny. One student yelled out the answer after the other had read it, she just repeated the yelled out answer so I gave her a point. "But, she didn't know it!" "But, you shouldn't have yelled it out!" everyonekept laughing.

New Years Day

I felt like we had a solid start to 2017.

We had a sleep in, probably only getting out of bed at like 11;00am.

Michelle had somethings to get at the grocery store so we kind of made a day of it.

We went to Home Plus to stare at the pets, and buy a couple of things.

Siezing the moment, we took the bike to Jungang station, home of the arcade. First Michelle practiced her shooting skills at the shooting range. She won two prizes tickets, and I got one just as a gift from the guy working there, just shy of a Snorlax plushie. We went into the arcade and I finally, finally, beat Michelle at air hockey. I'm actually the first person to ever beat Michelle at air hockey.

Since the prize tickets are for games played and do not correspond to how well you play, we went back and I gave it a try. After missing the first maybe six shots Michelle and the guy explained a bit more how to do it and I barely missed a shot after that. We left with the Snorlax.

There was a claw machine place across the road that had lots of Pokemon plushies. We've been looking for good machines for awhile, only occassionally testing them to figure out a strategy. We walked around this place, deciding now that it was all about picking good machine. We went upstairs and I was pretty sure I founda good one. I sacrificed at 500 won coin (like 50 cents) and dragged an Umbreon plush up and into the exit hole. A woman pointed and yelped, she stomped around a bit -I think she had been playing that machine just before.

Then we went downstairs and found another good machine. This one had three plateaus the slowly pushed forward, piling up the plushies would push some over the edge. This machine had many hanging right off the edge and drew a small crowd. One lady was playing, but could seem to pick up any Squirtles to fill up the plateau. As soon as she walk away to get more coins, Michelle tried, and four plushies fell out.

We spent about a dollar and left with five prizes.

A face of joy.

I bought some spicy meat on a stick and we biked home. We ordered chicken, and watched a Swedish movie. So far so good, 2017.

New Years Eve

I think it is only fitting that I get to write the last piece of Niki blog for 2016.

A year ago Niki changed my trajectory in life. It all started with a kiss at midnight, and now one year has passed as have 2016. It went fast and much have occurred. Niki has graduated and moved to a different country.

Completing your education is always hard, but It is also scary. Once you are in university that is your world, it becomes routine. Your friends are there it is the world you know. Niki left it all behind to follow her dreams and aspirations. She says she is not a brave person but rarely has I meet another person who takes on such challenges. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the mindset to challenge it. To say it will not let it control me, I will not let it affect my dreams. I will sail as high as I can go because if I did not aim for the sky, I would not have left the ground.

Niki aims for the sky. I love that about her, and I am trying to do the same. I followed my dreams it led mine to Australia. There have been challenges, but they are always easier to face when doing something you are passionate about. I think we all would be happier if we had more courage to follow our hope and dreams.

So I challenge anyone who reads this. To live a little more. Because we only have set amount of years on this planet, and what is life for if we do not live it?

-Michelle