Merry Wednesday Good Gentlefolk!

Apparently a middle school student died recently in Cheongju after getting into a fight with another students/other students. Has anyone else heard anything about this? My co-teacher told me about it on Tuesday, after one of her homeroom students ended up in hospital with a possible broken rib after being punched in the chest by another student and finding it hard to breathe (he turned out to be ok). I think she said it was at Seo-Gyeong Middle School but I'm not sure - she might have said Seo-Gyo or Seo-Hyeon. Which brings to mind the stabbing incident at my school last year - I can't remember if I blogged about this or not (I certainly should have if I didn't), but last year after the movie "아저씨" ("Ajosshi" or in it's English title "The Man From Nowhere") came out which features a lot of violence, apparently it became popular amongst the second year boys to mimic the stuff done in the movie. To this end, one of them brought a knife to school (I think, or he could have been using his craft knife which all students quite ridiculously have and are allowed to carry around at all times, even when they aren't using them in any subjects, to semi-disastrous results) and was mock-stabbing his classmates. And of course, ended up actually stabbing one of them, sending the stabbed student to hospital for stitches and making the student who stabbed him have a panic attack and start crying because he genuinely thought he'd killed his friend. Which I guess was quite a smart move (although involuntary) because it made it harder to punish him for it since he was already mid-nervous breakdown. And then of course there was the incident with Jin-Seon. Don't get the wrong idea, it's not always the boys - the first year girls have been in trouble for going to visit their friends at other schools and starting scrag-fights there too, where apparently the go-to move is scratching up each other's faces. *Sigh* Teenagers.

Anyway, today is my last day of regular school before my winter camps start. I'm taking tomorrow and Friday off to use up my holiday days since they don't get paid out if I don't use them, and am overjoyed at the prospect of never having to teach my Thursday and Friday classes again (a jubilation that has lasted since last week). Hooray! Today I also only had one class with my favourite 1st graders - the "super-smart" class (my co-teacher's nickname for them). But unfortunately I completely stuffed up on that one - our timetables got changed so I had them first period instead of sixth (I normally wouldn't have class until 3rd period anyway), and wouldn't you know it, but I turned my phone off last night (so losing the alarm on it) and forgot to set my clock alarm, so I didn't wake up until 8.53am, 33 minutes AFTER I was supposed to be at school and 3 minutes AFTER my first class was supposed to start. On any other day it wouldn't have mattered but of course today... *double sigh* It's official - I'm a cotton-headed ninny muggins (I've been watching "Elf" with some of my students ㅋㅋ). Luckily my co-teacher knew that I wouldn't do something like that on purpose and wasn't angry - it's also her homeroom group so they were fine.

놈놈놈 (nom nom nom, haha^^)

I guess it's really a pretty typical way of ending my school year - violence and tardiness, although it's a nice change that it's me being late for once and not my students. If it was any other class than my good class I might still have wandered in 20 minutes late, just to be a jerk and interrupt their movie, since they do it to me all the time. Anyway, I better get going with finishing stuff for my winter camps! I have 20 hours of conversation class across the first two weeks, then 10 hours of a teacher's class and 10 hours of a students' class in the third week so I'll be pretty busy. And after last year, this time I know for sure not to be stupid enough to tell the VP or Principal about the class magazine/newspaper we're making, no matter how proud I am of my students :) Oh and it's 오징어덮밥 (ojing-eo deopbap, as in the picture above), which I love, with egg and vegetable soup (계란야채국) - which I also love! - and chocolate cake for lunch because it's Wednesday, so hooray!

Oh and one last reason to be happy: Ryan also has the day off on Friday! At least I hope so - if he doesn't I'm going to turn up at his hagwon, take a kitchen knife out of my bag and sit there glaring angrily at his boss while I stroke the knife blade for the whole day. A bit of a complicated story there that I won't go into, but it basically involves his boss dicking around and telling the Korean teachers that they had Friday off, then didn't, getting angry that they assumed they did, and then telling them that they DID have the day off and he was faking it to encourage them to work harder. Hi-LAR-ious, no?

Anyway, now that he apparently DOES actually have the day off, we can do what we had planned to do which is go to Deoksan to the Reesom Spa Castle, which is a warm water theme park, and then stay at this cute pension which has a jacuzzi in the room! How awesome is that?? Ryan originally tried to book us a place that had the in-room jacuzzi outside because he knows that I like outdoor spas, but since it will be the New Year's weekend places are pretty full up, so we couldn't find one that was free and also not horrendously expensive (like more than 400 000 won). And then I'm going down to Busan to meet up with my favourite ladies, including the Cheongju posse and my KBFF II, for what I'm sure will be an amazing NYE! So it will be a very exciting three day weekend ^_^

Oh and I'm meeting one of Ryan's sisters on Sunday for an early dinner/late lunch before she heads back to Seoul on the KTX and we go back to Cheongju, so wish me luck! I'm obviously going to have to go easy the night before so I don't look like I just fell out of a tree on Sunday when I meet her, haha :p

Anyway, happy Wednesday everyone! Hope you're having a delicious lunch today, if not a brilliant day :)

A Rainy Tuesday ㅠㅠ

An amazing talent to even make a buzzcut look hot!

Actually it's not - it was really foggy in the morning here and cold, but it seems to have all burned off in the afternoon sun. But it is raining in my heart at least, because today my husband Rain goes into the army. *sigh*... 가슴이 아파...('my heart is breaking') ㅠㅠ;;

But at least I got a few good videos of him at his last concert, which I have now uploaded to Youtube. Haha, that sounds almost pervy, I know ^__^


And sorry for the terrible sound quality in this first one - I think we were too close to the stage for such a loud song! ^_^

P.S. For those interested (few but myself I know) there is also another article summarising his successful career here at Seoulbeats. If you read it, the last comment is about the story that when he first auditioned for a recording company they told him that he'd never be successful because he didn't have the double eyelids so prized (and paid for) amongst many K-pop idols today.

It's Raining Rain!

 And I've never been happier!^__^

Or actually, sadder too because tomorrow (Tuesday, October 11th), my beloved husband Rain goes to the army to (finally) get started on his military service. It will be a long 18 months without him :( And yes, I know he's not classically K-pop idol good looking (as in, he's not girly and he doesn't have double eyelids) but that's exactly why I like him. Or rather, that's why I like him after the fact that he can actually sing AND dance and has some videos with some amazing choreography.

So to farewell his fans, he hosted a free concert on Sunday in Gangnam, Seoul, and of course I went! And it was pretty damn amazing! First of all that they closed down about 500m of one of the busiest streets in the area outside CoEx Mall and the KEPCO building (seriously, who else would they do that for??? NO-ONE!!!!! That's who!), and secondly of all because he really went all out to amaze, and didn't skimp on anything (except possibly clothes.. he could certainly have done with less of those...^^).

Oh Rain, you sexy beast you ^__^

What a waste of an opportunity!

 Oh and thirdly because he's very charismatic and has a great stage presence and his MC-ing between songs was genuinely funny - like teaching the audience dance moves for one song, and then stopping it because people weren't doing it enthusiastically enough and threatening to stop the whole concert until they joined in, or responding to chants of "Jeong Ji Hun!" (his name) with "네, 알겠어요." ("Yes, I hear you.")



 
He also made some lucky fangirl's day when he got her to come up on stage, sang a song to her, hugged her and gave her a huge teddy bear and flowers! But he was a little taken aback to find out she was in fact 20, not a high school student like he thought - appropriate crazy fangirl age! Michelle and I kept joking that he likes them young, because he also kept calling out to young girls (who of course went crazy!). He also was very awesome and told people off for pushing too much when he saw a woman with her 10 year old kid getting a bit squashed.

It was SO FRICKING AWESOME!!! Michelle and I got there at 6 (it started at 7) and luckily were just in time to jump on the end of a queue for free wristband tickets to get into the main central area right in front of the stage. Cali Amy came a few minutes later and ALL of the wristbands for all of the sections (there were 8000 people just in that bit alone apparently!) were gone but luckily found a really nice and sympathetic security guy who let her in since we were already in there. A bunch of contestants from Superstar K (the Korean version of Pop/Australian/American Idol) came on first to warm up with 널 붙잡는 노래 ('Love Song') and the whole crowd immediately surged forward, then muttered disappointingly, and of course when Rain actually came out everyone rushed forward again, so we got REALLY close. And then at the end he got into this cherry picker type thing and swung out over the crowd in our section so we were even closer - as in, close enough to see the sweat on his beautiful face! (The photo on the left is from that). Below are some photos from the concert, of course chosen by how sexy he looks ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ

Oh and lol, I told one of my co-workers about it today at lunch and she laughed and responded with "Oh, because you always use him in examples! I think you like large men, right?" (She's about 150cm and her husband is apparently not much taller). Haha, I guess I do ^__^

Videos to follow when Youtube finishes uploading.

Serious post of the day - Seoul Slutwalk 2011

Reblogged from Roboseyo, 18th of July 2011

SlutWalk Seoul 2011

(possibly from here... anybody have an ORIGINAL original source?) (from here)

A police officer in Toronto said that women should protect themselves from rape by avoiding dressing like sluts. Toronto's feminist community called bullshit on victim-blaming, an all-too-prevalent attitude in assault safety discussions, and organized a response called "SlutWalk" -- a group of women dressed like "sluts" and walked through the streets of Toronto carrying signs, to raise awareness that those attitudes are really not cool, and possibly to reclaim the word "slut."

Since then, SlutWalk has spread to other cities, and it appeared in Seoul last Saturday, July 16, 2011.

I attended in solidarity, because I strongly believe that the idea needs to be introduced, championed, and spread, that it doesn't matter what a woman wears: nothing even remotely justifies sexual assault, and focusing on what a woman should do to avoid the attack implicitly acquits men (and other would-be attackers) of their responsibility to not be rapists, which is where every discourse about sexual assault should begin and end: with better education of what rape is, and what the consequences are, until the slogan "No means no" jumps to the lips of 20-year olds as quickly as other slogans, like "don't drink and drive."

The proceedings for Slutwalk Seoul started at 2pm. I joined up near Gwanghwamun at 4 - demonstrations aren't allowed in Gwanghwamun Square proper - during a welcome pause in the intermittent downpours in Seoul that day. There were speeches, some songs, a non-verbal performance, and then a march down to Deoksugung palace, in front of which there was a dance, and then a return to Gwanghwamun.

The SlutWalk crew moved on to Hongdae, where I was a little too wet and cold to catch up with them, though I met with a few of my feminist and/or supportive friends, including The Grand Narrative (from whom I found out about SlutWalk Korea) and Popular Gusts, for some burgers and drinks afterwards.


signs were carried, slogans were shouted.

At the event, there were almost as many cameras as demonstrators, and rain concerns may have caused the "costumes" or "slut" outfits to be less extreme than they might have been at other slutwalks; however, the crowd was enthusiastic, and people were generally OK with the different people who'd come - including males with cameras.

They ran out of the red ribbons which indicated a person didn't want to be photographed, so I can only publish pictures I took where no faces show... in that respect, the rain and face-obscuring umbrellas turned out to be a boon... and even if it hadn't rained, the point of going wasn't to take lots of pictures of women dressed like "sluts" anyway -- that'd kind of be missing part of the point of the event, that self- objectification for the male/appraising gaze is not the reason for the event, nor the reason women dress the way they do when they go out.


Here's a link that includes a video made by the Hankyoreh.


body-paint was used to interesting effect.

Why did I especially like this event? Two main reasons:

1. Because it was planned and promoted by Koreans for Koreans - the blog and the twitter account and the poster were all Korean only, and I think it's awesome that Korean women are speaking with their own voice.

2. Because when sexual assault comes up in Korea, even in my classes (I like bringing a lesson based on this article into my discussion classes), the discourses I've heard have overwhelmingly focused on the victim's side -- "she shouldn't wear short skirts" "she should not drink too much" "she should use the buddy system" -- what the woman did to bring her attack on -- and barely brought the attacker's side into it (things like stiffer punishments or public awareness campaigns). Overwhelmingly skewing the discourse toward the victim's responsibilities eventually results in an atmosphere of complicity and maybe even enabling, for would-be attackers, in which they figure they can get away with it, if she's drunk enough, or dressed sexy enough, because that's what they always hear when sex attacks are in the news anyway.

Blaming a rape on a short skirt is like blaming a pedestrian hit by a drunk driver for using the crosswalk. Especially in Korea, where short skirts are just about the norm.

I'm strongly of the opinion that for every time somebody says "she shouldn't dress that way" somebody should say "she has the right to dress how she likes and not be attacked for it" and "it's on the attacker's head" twice, and for every dollar spent promoting the former idea, two should be spent on the latter, and so forth. So that no sex attack ever happens again because somebody simply didn't understand, or hadn't had it impressed strongly enough upon them during that one class during high school, where the law draws the line.

It reads something kind of like this: "Sorry my body's not beautiful. Ha ha ha. -From an unsexy slut"

SlutWalk has, predictably, been controversial in many places where it's occurred, and I'd like to touch on a few of those controversies.

1. Maybe SlutWalk makes sense in Canada, where it was invented, but it's not culturally appropriate for Korea.

A journalist asked me if I thought this was an appropriate kind of demonstration for Korean culture, which (by asking it of a foreigner) turned into a kind of loaded question, given that the event was planned by Koreans: I think Korean women should be free to express themselves however they want. Cultural appropriacy doesn't come into it when a. people raised in this culture made the choice to express themselves this way, b. cultures change all the time, and c. some cultures systematically suppress women's rights, and ignore women's voices.

Deoksugung gate. Note the boys dressed as sluts.

2. Isn't this a pretty shocking and outrageous way of starting discussion about this issue?

Maybe it is... but sometimes controversy gets people talking in a way that doesn't happen when one minds their p's and q's, and sometimes something a little brash is needed to capture public attention. A hundred women walking past city hall in lingerie counts as such.

And especially in women's issues, where part of the problem is that women are programmed that being loud, and demanding their rights is unladylike, imprudent, or not "demure" the way a good filial daughter and dutiful wife should be, I'm all for women getting angry, and loud, until middle-aged, male middle-managers feel ashamed to say "well I think women's rights have come far enough in Korea because women have taken over every entry-level position in my district office, and I can't find a single man at the entry-level to promote into division manager," and until women feel empowered enough to confront them on actually believing Korea's come far enough when Korea's Gender Empowerment Measure was woefully low in the last year it was measured (61st of 109 in 2009 - shockingly low when compared to its very HIGH Human development index (26th in the world).)  (for the record, yes, Korea does better when you include women's access to quality healthcare and education here)

Sometimes a vanguard comes along with a pretty strident message, and acts as the shock troops for an important idea. After they've put the idea out there, it becomes OK to talk about it, where before people just changed the subject. Once it becomes OK to talk about it, very smart, less brazen voices (hopefully) appear to present the idea in a way that is palatable to those who feel accused and attacked by the stridency of the vanguard. Over time, idea enters the mainstream. I'm OK with that process taking place. I'm OK with there being a noisy vanguard for important ideas. I'm OK with some screeching about important ideas, especially because marginalized populations are marginalized because people don't listen to them: clearing their throat and raising their hand and saying please hasn't worked.

I liked this boy's sign.




3. But isn't it true that women who dress that way are dressing that way because they want men to look at them? Why would a woman dress like that if she wasn't looking for sex?

Hmm. Something I've learned: despite how I like to think the world is aligned, it's not always about men.

There are any number of reasons a woman might dress up nicely/sexy (and let's not forget that what's sexy to one person may be absolutely modest to another):

1. To pick up other women
2. To impress other women
3. To make their friends jealous
4. To make their boyfriends jealous
5. To display status
6. For their own damn selves
7. To feel more confident
8. To enjoy being admired by other women
9. To enjoy being admired (and only admired) by men
10. To balance feeling bad by looking good
11. To show off those bitchin' new heels she just bought, the sixteen pounds she finally lost, the hairstyle she's been waiting to try, or the great (name accessory) she got as a gift
12. To live out a Sex And The City, or similar, fantasy she has
13. Because of a bet she won or lost
14. Because going out and flirting with boys or girls helps her forget something that's bothering her
15. Because most women dress that way at the place where she's going
16. Because she was raised to believe looks were the only important thing
17. Because she was taught that sexual attractiveness is the best way for women to gain power over men
18. Because she grew up in a culture where people judge women who don't dress up and look good as "lazy" (I've had a man say that in class)
19. To attract the attention of men, because she wants to talk to men
20. Because she likes getting free drinks when she goes out (jeez. I'd dress in a tube top and high heeled boots if it meant I drank for free every Friday night. Wouldn't you?)
21. To turn on the boyfriend/boyfriend prospect who came out with her that night
22. To advertise she's looking to make whoopie with some guy she meets that night

That's twenty-two I thought of just now, and I'm not even a woman, and only one of them invites a proposition from a stranger who was ogling her across the room.

I wasn't catching every word, but the point of the event wasn't man-hating, as far as I could tell. I had an interesting conversation with a journalist about it, and the fact is, this is a really complex issue with a lot of variables...

1. There are any number of ways women can dress and behave, for any number of reasons (see above)
2. There are any number of ways that dress and behavior can be interpreted by the (usually male) observer (though too many automatically assume reason 22, and act accordingly)
3. There are any number of ways a male can act on their interpretation of a woman's dress and behavior
4. There are any number of ways that male's behavior can be interpreted by the woman he approaches

And clearly some things are out of line from the start, but there are others - certain types of compliments, certain types of eye (or not-eye) contact, and other kinds of movement and attention, that can be easily misinterpreted, on either side, at numerous points in the interaction... and it's unfortunate that the amount of alcohol flowing increases the chance signals will be misread.

But in the end, it'd be great if responsibility for those misreadings and misunderstandings were blamed equally on the dudes thinking with their one-eyed trouser-snakes (that's penises, y'all), as on the ladies who supposedly "brought it on themselves." And until responsibility for those misreadings and misunderstandings is shared by both sides, and moreover, until it is recognized that men are capable of better than acting on every sexual urge that comes along, and thus share more responsibility, women have a reason to hold slutwalks, and whatever other demonstrations bring these issues back to the forefront, where people have to be confronted by them**, and think about them, and hear ideas they don't necessarily agree with, that might force them to change some of their ideas.

And that's the point of SlutWalk, to me.





**I'm lucky, as a man, because for me, these issues are things that I can touch on from time to time, read about at my leisure, and comment on when it suits me. It's not something that confronts me every time I dress up to go out, or get leered at in a bar; it's not something that casts a bit of suspicion and even fear on every night out, or every up-and-down I get from a stranger. I'm lucky to be able to approach the topic so academically, because I've never in my life felt like I'm three, or two, or even one decision from being raped. And the fact I haven't, and many males in these conversations haven't, means (I think) that some of us wildly misjudge what's at stake for others taking part in the conversation, because they, or someone they love, was. Because I'm not confronted by these issues every Friday night, I'm still learning about them. Somewhere stewing in me is a post, or maybe a series, about why these discussions get so fraught, and dramatic, and (frankly) ugly, when people go beyond preaching to the choir... but for now, suffice it to say I know I'm in a lucky spot, to be approaching the topic so casually. That bears on everything I write about it.



Comment moderation is on. I don't like deleting comments, but I also don't like trolls, flames, misogyny, misanthropy (that'd be man-hating) and general disrespectfulness of either the host (me), women, men, or other commenters.

And by the way: If you're about to go into the comments and say that "Yes, well, it's still true that women should be careful etc. etc."

To save you some time, I know. I never said otherwise. Everybody in the presence of strangers should use their smarts. Public awareness campaigns can help people who don't understand their choices, or who wrongly think their justifications are enough, but they won't stop pure predators. I know that, and I'm not saying parents and teachers should stop teaching would-be victims to get reckless... I AM saying that message should be a distant second to "Don't sexually assault people" in emphasis, but right now I don't think it is.

 

The only thing I disagreed with in Roboseyo's post was his list of reasons why women may dress 'like sluts' sometimes - number six, "for their own damn selves" should have been number one (so not really disagreeing). As to my own opinion, I think that this is a great idea. And, it has to be said, it seems like it was done pretty well in Seoul without being too strident which unfortunately often seems to be an excuse for media to write protests and shock-value campaigns off as overreaction, which can make it more difficult to get taken seriously by the people that it actually targets. It was also great to see so much male support in what Roboseyo rightly points out is a country with a terrible record for gender equality. Anyway, that's the serious post for the day. Might have a crack at translating some song lyrics later.

Welcome to the Korean school system...

I know it's pretty rare (and demanding) to write two posts in one day but this is a special occasion. Lots of people write or rant about how inefficient Korea is, especially the bureacracy - and there's a lot of bureacracy - so I'm not going to bother going into details about that. I'm just going to launch straight into a rant of my own.

First things first: as you may have gathered from an earlier post, things got a bit stressed last year with my old vice-principal, and all in all I was rather glad this year to find that a) he went to a new school and b) I'm no longer in the same office as the new one. I was also all happy that I only have 17 regular teaching hours, and 6 after school classes (I was expecting 8). Lesson of the day: DUHHHHHHHHHH! I should have touched wood. I should have thrown salt over my shoulder. I should have spent the entire week looking for black cats and dyeing them any other colour (purple or green for preference) and hunting down four leaf clovers. They say pride comes before a fall and although it's more like relief comes before a big kick in the pants, it's still much the case here. Because the new VP isn't just demanding.

He's.

Frickin'.

Crazy.

So yes, the old VP was a bit pushy, and wanted the school to do well (they all do), but we got on pretty well and he was pretty nice to me on the whole. My new co-teacher Paige said he was really awful to her, and last night one of my new co-workers who is also new to the school said that he'd heard the old VP was comparable to Gaddafi, so I imagine that there were a few others who also had problems with him, but really, that wasn't my problem and why he was like that to them wasn't either. I evaluate people on my own impressions and interactions with them, both for good and bad, and although there were some bad moments between me and him, things could have been a lot worse.

Well now they are. This new guy is completely and utterly committed to results, no matter how they're achieved. Not only is he likely to piss off the entire staff with this attitude, he's also likely to wipe out his entire student body because they're going to have to spend so much time studying that they aren't going to have any to do little things like eat, sleep and bathe. Last year, the Principal signed our school up for a Mentoring Program (and the attendant funding) without consulting ANY of the teachers first, which is pretty much meant to compete with the hagwon ('Academy' or tutoring) system that kids are usually stuffed into straight after school and pretty much in any spare time they might have. A Korean middle school student has it comparatively easy compared to high school students, but can still expect to have to spend a good 2 or 3 hours a day having English, Math, Science, piano, baseball, violin, taekwondo, drawing or anything else you'd care to think of lessons after school which is 8.30 - 4.30. I have seen my students walking home at night at 9.30 in the evening. Our mentoring program was designed to provide the same thing from 7 - 9 pm, but only for subjects taught at school that kids needed extra help with, and be more accessible by being cheaper than the usual hagwon fees. Good idea, right? Wrong. Because the thing about hagwons is that even though they are usually afternoon/evening classes, the teachers still usually only work a regular day (for Korea) workshift. So who teaches our mentoring program? Yep, the teachers. Which means that most of them have a work day of between 9 - 12 hours, which they obviously love.
Hooray for someone signing everyone but themselves up for extra work!

Luckily there are plenty of teachers not working insane schedules already or at least want the money more than I do who are keen for some tutoring so I don't have to do it. Which is lucky because there are three classes this year rather than one.

So we get to my gripe and why I think my VP is psychotic. He has just informed me that I'm expected to run a four hour class from 6 - 10pm (hopefully only once a week) for students to practice everything from conversation to presentations to whatever. This was not a request. What the fudge. First of all, never mind me, but what kind of ...person.... thinks that that kind of thing is going to be productive for the kids?? They're only 15 at oldest, and even though yes, they're used to studying for long hours and working hard, do you really think that making them go to a class after even a regular school day for four hours is going to do anything? It's not even going to be in their native tongue, so all they are going to end up doing is either not attending after the first couple of weeks or falling asleep. Oh and how about "what about the teacher who's going to have to teach at least 9 hours of her 14 hour working day"??????? Although I live in a pretty safe area, I also don't particularly like the idea of walking home by myself at 10pm at night.

I'm slightly pissed off. This is the whole parents winter conversation class over again. I suggested that we at least run it as two two-hour classes instead of one huge chunk, but that didn't seem to go down very well. I really don't care about the money - I'd rather have the free time - so I'm hoping that the VP will let me find someone else to do it because he doesn't really seem to understand what "refusing point blank" means, probably because it doesn't really happen in Korea. I told him that if he wants me to do it, I'm not doing it until at least the 25th of March so I can at least finish my TESOL coursework first and that was tricky enough.

Something weird is also happening with our exam preparation class intended to help students prepare for English language contests like the Ban Ki Moon essay/speech contest. But hey, it's not like the students have a choice about entering this so I guess it's only fair that I get forced to do it too. The weirdness is that apparently the head English teacher (who isn't great at classroom management and handling students to begin with, or at least in my classes anyway) really wants the students to do well, so only the absolute top students are going to be allowed in the class, but nevertheless she's putting FIRST graders in as well as seconds. Which to me just sounds stupid since there is only one test for everyone who enters with no distinction for different ages/grades but there you go. Unfortunately, Yong-Seo, one of the students who's been vetted from entering the class was one of my favourites last year as apparently he only did well in his English speaking test and bombed the rest, and one of the girls, Yeong-Ji was vetted out too because she doesn't have the right attitude or something.

Anyway, I've also just been told that I'm doing two more conversation classes, this time in 8th and 9th period on the two afternoons I had free, and since I usually get here at 8am, it looks like I'll have a few 10 hour days. I'm hoping that this means that I don't have to do the ridiculous 4 hour thing but who knows. Apparently this is also different from the 2 hour conversation class I'll have that's 1st 2nd AND 3rd year on Mondays and poor Paige has about as much idea as I do why that has to be different from the 1st year and 2nd year classes and can't just be changed so that there are three separate conversation classes, one for each grade so I can use some sort of teaching aide like a textbook and don't have to make the whole damn thing up myself. But no. So a fair prediction for the mixed Monday class is that we'll be watching a lot of movies. (I teach all of these classes by myself without a co-teacher by the way).

*sigh* Poor kids. Some of them are going to be mighty sick of seeing me every single day every week by the end of the semester.

HOME!

Yes, it is true. The eagle has landed, and Amy has come home. And good lord does it feel GRRRRRREEEEEAAAT! Although I'm used to travelling, it's always a little weird for me when I'm overseas for a long time somewhere where the climate is diametrically different to what I'm used to, especially over holiday periods like Christmas and the New Year and it's really different to my memories and habits of how I usually spend that time at home. It makes me slightly homesick and very mopey (not to say anti-snow) to look outside (having first had to defrost my window) and see frost and people wrapped up in six layers of clothing inching across icy pavements when everything is telling me that this is the time of year when people should be walking around in the blazing sunshine in summer dresses, thongs, sunnies and a tan, drinking cold beer or a refreshing gin and tonic on the verandah and listening to the crickets and cicadas chirping. So needless to say, coming home and having a sense of everything being set right again has been absolute BLISS. I haven't worn socks since I got off the plane (I immediately put my thongs on as soon as we landed) or even closed shoes, and I've been gradually crisping my feet and legs every morning by propping them up on the railing in the sunshine as I sit out on the verandah doing the crossword with my dad (who has now also become a sudoku nut but unfortunately with much the same "guess and hope and then blame the paper for making mistakes when it's wrong" technique as he used to have with crosswords).

Speaking of planes, I should mention some highlights of my flight(s) home here. The first leg of the trip from Seoul to Shanghai was pretty good, mainly thanks to my plane neighbours Brady and Jihye, also teachers, who were on their way to Singapore and then Malaysia. I was still exhausted from a busy weekend and the anticipation of coming home, but we got chatting over a beer.. and then another.. and then another.. I actually think the stewardess was getting a bit annoyed as Jihye asked for more beer for all of us, as she kept telling us to wait for the drinks cart, but she eventually gave up and gave in. So it was a pretty entertaining flight. Until we got to Shanghai. Our flight had been delayed by about half an hour, which was fine for me with my 7 hour stopover, but it meant that Brady and Jihye now only had about an hour and fifteen minutes to make their connecting flight. 75 minutes? Fine, no worries... in a normal airport. So we said goodbye and off they rushed while I proceeded at a more sedate pace. And then China confirmed my worst misgivings about going through there. Luckily, I didn't contract anything nasty (as far as I know) like I did last time, despite being surrounded by hordes of people with the usual and very charming Chinese habit of hacking, snorting, clearing your throat, coughing and sneezing with no attempt to cover up and all sorts, but that was probably due to my own paranoia rather than luck.

So first of all, the gate we'd come in was a ridiculously long way away from the rest of the terminal - fair enough, it's a big airport. After a nice 15 or 20 minute walk, I reached the "transfer lounge"... which was either non-existent or synonymous with "immigration" because we had to fill in an arrivals card and be processed and photographed before we could go through. I spotted Jihye and Brady in the line ahead of me, and wondered if they'd be rushed through as they would now have less than an hour to get to their next plane once they got through. When it was my turn and I asked where I should go, I was told "third floor" with a hand vaguely waved in a random direction, so I hopefully set off that way and then roamed around looking for a way up, finally spying a "transfers" sign over an escalator. Coming out onto the third floor, it had actually come out into arrivals, which I wandered around until I found someone to tell me where to go. Luckily I didn't have to check in again, but I DID have to fill out a departure card and go through immigration and security AGAIN. And guess who else I ran into with less than 15 minutes to make their flight? I wished them luck (again!) and set off in search of my gate, determined never to fly through China again unless I had absolutely no chance and no money to do otherwise. Waiting wasn't too eventful, although the 7 hours did give me a chance to become intimately acquainted with the swine flu information video being shown on a 15 minute loop. It was very cute and very funny - have a gander! (Unfortunately, I missed the first bit which said "Pay attention! Swine flu comes from America. It's other name is H1N1. What a shame!")

After boarding my plane and finding myself sitting across from a slack-lipped germ factory who kept sneezing and spraying gross yuk everywhere but into a tissue and coughing loudly, and thanks to the lovely H1N1 video making me even more of a hypochondriac than normal, I immediately covered my face with my scarf as a make-shift face-mask, which I wore for most of the 11 hour journey. The woman sitting next to me seemed perfectly healthy though, and as a bonus, was also fairly lightly built (this sounds prejudiced, but experienced flyers will know the discomfort of having someone three times your weight trying to squeeze past you and most likely over you to get to the toilet multiple times and be as relieved as I was that I didn't have to experience it again). We exchanged smiles and then settled down to wait for dinner. Unfortunately, the people in the row in front of us (the first row) weren't content to simply sit for the announced 15 minutes it would take to serve it. So, being hungry, they decided to have a picnic. The menu? A whole marinated roast goose, vacuum packed in foil. The four of them ripped into it with much gusto while I and the other three women sitting next to me in my row had a fit of giggles at their antics. Luckily the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful as most people crashed out right after dinner, and I didn't have the misfortune to be stuck across from someone with horrific and constant gas issues like I was coming back from America, so it was all good, and a huge relief to finally be home and step off the plane into that familiar mix of Australian summer before the terminal's air-conditioning hits you. It was pretty funny coming through customs and seeing the inevitable crowds of disappointed tourists thronged around the quarantine bins and hurriedly scarfing whatever they could because despite the many signs and warnings on the plane, they only just realised that the (probably very expensive) foodstuffs they brought with them to see them through the wilderness that is non-whatever their own country's cuisine is won't be allowed through Customs. (NB to people who've never been here before - Australia has really strict Customs and Quarantine laws because, duh, we are an island. A big one yes, but an island nonetheless, so you aren't allowed to bring seeds, dirt, shoes that have dirt in them, most animals, fresh food, food not sealed to commercial standards, wood, wood products, plants, tea, grains ... a lot of stuff. If you forget this, you may end up wasting a lot of money on food presents). Immigration was chaos - someone obviously decided that to make their own hellish day slightly less godawful, they were going to pass the bollocks around by making EVERYONE confused and pissy, so none of the signs made any sense, and the officers arbitrarily changed their minds about who could go where and which nationalities and types of passports were allowed in which lanes. But at last I got through and was home! Absolute bliss ^_^

Also, I've already managed to eat my way through a goodly number of things on my wishlist! Baked ham dinner, roast lamb with gravy and perfectly roasted potatoes, trifle (and a chocolate one at that!), nectarines (sadly, or perhaps luckily, due to the rain they are scarce, so I haven't eaten myself silly on them yet), chocolate gelato in Circular Quay with my sister, home-made muesli, smoked salmon bagels, my sister's mince pies - MANY things! And tomorrow I'm making home-made banana ice-cream for my grandad, and then next week my mum's making a pavlova for Australia Day so the gorging is good to continue. Fran thinks she's put on 2 kgs already in the three days that I've been home, and the dogs are overjoyed to have yet another person to scab from.

Ooh and also more importantly!! ...
... Okay, male readers (if any), you should probably skip this part, because I'm about to launch into a shopping story. Yes, it's about underwear, but not in any kind of alluring way - I stress, it's about underwear, NOT lingerie. So sorry in advance, but this stuff is important to women, so proceed at your own risk!

So, ALSO! Something that makes me incredibly happy - UNDERWEAR! I went shopping in Sydney yesterday with my sissy poo, and there was still plenty of stuff on sale from the Christmas/New Year's sales, so I had a field day! For those of you unaware of this fact, comfortable, well-fitting underwear is extremely hard to find in Korea, especially as most knickers are a kind of 'one size fits no-one' (for the most part, Koreans have no butts) and the only place you can reliably buy anything bigger than a B-cup is at American chain stores in Seoul, and even then they don't usually fit that well. Seriously, C-cups are usually advertised as "large sizes!", and everything has the hell padded out of it anyway, so if you are planning to go to Korea and wear underwear ladies, it is a given that you should stock up on it before you go, unless you want to spend the year with some very unflattering bulges and your bosom twice the size you want and perched right up under your chin. So anyway, Christmas money in hand from many people in a very generous family, and having gotten home to realise that contrary to my expectations, I'd actually taken ALL of my non-lingerie underwear with me to Korea and so had not one pair of practical (and comfortable) knickers left at home, I hit up Myers underwear department like there was no tomorrow. $150 later, I was much happier. And then of course, we couldn't go past the clothes floor... ^_^ I was very happy to discover that there were still lots of bargains to be had in the Princess Highway section, one of my favourite brands.

It's good to be home ^_^

Hip Hip Hooray for a Happy 2011!

So not feeling the blogness much today, but I thought I'd pop in a quick New Year's resolutions entry so that I have them written down somewhere. Happy new year to y'all by the way! Hope you've all gotten off to a good start, and have eaten some yummy ddokguk (떡국 or rice-cake soup) if you're in Korea/are Korean.

Ok, so, resolutions. Not many and hopefully all achieveable - keeping it simple is hopefully the key to actually keeping the resolutions.
1. Less procrastination. Decision making and work-doing both!
2. Finish my TESOL coursework before my new contract period starts on February 25th.
3. Go to the gym more often - Chanel and I decided that twice a week is too few, so I'm going for at least ten times a month.
4. Hmm should probably add "ignore nosey old buggers asking too many personal questions" here too. That or switch to a different gym with a less annoying ajosshi owner : p
5.  Be more patient. Accept that some things take time, and other times that decisions shouldn't be made on impulse. I have to add here, my policy still stands on repeating myself with people who have no excuse like language or genuine hearing problems - if I have to repeat something more than three times, too bad. If you didn't get it the first time, ok, maybe you didn't hear, second time, maybe it was hard to understand, more than three times, you obviously weren't paying attention which is either just plain rude or lazy. So too bad - if you want to hear it again, you're gonna have to make it worth my while and ask nicely! To a lesser degree, this applies to all of my students too - if they want me to say something again, they at least have to say 'please' and 'thankyou'. Yelling out 'one more time!' doesn't cut the mustard with Amy Teacher! Which leads me to number 6:
6. Teach all of my students the basics - "Hello", "Goodbye!", "thankyou", "no thankyou", "Please", "yes please" and whatever random idiom I decide to throw in :) (This year, for first years it was "awesome!" and "you beauty!", and for the second years it was "too bad!" and "hooroo!"... hahahahaha ㅋㅋ)
7.Stop doing favours for people who don't appreciate it. I like helping people out, and I don't expect something material for every little thing, but if you can't manage to even say 'thankyou' when someone helps you out, you need to go back to school 'cos your parents obviously didn't bring you up properly.
8. Don't waste time and effort on people who aren't worth it. This may be the wrong resolution to have if you're teaching English in a Korean public school as a native English speaker (a job that could be done by the English robots they have these days or a talking parrot), but outside of work, this has been a good resolution to have for the last couple of years so I am sticking to it.
9. Eat less sugar and try to actually stick to as low a GI diet as is possible in Korea.
10. Travel somewhere new. I'm holding out for Vietnam next winter holidays with Chanel and anyone else who's up for it!

With Chanel and Ji at Ho Bar #1 in Hongdae

Hope you all had a good NYE too by the way. I had a good evening shopping in Myeongdong (well, going around with Chanel while she went crazy over the sales at Forever 21 and H&M), then dinner, then drinks over the NYE countdown with Chanel and Ji amongst various gay couples having a romantic evening at Bricx (by the way, their Lycheebug Limonade cocktail is DISGUSTING! tastes like soju made in a sweaty boot. Seriously, it was so strong that any sugar in it vaporised), and some more drinks with other Cheongju-ites who had also flocked to Seoul, and then dancing at one of the weirdest and awfully constructed clubs in Hongdae, 'Oi'. Seriously, if there is no ventilation, everything smells of nicotine grossness, and the smoke machine is pouring out chemical fog onto the dance floor, why would you decide to add to it and smoke when you could just inhale deeply and get your hit there? Gross. But it was a fun night anyway and I got to see Addie briefly, one of my classmates from my Ewha exchange in '06!

But anyway, it was a good night, if long. We ended up giving up on the taxi scrum and getting the first subway ride back to the bus station and hopping the 6.20am bus back to Cheongju, so I then ended up passing out on my deliciously warm floor when I got home. After a much needed shower to get rid of the stink of smoke in my hair (and washing all my pillowcases and clothes and Febreezing the hell out of my jacket), I was just in time for dinner with Super Onni. She is an awesome cook! Her ddokguk was scrumptious ^_^ Sadly, the panforte I took over was not so successful (sadly because I doubt they'll actually eat much of it before they throw it out, so it was a bit of a waste of something really yummy) because Koreans don't really seem to like dried fruit very much, but it was a nice relaxing dinner anyway.

By the way, thanks for the photos I mercilessly stole Chanel :) hehe~

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! All the best for the year ahead :)