Happiness is a Hobbit!

Secret geek that I am, I was incredibly excited, then pissed off, to see the trailer for "The Hobbit". Excited because it looks AMAZING! (as everyone knows it will be) and pissed off because it's not being released until the 14th of December NEXT YEAR. What the hell Peter Jackson you tubby jerk! Why would you release the trailer a year before the movie is released??? So grr on that one. For anyone less than Martin Freeman in the title role and the fabulous Sir Ian Mackellan I would refuse to see it when it came out on principle.... Mind you, a year is quite a long time - by next December I'm sure I'd have conveniently forgotten that oath :)

Of course, there are those out there who it will be frankly wasted on, like this moron.

For those not in the know, this is the meme for 'not sure if ... or ...'. E.g. "Not sure if incredibly stupid or just trolling. Stupidly."

Apparently there is a bunch of behind the scenes photos etc on Facebook if you are into that kind of thing and have either the curiousity or the Facebook to see it.

Oh and weirdest yet of the conversations I've had with my weird first year girl's class, class 1-1. For some background, this is the class who fooled me into mis-pronouncing a bunch of K-pop groups' names wrong and sometimes randomly start singing in harmony with each other when I ask them questions. Anyway, today while two students were trying to get me to 'fess up about whether I had a boyfriend or not (I fooled them into thinking I was dating Rain for a while) and ordering me to "No joking! No lies!" I had another student stroking - yes, STROKING - my jumper (which while soft is not particularly so and doesn't have a particularly interesting weave or anything) and screaming in my other ear about how she'd killed her hamster from "too much stress" and showing me how she used to pet it and cuddle it.. with both hands.. The Dead Hamster girl is also the one who gurns at me from the back of the class, so sometimes I'll look up at her and find these faces staring back at me (amongst others), often in quick succession >

Sometimes it's really hard to keep a straight face :p Today's expression was her classic 'happy pyscho' face that looked something like these guys >

If you can imagine a 12 year old girl grinning widely and miming gripping a hamster so tightly and stroking it so heavily that it dies, you'll know what my morning was like.

Anyway, only 3 sleeps until Christmas! Woohoo! Can't wait to break into the Christmas goodies my lovely parents sent me :)

Tangential post is tangential

Or should that be 'tangental'? Hmm. I've obviously been spending too much time on 9gag with the internet memes as my only friends. Too obviously when you consider I was playing Taboo last night and the word was "alone" so I said "the internet meme, forever ...?" But at least my friend got it straight away! I guess we're both sad and forever alone together...? Haha^^

Anyway, so I'm not dealing with student cuteness or ranting about how 'special' they are just yet - I'll save that to rant together since it's quite depressing. Or would be if I was sticking around for another year! Woohoo for resigning instead of re-signing! Haha, I know, I'm a dork^^

Instead, I'm going to post some photos from the lovely weekend I had in Busan with Christy, decorating her Christmas tree and missing Nat. We also had some delicious dwaeji gukbab (돼지국밥) or porky rice-soup which is basically soup with sliced pork that you add rice to AFTER it's cooked and enjoy with some nice eye-wateringly sharp kimchi. It's a specialty of Busan and delicious.

Our star/angel substitute

Danielle, Christy, Christy's friend Charlie

JP, quite drunk ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

맛있는 부산 돼지국밥 (delicious Busan dwaeji guk-bap)

In other news, it started snowing very gently last night, making for a very gloomy walk home from the bus stop. Today the sky had another whirl at it, making my students very excited. Don't know if you can see it here, but if you can, those white bits are the frosty chunks of slippery death that people call snow.

*sigh* Oh well, at least I get to use my wellingtons more now!



 



Oh and also, one thing that I like about this cold weather - it's perfect time for juk! (죽) Aka congee, aka rice porridge. I had some last week with Michelle - she had samgye-juk (삼계죽) which is like samgyetang (spring chicken soup) but with juk instead, and I had the sogogi nakji-juk (쇠고기낚지죽)
which was beef and octopus. Yum yum yummity!

Happy Friday everyone! Hope you're having a less snowy day. Oh and look, the sunshine is out now. Gotta love that temperamental weather :p

Christmas countdown

There are many things to write about, but right now all I can be bothered to deal with is one of my favourite parts of Christmas - the annual broadcasting of Frank Kelly's Christmas Countdown on the radio. Haha, it's weird to think of him as Father Jack!

Lol, there's not a line of this that I don't love, so rather than quote them randomly here's the script if you didn't catch the whole thing in the video (or have problems understanding Irish accents) and don't want to watch it again.

Day One
Dear Nuala,
Thank you very much for your lovely present of a partridge in a pear-tree. We’re getting the hang of feeding the partridge now, although it was difficult at first to win its confidence. It bit the mother rather badly on the hand but they’re good friends now and we’re keeping the pear-tree indoors in a bucket. Thank you again. Yours affectionately,
Gobnait O’Lúnasa

Day Two
Dear Nuala,
I cannot tell you how surprised we were to hear from you so soon again and to receive your lovely present of two turtle doves. You really are too kind. At first the partridge was very jealous and suspicious of the doves and they had a terrible row the night the doves arrived. We had to send for the vet but the birds are okay again and the stitches are due to some out in a week or two. The vet’s bill was £8 but the mother is over her annoyance now and the doves and the partridge are watching the telly from the pear-tree as I write. Yours ever,
Gobnait

Day Three
Dear Nuala,
We must be foremost in your thoughts. I had only posted my letter when the three French hens arrived. There was another sort-out between the hens and the doves, who sided with the partridge, and the vet had to be sent for again. The mother was raging because the bill was £16 this time but she has almost cooled down. However, the fact that the birds’ droppings keep falling down on her hair whilen she’s watching the telly, doesn’t help matters. Thanking you for your kindness. I remain,
Your Gobnait

Day Four
Dear Nuala,
You mustn’t have received my last letter when you were sending us the four calling birds. There was pandemonium in the pear-tree again last night and the vet’s bill was £32. The mother is on sedation as I write. I know you meant no harm and remain your close friend. Gobnauit

Day Five
Nuala,
Your generosity knows no bounds. Five gold rings ! When the parcel arrived I was scared stiff that it might be more birds, because the smell in the living-room is atrocious. However, I don’t want to seem ungrateful for the beautiful rings. Your affectionate friend, Gobnait

Day Six
Nuala,
What are you trying to do to us ? It isn’t that we don’t appreciate your generosity but the six geese have not alone nearly murdered the calling birds but they laid their eggs on top of the vet’s head from the pear-tree and his bill was £68 in cash ! My mother is munching 60 grains of Valium a day and talking to herself in a most alarming way. You must keep your feelings for me in check. Gobnait

Day Seven
Nuala,
W e are not amused by your little joke. Seven swans-a-swimming is a most romantic idea but not in the bath of a private house. We cannot use the bathroom now because they’ve gone completely savage and rush the door every time we try to enter. If things go on this way, the mother and I will smell as bad as the living-room carpet. Please lay off. It is not fair. Gobnait

Day Eight
Nuala,
Who the hell do you think gave you the right to send eight, hefty maids-a-milking here, to eat us out of house and home ? Their cattle are all over the front lawn and have trampled the hell out of the mother’s rose-beds. The swans invaded the living-room in a sneak attack and the ensuing battle between them and the calling birds, turtle doves, French hens and partridge make the Battle of the Somme seem like Wanderly Wagon. The mother is on a bottle of whiskey a day, as well as the sixty grains of Valium. I’m very annoyed with you. Gobnait

Day Nine
Listen you louser !
There’s enough pandemonium in this place night and day without nine drummers drumming, while the eight flaming maids-a-milking are beating my poor, old alcoholic mother out of her own kitchen and gobbling everything in sight. I’m warning you, you’re making an enemy of me. Gobnait

Day Ten
Listen manure-face,
I hope you’ll be haunted by the strains of ten pipers piping which you sent to torment us last night. They were aided in their evil work by those maniac drummers and it wasn’t a pleasant sight to look out the window and see eight hefty maids-a-milking pogo-ing around with the ensuing punk-rock uproar. My mother has just finished her third bottle of whiskey, on top of a hundred and twenty four grains of Valium. You’ll get yours ! Gobnait O’Lúnasa

Day Eleven
You have scandalised my mother, you dirty Jezebel,
It was bad enough to have eight maids-a-milking dancing to punk music on the front lawn but they’ve now been joined by your friends ~ the eleven Lords-a-leaping and the antics of the whole lot of them would leave the most decadent days of the Roman Empire looking like “Outlook”. I’ll get you yet, you ould bag !

Day Twelve
Listen slurry head,
You have ruined our lives. The twelve maidens dancing turned up last night and beat the living daylights out of the eight maids-a-milking, ‘cos they found them carrying on with the eleven Lords-a-leaping. Meanwhile, the swans got out of the living-room, where they’d been hiding since the big battle, and savaged hell out of the Lords and all the Maids. There were eight ambulances here last night, and the local Civil Defence as well. The mother is in a home for the bewildered and I’m sitting here, up to my neck in birds’ droppings, empty whiskey and Valium bottles, birds’ blood and feathers, while the flaming cows eat the leaves off the pear-tree. I’m a broken man.

Gobnait O’Lúnasa

And just for reference, this is Frank Kelly in 'Father Ted' and as his more normal self. Double haha^^

Merry Christmas!

 ‎*★MERRY*•˚° •。•★*CHRISTMAS★ °* •。★* •。★*˚
° 。* •。˛˚˛★*˚*° 。* ★。EVERYONE!♥˚° 。 ° ˛˚*° 。˚*• °
° 。.°˛˚* _Π_____*。*˚° 。 ° ˛˚*˚° • 。 ° ˛˚*˚° • 。 ° ˛˚
˚ ˛˛•˚ */______/~＼。˚ ˚ ° 。• ° ˛˚˚° 。 ° ˛˚˛˚˚° 。 ° ˛˚˛
˚ ˛˛ ˚ *｜田田｜門｜ ˚˚˚° 。 ° ˛˚˛˚*And Happy New Year*

So we ended up having a white Christmas here after all - it started snowing around 2.30 this afternoon, and by about 7pm, everything was coated in a fine layer of powdery white icing-sugar snow. And this time I liked it!... Because I was inside and keeping warm hehe :)



 Christmas in Korea is not really much of a holiday. Actually, it's more of a couples day than a family day, like a second Valentine's Day, so people might do something special for it with whoever, but things don't really shut down like they do at home. So shops stay open (although usually for shorter hours) and traffic is predictably terrible and because of the cold weather and it being a weekend, catching a taxi was tricky.

 





With Chanel at the C.o.E. dinner



So this is a quick run-down of what I did for Christmas. First of all, we had the Chungbuk Office of Education end of year (Christmas) dinner on Friday, Christmas Eve. As my friend Lara pointed out, not everyone is Catholic or Christian, so calling it a Christmas dinner straight out might have been a little exclusive. Our co-teachers were told it was a 'workshop' however, so I guess we were just told whatever they thought would make us want to come. It was kind of fun though - an ok buffet dinner with some pretty good oysters! and an orchestra, photo slideshow and Karaoke competition which was .. interesting... :) Luckily, after the dinner ended Lara (who lives a street away from me) and I cadged a ride with one of the co-teachers and didn't have to walk home in the minus 16 degrees or whatever it was.



With Lara and Teresah

Christmas day started with a morning skype home and opening presents with mum, dad and Fran at 7am (9am Wollongong time). Floss was in her reindeer suit as usual, and looked miserable, as usual, but looked slightly happier at the prospect of her and Henry's new doggie biscuit bottle. Cute! Needless to say, I was very jealous at missing out on the traditional stewed fruit, yoghurt and bagels. Next came a call to my grandparents, and I accidentally confused my grandma by telling her that I was coming home on the morning of the 18th and making her think that I was coming home TOMORROW morning - sorry nan!



MMMMM!! or as they say here "nom nom nom!"



Then, the big thing that so many of us Cheongju-ites were looking forward to - Christmas breakfast at Chanel's! Everyone brought something delicious - we had orange juice, cheesy scrambled eggs, crispy crunchy bacon, sausages, french toast (with mandatory maple syrup), croissants, fruit salad, kiwis and strawberries, yoghurt, nougat Christmas pudding, tim tams (thanks mum, dad and fran!), bread that turned out to be cream-filled... YUM!!! It was all delicious ^_^

We also watched 'Love Actually' too while we ate - the perfect Christmas movie to watch with a group of your best girlfriends ^_^

Getting home turned out to be a bit more difficult than we thought though - I read the bus route map wrong, so the bus Lara and I caught ended up at the Eastern bus depot (동부종점) with no taxis or information on buses in sight, but luckily the driver of the bus we were on helped us out and helped hustle us onto a bus that was going our way and luckily was the only one that went right to my front door. A quick dash inside to drop off my stuff and then I was back out into the cold again and off to the Cheongju Sports Complex(Chaeyukgwon or 체육관) to see "B,Boyz and Ballerina". My co-teacher Ms Shin had an extra ticket so she was her usual awesome self and invited me to come see it with her, her son and her school friend Ms Kim. And it was awesome! I thought it was going to be a kind of stage version of one of those fancy ballerina meets tough street boy love stories with some speaking, and it was, but today it seemed like a kind of dancing pantomime because there was Christmas bit where they threw presents (candy) into the audience (I actually hid because some of it was being thrown quite forcefully). And I love pantos! Haven't seen one since I was in year 9 or something, and Ms Shin really enjoyed it too so we clapped and cheered and had a great time. Luckily we were in the centre, about ten rows back from the stage so we had a great view, and when they asked everyone in the audience who was "solo" (meaning single) to put their hands up and then picked people to come up on stage and be a couple or dance with them, we were far enough back that neither I nor Ms Shin's son got picked, even though Ms Shin tried her hardest to get them to choose me by yelling out and waving at them. It was so much fun! And completely worth going outside for on this chilly minus 14 degree day, even having to walk through falling snow dropping into my face. I was actually supposed to drop by and see Super Onni and her family today too but when I got home I ad a quick nap that ended up lasting until 10.30, so I think I kind of missed that one. Luckily they are Buddhist anyway, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't going to be anything especially Christmassy.

So that's about it. Oh, I have one more Christmas thing to look forward to! Lucy is coming to see me! Yay fo stopovers! ^_^ So hopefully in a few days time I will be adding a post about what an awesome time we'll have and the snow won't be too much of a buzzkill.

****P.S. All photos here from Lara's much higher quality collection and ability at photo-taking than mine :)



A mostly good day...

Yes, I am cynical and prone to occasional bouts of - shall we say a dour grumpiness? So really I shouldn't head what I intend to be a mostly upbeat post with something that hints at more of the same. But that annoying vein of combined honesty and literalism and an inability to ignore niggling wrong details stops me from changing it.

So first things first - last week I was pretty busy. As you may have guessed from my whingey Friday grouse, I was busy and tired and then on top of it all, freezing my butt off, so all in all not a happy camper. A pair of wellies, a chilled dinner and drinks after buying an extra super thick (electric purple too!) blanket helped me de-stress a little, just in time for a busy two days of travelling all over to see a lot of fabulous people. Don't get me wrong - I was happy to do it, and really, I did manage quite a lot of snoozes in between. But it was a bit weird finally getting home on Sunday night at 9.30pm and realising that I had another week in front of me of more of the same craziness that I'd just recovered from and then it would be Christmas. Where does the time go?



Nat enjoying her birthday :)

 Ok, a quick summary of where mine went: Saturday saw me in Busan to celebrate my lovely and entirely awesome friend Natalie's birthday and help her age noisily if not gracefully. Happy Birthday Nat! We love you, even if you piked early (our fault really for letting her lapse between drinks in favour of beer pong and allowing tiredness to get there before drunkeness). After 5 hours of sleep it was up and off to brunch and then a dash to Busan station, where thanks to three wonderful compassionate people who allowed me to cut in front of them after waiting in line for an unproductive seven minutes got us nowhere, I made my train with literally 1 minute and about 10 seconds to spare. A screaming child (excited screaming not crying screaming) for most of it made it slightly less restful than it could have been, even after asking the mother to keep her kid quiet. (I put up with it for a good 15 minutes. Enough was enough and really, if your four year old child is STILL excited at the prospect of a piece of gum, even after it has chewed and discarded the other nine pieces in the whole packet, I should not be the only one wondering what the hell.)


Me, Hema and Sonali



All of this was worth it though because it meant I got to see Hema!! In fact, one of the things that has made this such a great year so far is all the old friends that I've managed to see again, and Hema makes it doubly-great because I got to see her twice! I was lucky that she had time really, on her whirlwind tour around the world from NY to Korea, to Mongolia, and then back to Korea before going onto Finland and home again. And of course that meant I got to catch up and hang out with her sister Sonali too, so the three of us had a great time chatting in this weird coffee place in Myeongdong. (Seriously, awful drinks, awful service, awful attitude. Between exit 7 at Myeongdong Station and Caffe Bene with the outdoor seating. Don't go there!) It was sad saying goodbye, but Hema had to go home and find a way to stuff all of her shopping into her suitcase! :p

Bus back to Cheongju, home, did some washing and tidying, ate something and crashed. Up again early this morning to another pea-soup fog type day for my health check to extend my contract next year. Doctors and nurses were ok, but am definitely not keen on their methods of taking blood. Not that I am at the best of times, but here they've been so bad I wouldn't even volunteer to do it to give blood, which apparently they have to bribe uni students with extra credits to get sometimes so it mustn't just be me who thinks it's bad. (Actually, it's weird, but everyone has been great at injections!)





 And then classes. Was watching the rest of Home Alone 2 in the two of them, one of which I did lesson plans in and the other I played omok (오목, like Korean connect five - also known as gomoku in Japanese apparently) with my co-teacher on a set that she'd confiscated from one of the students so they were good. The other was with one of my worst first year classes - lowest level boys. We were finishing their class Christmas tree (made out of their hand silhouettes) and letters to Santa (paper decorations) and also making Christmas cards with paper snowflakes and paper chains. I wasn't sure how they'd like this since the tree making had met with mixed success the week before, but they LOVED IT! It was weird, but apparently Korean kids don't learn how to make paper snowflakes (or at least none of mine have yet) so they thought it was all new and intriguing. None of them got up to making a cut-out Christmas tree or paper dolls, but they had a brilliant time experimenting with cutting out the snowflakes and sticking them onto paper cards so we had a great lesson. Part of this might have been because I gave them all little Christmas tags and candy at the end though ㅋㅋㅋ

  I have to say here - not all of the students in this class are low level. Some of them are really bright, and up until exams I had actually split the class into low and high (about 2/3 to 1/3 respectively) with my co-teacher and the high stream kids had been doing fantastic work, even with just me and no co-teacher to occasionally translate. But until then it had been a struggle trying to find stuff that appealed to everyone and was achieveable for all the students, so it was really great to have a lesson that they all enjoyed and got into. Which brings me to what I think has to be the highlight of my Christmas decorations so far - Hyeong-Nae drew me a special Christmas picture. Here it is on the right... Yes, apparently Alien celebrates Christmas too.




Letter to Santa (from one of the girls)

 So another bright spot in my day is also the Christmas letters that my kids have been writing to Santa. I've done a post about this on Facebook, but I've definitely noticed a bit of a gender divide in terms of material, although they all pretty much come down to the same bottom line - give me a present. Here's one from one of the girls. If you can't read it, it says "Dear Santa. Hello Santa. My name is Ye-Jin. I love you. You are children's Rome (?). Every one hopes your prasent! Others: Santa doesn't exist. But I believe your exist. So you will give a present to me! Love you Santa. To Ye-Jin." Other letters from the girls have included "Dear Santa. Please bring me a dog for Christmas. Because I want a friend. I love you! Hannah.", "Dear Santa, please bring me new cloths and i-pot.", "Dear Santa, please bring me MBlaq for Christmas!" (a K-pop group. I think she meant their album.. but then and again maybe not)

In the meantime, the boys have been much more.. shall we say, direct? Here's one I particularly liked. It says:

"Dear Santa

Hellow, Nice Christmas,

How old are you? I want to know your age.

It is mystery to all the people. Why didn't you die?

Please, tell me about your secret.

Bye bye, Hun-Min

Others have been "Dear Santa. I hate you. Just give me a present. Jeong-Bin.", "Dear Santa, show me the money! Give me lots of money. Then give me more money. Love Tae-Hee." and today "Dear Mr Ha. You is so foolish."

Lol, great stuff ^_^

But onto the final part of the day, which is what made me hesistate before claiming today was a great day. Dinner. I was meeting Lara for dinner and I felt like haejang-guk (해장국), a kind of yummy savoury Korean soup that you usually add your rice to and mix up to eat, so we decided to check out a haejang-guk hole in the wall type place in our area we'd seen but never been to and grab some kong-namul haejang-guk (콩나물해장국) made with bean sprouts. We walked into the restaurant, sat down and ordered from the slightly deaf old lady running the place. There were only two other people in there (it would have only fit about ten people in the whole place), two ajosshis (old men) drinking and talking loudly, so we continued our conversation in our corner until our food arrived, at which point the one closest (and drunkest) decided to get chatty, saying that they'd been listening to us talking English. Which was fine, and we chatted for a bit, me translating as best I could for Lara, and then turned back to our food. A few seconds later, ajosshi #1 started telling me how pretty I was. Seeing that he'd embarrassed me and I wasn't translating this to Lara, he turned to her, pointed at me and said loudly in English "Miss Korea, eh?" We all laughed and seeing that we were trying to eat, his friend told him (in Korean) to shut up, stop bothering us and let us eat. Which we managed for a good five minutes or so, before ajosshi #1 began yelling at the ajumma to order something else and started getting a wee bit rude, (with his friend telling him to shut up and stop swearing). And then since he was pointed that way moved on to trying to talk to us again, asking us where we were from and trying to explain that he wasn't being rude, it was just that the ajumma was deaf and Koreans were naturally noisy and energetic but very sincere (all the while insisting periodically that I translate for Lara). His friend once again tried to get him to leave us alone, but then the lady brought out their food (a plate of meat) and they decided to give us half, saying they couldn't eat it all themselves. We thanked them and tried to get back to eating it. Five minutes later Mr Drunk was back . His friend left, muttering about how the other guy was drunk and telling me that he gets so drunk he "falls out of his room" (meaning he must live alone, and unmarried ajosshi's living alone are invariably drunk, angry and usually have some sort of social problems) and the old lady retreated into her kitchen. By this point I had very little or no idea what the guy was talking about, but trying to translate as best as possible for Lara, and trying with very little success to occasionally actually eat. It was obvious we weren't going to be left alone by now, and Lara took out her phone to check the time. Mr Drunk did not appreciate this and started saying how rude she was to talk on her phone (which she wasn't). I then said to Lara that it was probably time to escape in as cheery a fake tone as I could muster, and then apologised to him and said we had to go, as we had another appointment. I don't know if he'd understood what I said to Lara, but man was he pissed! By the time he'd started yelling at us to get out ("그냥 가!") amidst a variety of other abuse, we were wrapped up and jumping into our shoes. A torrent of abuse continued as we paid and left (the old lady was very apologetic) and we thought we'd escaped. Since we hadn't finished dinner, we headed for some ice-cream to cool off. This proved a great comic relief as we were highly amused to discover that the cookie ice-cream sandwich I'd bought was literally a sandwich made out of bread and cookie ice-cream. Standing on the street laughing over this and various other things before parting ways however proved to be a mistake, as Lara noticed drunk ajosshi coming down the street who had unfortunately noticed us and was glancing over his shoulder to glare at us angrily. Solution: we jumped behind a huge blowup balloon advertisement pillar and hid until he'd turned the corner.

What a weirdo. But now that I'm (presumably) safe and warm, hidden in my apartment that I'm 98% sure he didn't see me go into, and hopefully Lara is the same, it's kind of funny. lol, I guess I'm weird too... but not as weird as he was! ^_^

세상 누구도 혼자가 되지않는 날, 크리스마스

"Christmas, a day when no-one in the world should be alone"

Saw this ad for Christmas cakes at Paris Baguette (a Korean bakery) on tv. A mix of funny, slightly weird and hopefully not prophetic for those of us away from home for Christmas this year :)