2009 ICC Fall Retreat Promo Video

I didn't create the video portion of this but I added sound and text so that my church could use it for our upcoming retreat. Check it out!

Lotte Giants!

Today I got my first real experience with photojournalism. Busan Haps, a local magazine for foreigners asked me to shoot some photos to accompany an upcoming article on the foreign players in the Lotte Giants. It was amazing experience, particularly since they gave me an all-access press pass and let me shoot photos from the sidelines as well as during the actual interviews. After the game, I talked with the owner of the magazine and he was so satisfied with my work that he invited me to shoot the upcoming basketball tournaments as well. I can't wait! It's a great way for me to practice my skills, get experience and expand my portfolio all at the same time. I won't be posting many of the photos on my website but I did take some that I consider portfolio worthy. I'll probably have those up in a few days so I hope you will take the time to look them over and give me your opinions.

Proverbs

I have recently come to realise that the old proverb "curiosity killed the cat" could easily come true in our household, if we don't keep a firm eye or two on Ginga. I could also extend the application like so: "Curiosity may sting your dog on the nose." It hasn't happened yet, but the amount of times I've told Tia to keep away from a bee or a wasp now numbers more than ten!
What a blessing to have animals and children, even if one gets exasperated at times ;P
The world IS a beautiful place and there's always sooooo much more that can be explored.

Opportunities knock in the strangest ways

I've never been much of a journal-writer. I used to write all the time, but around the time I left high school my passion shifted from writing to photography. I'm telling you this because I don't tend to update my blog much even though there's a lot of things to write about.

One of those things is the strangeness of living in a completely different culture where being a westerner is an oddity and often a reason for unexpected opportunities. For example, last Thursday my friend Matthew called me out-of-the-blue and asked if I wanted to be in a commercial. He does commercials all the time for the city of Busan but apparently this time the company wanted someone new. So on Friday afternoon I showed up at the Nampo-dong station in Busan expecting to be one of many extras. To my surprise, it turned out that the commercial was promoting tourism and the only person in the commercial was yours truly. I spent the following 8 hours smiling, pretending to buy souvenirs, pretending to take pictures of a gorgeous sunset (which I plan to go back and photograph later) and running through a fountain with several Korean children. Afterwards I asked the director where the commercial would be shown if it was green-lighted by the city tourism council and he told me Japan, the Philippines, basically most of Asia and Los Angeles, but in LA it wouldn't be shown on TV but on one of those big LCD screens that you see on the outside of buildings. Okay then...

On top of that, tomorrow another film crew is coming to film me and my wife in our home. At least that was what one of the directors of EPIK (the English Program in Korea) told us after explaining that Shannon and I are the perfect couple to promote teaching in South Korea. In reality, the film crew called us and said that they need to film us at home, walking in the park holding hands, drinking coffee or tea at an outdoor cafe, enjoying our hobbies, eating Korean food and talking about our teaching experiences. So what we thought would be a simple video about us has turned into yet another commercial. I'm all for it but I think Shannon is still hoping for something a bit more genuine. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Anyway, that's it for now but I'm sure this is only the beginning.

Dealing with sickness in Korea

Our South African friend, Brett, unfortunately had a TERRIBLE time getting good treatment and being admitted to hospital when he caught chicken pox here from his students. Note: Adult chicken pox is DANGEROUS. There's apparently a vaccine available here in Korea, so if you never had chicken pox as a kid, ask a doctor for that vaccine asap!

We can't comprehend that what Brett had to go through is the normal experience here. They didn't seem to realise and confirm how serious his sickness was until he was finally in a hospital-like clinic.

We have full health insurance here and everyone we've spoken to has had no problem going to a hospital to see an English speaking doctor when they needed to. Rob even managed to get a list from the Haeundae District office of medical practitioners in our area who speak English. It's so nice to be able to communicate in your own language when you're sick. And you want to be able to fully understand what the doctor has to say to you.

But so far, my experiences here have made me a little anxious about being sick in Korea. :(

I had an awesome experience of going to a doctor about knee pain. He spoke some English. He was the first doctor who's x-rayed my knees. He told me I have degenerate bones. (No wonder I've had confidence problems walking down steep hill slopes for years.) He told me I have the knee joints of someone thirty plus years older than me. That's right! Old lady knees! It sounds funny, but it really upset me, cos when I asked what we could do about it, he said "lose weight and not exercise." How can you lose weight and not exercise! Anyway, I have lost 5kg since coming to Korea (granted, I didn't have that weight before I left Germany, but it IS possible without too much effort...) and I have been going to some awesome physio therapy there that's really helped. The physio therapist there is a young Christian guy who's studied in Australia for 4 years, so his English is pretty darn good. Each time I go, he'd give my knees heat treatment, electro-shock treatment, then ultra sound treatment and then I'd wear the air massage pants to increase leg circulation. Sometimes I get to lie on the massage bed too. And it costs under 4,000won each time I go! (About $3!) He's also given me really good exercise to increase my strength in the muscles around my knees. Exercise should be walking/running in the pool. Haven't checked out that option yet.

The more negative exeriences are as follows:
I've had were going to a gynocologist on Rob's list and finding that no one there really spoke English. It was a mildly negative experience, because I clearly caused the workers there a lot of stress, not being able to speak Korean and I felt like there was false advertising. This clinic is so convenient for me. Right near my school. I did ok with my phrase book and the pictures on the gynocologist's wall. In all fairness, she did know enough English for us to communicate with help from the pictures on the wall, but she didn't want to speak English. I couldn't find out from them how their clinic was on this list of English speaking practices, if no one there can speak English.

With rainy season, there have been a sudden increase of flies at school, mosquitos at night and beautifully, thousands upon thousands of big, lazy dragon flies :)

I've been bitten by mosquitos on my legs, arms and neck (and now face) at night, and often these are getting infected days after the bite occuring. You know me, I TRY not to scratch, but I guess somewhere during the night or during the day I sometimes give in to the urge and then a day later, there's this huge pink pussy infection around the bite.
:( I have mozzie repellent spray, but it STINKS. Will have to try to use it more often, esepcially before walking Tia at night. We also have screens on our windows, so we'll have to make sure our couchsurfing guests know to keep them shut at all time and we have a mozzie net over our bed. That's being totally paranoid, considering there aren't really mozzies around compared to other countries. And yet, I'm stillg etting bitten. They love my blood! Please pray for me to be able to resist scratching and to keep away infection!

Last Friday and Saturday I woke up with what appears to be spider bites on my face. (Also on one leg, I think). They just look like pink acne and they hurt if you touch them, so I just put tea tree oil on them and waited for them to go away, but Korean friends urged me to see a dermatologist before going away on Summer vacation. So today I went across the street to the big medical centre here and found no English on any of the signs. Which floor to go to? I tried the second floor. None of the administrators spoke much English. I got them to understand that I wanted to see an English speaking doctor. Then when I showed them my symptoms, they told me I was at the eye clinic and the dermatologist is on the 5th floor. So on up to the 5th floor! I HAVE TO learn much more Korean!

When I got to the dermatologist, for the first minute he only spoke in Korean until I asked him in Korean if he speaks English. He said in perfect English "In Rome, do as the Romans do. You are in Korea, so you should speak Korean." Yes, I understand and actually, I agree with that statement. Because of his stance on Korean language, I asked him what the Korean was for certain symptoms and he gave it to me and we wrote it down. However, if I were feeling like crap because I was seriously sick, I probably would've thrown a tantrum right there.

Unfortunately this blog post hasn't been that encouraging for new teachers arriving in Korea. I can only encourage you to learn as much Korean as possible asap and find out from your mates where their good English speaking doctors are and go there. Do also enquire at your local district office, because there could be good English speaking doctors very close to your apartment and school. After all, 4 million people live in Busan. There have to be a lot of doctors here and doctors are highly educated people.

New additions to the Digby family!

Well, this is several months overdue, but maybe you heard through facebook? There’s a LOT to catch up on folks, so I hope you’re interested in our newest family members! Or just skim read.

Here’s how the idea became concrete, even though we’d decided it wasn't practical and we didn’t have the money for it:

Back in early-mid May, our friend Ashley went back home to Alabama (and Hawaii and Japan) for 10 days, bringing back her Mom with her. During that time we had the privilege to dog sit her then 3 month old Maltese puppy, Marley. He looked like a tiny clean mop head. He was soooo funny. His favorite game was then chase. I’d chase him to his bed, then he’d chase me,

I’d hide somewhere and then chase him…. How can something so small be such a bundle of energy? He was such a well-behaved, sweet puppy though. His Momma had trained him well! He didn’t even bark. I trained Marley to walk on a lead – I couldn’t believe that you have to train a dog to like going for a walk. At the beginning of the stay, Rob was dragging him around on his arse. Marley HATED it! How could he hate going for a walk?! I don’t remember that EVER being a problem with the family dogs the Whites have had. But then we took Marley to the beach with Kim and her Rhodesian ridgeback, Lola, and he saw a big dog having no problem being on a leash. I think Lola set a good example. Then I spent a few days coaxing him during short training session walks. I observed that Marley was so tiny that he couldn’t easily keep up with me, so I had to walk slower and encourage him to come where I was goi

ng so that he’d walk alongside me rather than stop behind me. He also didn’t have good depth perception. He was scared of going down stairs (he broke his leg jumping off Ashley’s bed when he was really little) and he was also scared of the grating covering the storm drains (fair enough, cos his tiny paws could easily go through that, if he didn’t jump it). So I stopped and encouraged him to go down each step, rewarding him with a lot of praise for each step. Then I showed him how to jump over the grating several times before encouraging him to jump the grating. It took maybe 3-4 days for it to become more natural to him. I praised him still for good jumps and for keeping up with me when I said “Come on, Marley” in a nice voice, but I didn’t have to encourage him as much as before and he was enjoying the walks! Ashley was pretty amazed when she came to pick him up. I knew I was going to miss the little critter!

Somehow, God knew that and during the days we had Marley, our friend Mary was out jogging and had stopped to tie up a shoelace when a small group stopped to talk to her. It was a (Korean) parent and daughter who were out walking their dog and near their dog was a little puppy. “Can you take this puppy home? We already have a dog.” Mary already has a dog of her own, but the puppy came and sat near her. It seemed friendly enough and it was beautiful, so luckily for us, she had the heart to take it home. The puppy was really skinny and had worms and parasites, so she took her to the vet for treatment and since the puppy got on so well with Mary’s dog, Pepper, Mary was happy to wait to find a good owner. She advertised on facebook and pusanweb and on the last day we had Marley, she brought the puppy to church for us to meet. Rob was instantly in love. My only hesitation was because the vet said this was going to grow into a “big dog” (which by Korean standards, would be maximum 10kg, so more like a medium sized dog) and although our apartment is family sized, this puppy was used to living on the street or playing with another dog (at Mary’s), not being couped up alone in an apartment for hours on end each day!

However we went to Mary’s the next day and took Tia home with us. Yes, we named her Tia, short for “Tiaki”, which is Maori for “to care for/to protect”. Rob wanted a name that would be special for our future home, because we intend to take Tia back to NZ with us. She’s a part of our family, we want to care for a puppy who was abandoned and show her a better life. Rob’s family always took in strays or saved dogs and cats in the USA. We also hope that she’ll grow protective of us.

We shortened Tiaki to Tia because

1) it’s easier to say and

2) because “Tiaki” sounds too much like “Teriyaki” and sadly, it is a delicacy to eat dog here in Korea (granted, not in Teriyaki sauce though.)

Our friend Jim still jokingly calls Tia “Teriyaki”. She has no idea ;P

So here’s some facts about our first pet child:

1. Tia was 2.8kg when we picked her up on May 25^th
2. She was estimated by 2 vets to have been born around the time we arrived in Korea. That is, somewhere between mid February and early March. So she was approximately 3 months old when we got her (and now she’s now roughly 5 - 6 months old).
3. This is the first time Rob or I have raised a puppy from such a young age.
4. She’s already doubled in length and height and she now weighs 5.8kg. I still pick her up and carry her like a baby to take her in the local shops with me, but she doesn’t like it so much, now she’s a teenager ;) We have an open dogbag which we use to take her on the bus and subway. (Most dogs over 5kg won’t go in a bag.) She’s well-behaved. That’s how we get away with it.
5. Tia is what most Koreans would call a “Dong-ge”, which means a mutt who eats shit off the street. Koreans on the street often ask if she’s a fox, but no, she’s definitely a dog! From our research using google images, plus what the vets and people say on the street, she maybe is part jindo ( traditional domestic Korean dog) or shiba inu (traditional domestic Japanese dog), because she has a curly tail and she is of the same colouring, especially around her face. But her frame is much slighter and she has much shorter hair to be fully either of those breeds. Her feet are also small, so we can’t imagine her getting as big as those breeds. Maybe she has a little chiuaua blood in her, as her ears are HUGE, compared to the size of her head! As she grows, her ears grow even faster J So BOTTOM LINE, she’s a Korean mutt. Some people have said to me, “Well you know, that’s actually the best-natured type of dog.” In this case, we have truly been blessed with her!
6. No, we didn’t need to train her to walk on a leash. She’s always loved it!
7. Tia is well-behaved and often timid around people (often she’s outright scared of small Korean children – particularly boys or really young ones – and elderly Korean men and women = abuse when she was on the street, we think), but around other dogs, she’s a playful warrior!
8. Tia doesn’t bark, apart from four barks on three separate occasions when I began playing (off her lead) chase with her in the park near our apartment building.
9. Tia is terrified of water! Whether it be the shower or a bath, the sea, a river, a deep puddle or heavy rain! I have soooooooooo many funny stories about this. Next time I get to speak to you, please ask about it. Every week we subject her to at least one of the “being in water” or “being near water” experiences, but she’s still quite scared. We wonder if her original owners tried to drown her in Dongnae’s river. That’s truly how scared she is of it, even though she trusts us.
10. We’ve taught her to recognize her new name, “come,” “sit,” “stay” and if we’re walking: “wait,” now we’re teaching her “down.”
11. She initially got fatter living with us, but now she’s very thin again. She’s been fussy about her food for the last month now, at times just refusing to eat it, even if that means starving for 18 hours, then eating half of what she used to eat during her last big growth spurt. I’ve been getting good advice from the internet and the vet, but I’m a little concerned that it’s been a month now and we haven’t seen any consistent improvements on this front. In spite of my concerns, she’s just as energetic and happy as she ever was and she still has a healthy coat, but people are often making the observation that she’s thin.
12. She’s just finished all of her puppy shots (I dunno about elsewhere, but here puppies get HEAPS of shots! And their ears cleaned and deworming, even if they don’t have worms…) and this week she started to lose her puppy teeth!
13. When we come back from our summer vacation, we’ll be getting her spayed. Hopefully this doesn’t change her beautiful temperament too much!
    

Tia’s been a great addition to the family, even with all of the pee-pad training and pooing inside at the beginning. Now she never poos inside and she almost never needs to use her pee-pads. We walk her 3 times a day and during the weekends up until last week, she’s mostly gone wherever we go. Wanna know why now she’s stuck at home more often? Cos Tia became a big sister last Thursday!

Here’s how it happened:

I arrived at school on Thursday afternoon to do a little printing in preparation for my 2-hour summer camp class, but I was having printer problems. The lovely Mr Hwang (the school’s computer guy) came to help me out and he had this tiny box with a tiny ginger tabby kitten in his hand. The kitten had gorgeous blue eyes, so I asked if I could hold it. He said yes. It fell asleep on my chest almost straight away. Since it was in a box, I asked if the kitten had a home. He said “No, it’s not my cat.” I said “Whose cat is it?” and he said “It’s not my cat. Some students bring it to school.” My colleagues at school don’t have the best English and I have almost no Korean, so communication is always at least somewhat limited. I eventually found out that the students had found it near their apartment building, brought it to school and left it with him. I knew Rob wanted to get a cat after our vacation….

We’d been thinking that Tia should get adjusted to other animals while she’s still young. We take her to the local dog café sometimes (see the picture above), but otherwise Koreans walking their dogs are normally sh*t-scared of Tia coming near them or their dogs, even if their dogs are bigger, older and clearly the more vicious breeds. Probably cos she looks like a fox I guess, but it’s a shame for Tia! She barely gets to play with her own kind!

I rang Rob, who said he wanted it, so we put the kitten in a bigger box with some water, then I taught my two hour class. Apparently cats don’t like being transported, because once the car started, that cat was doing everything it could to get out of the box. It made for some not-so-safe driving conditions!

We took the kitten to the vet and the vet determined it to be healthy and under two months of age (not good). We thought it was a female from looking at its genitals, but really, it’s so hard to tell with kittens! Turns out it’s a boy. At first, he hissed at Tia, probably because of her sudden movements. But once we introduced him to her bed, they hit it off. Tia was so amusing to watch that evening. It took a while of us telling her to wait and her looking bemused, trying to work out how she could play with this little thing. He’d eat his formula and she’d sit there, watching him licking his paws clean and the expression on her face was “What is he doing? How long is this going to take until we can play?” Even now, he tries to suckle her, even though she produces no milk. She generally lets him, or gets up and moves if we’re coming towards them, because we take him off her and put him right in front of his cat bowl, where the formula and solid food is. Yes, he eats solids too. We have to spray him with the water gun to deter him from eating from Tia’s food bowl. And when we’ve gone out and left them at home alone, we’ve had to punish Tia for eating all of the cat’s food. We made it quite clear that food was NOT for her.

On day 3, I really felt for Tia – new older sister syndrome – I remember it well. This is where (not that you’re spoiled, BUT) you’re used to being an only child and then along comes a little sibling, who you love. But after a while you begin to realise how few perks there are: you get less attention, you have all of this responsibility all of a sudden and you’re being told off and punished a lot more all of a sudden because of it! Poor Tia, because she’s a dog, she responds to a telling off, but of course, Ginga keeps on truckin’ like nothing’s happened! Just like a little sister or brother, eh?! As you can see though, they still are good family friends.

Anyway, we’ve called the kitten Ginga, for several reasons:

1. the kitten is a ginger colour and kiwis never pronounce ‘r’s on the ends of their words (right, Shannon?!)
2. ginga rhymes with ninja, which is, of course, what every kitten is! Rob loves calling him the ginga ninja!
3. In Korean, 진자 (said “gin-ja”) means “REALLY?!”, which is what every student and teacher are going to be saying when they hear Shannon Teacher took home a stray kitten brought to school by some of our students!

So far Ginga’s settled in well. It’s made a difference getting him kitty litter. He naturally runs under the couch, but we catch him and put him in his box and then he’s fine. At night he naturally goes straight there. He’s peed in Tia’s bed a little, which Tia doesn’t like and now we’ve gotten him his own bed, which he’s beginning to use more and more, since we’re taking away Tia’s bed as much as possible. He knows where the water bowl is. He plays boisterously as a kitten should (no claws when he’s pouncing on Tia though) and sleeps a LOT.

We need to get him a scratching post, because as of today, he’s started really scratching at things. We should probably clip his claws again too, but he’s getting his first shots at the vet’s on Wednesday, so maybe we’ll watch him do it one more time. This is the first cat I’ve ever had and the first little kitten Rob’s ever had. His family always got stray adult cats, rather than young kittens.

I’m glad he’s getting his first shots so early. That means we can get him neutered – hopefully before he gets the teenage urges to mark his territory in our apartment!

The only things that shows what a young baby he is, is that he CANNOT remember where his food is. If we’re here, he’ll meow and meow and meow until we put him directly in front of the food bowl. If he’s sitting on Rob when he’s not sleeping, Rob’s taking him to his food bowl or water bowl or the kitty litter box every five minutes. Good training for when we have kids, eh?! ;P

An into to long overdue updates!

Kia ora koutou! (Hi to you all! in Maori)

What have we been doing for the last few months?! It's sure gone fast!

Basically work (and I've worked had to work HARD in the second half of the semester - it was actually kinda crazy), church (I start leading a worship team from next week!) and hanging out with friends. That has left us with a VERY busy schedule.

There are so many minor comical or interesting experiences to tell you about, like how I bought a dark chocolate-peppermint ice cream at the movies but it turned out to be green tea ice cream coated in dark chocolate. VERY disappointing, after expecting to taste peppermint!

Aside from being able to read Korean and being able to say a handful of phrases, Rob and I have not worked hard on expanding our Korean vocabulary and I've recently been convicted about this. There was one week recently where I needed Korean EVERY DAY in some situation. Particularly with our neighbours, who've started talking to us because they see us around and about all the time. I didn't even know how to say "Sorry, I don't understand!"

Rob's been hit with homesickness for Germany and I've been in a few frustrating situations where I caught myself saying "Well, that's just retarded." My co-teachers actually agreed, but I don't really want to have that attitude, as much as possible.

Our first wave of good new friends are already leaving. There are about 10 of them leaving! That's life when you work in a foreign country.

We have been thinking about our old friends often though, so we made some videos which you can look forward to: introducing Busan, my school, our apartment and more...

Some upcoming entries from me or Rob will introduce:
-our Korean PUPPY, Tia
-my birthday
-lecturing for the upcoming EPIK orientation
-our new SUV
-Middle School assessments and Summer camps
-our Summer vacation: which officially starts next week, baby!
-couchsurfing and skype appointments
-old lady knees

It's the middle of Summer here now and it's mostly not too hot this year yet, but it sure has been humid. It'd be fair to say I'd forgotten what the word "sweaty" truly means until recently! It's actually rainy season, but that doesn't mean it rains every day, which has been awesome.

Well, we won't be waiting so long to write again now, so enjoy!

An Interesting Change of Focus

Out of all the places I've lived, I have to say that living and working in Korea is the strangest experience I've had for a number of reasons. I won't go into all of them here because there are a LOT of them but the biggest reason that always strikes me as odd is this: In every other place I've lived and worked, my job was always my biggest priority, my biggest focus. Not here. Living here in Busan, my biggest priority is strengthening my marriage followed by developing my photography skills followed by helping out at our church. My school is just that place I go Monday to Friday from 830 to 430.

In Germany I planned all my lessons from start to finish, designed the curriculum myself and had to find all the materials myself but here my creativity is limited by the educational traditions set by my school. Here I have to teach from the students' book which means that I have to cover the topics mentioned and make sure that the students learn certain phrases, whether I find them useful or not, because those are the things that are on their tests. Now before you come down on me as being a slacker, you gotta know that this tends to be the situation for most of the foreigners living here. That's why a lot of people come here. All in all, it's an interesting change and one that definitely takes time getting used to.

Cosplay at BEXCO!

5 minutes from our house is BEXCO, the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center, and today while walking past it, we came across an amazing sight. At least hundred Korean teenagers, and I do mean at least one hundred, dressed up in all manner of costume surrounded by friends and photographers. It was a huge anime/manga cosplay meeting (cosplay = costume + play), which according to my friend happens every Sunday but just not to this level. It was brilliant fun and so we went around taking pictures of all the different characters, none of whom we actually knew (someone mentioned something called 7-star). Whoever and whatever they were, I'm definitely planning to go back next Sunday and see if I can take some more pictures.

You can check out some of the pictures I took by clicking here and here's a link to one of my pictures that I entitled "Turquoise Soul".

Enjoy!

Teaching and tired teachers

Rob's students' mid term exams finish tomorrow. My students have exams next Monday - Wednesday. I find out tomorrow about whether I have to be at school for the whole day or (fingers crossed) just half days. All of this week I've just been using self made crosswords to get the students to revise. My co-teachers have run what's in the exams by me to check for mistakes, so I know the content. From using the crosswords in class, I can see a small percentage of the girls should do very well in this almost solely multi choice exam, but most of them unfortunately won't. :( They just don't know the vocabulary required and a lot of them don't know effective study techniques, from what I've observed.

I don't know if I already mentioned it, but the oldest students have the most atrocious writing! It is true that Koreans do pretty well to learn the alphabet of a language as far from their own as possible AND be able to do as well as they do by the age of 10. But after 3 years of German at school or one semester of Maori at university, it was expected that I would be able to write 50 - 100 words in full sentences in those languages. I estimate that 60% of the girls at my school can't write 50 words in complete sentences. They have little idea about how to construct full sentences in English. Few students have a big enough active vocabulary. The curriculum here doesn't push writing. Hence when I gave the 3rd grade a homework writing assignment of 3 - 5 sentences about a Korean movie last month, almost half of the homework was plagiarised from the internet. And they didn't pick the most well-written movie reviews for copying!

It is stressful sometimes. Especially when I put in a lot of energy in the classroom and spend ages looking for the best games to use in class and then for whatever reason - it's after lunch and they're sleepy and can't concentrate for the 2 minutes of instructions required before they can begin their speaking activity, or they are just super chatty and 70 % of the class don't want to speak English during that lesson that day - it can be like pulling teeth and the awesome activities fall flat. Luckily for me, that doesn't happen too often, but it is disheartening when it happens. I'm getting better at motivating the students in a wider variety of ways.

With all of the changes that have happened since I started work almost 2 months ago, like Rob, I'm also thankful for a break from it all during this revision week (I have less to prepare) and next week during the exams. I want to feel fresh again and start getting ahead in preparations for the oncoming chapters of their text books. Especially when I'm so exhausted this week! Although to be honest, that's mostly because Rob and I have been going to bed much too late. We've been watching the American forensic detective (comic) drama "Bones". I'm sad to say, we are addicted to it, but it's soooooooooo good!

Examinations & Ruminations

This week is exam week which means that Wednesday (today), Thursday and Friday I have no classes. The only bad thing is that I still have to come in and keep my chair warm for a few hours. At least I get to leave at 1230 instead of having to stay the whole day.
I'm really glad for this time off because sometimes teaching my students can be really frustrating.

Anyway, this evening I'm meeting with the pastor of my church (who is actually younger than me, not that that's bad - just giving you perspective). And Friday, the teachers at my school are going hiking in the hills somewhere so I'll make sure to post some more pics either on Flickr or Picasa. Check back for links.

Other than that, Shannon and I have really been enjoying our time here in Korea, if only for the time we've had to grow closer together through God's word. We're finding more time to do devotionals together and spend some quality time not only with each other but with valuable church friends outside our marriage who can strengthen us and give us honest advice. I think our time in Korea can be compared to the experience that a caterpillar has in its cocoon. I feel like God is using this time to prepare us and bring us closer so when we leave, our marriage and our faith will be stronger and more durable. I hope you understand what I mean.

Well, whoever you are, whether you're friends, family or strangers - know that we're praying for you and that God loves you. May the peace that transcends all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:7)

Life Going On

A lot has happened in the last couple weeks but most of it has been normal stuff involving our church and our schools. For example, two weeks ago our church celebrated its 2 year anniversary and then a week later celebrated Easter. Last week the 3rd-year middle schoolers at my school had a science day and shot water rockets at an orange cone target. And through it all, Shannon and I are just getting into the rhythm of life here, trying to balance our school, church, social, professional and personal lives. It takes a lot of work and a lot of day-to-day decisions that unfortunately might not seem so exciting to everyone else out there. But to us, it's great stuff. I think God is really working on us and I hope that he is doing the same with you.

Oh and by the way, I submitted 35 stock photos to a stock photo website and 3 of them got accepted which is actually pretty good. I'm also posting a lot of Busan photos on my Flickr account so be sure to check them out.

So, that's it for now but I think that's enough. :)

www.flickr.com Go to Poetprince's photostream

(Just a quickie) random thoughts and comments

Dunno if I already said this: the toilet paper is often outside of the toilet cubicles. Doh! if you forget to grab some before you go in!

Rob's right that a lot of Koreans will pose for photos, but I'd like to straighten this out a bit: there are also plenty of people who don't want their photo taken! They say no and hide their faces! More than half of my middle school girls are like this, plus some people on the street.

Shannon’s German/Korean skills, random facts and experiences in South Korea thus far.

Kia ora alle!

Since being in a new foreign country, I haven’t been having problems separating German and English so much anymore. (Although I still always say “MENSCH!” when I’m frustrated.) But just as when I was in Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic and France, when I speak to Koreans who can’t speak English, I often accidentally speak to them in German, not realising I’m doing so ☺

Statistics say there are a lot of Germans in South Korea. Based on the business industries here, I can believe it. (There’s even apparently a German-owned micro brewery here in Busan to support them all.) As I said in my last blog entry, a lot of Koreans get the opportunity to learn Deutsch, so it’s just a matter of me finding out how to tap into this community. We have one German left at our new church. She’s a masters student from Saarbruecken, but she’s only staying another two months or so. One of the teachers at my school lived in Germany for 3 years, but she claims that she can’t say more than “Guten Tag”, “Danke schoen” and “Auf Wiedersehen” ☹

Thankfully for my German and our sanity, we have internet at home now! Yay! It was about time we finally got it. Due to the administrative changes to classes and my teaching schedule, plus homework marking, “lunch time conversation classes” and “after school English” beginning this week, I really no longer have time to use internet at school at all. So I only found out late this week that Melissa (and David Mettler in Karlsruhe) gave birth to Lilian last Sunday. How great the internet is for hearing about and seeing these things quickly from the other side of the world!
The internet provider was chosen and the paperwork sorted out on Tuesday. Then we got connected on Wednesday night, as simple as that! Honestly, that’s super good service and the line is fast! All of the delay in setting it up was due to my co-teachers being so busy with all of those administrative changes. They have less time to help me with everyday stuff. It’s a good thing I’m not a newbie to living in foreign country.

Whilst on this topic, I should say that from May, Rob and I are planning to sign up with a Skype payment plan that means we’ll be able to ring and be rung from New Zealand, American and German landlines as if just ringing landlines within those countries. We’ll let you know these new “landline numbers” once we’ve sorted them out.

Rob or I might have mentioned from our orientation blog entries that we had a few free “survival Korean” lessons. Within week one of being in Busan I started looking for lessons here. With the help of another EPIK teacher, I found some free lessons held twice a week at Pusan National University. We don’t have trained Korean teachers or even teacher trainees, but native Korean uni students from a club called PNU Friends who have volunteered to help out foreigners. They’re really lovely people. Due to a lot of variable factors, the lessons haven’t been that effective yet, but I’m thankful for their generosity and help. And I have learned a couple of things faster than if I’d just been learning on my own. (Let’s face it, I’m normally totally unmotivated to learn on my own!) I may have already said it, but I can read now Hangeul now, albeit sloooooooooooowly.

So PNU is Busan’s “most prestigious university” and one of 7+ “universities” (are some merely higher education schools?) in Busan alone. Koreans are some of the most highly educated in the world. Compared with the rest of the world, really high percentages finish high school, undergrad and go on to post grad studies. (This doesn’t mean they can speak or understand English.) Including the university in Chon-on where we had our orientation, EVERY UNIVERSITY IS UP A REALLY STEEP HILL! Also including the university where our new church is. I have to say, I’m really happy about getting more exercise. Teacher sports start up this week. But apart from that, I’ve been wondering… what is the reason for every university being up the top of a steep hill? Busan (actually 85% or so of Korea) is “mountainous”. Koreans don’t seem to build on hills above 500m above sea level. So why do universities get the best views of a town? (Apart from the penthouses in sky-rise apartment buildings.) Is it because higher learning is something you have to work for and look up to? Is it because the clearer air is good for the brain? Is it because the beautiful view aids meditation and with that comes new ideas and ways of thinking? I’m sure there’s some ancient tradition and reasoning behind this.

One of the Eastern things that is so different from the West is the toilets. The traditional toilets are squat loos. I dunno about for the men, but for the ladies, it’s a long oval shaped urinal in the ground (instead of on the wall, like the guys have in so many countries). Although western style toilets are totally common in apartments, major tourist areas and department stores, squat loos are all you’re going to get at a school or a university. It occurred to me in my first week of teaching here that it has probably never crossed my colleagues’ minds that these loos are something I’ve had to learn to use. (You really want to be precise!) But I continually astound myself at how quickly I can adjust to new situations. Five weeks on ( that is, today) we were at an intercity bus station and I found myself wishing that there were squat loos for me to use, because at least it’s cleaner if they aren’t going to employ full time cleaners!
Sorry Dad, but that pedometer you gave me was not meant to be. It came flying off a couple of days ago and landed in the squat loo where it was irretrievable. Out of all of the places it could’ve fallen off and bounced into, I couldn’t believe it landed down there! Gutted. But at the same time, also a little comical. I bet you’ve smiled a little at this admission!

I had heard that Busan isn’t very polluted compared to elsewhere in Korea, thanks to sea breezes and such. But there have been a fair number or grey days here in the last month. Greyness that looks suspiciously like smog. Sometimes the sun looks an unusual yellow through it. Well it turns out there’s this weather phenomenon here called “the yellow dust” which is actually desert dust blown over from China! I think the worst of it is over now, but it was interesting to learn about it. It supposedly happens on and off particularly all through spring. You don’t really notice it’s yellow unless the sun’s almost setting, or you run your finger over a surface that hasn’t moved all day – your finger will be coated in yellow dust. Once it starts up, supposedly all the old people and the young children start wearing medical face masks everywhere outside. I don’t think I’ve noticed anymore masks than normal though. It can’t be that bad so far this year.

Back in the second week of March, I had the sneezes quite bad. I wasn’t sure if it was an allergy to some plant (because of spring), a minor cold or this yellow dust. Then I started to get a sore throat, which apparently is also a symptom of the yellow dust. So for more than a week I had this sore throat and occasionally sneezes. Then it became clear last week that it was a cold, because I got nose congestion. But it wasn’t too bad. The sore throat got worse though and for a teacher trying to keep the attention of up to 38 young teenagers at a time, this is never a good thing! So then this week, my throat got so painful, I was gifted some traditional chinese and pharmacy medication from my co-teachers. I felt so crappy mid-week, I stayed at home in the evenings and went to bed super early and slept a LOT of hours. That was the best help. It turns out it was a bug that everyone’s been getting. Now my colleagues and students have it and other EPIK teachers have had it. It was a real blessing I never lost my voice entirely like other friends of mine have. I was really worried mid-week though. I was thinking about going to a doctor if things didn’t get better – but my health insurance hadn’t yet been set up! It is now. Again, it’s a quick process once you get your alien registration card. So I was asking about where would be best to go to a doctor, how to do it, etc. All of my colleagues kept talking about hospital and I was thinking “Ok, I feel crappy, but it isn’t THAT bad!” Then I thought about other EPIK teachers who have been sick since we arrived in Korea and every single one of them was sent straight to hospital for tests, etc. So then I asked a co-teacher if Koreans go to a doctor outside the hospital or if they always just go to the hospital and it turns out, apart from traditional Chinese medicine and specialists, or if you know, like and have always had that family doctor, every Korean normally goes to the hospital to see a doctor if they can’t get fixed by what available from a pharmacy! Interesting, eh?!

Here’s another random fact: Koreans are considered more beautiful the smaller their heads are and the whiter their skin is. Therefore I’m regularly told I have a small head or that I’m pretty or beautiful. Since spring began, one thing that is totally clearly popular with the cougars (middle aged – older ladies) is the ridiculously large sun visor. These come in a range of colours and patterns, but they always look ridiculously large. Clearly they are popular because your whole face stays in the shade (preventing skin pigmentation) and it’s so out of proportion to your face that it makes your head look smaller!


Today it got pretty warm at the cherry blossom festival in Jinhae, so because we haven’t purchased sunscreen yet, I bought a sun hat with one of these visors (zip off! But you’re not going to catch me zipping it off!) Wearing it made me think someone should show this design to the NZ and Australian Cancer societies. It actually is totally practical and you know Shannon: always a sucker for practicality!


At the cherry blossom festival a few Koreans mentioned Obama to us. They are pleased about him. I believe I heard that the Korean president was visiting Obama sometime earlier this week. What was interesting was meeting an older kiwi woman today who came to Korea to teach at one of the famous “English-speaking towns” near an American naval base. She had come to Korea for a cultural experience. As a typical kiwi, whilst experiencing a new culture, she likes to share a little kiwi culture. (All kiwis are a little proud of NZ.) Her boss demanded that she speak with an American accent though and her Korean colleagues weren’t interested in New Zealand at all. So she was left wondering why they didn’t just hire more Americans instead of her. She said the Americans at the naval base were more interested in cultural exchange than her workmates, whose aim is to live a simulation of English speaking society.

Today at the cherry blossom festival Rob saw the New Zealand flag flying, amongst others. There was an expo run by the New Zealand Embassy in Seoul this weekend to promote trade, because the Korean president’s been busy! He was in NZ earlier in March and now there’s apparently a new trade deal between NZ and South Korea. Generally Koreans seem to know what their president is doing. Politics are important to them. Protests are totally common. The week leading up to “national test day” included a student and teacher protest in front of the school gates every morning saying that there shouldn’t be so many exams for Korean students across the board.

Anyway, back to the kiwi lady I met today… She used to be a social worker and she’s really passionate about culture (a woman I could really relate to). It made her sad that Koreans weren’t so interested in NZ culture, but it made me sad that she assumed I know nothing about Maori culture and she knows I’m a kiwi too! I even indicated I have some knowledge of Maori language and tikanga during our conversation. I said I studied it at uni. But she still assumed I didn’t know anything about Maoridom. I find that sad, because as New Zealander, I think mana maori is an essential part of our culture. Is the public perception of our aboriginal (native) heritage really so unpopular that we can assume it’s not an accepted part of our culture? Maybe that’s getting a little heavy or deep for this time of night…

So one more random fact before I go (just to tie this all back to Germany, where I began today): the pom-poms on top of the traditional farmers’ hats here (we see these during the traditional famers’ dance) SO remind me of the pom-poms on the traditional ladies’ hats in the Black Forest!

The Adrenaline of Being Paid & New Photos

The Road to Bansong
Originally uploaded by Poetprince

So last week, we finally got paid. We not only received our base salary but we were also refunded the money for our plane tickets. The first thing I did was go to the camera shop to buy my new camera.

The only weird thing about buying my camera here in Korea was the fact that I had to pay in cash to get a lower price. In the US, cash is no problem. All you do is go to the ATM, pull out the amount in $100 bills and it's okay. In Korea, the biggest bill they have is a 10,000 won bill which is the equivalent of a $10 bill. Now, imagine you have to pay a couple thousand in cash but all you can do is withdraw $10 bills. I won't tell you how much I had to take out to pay for my camera but walking from the bank to the camera store with my pockets stuffed with 10,000 won notes was probably one of the weirdest moments of my life. All I could do was pray that I didn't get robbed along the way.

So now that I have a new camera, I've started posting pictures on the web, starting with Flickr. Here's a picture of the road to my school. If you click on it, you will be able to see the rest of the album. Tell me what you think. I'd love to hear your impressions!

Our 4th Sunday in Busan – feels like we’ve been here already so much longer!

We are going to have a flat warming this Friday and I wish you could all be here!

We get paid this Wednesday. Our first pay cheques plus our air fares into Korea. We’ve been budgeting and praying, because although it’s a lot of money, it could easily go quickly! We want to use it wisely, especially since God has already been so awesome in providing us here! Two weeks into our time at our schools and our three bedroom apartment was almost fully NICELY furnished! In ways that surpass what expected from our contracts or even thought to want! The only things we still need to get are a big chest of drawers for the majority of our clothes, a shower rail and shower curtain and air conditioning for when summer hits. We haven’t yet been told if there’s any school budget left for those things. We’d also like (at some time) to get for ourselves a small oven for baking/roasting (Korean apartments come with only a gas range and we want everyone to try pavlova), some bookshelves for the practice room/study and a new computer.

Another example of how God has provided for us is the new church home we’ve found through a married couple who were at our EPIK orientation.

Firstly, we haven’t found any bilingual churches here yet, which is a little sad for language learning. Ich vermisse unsere kleine aber kreative zweisprachige Gottesdienst!

On our third afternoon in Busan we visited the foreigners’ service (AIM) at the huge Korean church we can now see from our balcony (Soo Young’s the 2nd or 3rd biggest church in Korea) and we met some lovely people. Although this church is practically in our backyard, the format of the service just didn’t resonate with me. The worship team was good, the sermon was fine… Although I found the additional choir items to be a bit old fashioned and stilted in the context of the service, the people were friendly - but I was hoping for something more. We’ve made some good contacts that we’re maintaining there though. We still visit every few weeks and we’re participating in their married couple’s group.

For our second weekend in Busan we visited ICC (International Community Church). ICC started almost 2 years ago because some foreigners at the AIM service were frustrated that the service had to be in a certain format to please its Korean mother church. ICC’s a lot smaller with more native English speakers there, but it was the service that I really enjoyed. And what was surreal was that we already knew so many people there from our EPIK orientation and as we introduced ourselves to people we hadn’t yet met, we were handed new roles! No one was really in charge of the Mac for service production – they were looking for someone to really learn how to do it. Well Rob and I have been looking at buying a Mac, as well as the fact that Rob used to create the powerpoints for worship and announcements at Jesus Rockt. (We’re praying someone new has stepped forward to do that there!) At the same time I spoke to the worship team and found out that they have a bass guitar that no one’s been using, so they offered it to me to take away and practise with! So now our apartment has a huge iMac and an electric bass on loan, which we are learning how to use! It looks like this will give us more time to save money and more experience to use when purchasing our own ones.

Rob’s already taken on the role as main tech guy, so last Sunday he started doing the worship powerpoints and today he was given the church video camera too. I only got a bass shoulder strap today, so I’ll start rehearsals/services next Sunday. Rob’s been going to the mens' small group on Thursday nights. A new couple’s group (fortnightly) is starting up next Sunday, and we’re hosting it. I’ll visit a women’s small group this Wednesday night.

With free Korean lessons from a local university club on Mondays (both of us) and Thursdays (me only), that leaves our schedules really full already. But we still have time together because we both work 40 hours Mon – Fri. We travel to and from school together. Most of those evenings we have stuff together or some time together before and after the other things. Working in separate workplaces has definitely been a blessing, I reckon. God has really blessed us, with a new life situation that pulls us together as a family team, a home which we can open up to others, a clear idea which church family we should join, a big support network and already help to overcome my biggest cultural barrier currently – the language.

So with our first pay cheque, apart from general living and internet set up costs, some things we have to do are:

• get Rob his dream camera, especially since our old one broke as soon as we arrived in Auckland at the end of January.

You should all know how important this is to him. THE Canon 50D! It’s been sometimes difficult to hang out with him without a “good camera”, but to be fair, considering how important it is to him, he’s coped really well in these last two months with substitutes or ideas to sidetrack him.

• get me some decent music library accessories, since I could benefit from the tools for inspiration as much as Rob needs his.

I’m getting (maybe a second-hand) iPod with a lot of GB, new decent earphones and speakers for it and then I’m going to be spending a LOT of time organising (we have iTunes on the church iMac!!!), listening and using music every day. I’m especially excited about using this stuff for personal worship time, inspiration to practise bassoon or learn by ear/transcribe bass lines and piano parts and for motivation to exercise more.

• I’m also going to buy a new sturdy music stand and if there’s money for it, maybe a small second hand portable mini-amp. If I can find an English speaking bass teacher and time, I’ll have at least one lesson sooner.
• get our multitude of boxes sent from Karlsruhe, Michigan, Auckland and Wellington to here!

If you can remember, it was snowing when we arrived in mid February and it’s been around 20 degrees celsius for the last week now. It’s already too warm on the subway! Although it’s colder inside the schools than the outside temperature, we need summer clothes and more work clothes sent to us ASAP. Remember, they’ll take a while to get here and although we can buy tops here no problem, pants and skirts are a major problem to purchase here (unless you’re capable of ordering through the internet in Korean). I also want my bassoon stand and some bassoon music and we are looking forward to having some key books – all things that were too heavy to bring in our 20kg max suitcases.

• put money on my credit card and in our German bank account, since we drained them during our 2 month holiday.
• invest in a well-padded external hard drive, as this lap top is starting to crap out on us. We need to back up our data fast!
• invest a small amount of money in redecorating our EOZs, since our English departments don’t have fantastic budgets for that this year. It’s all about motivating the students.

I don’t know if I’ve made it clear yet: God is so good. The ultimate provider! We are so thankful. Really, this point is driven home to us time and time again when we talk to other couples and singles about their experiences to date in the EPIK program. We are so blessed here already. We are unworthy and wish to share all of these blessings with you. So I hope you’ll keep in touch and come and visit, if you can!

I miss you all, at the same time as making the most out of our new lives here! Aroha nui.

Korean School Kids

“Teacher is untie So, I look ghost But preety priness”

This was a written note from one of my better than average 3rd grade middle school students (14-15 years old). I couldn’t understand what she meant when she was saying the word “geäst”, so I got her to write it down for me.

I’m pretty impressed with this girl’s vocab. In class her listening comprehension is better than most. After me demonstrating how to pronounce “ghost”, I got her to read this sentence to me again and with her gestures that came with that, I came to understand that I have “ghost hair” (so either I need to get a hair cut, or else I just shouldn’t wear it out untied maybe, hehehe) but I still have the face of a pretty princess.

My colleagues at school keep telling me how incredibly poor people who live in Bansong are. One teacher said it’s one of the top ten poorest places in Korea. That means their English (and often their results in other subjects too) is mostly below the national average, due to no private lessons at hagwons. They don’t have any money for that. Most of them receive financial support from the government.

So how does that affect the classroom? Problem #1 is that the lower level students cannot and maybe will never be able to understand me. Even with beginner class style instructions and demonstrations, the less motivated ones have the attention span of tired teenagers. There’s also the special needs students who are normally in their own classes, but they join mine for fun?! They look the same as any other student and have varying capabilities in Korean as well as English, so I have to try to get them involved without spending too much time helping them. One of my co-teachers strictly tells one special needs student to stay out of my group speaking activities. I feel so bad for her, because she sits there all by herself, but my co-teacher doesn’t want any of the other students to have to “waste time trying to talk to someone who can’t talk back”. I feel like the material in the text books is above what a lot of my 2nd and 3rd graders can do. But do it we must. It’s the curriculum.

Yes, then there are problem kids. Is there any school that doesn’t have problem kids though? There are girls who don’t have mothers and are basically brought up by their grandmothers, since the fathers apparently don’t care. Or often they are without a father and their mothers are busy working. The teachers are constantly disciplining kids, in a variety of ways. I’ve seen students kneeling on the ground, doing lines; making them stand up with their hands in the air in the corridor; clapping the student’s face lightly with both hands to show them they are too chatty; crossing out previous stickers the student has earned on their award sheet. I’ve even seen the old-school rap on the hand with a ruler. Save the last one I’ve also considered using these methods – although so far I haven’t had to. I remind them and drill them on the classroom rules we’ve agreed upon constantly. With only one 45 minute lesson and 31 – 38 students in a class, it’s so important to make sure they’re all listening, understand and are participating in their one speaking practice class a week. The students generally respect teachers for punishing them though. I’ve heard it’s something to do with Confucianism and teachers being like parents to their students – they want their students to grow and do the best they can, so it’s their responsibility to keep students on track.

Generally, girls from Bansong Middle School are happy, quiet and shy or loud and boisterous, generally well behaved and respectful girls. I can’t tell they’re any poorer than anyone else. After all, they are in school uniform.

Please pray for them, my colleagues and I though, because some of my colleagues have to deal with the problem of the stealing of expensive items from some students. A handful of students refuse to follow guidance and continue to disrupt other students in a variety of ways. (There was a before school protest against violence amongst students before school earlier this week.) And it may be that for that handful of them, teachers are the only caring (younger than 50) adult guidance they have in their lives. I wish for teachers to not have to make them hurt to make them think about their actions and for their peers not to be scared and consider them outcasts, but to be brave and encourage them without being used or abused in the process.

I’m really looking forward to having my English classes in my English Only Zone (EOZ) from April. I can’t wait to put some new posters up and take some photos to show you. The resources there are fantastic. More to come on that later. They’ll also be sitting in teams then and class motivation and self/peer discipline should be remarkably easier then. Rob’s already got that situation right now. I have to go to their home rooms, where they sit in pairs or in single file. 31 – 38 desks!

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Today whilst exploring a new part of Busan for us, we saw students from a richer school: Busan International High School (for foreign languages) out on a field trip. Rob’s going to post photos. They learn English, and one of Chinese, Japanese or German. So we were talking with them on basic topics in English and Deutsch. Even the richer kids only speak about Elementary topics, it seems, albeit a little more fluently than most of my students – but these girls are a little older (and maybe only started learning German this year, to be fair). I mean, we were walking with these 400 or so girls for about 20 minutes to the same destination. They screamed with excitement to learn where we’re from, to hear we’ve lived in Germany and to hear that we’re married -only in Korea!!! “I envy you” said several girls after the screaming subsided. I also got told again that I have a small head (a Korean obsession) and that Rob is handsome and I am pretty. (I’m told this regularly from my girls too – they see Rob on the street after school.) We were pulled into a lot of their group photos being taken by teachers or friends, introduced to their Korean English teachers (the Native English teachers don’t work Saturdays without being paid overtime), just so they could scream when they heard their teachers and us conversing in English. It was very funny and a lot of fun. Rob and I are pleased we can show Korean kids they have the opportunity to practise English outside of their classrooms.

Pictures of Korea

Okay, I finally found a way to download the photos on my cell phone onto our computer. So here are a few of the photos I've taken so far along with some colorful commentary.

Okay, this is a floorplan of our apartment. I labeled it using Photoshop so now you can see how it's all laid out. And yes, there are windows inside the apartment that look into other rooms rather than directly outside. Case in point - the guest bedroom which looks into our lovely, but messy, laundry room and it's sad to say, but our laundry room is the room with the best view. It overlooks the hills behind our apartment complex.

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This is a sign we found in a store called "Artbox". It's definitely an interesting tactic against shoplifting. I especially love how it asks, "Have you gotten therapy?"

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In America and most western countries, it's common for couples to sometimes wear clothes that are similar in color or style especially if they're dressing up for a big event. In Korea, however the trend goes a few steps farther. Shannon and I have seen many couples who not only wear the same type of clothing but actually go as far as to wear the exact same t-shirt and sometimes even the same shoes. Matching t-shirts for Korean couples are called "couple tees". Can you imagine it? Wearing the same outfit as your partner? Well, it gets worse. Take a look at the following picture.

That's right. Now you can wear matching underwear! A must-have for the modern couple who do everything together.

The worst part about this picture is that this isn't a picture of just one store with a unique perspective on dating. Shannon and I have seen at least 10-20 stores offering the same thing and all of them have only pink flowery underwear for him and her. There's no gender-neutral version. If you want to wear the same underwear as your partner, then it's just pink pansies and girly stripes. Talk about emasculation...

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There's not much to say about this next picture except that I'm dying to buy this lamp and put it in our guest bedroom just to mess with our guests. Personally, I think it's hilarious!

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Okay, now for some bad English. I was hoping that maybe the English here would be better than most countries because of how many English teachers there are and the government's policies on English education, but... it's not.

Take a look at what I found written in English on the following products.

First, a Cinderella playset:

Here's a transcript:

'(Cinderella) is one of the most famous chapters in (Grimms Fairy Tales) which wrote by the Brothers Grimm. Cinderella is the protaganist of the tale who suffered humiliation from her stepmother and two elder sisters. But she bear it quietly and finally acquire the happiness. Look! The bell of midnight is ringing. Cinderella ran from the fortress in a flurry. You must search for the lost crystal shoe quickly and the prince may need assistance to find his lover.'

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Here's another one, from the box bottom of a solar-powered bobble head of Pumpkin Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas (which incidentally I am going to buy at some point).

Once again, here's the transcript:

• in order not course the danger of asphyxial, Please do no to put the spare parts into the mouth.
• in order not course the danger of swallowing, forbidden to give the toy playing by the Children who are not enough 3 years old.
• in order not course the danger of asphyxial, please do not cover the plastic bag on the head or face
• in order to avoid accident, please safekeeping the toy that make sure the children who are not enough 3 years old not reach the toy.
• Please do not shake or haul the toy
• Please do not use the sun energy battery tough and don't throw it away

Someone must be putting too much faith in online language translators, don't you think?

A Good Day

Okay, in each class I have anywhere from 30 - 35 students, all of who have very similar names with nametags printed only in Korean. As you can probably guess, this makes calling on them in class rather difficult since they're listening for me to call their name and I can't either pronounce or remember it.

One thing I've already done to make my job easier is to arrange the tables so that they're sitting in groups of 4. Instead of having 35 students to control. I only need to control 9 tables. The arrangement helps but there's still a lot of confusion when I'm trying to call on one particular student and the only thing I can do is point at him.

So this morning, while talking to Shannon, I came up with the brilliant idea to give each table the name of a particular English-speaking city. The names I chose were:

• New York City, USA
• San Fransisco, USA
• Toronto, Canada
• London, England
• Dublin, Ireland
• Edinburgh, Scotland
• Capetown, South Africa
• Sydney, Australia
• Wellington, NZ (I put this one on the table in the center of my classroom out of symbolism and sentimentality)

Now, instead of having to remember everyone's name right off the bat, I can call on their table by using the city name and the students can actually recognize that I'm speaking to them, or at least their group. I'm amazed at how well it has already worked! It immediately gave me more control over the classroom. So now I can say, "London, be quiet! I want to hear an answer from Wellington!" or "Sydney! Pay attention!"

Of course, I hope that eventually I can learn everyone's name but, for now, it's a great way to manage my classes.

I also had another great experience today. At the end of each day, the students spend their last hour cleaning the school from top to bottom. When they're finished with their particular job, they're allowed to roam around the school talking to the teachers or just playing while they wait for their friends to finish. Today, as usual, a group of students crowded around my desk because they were curious about me. They're always curious about me, asking me if I know Korean sports stars or videogames.

Anyway, today they were asking me about videogames so of course I turned it back on them. A few of them told me that liked an online roleplaying game called "Maple Story" so I went onto the internet and looked up the website as they watched over my shoulder.

As soon as the website came up, a ripple of excitement went through them and suddenly there were 20-30 students crowded around my desk, all of who were desperately trying to tell me about this "Maple Story" game... in English! It was so cool! They went from being bored and just hanging out to super-excited because their English teacher was looking at one of their favorite videogames. They all wanted to tell me what level their character was or how awesome of a player they were. The only thing I could do was just sit there and milk the conversations as long as I could until they had to go home.

I love it when my students get excited about English! Their reaction just reconfirms my view that students will want to talk English when it's exciting and personal. In the coming year, I hope that I can find other ways to get my students just as talkative.

So, I feel encouraged and I think that's a great way to end the day!

Our Address - Westernized!

One of my co-teachers just gave me a Westernized version of our new address, because the other address I gave you might not work when sending mail from outside the country.

I'm putting the new address below and also changing the old post in this blog so that no one gets confused. Here's the address as it should be written:

Rob and Shannon Digby

Dongbu Olympic Town 103-1301

Wu-dong 1008-5, Haeundae-gu

Busan, Korea 612-745

If you know anyone who has the old version of our address, please tell them about the change and/or direct them to this blog. Thanks!

A Few Quick Notes

I've had a few questions about the food & the shopping here. Let me tell you - both are fantastic! Everywhere we go, Shannon and I can find almost any kind of food, from Western fast food (KFC, McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut) to traditional Korean, Japanese, Thai and more.

As for the shopping, it's the same. They just opened a HUGE shopping mall called Shinsegae ("New World") here and it's got to be one of the most upscale shopping centers I've ever seen. They have everything you could want to find inside. Louis Betton, Gucci, Apple Computers, Nike, etc. They also have an ice rink, a rooftop garden with views out across the city, a cinema on the 9th floor and a luxury cinema on the 5th floor where you can sit in comfy armchairs and eat dinner while watching a movie. But that's just Shinsegae. Scattered across this vast city are tens of thousands of stores - big and small, shopping centers, underground markets, street markets, street vendors and fruit/vegetable markets. I think the shopping possibilities are endless here.

To put it simply, I love Busan.

The Wheels on the Bus...

This morning I was a human tetherball in a Korean mosh pit composed of teenage schoolboys and little old women...

The First Stages of Culture Shock and a Multitude of Blessings

It’s Sunday and I’m unsure of the date! Uh, March 8th. I’m writing this on Rob’s laptop because we don’t have internet at home yet. I’m not even sure when I’ll be able to upload this, as every time I got to blogspot on my work laptop, everything apart from our writing is in Hanguel!

So, we’ve been in Busan just over a week now. I remember when I first started working in Karlsruhe…. Weeks seemed like months and months felt like more than a year had passed! In a new country and culture almost everything is new and we are but sponges, soaking up all of the new information, adapting as best we can. All of that new experience changes our perception of time drastically.

Rob’s already described a lot in so much detail, so to summarize what it’s been like for me: in our first week I’ve started a new job, met hundreds of people (of which only about 15 names will be remembered next week), improved drastically with reading Hanguel considering I haven’t been studying it, become capable of correctly pronouncing most of my students’ names, we’ve been communicating as best as we can with limited Korean, easy English and a lot of sign language, started forming our own physical understanding of this city’s layout, lived in two different locations, visited and got to know some people at two different churches…. So it somehow feels like we’ve been here much more than a week already, in a lot of ways.

Oh I can’t resist, because my first few days at school were really hard! So I here’s where I go into more detail. My first day of school was mostly very boring. My main co-teacher, Noh Hyun Jung, took me to school early and we sat in the teachers’ office basically all day.

My school’s teachers’ office sounds a bit like Rob’s: every teacher has their own desk area facing a cubicle wall. 4 teachers face the wall on either side. The vice principal has a stand-alone desk right in the very middle of this long room filled with teachers. The students open the sliding doors and come and talk to teachers freely between lessons. So I especially had a lot of visitors that first day, being the new foreign teacher (aka super star). Some were too shy to do anything but wave, smile and giggle. Quite a few bowed and said hello. One took my hand and bowed until her forehead was touching my hand. Many try to speak to me for more than just hello. A couple of them have a decent sized vocabulary, even if they don’t speak very fluently or grammatically correct. Occasionally they are just being silly. A giggling group visited to tell me they love me and that one of them was my predecessor’s girlfriend. Sometimes it’s awkward, because they are just hovering around me, the conversation has drawn to its natural close and I have to tell them “I need to get back to work now, so see you later. Good bye!”

So on that first day, without any computer and barely any Korean, I met my 3 other co-teachers, one of which is also new to Bansong Girls’ Middle School this year. Then I met and instantly forgot the names of some other friendly teachers. Many of the teachers are very friendly, but their English seems to be only slightly more advanced than my Korean and even my co-teachers have big problems understanding me sometimes. They are also very busy. They have more classes than I do, plus they have so much administrative work, it’s insane. I’m very aware of this, so I try not to be bothersome to them.

Korea seems to be the opposite of Germany when it comes to organisation. All anybody could tell me was that I probably wouldn’t have to teach that first day. I just read until about 9.30am, when the old principal and vice principal gave exit speeches and left. Then I just continued to read through my 3 new textbooks and the empty organisational files my predecessor had left me and made notes of things to ask my co-teachers. After an hour or so a new principal and vice principal arrived with an official from the Busan Office of Education and there were more speeches. Then we went back to doing our own things, which for me, was reading and making notes. At 11am we had an “opening ceremony” in the school gym, which was basically an assembly with only 2nd and 3rd graders. (1st graders started on Tuesday.) The new principal, vice-principal and 8 or so new teachers were introduced. When it was my turn to step forward and bow to the audience, the students screamed like I was a rock star, much to my surprise and embarrassment. Since then, two of my English classes have screamed in the same way when I enter their classrooms too. It’s very loud. I’m sure the excitement will wear off soon.
After the opening ceremony, it was back to reading for the rest of the day until 4.30pm, apart from a Korean lunch with the teachers in the teachers’ cafeteria.

On day two at school, I wanted to cry in the morning. I just felt left out because I can’t speak Korean. I can’t read the teachers’ notice board, or understand the announcements, or go to the staff meetings. I also felt like every one was too busy to help me out. There still wasn’t a schedule, so I had no idea if I’d be teaching that day or not. I had brought in our laptop, but couldn’t hook it up to a printer, so once my basic lesson planning was done, all I could do was try to get my co teachers to understand that I need to be able to have internet access and print before I can teach and that I can’t bring this laptop in each day, since I share it with Rob. Once they understood that, I got a school laptop that afternoon and since then I’ve been surfing the internet if all of my school planning’s finished. That has been a real outlet to my prior frustration, I have to say, although I feel a bit guilty that I’m there surfing for all to see when my colleagues have so much to do. But I’ve offered my help for anything and until we have some meetings about what my co teachers would like me to cover and when and what the lunch time and after school classes should cover, I really can’t plan that much more. I also wish my school laptop’s computer settings were in English, as then I’d be able to change the setup to how I like it, but apart from the software, it all defaults to Hanguel still.

My first classes on Wednesday – Friday with all three grades went really well. The students got to speak a lot, have agreed to my rules and had fun. From all of those classes, only a handful of students refused to speak English with me. With 700 students from a poor, often difficult background, a handful reusing to speak so far is much better than I what I was told at orientation to expect. My co teachers let me run the classes and assisted with monitoring the students’ work, making sure they understood and keeping the students in check. They were all surprised I could run a class. They didn’t understand I have prior teaching experience and they’re all quite happy with me, I think. On average, the 1st graders seem to be better in listening comprehension and speaking fluency than the 2nd and 3rd graders – especially the 2nd graders. I’m looking forward to next week. On Monday and Tuesday I get to meet those classes I haven’t yet met and I’ll be spending a lot more time lesson planning, having to use some material from their seemingly random textbooks. I’m going to have to have some meetings with my co teachers, although I still don’t have access to their schedules.

Apart from work differences and the language barrier, I hadn’t thought I was feeling culture shock much yet. But then we went to watch “The Watchmen” last night at the new local cinema… Here Hollywood movies remain in English, as there are plenty of Korean movies in Korean playing all of the time as well. At the end of that movie as the lights were slowly raised, I looked at the people walking out and it took me several seconds to realise they were all Korean, every one of them. Then I felt surprise at how much I had really escaped reality by watching that movie. I momentarily forgot what country I’m in!

Since I got a laptop and started teaching, I haven’t felt bad at all. The other teachers have begun to show real interest in getting to know me and I’ve found out some very interesting things about them. I’m super motivated to find a Korean course now! (And keep practising German.) There’s still a lot to do in terms of registering, changing banks, getting internet at home… general set up stuff. I feel really blessed to be at such a great school, with enthusiastic students, teachers who really care about quality education and their students’ well being. I feel really blessed to be in this awesome fully furnished apartment with Rob. I have a practice room! We’re praying for lots of guests and are seriously considering getting two little dogs. I feel really blessed about the churches we’ve found. We’ve met some wonderful people there who will probably become good friends and I’ve already got the electric bass from one of them. When we speak with our fellow EPIK colleagues, I realise that Rob and I have already seen a lot more of the city than most. Spring is clearly almost here, so I’m happy to report that after a slightly difficult beginning to the working week, I feel like we’re doing really well. I can only sing God praises.