Text Twirl

I have stayed away from every trendy application to add to facebook. There is absolutely nothing fun ever to appear on the fun wall. Getting fake flowers, presents, fish tanks and icons of beer are all well intended but an ultimate waste of time. As for having legions of vampires taking on one another I just don't get it. I never want to know my stripper name, nor my name in Russian or my name as a marauding pirate.

When I get invitations to add any application I reject it without even reading about it. Then one night out, Raymond was raving about a game called Text Twirl and while it did sound better than most things on facebook (including old school friends I'll never talk to) I was reluctant to add this application. Curiosity did finally win though and I'm now hooked.

For those not in the know, the game is played by being given seven random letters and you then have two minutes to find all the 3,4,5,6 and 7 letter word combinations you can make out of the letters. I am crap at it but slowly improving. The other night I even had my sleep interrupted as my brain worked out what words I could make in my dream on some fictional super computer. I do know how sad that sounds but it's also a great way to kill my many free hours at work.

Spring Field Trip

Today was our spring field trip and the Kindergartener to grade fours all got to go to Lotte World for the day. The 5th and 6th graders are off for a three day trip to KyeongJu and I was given the option of going along. It was an simple choice. A single day trip to an amusement park with an easy schedule on Thursday and Friday because the older kids are away easily won over three full days of kids.

The schedule at the park was all set out and there was a lot of hurry up and wait going on. Here we are standing in front of the first ride of the day, Simbad's Adventure.

Because the third grade teacher is pregnant to the point of popping, I was given the task of taking care of Chan Hyung. He is one of the special education kids at school and doesn't speak a lick of English. He likes to wander, can get aggressive with some of the kids in his class and will shout out whenever he feels like it before setting into a fit of giggles that can lead to tears. As distracting as he is in class when you call on him to focus he is a cute kind kid. Today he was great. On all the rides whenever I turned around to take pictures he'd pull my hands back to the bar while telling me to hold on to.

A logical stop before a lunch where you can't wash your hands, an insect touchy feely juncture in the park.

After lunch we hit the bumper cars before watching the daily parade dance on by. It was a fun day and with only three more classes this week I'm looking forward to the rest of the week.

The Concert

The Duran Duran concert was a lot better than I was expecting. It did start out slow with them peppering in some new songs that I liked on video but because they were overproduced they didn't sound so good live. About halfway through the two hour concert things got a lot better and you can tell these guys have preformed before. Simon got the crowd going when he sang White Lines. Raymond and myself had a good chuckle that 90 percent of the Koreans rocking out to the song had no idea it was all about cocaine.

Duran Duran

I've just spent the morning and all afternoon getting to know the new songs from Duran Duran. They're in town tonight and Raymond worked his magic to get us a couple of tickets. I had low expectations for this concert because they are old but after hearing the stuff they made on this last album I'm thinking it could be a good show. I can't wait to sneak out of here at 4:40.

Sports Day

When the new school year started we got one new teacher. She came from a bigger school (every school in the country is bigger than ours) where there is a strong community among the teachers. At our school the Korean teachers have so much (ridiculous) paper work to do that it's hard for them to have any free time. We do get together for a lot of diners but at work the teachers rarely have time to hang out and chat. The new teacher pointed this out to the other teachers and eventually the vice principal got word of it. Wanting to create a better work environment he made a new sports day for every third Wednesday of the month.

This month we got to go on our Spring hike (our school is down there but you can't see it well because of the constant haze -polution- that clings to the city of Seoul.) We've climbed this same mountain every time but it still beats sitting around doing nothing on Wednesday afternoons (the kids leave after lunch on Wednesdays- I normally bring in a DVD to kill the time) and was an excellent afternoon even if only four of us actually did any hiking.

Heading up.

Mr. Oh pointing out some spring flowers.

The Vice-principal relaxing at the summit, we climbed straight up for about five minutes to reach this spot. The rest was needed. I call him "the Vice-Principal" but his name is Mr. Lee, because this is Korea it's very rude to call him anything but by his title.)


The rest of the sites. It was a nice little hike and my legs feel like jello because hiking in Korea tends to be straight up and the straight down. Good times.

Who's Beckham?

Every Monday for the last twenty minutes of class I force the older kids to sing. We start out with the songs from our book and then in the last ten minutes I load up Youtube and we learn a new Pop song each month. Last month I tortured them with the Spice Girls song, "Stop".

One kid knew who they were and she also had heard that one of them was married to David Beckham but she didn't know which one it was. When I paused the video on Mrs. Posh in typical Korean fashion the kids voiced they're opinion on her "beauty" and they weren't kind. (I'll be nice and keep them from seeing her pictures from the anorexic years). Most kids nodded along while her looks were dissected and debated.

All except for poor Bum Joone who was still working out a question in his mind. He raised his hand to ask, "Who is Beckham?" This brought on some nasty comments from his peers as they asked him if he knew anything about soccer and or fashion or phones or sun glasses. I was never prouder of the boy and gave him a candy for being beyond that grasp of popular western consumerism. Beckham endorses a ton of stuff here in Korea and his face is plastered everywhere. Seeing candy being given away for nothing the rest of the class soon jumped on board and committed to not knowing who Beckham was either. They were too late and got nothing any candy they ate that day they bought.

A Springy Sunday

I had a case of mild amnesia the last couple of weeks and somehow forgot to update. The "problem" is that my new schedual at work gives me the same number of breaks but they are split up troughout the day. By the time I'm done teaching I have a full hour break before heading home but I'm laziest during this hour. So here are some old posts I have been meaning to get around to.

A couple of Sundays ago, Saejin and I spent the whole day taking in Spring's sights. We debated going to the Cherry Blossom festival again this year but after remembering the mob of people that were present last year we decided to hit up a palace instead and hope some of the trees were in bloom. Here's a shot right outside the door of our apartment.

One of bigger magnolia trees outside a shop two minutes from home.

Downtown's stream, no cherry blossoms here.

Inside Deoksu palace's grounds.

More spring colours on some plant I can't name scientifically nor by it's common name.

A Cherry blossom tree on the way to the Seoul Museum of Art.

We choose to end the day at the museum by checking out the Antoine Bourdelle exhibition. It was a great relaxing day and a good end to the weekend.

A Virus

My computer got a nasty virus when I downloaded a program to convert video files to MP4s and I'm going to use that as my excuse for not updating this blog. I brought my computer in to be fixed by the popular Mr Jonny computer and things have been fixed but now my computer is struggling reading some Korean. I've played around trying to fix this problem myself but I can't seem to figure it out.

Happy Birthday Saejin

Saturday night we all met up for Saejin's birthday. Because he is a year older and wiser there wasn't the normal amount of wine holding fort on the table at dinner. We saved the boozing until we were on friendlier less posh places. It was a great night out and I'll post more pictures when blogger lets me add them.