Everything is still weird

     Gamcheon Village:

Gamcheon Village was a fairly spectacular experience. I spent the day with my new friend Catharina, the angelic human being I met at the international party. She was an awesome tour guide and her abilities to speak Korean, English and Chinese all came in handy (we ran into some Chinese tourists along the way). Gamcheon Village is basically a really poor area where many people moved during the Korean War. Someone decided to turn it into a tourist attraction by painting everything in bright colours and turning it into a massive art piece, really. It’s a good thing I suppose... turn somewhere poor and run down into a place where people will come from all over to see (and spend money at!). The weather wasn’t at its best but luckily we left just as the wind started picking up. We then went to Catharina’s hometown where we ate a late lunch together... I had this amazing curry, perhaps even the best curry I’ve ever had, but I’m sad to say that the heat got the better of me. Korean food is often spicy so I should have known better. I didn’t want to stop but the embarrassment of the sweating and runny nose eventually caused me to call it a day! As soon as I got back to my home in Jangsan the rain started pouring down. A successful outing and well-timed too!    

Strange Korean Compliment of the Day:

      Student: Teacher... your nose... like Pinocchio.
Me: Ah... I see. Well, thanks.
Student: No teacher. It good!
Me: To have a nose like Pinocchio?
Student: Yes teacher. Many Koreans... um, silicon nose to look like your.
Me: They have plastic surgery?
Student: Yes, plastic!
Me: Ah, well thank you.
Student: Yes, teacher very handsome.
Me: *plays it cool* There’s a spelling mistake in your answer to question 4. *walks away*

       April Fool’s Day:

April Fool’s Day is apparently a pretty big deal in Korea. At least, they certainly seem to take it more seriously than we do in South Africa. My co-teacher fortunately alerted me to this fact earlier in the week so I could be sure to remember that if anything strange happened it was probably because of the date! I was (fortunately) excluded from most of the activity but my co-teacher had an evil plan... with our best poker faces on, we would tell the students that I would be returning to South Africa in a couple of weeks and they would be getting a new native teacher to take my place. To be perfectly honest, I was worried that the reaction was going to be whoops, cheers and a small party... but solemn faces were the order of the day. I wasn’t sure I would be able to pull it off but I gave a pretty convincing performance if I do say so myself. After telling the students the bad news, my co-teacher whispered to me that we would only tell them the truth after class; how successful this was I can’t be sure, as we still had a lesson to do and the classroom atmosphere was completely dead after that! Nevertheless, it was worth it for the reaction at the end – my co-teacher let them believe it right up until they were lined up and ready to go out the door. Their reaction when they realised they’d been duped was priceless! I still had some students coming up to me days afterwards giving me dirty scowls and calling me a “bad liar”. Mission accomplished!

 Lotte Giants baseball game:

This was something I just knew I had to do. A few friends went a couple of weeks before and it seemed like a really awesome experience. And plus, I’d been missing my live sport over here so I figured it would be fun either way! While my enjoyment of the experience was significantly lessened due to the fact that I’d just visited the ENT doctor earlier in the day and received an unusually large bag of medicine, the baseball was still everything I thought it would be. The experience can be summed up quite nicely in this video:

Birthday bowling celebrations:

This was perhaps the best night out I’ve had in Korea yet. For once the activity was taking place close by to me, in Haeundae, and the plans were simple: hit the bowling alley and partake in the W10,000 (R100) unlimited beer special. While my interest in the bowling itself was initially quite minimal, I soon realised that luck was on my side as I nailed three strikes in a row (with a couple of them admittedly bouncing off the railing) and won myself a pair of socks. While I wasn’t able to maintain that form throughout the round, I did enough to snatch a win despite a nerve-wracking comeback from Tom, the birthday boy, who took it to the final ball being bowled. The proclamations of me being an “awesome bowler” were short-lived, as I finished near the bottom of the pack for the next two games.

I feel like this would be a weirdly awesome photo if those
damn socks I won weren't in the way. Artistic.

As you can see, I enjoyed early dominance
(player D by the way)...

...and then almost lost it at the end. Fortunately I held on
and exorcised some terrible bowling performances from the
past.

     On-air reading:

      My debut television appearance was nowhere near as glamorous as I’d always imagined it might be. My blonde locks weren’t blowing in the wind and there were no cute girls by my side. Instead I held a children’s book in my hand as I nervously read and asked comprehension questions to an imaginary audience. Of course, that imaginary audience was in fact hundreds of students and teachers looking on at me from the TV screens in their classrooms. I read The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear which was quite entertaining for the kids I think; maybe if a reading coincides with April Fool’s Day next year I’ll introduce them to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.