Car

I have a car!! So if anyone wants to come and visit, I can give you a proper tour around the island. I rock. If you are wondering it is a 95 Kia Sophia. Now I don't have to spend 2 1/2 hours on the bus to get to work. Yay ME!!!!

Cheese, Hookahs and Assults.

Jeju United lost again. My soccer team isn't doing so hot. We lost this weekend to the last placed team. Well they are no longer the last placed team, we are. I think we need new coaches. We were playing like we had the lead. Playing too conservative. We were down 1-0 from 5 minutes in the game and our game plan never changed. We never pressured the other team. We let them dictate to play. We have yet to win a home game this season. We have only scored one time on our home field. That shit just shouldn't happen. We need our home field
I missed most of the second half of the game though. Some little girls came up to me during half time and asked me some basic English questions. This apparently was enough for them to attack me during the second half of the match. Here I am just minding my own business, drinking my beer and screaming at the game, when these girls start climbing on me and trying to steal my beer. Yes these 6-8 year old girls were trying to steal my beer. Crazy kids. This went on for almost the whole 45 minutes of the half. They were talking to me, climbing on me, they just would not leave me alone. I had no idea who they were. My friends asked me if they were my students. They weren't. They just laughed. I tried to pawn them off on others, it worked, for a short short time. They just started coming back.

Sunday night I was treated to a new joint here on the wonder island paradise I live on. It is a small bar type establishment. This place had a hookah and cheese platter. I don't know which was better, the cheese or the hookah. I have been missing cheese. Cheese isn't something that is popular in Korea. And this was fantastic. Gourmet cheeses. So so so tasty. I was in heaven. The cheeses were complimented by our cherry flavored smoke in the hookah. We ended up ordering 2 plates of cheese and crackers. Though we didn't get a refill on the crackers for the second plate of cheese. Oh well. Still yummy.

Opening Ceremony and other hooplaa

May 1st was the opening ceremony of my new center. It had all the hoopla and shenanigans of any Korean opening. There was a band, food, speeches, and famous Koreans and of course flowers. One can always tell when something is new here. There are reefs of flowers all around the entrance.
I missed the opening ceremony. Actually I wasn't invited. I had to work. Part of the ceremony was a tour. They brought in one class of students to run through our Sim lab. So I was teaching a bunch of girls how to order food at a fast food joint. Woo Hoo. I got to do this as my co-worker got to cut the ribbon. I'm a wee bit jealous. She gets to do all the fun stuff. My director was pretty proud. He told me that some guy's hand I shook was the big wig in charge of the school system on Jeju. Apparently it was a big honor. "Not everyone gets to shake his hand." is what my director told me. So what I shook some dude's hand, who I will never meet again. Come on! Not that big of a deal. It made him happy though.
Following the ceremony, we went to lunch. Nice restaurant. Though the food they served was a bit funny. It was all shellfish, prawns, clams, muscles, in a soup. The problem was, none of it was deshelled. So I had to go into my soup, dig out what I wanted to eat, pop it out of the shell and into my mouth. So go on eating. Some people are still eating, some are done. None of that mattered, when the most important guy in the room was finished, everyone was finished. Fucked up culture. Gotta love the Confucianism.
OK, little side track here. Confucianism is not a bad thing. Respecting elders and all that good stuff. The thing is, that Koreans have taken advantage of it. The old people and rich people think that they should get special treatment. They won't move out of your way, even if it is much easier for them to do so. I was in a car with a friend. An elderly gentleman, driving a nicer car was going down the street. Now streets here only allow one car to go at a time. My friend along with 2 other cars behind him, had to back up to let him pass. It was much easier for this guy to pull off to the side, but he wouldn't. That is just one example of many. I've played chicken with people on the island. I will walk in a straight line, with purpose, just to see if they will move out of my way. I've run into more than have moved. Then they look at you like you are crazy.
OK back to the school stuff. After lunch, we had to come back to work. Well come back and look busy. I've been doing the same stuff since then, nothing. I don't know what classes I will be teaching or if I will be teaching at all. If I do end up teaching, it won't be until the 20th of May. Until then, I don't have anything to do. I can't even lesson plan. So I am studying for my SCUBA lessons, and some Korean
So after school, it was dinner with the same people for lunch and drinking. That was fine. Food and a couple shots of soju isn't such a bad thing. I was ready to go and we start to leave, when Arielle and myself get hijacked. We are going to a Noribong, Karaoke bar. I wasn't in the mood for it, Arielle really didn't want to do it. But we had no choice in the matter. Our director wanted to go, so we were obligated to go. We get there and they order 4 bottles of whisky at $100 a pop. This was after Arielle got bitched out by our director for ordering a drink that cost $1 more than a bottle of soju, that they were sucking down. I tried to show them the proper way to drink it, yeah they were having none of that. Korean way is to shoot whisky. So they sip a $4 bottle of crap soju, but shoot good whisky. A bit backwards if you ask me. Sang some and danced some. The video is of my director dancing, enjoy. Sorry it is sideways. I can't figure out how to flip it.

Ultimate Frisbee

Last weekend was the Gnarley Nines International Ultimate Frisbee Tourney. Jeju entered 3 teams and I was on one of them. There were 27 teams in total. They came from far and wide to participate in this, the 4th annual tournament. There were teams from the US, Korea, Japan, China, Philippines, and I believe Thailand amongst other places. There were 3 divisions and my team was thankfully in the 3rd division. That is the division that is not so competitive and people out for a good time and a little competition.
The tournament was spread out over 2 days. The first day was for rankings for the playoffs. Saturday was a hell day. We played 4 games, 3 games right in a row. Each match lasts to 11 points or a 55 minute cap. Most of our games went to cap. It was a rough couple of games. I think we had one healthy person on our team at the end of the day. Mostly muscle strains and bum knees and the like. I pulled my alkalies tendon. It hurt to run, but I played on. We needed everyone out there and everyone was in pain. Plus when your in a match, pain doesn't bother you.
We ended up winning 2 games and losing 2 games on Saturday. We lost a heart breaker. We were down 5-1 with less than 5 minutes to go and came back and tied the match and losing in a sudden death overtime. The other loss was to another Jeju team, a team we practice with every weekend. We are an evenly matched team. We just couldn't play. The day got windier and windier as the day went on and it was our last game of the day. So on top of being dead tired, we were dealing with gale force winds. We lost that one by 2 points, 2-4.
The next day we won 1 and lost 1 and were knocked out of the playoffs. That sucked. All the games we won during the tournament we handled the other teams. Most ended up 11-2. But the game that knocked us out of the playoffs, we got handled, their girls were good tossers and fast runners. I found out after the game why we got beat so badly. They were a division A team. That is the top division and they were placed in the C division for the playoffs. So they just flat out played us.
So it was a good weekend out. Pretty sweet deal as well. The entrance fee for the tourney was about 50 bucks. With that we got 2 nights in a hotel, 2 nights of food and drinking. Food and Drinking were included, Soju and beer. Lunch at the field as well as more free beer and soju and a free Frisbee. Saturday night they threw a party for us, the theme of the party was scandles. A few people dressed up, but most did not. It is kind of a hard topic for people to dress up as.
Most teams were sponsored as well. We had shirts made, 2 pairs of shorts, a bandanna and socks donated to our team.
Oh yeah I almost forgot on of the best things about the tourney. I got to use my Mongolian. On the way to the fields on Sunday, someone found out that I used to live there and there was a MONGOLIAN guy playing on one of the other teams. A team that we crushed the previous day. So I introduced myself and talked Mongolian for a while. Good guy, fun guy. He was his teams cheerleader. Keeping them laughing and motivated. I have lost some of my Mongol, but I still managed to get by. I was so happy to speak it again. FAN-FRICKIN-TASTIC!!!!!

Chair Racing

Ah! Mondays. I love them. Today might be my last Monday at the Center. We were informed today that this will be our last week working in the schools that we have been working at. Our Center opens up on the first. So we will be moving out there next week. I am looking forward to it. Today we had a meeting with Ellen. She is the director of the foreign language centers. She came and told us that we would be taking part in the opening ceremonies. We are just running things in the sim labs. I don't know if we'll be giving speeches or anything. Hell I don't even know where I'll be going for the most of next week.

But now on to the title of this post. Today at work, typical Monday, we (Arielle and myself) started off the usual way. Checking email, doing crosswords and reading. When we started sliding around the room in our chairs. It progressed to a designed figure 8 race track. I am proud to say that I won. I kicked ass. I rocked the house. I won with a triumphant block with a double chair push block. There are obstacles that we can use to our advantage. Arielle was coming around the corner, when I threw two chairs to block her and rolled my way to victory.

Parent observation

Last week my co-teacher informed me that the students parents would be watching my classes today. Of course she didn't tell me until it was time to go. She has a tendency to do that. It is not a quality I like in her. Most of the time when she tells me about something, it is right before it is time to go. I've been sitting around in the office, all day with nothing to do. I finish at 12:20 and sit here until 4:30. It doesn't take me all that long to plan for my classes the next day. I usually do that on Mondays anyway. She was stressing out. She called me several times during the week to ask me questions.

I wrote her up a lesson plan and told her to do whatever she liked for it. Take things she liked and get rid of stuff she didn't. That seemed to satisfy her. That is until 4:30 yesterday. Apparently she ran through the lesson with the class and they thought it was to difficult. I was done for work for the day and really did not want to write up another plan. I sent out a quick email to her explaining my new idea. She then proceeded to call me and text me throughout the night. I guess she didnt' really understand what I was trying to do. The kids had a firm grip on the topic. They have been studying the same thing for the past 3 weeks trying to look good for their parents. It was a bit of overkill if you ask me. I would have prefered to teach something new and not rehash the same ole thing just to look good in front of their parents.

But it was all good. I killed that lesson. I rocked the house. I am a god. No, I'm that good. People worship me. I know what I am doing and I am good at it. She got her wish that the parents liked the lesson. The principle was happy. Everyone was happy. My next lesson was also watched. I don't know why that one was. The parents for the 5th grade seemed to enjoy that lesson as well and that one had minimal prep. I would have to say almost no prep. I didn't even know what they were learning until I stepped into the classroom. Which is fine at this school They seem to be a bit behind my other school, so I have covered and planned for these classes already.

Jeju delicacy

Friday I got a call from my co-teacher asking me if it was ok to stay late. There was a PTA meeting that they wanted me to attend. I was fine with it. It meant free food and drinks. Though it was a bit pointless for me to go, as I am only teaching here for another week. Or so I think. I haven't been well informed on the subject.
It was less of a meeting and more of a dinner party. I guess the parents take the teachers out to eat to get to know them before the real PTA stuff starts. We went to this nice restaurant overlooking the ocean. Beautiful really. I was then informed about the night's fare. Black Pig

Black Pig is a delicacy on Jeju. It might be a delicacy in all of Korea. The Black Pig lives a life, no other animal would like to live. At least that is my thought. Traditionally the black pig is put into outhouses. It lives it's life eating the waste, we poop out and piss out. Then on special occasions, it is hauled up and killed and eaten. Though now thanks to plumbing, it no longer fulfills that duty. I am sure in parts of the countryside it still wallows in the deeps of the outhouse.

It tastes like pork, as it is pork. But there was something else to the flavor. There was a uniqueness to it. I don't know what it is fed now. They could still be feeding it shit. I would have to say that I enjoyed it.