Finally going to Thailand

A couple of months ago I canceled my trip to Thailand because there was a coup the same day I booked my tickets. In the end the coup was bloodless, but I am still glad that I canceled the trip. Because now I get to go after the rainy season and with some friends. I am going with the other English teachers at my school, Teal and Jennifer. We all get along pretty well and a trip is always more fun if you can share it with friends. We are flying from Busan to Bangkok, and from their to the city of Surat Thani. We will spend a day in Surat Thani and then get a boat to Koh Samui for the next night. After our day on Koh Samui we will go to Koh Phangan. Koh Phangan is famous for two reasons. First of all it is the site of the Leonardo di Caprio film, "The Beach." If you have seen the film then you know how beautiful it is. Secondly, it is the site of the famous "Full Moon Party" which happens every month. Apparently, the party attracts 10,000-30,000 people every month depending on the season. It is held at Haad Rin beach and their is food, entertainment, more alcohol than you can shake a stick at and over a dozen DJ's from Thailand and around the world. I am not much for rave parties. But it sounds like a unique experience. We leave Saturday, (12/02) in the morning and arrive back the next Saturday. Surat Thani was the center of the Srivijaya Empire, which ruled much of the Malay peninsula and Java. So I will have the chance to explore Thai history as well as spending time snorkeling, swimming, eating and drinking.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has never been the biggest holiday for me. Growing up in Australia we didn't really celebrate it much. During my time at York, Thanksgiving was actually a bit of a downer. I would always spend it in my university residence, since my family was thousands of miles away. Most people went home so it got very quiet and a bit lonely.
For better or worse, I have made choices in the last six years which have kept me far away from family. Being so independent has often made life a real adventure. However, at holiday time I am always reminded of the distance. Now that I am in Korea (where they don't even have the same holidays) holidays continue to be a strange time. However, the nice thing about being here compared to York is that everyone here is in the same boat. For my first Thanksgiving in Korea I went to the Seaman's Club. I went with some of my workmates, April (far right of photo) and Teal (next to April), as well as Dave and Ed (back of the photo) and their workmate Mat (far left). I hang out a lot with Teal, Dave and Ed. Although we had to have a Thanksgiving lunch because we work too late to eat dinner, it was nice to have a good group to celebrate with.

Very slack about posting

The last couple weeks I have been really slack and I haven't been updating as often as I should have been. Part of that is that there isn't much news to tell, and part of it is that I have been getting myself in to a routine which didn't include posting. That's not to say that the routine I have gotten into is a bad thing. I am not feeling the depression I was experiencing a couple of weeks ago. The new term has brought some improvements in my teaching situation and I am enjoying my classes more. I have also stopped trying to keep up my Hapkido/gym schedual. I enjoyed the Hapkido. However, to get to Hapkido on time I was having to get up before 9 am. Now to all of you working regular jobs in other countries that might not sound too bad, but it wasn't working for me. I leave work around 10:15 pm most nights. I get home and around 3 nights a week I go to the gym around 10:30-10:40. I leave the gym a little after midnight and then I have a small dinner. That means that I am not even finished my day until 1 am. So my average bed time is 2:30. Its late, but I get up the next day at 10:30 with a good 8 hours sleep. I spend my mornings relaxing, a cup of tea, a good breakfast. Sometimes I go out shopping or down to Gwangali Beach to enjoy the view and a coffee. Then I leave for work at 3:30. While I was trying to maintain my Hapkido I was getting just over 6 hours of sleep each morning I went. In the end it was a source of stress rather than exercise and meditation. So I decided I had to choose between the gym and Hapkido. I am having a lot of fun at the gym, and I am seeing some real results. Plus I have a nice friendship developing with the evening gym manager. So the choice was easy. If I stay on a second year in Korea and I have a job with a better schedule I might take up Hapkido classes in the evening. However, I have never been a morning person and it is a source of great joy in my life that I have found a job which means I never have to be one!

Busan Fireworks

Korea has a great deal of well deserved pride as one of the true Asian success stories. Everyone knows about Japan's remarkable post-WWII success. However, Korea's transformation is just as remarkable. South Korea did not get the support for rebuilding which Japan received after the war. It also suffered from the effects of the Korean war just 10 years later. Its first democratic elections were only 19 years ago in 1987. But in that short time the tiny country of Korea has become the world's 10 largest economy, with the second largest metropolis in the world, Seoul. Last year Busan was very proud to host the 2005 APEC summit. And this year, to celebrate the first anniversary of the event, they put on a spectacular fireworks display. I was told by one friend that the cost of the display was close to a million dollars Canadian. I went with Teal, one of the other teachers from the school. The fireworks were scheduled to start at 8 and we arrived at Gwangali beach at around 7:30.



It was a real madhouse. I will have to ask some of the Korean teachers at my school exactly how many people are supposed to have shown up. But the picture you see above is what the street looked like as we arrived at the very edge of the beach 30 minutes before start time. Gwangali beach is probably 2 -3 km long and the entire beach was like this. I would not be at all surprised to find out that we shared this experience with a million other people.



It took us from 7:30 till 8 just to find a place to see the fireworks. We were finally lucky enough to squeeze in to a great spot on one of the elevated tree planters. We got settled on our spot (right at the very center of the beach) only 5 second before the first fireworks went off. The picture above shows the view we had of the crowd on the beach itself. Everyone below us is on the steps to the beach and the beach itself. It really boggles the mind to imagine a crowd which is 2 km long and 100 meters deep.



The opening salvos were very impressive. The whole thing was choreographed to dozens of pieces of music, mostly classical, classic rock and a few love songs thrown in for good measure. Interestingly it was mostly English music. I really wished I had gotten a picture of the fireworks that accompanied one of the love songs. They had rockets which exploded into dozens of brilliant red flares which formed enormous hearts in the sky.



The whole event went from 8pm till 9pm and must have included more than 10000 fireworks. There were firework boats both in front of and behind Gwangali bridge as well as firework which were set off from the bridge itself. I remember during the 2000 millennium celebrations, many commentators said that the Sydney (Australia) fireworks, set off from the Harbor bridge were among the most impressive in the world. Having the bridge as both lighted backdrop, laser platform and launch pad, added enormously to the event. Especially since the Gwangali bridge is 7 km long.



The final crescendo was incredible, soaring classical music, enormous explosions and a million people cheering. I have posted a link at the bottom of this post to a movie of the last minute of the fireworks. Its not the greatest quality, because it was made with my still camera. Also it does not capture the hight of the fireworks or the noise they were making. But, it's still quite impressive and I hope you check it out and enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkLZ__N3A0Y

Teaching English

I have talked a lot about my social life and what I do with my free time on this blog. But I haven't talked about my job very much. Part of that is because I don't think it's a very interesting topic. However, since it's the reason that I am here in this country I guess I should give it more attention.
In general my job situation is pretty good. I have a 33 hour work week from 3:30 until 10:10 Monday to Friday. For which I am paid a very good salary. I have my mornings free to shop, explore the city, and socialize. However, that does not prevent my from feeling frequently frustrated with my work. Hogwan jobs in Korea run the gamut from truly horrible to fantastic. Mine is on the good side of average, but there are still some problems which I deal with every day. One of these is the conservative attitude of the management at the school. Like many business people, the management is adverse to change. Unfortunately, the textbooks at Unium are often substandard. We started a new term on Wednesday last week. This term the text books have actually improved quite a bit. Last term we were using books which the management of the school had put together themselves. The books were created from two different sources. All of the TOEFL level courses alternate between a speaking and a writing class. During the writing classes the textbook material was frequently dull and the explanations of grammatic rules was far too dense for the students to understand easily. However, it was usable. But during speaking classes the material was taken from a different source and it caused me endless headaches. The biggest problem was a lack of source material. The class work generally consisted of taking a topic from the book and using it to develop a discussion or debate. However, numerous times the topic was on the lines of "take the reading from Peter Pan" or "look at the pictures from X and discuss their meaning" But every time this happened the management hadn't included the pictures from X or the excerpt from Peter Pan. The worst one was when I was supposed to have the students listen to a song from the movie "Pretty in Pink," fill in the missing words from the lyrics in their textbook, and then discuss the meaning of the song. Now here is a lesson I might actually create an interesting discussion with, right! Wrong! wouldn't you know it, there is no song to listen to. If the entire lesson is based on listening to this song, what kind of mongrel offspring of a mentally deficient orangutan puts it in a textbook without ever even looking for the damn song! Seeing as I am more intelligent than my bosses I got creative and found the song on Youtube. But my own ability to improvise not withstanding, I shouldn't have to deal with such deficiencies on a daily basis. When I pointed out this particular problem with the textbook they asked me to photocopy the offending lesson and any others with problems and they would look into it. I gave them a copy and nothing happened. So I have decided that my time is better spent finding ways to improve my lessons rather than trying to show them the numerous problems in the book they made.
Thankfully, like I said before, the new semester has brought different textbooks which are a big improvement on the old ones. Some of you must be wondering how I could consider this Hogwan to be on the good side of average. There are many positives at Unium, which so far out way some of the negative. For example, we get a week of holiday (when the middle schools have exams) every two months. I don't know of any other Hogwan where the teachers get so much holiday time. Another plus is that we all get our own classrooms instead of having to travel around the building like teachers do at most schools here (including public schools). Another big plus is that their are no cameras watching the classrooms. This has become quite common here. My friend Ian Stotesbury has cameras at his school. Anyway, without cameras I have more freedom to modify lessons when there is a problem in the textbook, or when it is my final (9:10-10:05) lesson of the day and I finish the last 15 minutes with a game because the students are exhausted and can't focus anymore. Of course, the big plus about Unium is that I am earning 2.3 million won a month, when the average here is 2.0.

Halloween

Since I grew up in Australia, where Halloween doesn't really exist, I do not have a special childhood connection to the holiday. However, while going to University I certainly developed an appreciation for adult Halloween parties. I've done a few different costumes in my time, like The Crow, Humphrey Bogart, or the classic male drag. However, when you are in a foreign country, finding a costume shop with a good selection is not easy. If this was Japan I would probably have a lot more costume options than in Korea. As long as I don't mind going as a Furry or an Anime character. The best I was able to find here in Busan was a wig stall and some basic face paint in a party supply store. Since it was the only prop I found, my green wig became the inspiration for my outfit. This year I went out as Oscar the Grouch. I got the wig on Friday, and I spent Saturday morning trying to find a store that sold garbage cans large enough for me to walk around in. Since their is no Canadian Tire in Korea, I was tragically out of luck. In the end I made the creative choice of cutting the bottom out of a laundry basket, from which I hung a sign saying "Garbage Can" (written in both English and Korean). All in all it was pretty stupid looking, but a fair number of foreigners actually got the costume with little or no prompting. Unfortunately, Sesame Street never really took off here. So only a few Koreans got my costume. I didn't really care about that when I was out partying. But when I wore the costume to school for Monday and Tuesday I had to show the my classes Youtube clips before they could understand what I was supposed to be. At least they all thought it was a hilarious costume. Teachers are figures of high authority and respect for children in Korea, and seeing a teacher pretending to be (as they saw it) a garbage can, was the height of amusement for them. They called me "Su rae gi (garbage) Sun sang nim (teacher)" all day.


Enjoy the picture. I am afraid that it doesn't do the fantasticness of the costume justice!