It's been too long since I last posted on here and so much has gone on that I will probably forget to include many of them.
At the time of the last blog, I was in school for the last official week of term - but that did not mean I was finished! After school finished I had a tough schedule to keep me from resting and relaxing - the infamous desk-warming was not given the opportunity to raise itself.
For the following fortnight I was teaching 2 hours of guitar (starting at 8am), then 2 hours of English Essay, then a short break for lunch before 4 hours of English Summer Camp... I was knackered after 2 days never mind 2 weeks of this!
I had also been asked to take a summer camp in a country school which led to much negotiating and arguments / discussions. Initially they had asked that both Danielle and I teach it together but Danielle's school went out of their way to make it impossible for her - even going so far as to tell her that although she did not have to come into school, she could not leave the city... nice! So I was left to do it on my own. My school proposed that I take my final 4 days of summer leave but teach in this other school for 5 days... but the other school would pay me too so it would be OK - for doing this my own school would then give me 2 weeks desk-warming from home (to do whatever I wanted... including going on holiday). My school are nice to me!
Summer Camp wasn't as bad as I thought - though I was disappointed with the level of English at my school compared to the country school. The students there (Angseong Middle School) asked me lots of questions about me, western boys, western girls, their education options, their aspirations - even what they could do to fulfill their dreams! I had a very funny and enjoyable week with them and we even made a short music video for Justin Bieber's song Baby (click to see the youtube video we made)!
I did mention Danielle not leaving Chungju for the summer... so if you are working at Daerim Elementary School and you are reading this - SHE DIDN'T... she stayed at home watching old Grey's Anatomy re-runs and crying again at the last series of Brothers & Sisters....
...if you don't work at Danielle's school then we hired a car and went AWOL for 2 weeks to travel down the East Coast of South Korea!
There were two main biggies for me on this holiday - 1) getting away with Danielle and being able to do whatever we wanted, when we wanted to, and 2) being able to drive again - I miss the freedom of having a car and being able to live out of it!
Our trip brought us up to the very north of the East Coast - and our first night was bloody awful as we paid too much for a dire campsite too close to the beach in Sokcho. We had planned to stay in the Soraksan National Park but it was already dark so we went for one a little easier to find (as directed by their Tourist Information services). The noise didn't stop - and as a bad omen for the following 13 nights it rained most of the night keeping us even more awake than the pumping house music and bad Korean entertainment floated through the camp. The next morning we woke (well, stopped lying down in a tent) with two missions - to go to the DMZ on this side of Korea, and to find a nicer place to stay that night!
And we did both!
The DMZ on the east is not really designed for international tourists... it seems that it is predominantly Koreans who go here (probably because they have to make special applications to visit the more touristy DMZ closer to Seoul in the west). English was in very little supply other than to tell us that we didn't need to sit and watch a 30min video that was compulsory for the Koreans to watch. Everything up here was a little creepy, a little dated, almost as if they were just waiting for the war to restart and therefore it was probably better not to tidy or clean as it would all be a mess again in no time once Kim Jong-Il and his son decided to visit Busan!
Abandoned building works, masses of barbed-wire, fenced off beaches with razor-wire, concrete bollards to narrow roads, even the modern attempts that the two halves of Korea had initiated together (before the North decided to shoot a civilian, blow up a SK ship and bomb an SK island) sit awaiting reanimation - highways which have stopped, bridges built but just not finished enough to use in a road-worthy car; left as they were... eerily held in limbo.
The problems in North Korea have been well documented (or at least as well as can be) over the past decade. We know there are problems with food supplies, people dying of starvation, mass numbers still living in concentration camps - but standing looking at the North you could be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a 1st World country... the clean highway with surprisingly good lighting (though it was day time so we don't know if they work) linking North and South, the railway system doing the same, clean beaches (which as part of the DMZ have almost been left for nature to manage); and clean, well maintained buildings from which their soldiers stare enviably at the liberated South (or so I imagine - as I guess they live in fear for their families and friends, thoughts encouraged by watching the documentary film Kimjongilia).
More to come!
At the time of the last blog, I was in school for the last official week of term - but that did not mean I was finished! After school finished I had a tough schedule to keep me from resting and relaxing - the infamous desk-warming was not given the opportunity to raise itself.
For the following fortnight I was teaching 2 hours of guitar (starting at 8am), then 2 hours of English Essay, then a short break for lunch before 4 hours of English Summer Camp... I was knackered after 2 days never mind 2 weeks of this!
I had also been asked to take a summer camp in a country school which led to much negotiating and arguments / discussions. Initially they had asked that both Danielle and I teach it together but Danielle's school went out of their way to make it impossible for her - even going so far as to tell her that although she did not have to come into school, she could not leave the city... nice! So I was left to do it on my own. My school proposed that I take my final 4 days of summer leave but teach in this other school for 5 days... but the other school would pay me too so it would be OK - for doing this my own school would then give me 2 weeks desk-warming from home (to do whatever I wanted... including going on holiday). My school are nice to me!
Summer Camp wasn't as bad as I thought - though I was disappointed with the level of English at my school compared to the country school. The students there (Angseong Middle School) asked me lots of questions about me, western boys, western girls, their education options, their aspirations - even what they could do to fulfill their dreams! I had a very funny and enjoyable week with them and we even made a short music video for Justin Bieber's song Baby (click to see the youtube video we made)!
I did mention Danielle not leaving Chungju for the summer... so if you are working at Daerim Elementary School and you are reading this - SHE DIDN'T... she stayed at home watching old Grey's Anatomy re-runs and crying again at the last series of Brothers & Sisters....
...if you don't work at Danielle's school then we hired a car and went AWOL for 2 weeks to travel down the East Coast of South Korea!
There were two main biggies for me on this holiday - 1) getting away with Danielle and being able to do whatever we wanted, when we wanted to, and 2) being able to drive again - I miss the freedom of having a car and being able to live out of it!
Our trip brought us up to the very north of the East Coast - and our first night was bloody awful as we paid too much for a dire campsite too close to the beach in Sokcho. We had planned to stay in the Soraksan National Park but it was already dark so we went for one a little easier to find (as directed by their Tourist Information services). The noise didn't stop - and as a bad omen for the following 13 nights it rained most of the night keeping us even more awake than the pumping house music and bad Korean entertainment floated through the camp. The next morning we woke (well, stopped lying down in a tent) with two missions - to go to the DMZ on this side of Korea, and to find a nicer place to stay that night!
And we did both!
The DMZ on the east is not really designed for international tourists... it seems that it is predominantly Koreans who go here (probably because they have to make special applications to visit the more touristy DMZ closer to Seoul in the west). English was in very little supply other than to tell us that we didn't need to sit and watch a 30min video that was compulsory for the Koreans to watch. Everything up here was a little creepy, a little dated, almost as if they were just waiting for the war to restart and therefore it was probably better not to tidy or clean as it would all be a mess again in no time once Kim Jong-Il and his son decided to visit Busan!Abandoned building works, masses of barbed-wire, fenced off beaches with razor-wire, concrete bollards to narrow roads, even the modern attempts that the two halves of Korea had initiated together (before the North decided to shoot a civilian, blow up a SK ship and bomb an SK island) sit awaiting reanimation - highways which have stopped, bridges built but just not finished enough to use in a road-worthy car; left as they were... eerily held in limbo.
The problems in North Korea have been well documented (or at least as well as can be) over the past decade. We know there are problems with food supplies, people dying of starvation, mass numbers still living in concentration camps - but standing looking at the North you could be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a 1st World country... the clean highway with surprisingly good lighting (though it was day time so we don't know if they work) linking North and South, the railway system doing the same, clean beaches (which as part of the DMZ have almost been left for nature to manage); and clean, well maintained buildings from which their soldiers stare enviably at the liberated South (or so I imagine - as I guess they live in fear for their families and friends, thoughts encouraged by watching the documentary film Kimjongilia). |
| Colm's nifty parking - it was a space... and we would fit! |
More to come!
