Good things, bad things

The nice part about being a teacher in a society that is highly influenced by Confucianism is that teachers are given a lot of respect. This includes gifts at times, or the students who can not but help call me "Teacher Mark." I usually tell them that they can call me just "Mark." After a few classes they recognize that Connexus is a little more relaxed and they grow content with that. Although I still dont know if this is good or bad, a pseudo form of cultural imperialism perhaps. Anyway, so I i have one student who is the graphic designer for Nike Korea. He offered me tickets to a friendly between Korea and Chile last night. That is the good thing about being a teacher in Korea.
The bad thing is that teaching adults in Korea means working late hours so that I wasnt able to accept the tickets as I had to work. Take the good with the bad i suppose. I watched the second half of the game on tv, and i didnt miss much, it wasnt a well played game.
Next week we are going to see Korea play Turkmenistan in a world cup qualifier match, hopefully it will be a little more interesting.

waterfalls and dakgalbi

Last weekend Mark and I visited our friends Ana and Will in Chuncheon. It was nice to get out of Seoul and just relax in a different setting. We went on a little hike, or maybe I should say walk, to a beautiful waterfall just outside the city. There is more snow in Chuncheon than in Seoul so I really enjoyed the whiteness around me. Here is the waterfall and the little dots that you will see are people climbing. It was interesting to watch....and actaully looks pretty scary. Can you find mark in this second picture?
There were a bunch of people waiting at the bottom of the falls who had all of their climbing gear. Do you notice the man wearing black right in the middle...well, he was taking pictures of us for like five minutes! Kind of weird..but whatever...so I took a picture as well.
Mark was really excited to get in this picture...can you tell?
Chuncheon is famous for it's delicious 'dakgalbi' which means barbequed chicken. Of course we had to go out for it so here we are enjoying the food. I love it so much!
We also enjoyed watching a lot of Corner Gas and playing a lot of scrabble at Ana and Will's place. Their apartment is really nice...it is great sitting on a couch when watching TV...funny the things you miss.
Have a lovely day to whom evers reading this!

breaking wind

I have been working on getting conversation going with some of my High-Basic classes. I decided to get the students to work at creating a discussion out of yes and no questions. We began with how it is a little rude to answer only yes and no, but if you want to be polite its good to always say "Yes, I do, am, have, etc." and then maybe add some extra information to get the conversation flowing. We studied the grammar of yes and no questions, moved to answering them and then talked about the importance of follow up questions to help a conversation.
At about half way through the class the students were asked to write down one yes and no question they wanted to ask another person and to start a conversation from that. The students broke into pairs, and one of my students who is in high school, asked her partner, "Did you breaking wind yesterday?" Then she had to explain what breaking wind meant.
So in response we talked about how to avoid certain questions, perhaps "I forget" or the classic answering a questions with a question, "why do you ask?" I never expected that question as a conversation starter. The class continued with her confessing she did many times yesterday.

Suddenly One Year Older

Growing up I always thought that every where in the world people added up their age in the same way. I have learned that I was mistaken. Before coming to Korea I had heard vaguely that my age in Canada is different than my "Korean age." I'm sure Korean isn't alone in how they figure out age but I really have no idea which other countries also use their same method. Currently I am at a P.C. Bong which is similar to a Internet Cafe. Most people seem to be playing computer games around me...I can hear gun shots in the background. I'm trying to drown it out with my music but with little success. Anyway, for some reason this computer is not letting me research this age thing...some korean words flash on the screen as I try to use google...who knows...So, anyway, back to the point. In Korea when a baby is born the baby is already one year old. And Koreans don't become one year older on their birthday but instead with the change of the new year, so every one becomes one year older on the same day. I was born in November 1983, and in Korean standards I was actually already 2 years old in January 1984. This means I just turned 26 in Korea and in Canada standards I just turned 24 two months ago. I'm getting old so fast. Crazy!

oil spill and church retreat

Now thats an original title.

This last weekend was our church retreat, as you may have guessed from the title. The church decided to go to Taean and help clean up oil that spilled about a month ago. If any of you have seen that Simpsons episode were Lisa is very excited to go and help save the world and clean up an oil spill, only to arrive and find she has to scrub rocks with a toothbrush, well thats what it was. Rather unromantic. We dug holes in the sand, when the sand was black we either took old clothes and tried to rub the oil out or we tried to dig out the black sand and throw it in bags. If we found a rock with oil on it, we wiped off the oil. But it was still fun. It was actually a lot cleaner than i was expecting. Little oil in the water, but there was black on some of the surrounding cliffs and there was a layer of black sand about 5-10 inches down from the surface. And it did smell.

Anyway, here are some pictures. This is Kwang-kyu. He is our friend and has started coming to Grace and peace. He was in my Peacebuilders class and has taken a number of other classes from Connexus. He is nice.



This the cleaning. There was another volunteer group there helping clean. I think most of the clean up has been done by groups volunteering to wipe up the oil with old clothes.


Vanessa made a new friend who said if Canada has an oil spill, she is going to come and help clean it up.


Most, but not all of our group.

This was inside the room where we had our church retreat. Those are our church members. They are also nice. My legs were a bit sore from doing everything on the floor, but, when in rome.

That is all,

Here is a movie from our trip, i finally got it to upload. Here is sushi from a conveyor belt. You take the plate off, eat, take another plate off, eat some more, and than you bring your plates, which are color coded by price, and pay at the till.

more pics from our trip

Here are some more pictures from our trip that i liked.

2 Days in Busan, South Korea

The next stop of our trip was Busan, Korea. It was actually kind of nice to be back in a place where I can read the langauge...I may not understand most of it...but it still helps. I felt kind of lost in Japan at times. The language looks so confusing!!!!

In Busan we met up with some people from Connexus. Busan has a huge port as well as many beaches so although it wasn't the warmest day we decided to explore the coast. There were so many seagulls which Mark, Joel and Marvin were inspired to feed. Heather and I took lots of pictures and laughed.
Then we met up with Karen, two of her students, and one of her students' mother. After the meal we all went to a Noreabong (singing room)...it seems to be the thing to do here...I'm not complaining. It was a good time.
The next day we went with Joel and Heather to a temple in the hills called Beomosa. It was so beautiful and peaceful.
Our last day of our travels we went to the top of Busan Tower...here is the view. You may notice the dots of blue all over. It seems that on every roof top there is a bright blue barrel...It adds some nice colour.
Busan is also known for it's gigantic fish market which we visited. I'm still not used to being surrounded by so many fish hanging from the ceiling or laying out on the street. Anyway, we ate at one of the restuarants at the fish market. The fish that Mark's holding was so tasty!
So, now we are back in Seoul and back to work. We're also back to cold weather! I shouldn't complain because it is only -6 but it feels so much colder!
Happy New Year to you all!!!!!