PASSION!!

Possibly the most important thing I have learnt today!

I was feeling quite exhausted today after the last week so I put some activities together for the kids. I mustered some energy and the kids saw straight through it; they saw I was not interested in what was going on and so this resulted a fair ol bumpy day.

I figure it is a lot like an artist who sings a song and sings it, and an artist who covers the song to make money.

The passion in the voice can intensify the words ten times over and maybe even be more meaningful than the words themselves.

The artist covering won't know the full meaning of the words really and so wont do the song any justice.

Impossible comparison maybe but I felt like a covering artist today and for this the kids lost faith I think.

As Bing Crosby once said 'It's all in the way you say it' :D.

I guess today I really did feel like someone who was being paid to occupy a bunch of kids.

First day of occurance and hopefully the last!

I have one day left of school now and then I'm on holiday for a week.... WOOHOO. In school last week I was talking to my Mentor Teacher about a few of the kids who were fighting in my class, crying or just proving to be a bit difficult. I mentioned one child to her and through her broken English she divulged 'Ah he is an orpan (orphan)... but he have father but his father does not (ummmmm) love him ... so he just want love... he (umm) want to love you and he want very much for you to love him, just love him and he be okay'.

He was throwing stuff and kicking the desk and chairs in class so my co-teacher kept him behind after the lesson to speak to him and he could'nt not stop crying all through it because he felt so bad (apparently) so he came over to me to apologise, and I said it was okay, gave him a HUGEEEE hug and since then, touch wood, he has been so attentive and non-aggressive :D. Unless hes just taking some sort of medication!?!?!




Picture at the top is the view from my window..... YEAH I'M BRAGGING..... RIGHT THERE :D....

The dog is one of two puppies who were on 'Udo Island' this weekend (took a small trip from an island to a smaller island) and they had so much emotion!! They were both tied up away from the house so when I went over they could not sit still; I picked them up and their hearts were beating so fast... so so fast.

Last picture is the ferry we took to get to the island. Pretty interesting eh?


I think I mentioned before that I'll go into school early for the lunch and put the lesson plans together. So if the English room is in use then I'll go into the library and try to learn a bit of Korean. One day I was in the library and I was stuck so I asked SpongeBob 2 if he could help me read a sentence (he is in grade 2 which is about 6yrs old I think) so he stood there correcting me, then his mate, SpongeBob 1 (I just call him SpongeBob) came over and helped aswell. SpongeBob 2 didn't take to this very well and they began arguing over who was gonna teach me to read. SpongeBob 2 won.

If they are in the library now when I walk in, they are to me like torpedos to a boat. First one to get to me teaches me. Also because of this, I've noticed that they are so much more receptive in class. SORTED :D!!

Got a few pictures from English camp (inclusive of my allocated kid for those 5 days.... Mr. Kim Woo Bin; possibly the most chilled out child ever... AND orientation.

Gravestones aren't really a common thing here, moreover a small patch of ground will be walled in (as below) and a huge mound of earth will represent where a peron is buried. These are everywhere; next to houses, in fields (mostly in fields actually), on the coast.... There is one day set aside for cleaning up and tidying the graves. I think it is actually a sort of holiday actually.

The chap with the smoke is a bug killer... on my ride to school a few days ago I saw the most beautiful butterflies dying on the road. They are huge here and everyone seems to be a different colour. When I say huge, generally they would cover the palm of your hand, unless you have really small hands which would make them so not big at all.

Another shot of the ladies... I'll try get thier faces so you can see how old they are. They are pretty shy though so may take me a while.

Yesterday the grade 3's were sort of out of control; it was the first day I felt like a proper teacher. Everytime I began talking and explaining something, they all turn around and start getting animated with each other (we were playing a game standing up with blindfolds and this was enough to get them giddy). So I kept saying 'quiet, look at me blah blah blah until they pushed it too far and I proper shouted 'EVERYBODY' and their was genuine fear in their eyes. SUCCESS!?! NO! they were attentive for 2, possibly 2 and a half minutes and began talking again.

Today I spend every lesson setting out rules of the classroom. Every lesson.

OH and in my grade 5 one kid apparently pulled a middle finger up to another kid. I asked him if he did it and he looked at me, looked at the floor, nodded his head and began laughing. I asked him in quite a serious voice,

"Are you laughing?"

I had a MASSIVE moment of reflection on myself and the seriousness of the situation made me start smiling (which I was trying so hard to keep back) and because I didn't want the kid to see it was a joke I kicked him outside for 5minutes. It worked perfectly.

Also I can now spell my name in Korean 사이몬 literally 'Saimon' :D.

These are the ladies that work no matter how old they are. Accordingly they are WELL hard. We were walking home when these ladies were on thier break. They were squatting on the pavement eating home-made rice cake and drinking some juice which they squeezed themselves and offered for all 5 of us to sit down and eat with them. The cakes were pretty good as they have some kinda of gooey stuff in the middle but the juice was by far the best and I can't even tell you what it was made out of :(! This guy next to the ladies needs no explaination other than he and 4 others were in a tiny pen in the midday heat in something that was less than a zoo. These guys really have it rough... half thier feathers had dropped out.

This is where we had English camp on the third week on the mainland. Quite literally in the mountains for 5 days... unbelievable! Also a lady who stopped the traffic and helped me cross the road.


So the flower above is called the 'Rose of Sharon' and next to it is a cactus field with additional pumpkins. Both are eaten here but pumpkins literally grow EVERYWHERE. I think in a few weeks time pumpkin will be all over the menus like bumblebees on lavendar.

Me and my new non-sunburn hat, although because my head is really big, the hat doesn't slot onto my head so well. If I cycle by bicycle too fast then it just blows off. Everytime. Right is a picture of Hallim Harbour which is mega industrial but very nice sunsets. It's maybe 10mins bicycle ride from our house I think... If you go in a straight line then possibly 5mins. Much difference.


These guys live outside a restaurant but a few had fallen down due to rot, which makes me think they must be pretty old guys.

So after the last post my parents think I am on drugs SO to maybe give a more realistic and detailed perspective on what has been happening I am going to upload millions of photos to show (rather than describe :S) what is occuring here :D.

Last week I had my grade 6 class last thing on a Thursday and the computer went down so my lesson plan was sort of thrown out the window as I couldn't upload all the stuff I wanted the kids to have. Improvisation has been a current theme for the entire week I think and last week I managed to create the 'RollerCoaster' game where the kids have three catergories of 'Emotion', 'Noise Level' (1= very quite, 10= SHOUTING) and direction (up, down, left, right, crazy right, crazy left, upside down...etc). So I got them sitting in pairs and drew a rollercoaster on the board, numbering the changes so they knew where they were, and we acted out the ride using the three catergories so they knew what to do. It went down SO WELL!! Later I used it on the 5th graders and they loved it so much. Anyway, reason I say this is that the reason the 6th graders did so well was because we had the ultimate warm up session to begin with.... called Taxi.

There are four chairs in the layout of a car and teacher is the driver. Teacher sets the emotion (happy, sad, scared, excited, bored, sleepy, crazy..etc) and drives in that emotion until a kid shouts 'TAXI!'. Taxi pulls over and the kid gets in and says 'I am HAPPY!', then the taxi drives with everybody acting out happy. The 6th graders were wayyyy to embarressed to do it so I had to be UBER enthusiastic about it which resulted in them crying from laughing so much and favourite sentences such as 'Simon teacher crazy crazy!!!' but boy did they do a good job of being on a rollercoaster afterwards. Whilst I was in orientation one of our lecturers gave us a quote,

"The greatest dances in the world are not judged by thier techniques, but by thier passion"

This quote really has had such an influence in the classroom. My 'techniques' really don't exist so much at the moment as I don't 100% know what I am doing really; however I'm hoping that in the next few weeks the technique will meet the passion and they will form perfect harmony to create the best English lessons EVER!!! So far as the passion goes, my co-teacher says that all of the kids have said that I have more energy than the last teacher, but when the kids say energy, I really think they are saying crazy. Either way it gets them motivated.... and me totally exhausted. Just teaching 'Seasons' to grades 1 and 2 on Friday resulted in everybody rolling around on the floor. In that class three girls said they were going to the toilet and didn't come back until 5mins before the end of the lesson.... hopefully they will be in tears when everybody gets a sticker on Wednesday apart from them, or at the very least they will look really really sad.

Every day has been up and down so far... generally speaking the younger kids have got more attitude than the older ones, but with the introduction of a sticker chart they have been on form. My favourite kid at the moment is 'Spongebob 2' because with everything he does, he manages to incorporate a spongebob into it, or at the very least a floating jelly fish on a picture. Some days my classes will double in number and other days they halve. Korean kids are pretty hard to keep interested if you don't have a constant flow of technology for them to look at and your not jumping in the air or running around the room.

One thing which is making me more happy than any other level of happiness is the food here. I'll start taking some pictures so you know what I'm on about. Meal times are always worth looking forward to but here I will go to school early just to get fed Korean food. It's not a matter of all your food on one plate; it is spread out on up to 10 other side dishes where you pick and choose what you want to go with your main meal. I went to a Korean class in Jejusi yesterday and we get a free meal at a restaurant after the class, which consisted of smoked duck, regular duck in lettuce pancakes followed by duck soup. Also its kinda cooked but they put it on a grill for you to finish cooking to whatever standard you like. All the food is so varied here and so so SO healthy. I eat so much but manage to lose weight somehow?!

I haven't even said who I'm living with I don't think? There is 5 of us together; 1 Aussie, 1 American and three Brits (inclusive of me). Perfect Harmony. Beach infront of my window and a volcano behind WHICH I'm hoping to climb in a month with my co-teacher. It's the highest point in South Korea and has the only natural lake in South Korea on top of it. Anywhere you go on the island you can see the Volcano. Also with reference to the beaches here, there are actually only a few considering its an island. The main coastline here is solidified lava so we are seriously lucky to have a beach 4mins cycle from our house. Seriously lucky.

It's taking about 10mins to load each photo now and its gettin late so am gonna finish em tommore.

GOODNIGHT :D

So the last week has been pretty fast... my attempts at trying to keep this blog up are falling pretty fast right now but hopefully I'll be gettin the internet in me room soon so I can talk EVERYDAY :D

So we had another typhoon a few days ago... I was writing a post on here at the time but the weather got quite bad and the loud speakers were announcing stuff all over town... it could have just been 'Party at Matey's house' but I just took it to be 'TYPHOON TYPHOON RUN HOME RUN HOME!!!' It was just raining on the way home but a few hours later at maybe 10pm the wind picked up to some intense intensity. I went outside to have a moment in the wind, I was out there for 10minutes, came back inside and quite literally floated up the stairs. My body felt so so light, I went and knocked on the other guys doors to see if they wanted to go down to the ocean to really feel the wind AND SO three of us cycled down into the storm (as it were).

The beach was deserted (desserted?) save for a few bystanders who were on rooftops watching the sea, with very good reason to do so. Benny said the sea was angry;I said moreover keen, but whichever one it was it was most certainly in some passionate movement. We were going to go swimming but after watching the waves for a few minutes it was obvious that there was no predictability to the waves. That may sound stupid but normally waves come up, break and roll back down, but theses waves were rolling backwards, forwards, diagonally and sideways; waves have always been waves to me but that night, just before the waves would break they were the jaws of a lions mouth - entirely.

I decided to try and have a moment with the ocean at this point and found myself a place where the rocks/lava reached a peak to the ocean. I lost my flip flops, rolled my trousers up tight to the tops of my thighs and stood being battered by the waves. I was there for maybe half an hour just watching the sea and for one small moment I lost myself in it. The misdirection of the waves breaking on the rocks gave me a sound covering of being soaked from EVERY direction. If I were blind folded I would not be able to tell you whether the sea were infront of me or behind me.

I can't really describe the whole feeling of what happened, but being in that space where I felt as though I was in the centre of the waves, a thousand miles away from shore, I became a little over-whelmed and the urge to jump into the waves was, with no exaggeration, exceptional. I think the sea was trying to eat me. All I wanted at that time was to lose control and I cannot even explain why... heres to not giving in :D. But for the drama of it all that night, I feel as though I had a fraction of the smallest glimpse into an aspect of creation.

Paul went for a walk in the water and Benny was taking a picture of him in the waves, and I thought to myself; this is the first time where a picture would NOT paint a thousand words. No picture could have done that night justice; only words could have come somwhere close to describing it.

Am gonn get some food but will get some photos and stories up in a jiffy :D

So turns out my first day at school was cancelled due to a typhoon WHICH was sort of bad as I couldn't ride my bike in a straight line from the wind but we were watching the news the day after and Seoul was hit so so badly... couldn't understand anything that the news was saying but the pictures were crazy ass... I'll try find some after.

ANYWAY Thursday was the first day of teaching and it went soooooo smoothly; I really don't think there were any problems; apparently 1st grade were bored but apparently they are hard to please :I. So then Friday came around and I went into school one hour early to set up everything on the pc and another teacher was using the room... so there was maybe a stage 3 scale panic at that moment. I found another PC and got all my stuff together on it and was sort of happy with my situation.

So to include how the apocalypse became the apocalypse I must tell you that my lesson for grades 1,2,3 and 4 was very much musical based as I wanted to try and lure them into getting English names for my class by playing scenes from the Simpsons, Disney tunes, Spongebob tunes... etc so they'd be MEGA excited and say 'SIMON TEACHER!!! THIS IS THE BEST LESSON EVER AND NOW I HAVE ENGLISH NAME I AM SO HAPPY!!!' and also every lesson was having a warm-up of musical chairs AND there was a song on Youtube called the 'Whats your name? song' which, on a separate now, is worth watching.

The lady who was teaching in my classroom said 10mins before my lesson 'Oh, the speakers are not working today but will be fixed by tommorow'. HAHA that was most definitely a stage 8 flashing lights panic stage. The lessons literally became a case of taking each minute by each minute so musical chairs still occured but I was making the music which the kids loved but I almost died from lack of breath THEN I had to be uber excited about a chair disappearing. THEN one kid came in late and said 'I want to play' so we did it ALL over again. ENGLISH NAMES: they didn't slip down a hill; they literally fell off a cliff, bounced back up again and then fell twice as hard.
I really can't type up what happened as I'll be here for a lifetime but basically they didn't understand the idea and so went on strike but 10mins before the end of the lesson we managed to resolve it and out of 14kids I got 12 names (inclusive of Spongebob, Spongebob 2, Buzz lightyear, Buzz lightyear 2, a Buzz. L, a 'Simpsons', Wayne Rooney and Aladdin and every name inbetween). Then my 4th graders pulled off Suji, Min, Genie and Cabbage. I don't even know where he got Cabbage from!?! Bottom line is I can now pronounce their names.

So after the English Names session, one girl said she was never coming back and the fourth graders looked as though they were gonna fall asleep. Might not sound like much but I was gutted. Then on the way home I bought an ice-cream, but the wrapper in the bin and the bin actually had written on it 'Cheer-up :D!'. Tomorrow is going to be a day of some seriously exciting lesson plans now.... YEAH feel that passion!!!!

Today I bought a Korean cook book in an attempt to force myself to understand the language or starve. Solid plan. Paul and I went to a restaurant on Thursday and just had to point and guess at food to order it, which, turned out to be really quite incredible food. He who dares wins!! Or maybe gets a plate of dirty tuna. Who knows?

SAW MY FIRST KOREAN FIGHT LAST NIGHT!! I think only one punch was thrown and the recieving guy had a face full of blood... proper ninjas. Then there was a guy behind us screaming and punching a metal face (he was really really REALLY drunk) because he had found out that day that his girlfriend was pregnant (I had a really good translater). He was very upset.

So I think I am done just now.... :D