On Friday it was Halloween Party Day for all the grades. In 3 classes I had two kids storm out, 3 kids cry and it was the day that the Vice-Principal of the school and my Mentor teacher decided to sit in on my lesson and see how I was doing. It was also the day that my co-teacher wasn't in and WHAT a day it was!!

In the first and second grade (infront of the Vice-Principal) two kids decided to get under the table and refused to get out because they weren't playing the game (they wouldn't stop talking when I was explaining it) ; however I managed to wrangle it when I stopped the whole class and said that we wouldn't play any more games and the WHOLE class went ape sh*t at them and they shot out then :).

Then in Grade 3 we were dressing up as zombie mummies using bog roll and the class literally went crazy. I think in the confusion one kid hit another and then bog roll was being lobbed at faces and the room was just a blur of flying toilet paper so we stopped that game, tidyed up and Halloween finished in one small moment. They were PROPER gutted!!!

The grade four class were AMAZING apart from me number 1 student who walked in late, so I (jokingly) said 'NO PARTY CABBAGE!' (his name is Cabbage) and he stormed out, closely followed by his mate who HATES English and will use any excuse to show this.

So at the end the Vice-Principal said (translated):

"You are a very at controlling the class... your lessons are very fun and exciting and you are a very good teacher as your classes are much bigger than the previous teacher and now many children enjoy English... I will be happy to reccomend you to extend your contract"

GET IN!!!

I know I'm bragging when I put that down, but the reasoning is that I was stunned. I genuinely believe I'm quite a bad teacher as the kids kick my ass in lessons, they don't learn half as much English as I'd like them too and I think the reason the classes are big is because we play outside some days. Either way, the school is quite quite happy!!!

So Friday night I went for a few drnks with the guys who I played football with last Saturday. I had to be awake at 6am this morning (Sat) as we had to go and do a dance and a stall at a talent show in the Southern city of Seogwippo SO I was having a mega early night.

I think we started at 9.30pm and I kept being introduced to more and more people (I think 5 different groups all told and with the culture here it's very hard to up and leave) so it was quite hard to get away. Then six of us went to a Karaoke bar and before I knew it, it was 3am. We finished the night there and waited for a taxi.

A man walked up to us and properly slapped one a guy called 'Robot' (he was given an 'English name' by an American) on the back of the head. He shouted at everybody and went into the shop behind us. I was quite confused and was staring at this man really hard, so as soon as he left, all the guys were saying 'NO NO NO do not stare!! He is very drunk and angry!!'

So oddly enough, when he came out of the shop, everybody was looking at the floor (it's the hierarchy thing again I think).

Our taxi pulled up and the man said (in translation) "This is my taxi", then a chap from our group said 'No, this is our taxi', then the man went MENTAL and grabbed him, threw him against a car and began punching him like crazy. At this moment everything went crazy.

Nobody fought him, the Korean chaps just tried to restrain him, count to three, let him go, and he'd do it all over again. By the end of this game, one guy had a busted lip and cut cheek, I had a nose full of blood and a fantastic rush of blood to the head (consequently my nose is now bigger than my sisters :S), two pairs of glasses had been smashed and everybody was quite confused.

Although I must say that even though it was a bad end to the night, Robot has offered to help me learn how to cook Korean food starting tomorrow :D!!!

So the night ended at 5am this morning with the largest part of it being spent in the police station giving written accounts of what happened. Luckily the chaps I was with are well known here so the police knew they weren't bad people and were on thier side. Throughout the entire period of being in the police station, the chaps I was with (Ji Won, Young Ho, Robot, Ladakh and Soon Chil) would say every 5minutes or so 'Sorry Simon, so so sorry. Sorry'.

Honestly they would not stop.

And then...

Today we were given the opportunity to get an extra 3 days holiday if we participated in a Global Language Festival in Seogwippo. The deal was you get 2 days if you manned a stall and another extra day if you participated in the talent show.

So the talent that 14 of us did was a dance infront of many hundreds of Korean children to one of the Korean pop songs 'Bo Beep' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5T_D_8JV54), although our dance was WELL much better than this one. So we bagged ourselves a third day holiday!! And with only 2hrs sleep.

I am proper knackered now. I upload some pictures...

This weekend worked WONDERS for the social bonds!! On Friday after school all the teachers went to the Principals house for a meal. Turns out that it wasn't his house but a patch inbetween lots of high-rise buildings where he had a little caravan and a garden patch.

Considering that some peoples Principals don't even look at them or acknowledge them in school, I considered myself quite priviledged to be invited. We started drinking instantly whilst all the food was being prepared (it was a team effort on everybodies part to make the meal) and then the remainder of the evening was spent eating, drinking and then we all went to a Karaoke bar (they call em Norebangs) and my Principal was the first to sing!! I took quite a few photos because I was so amazed.

As I said it was really good to be in an informal situation with all the teachers as it was so much more relaxed than in school. I tried testing a bit of my Korean language out with my Principal. He said that he would take me fishing on his boat (AMAZING RIGHT?) so I said 'Keeee?' which means 'REALLY?', he smiled and said he would. Later on in the night, Jay (me co-teacher) was talking to my mentor teacher and the Grade 4 teacher and they were talking about my conversation with the Principal. My mentor teacher said 'Simon you were quite rude when you said 'keee'' so I felt a little embarressed, and then Jay said 'Yeah Simon, that was actually f**king rude!' HAHA!! Apparently the Principal was fine with it, but its the whole social manners, hierarchy thing.

'Obla di, Obla daa life goes on!!' - Beatles

Anyway, we got a picture together (top)!!

Yesterday I played football with some locals chaps (thinking it would be a small fun game) and we got to the pitch and they had uniforms and were doing proper stretches and said 'yes today, it is the Catholics versus the Christians, it is a very big game'. Honestly I became a little nervous because even when I played football at Salford Lads Club the kids would ask me 'Have you ever played football before??'

Also I was the only white guy there and cars were turning up and staring at me and I thought, 'I'm not even doing anything and they are staring... they may very well wet themselves if I kick a ball'.

Really odd game of football as we had three half-times, but at the end of the match, the chap who asked me to come said 'Ahhhh Simon you very funny player!' and also if I kicked the football or managed to tackle anybody then the players in my vicinty would go 'Ahh VERY GOOD VERY GOOD!' Although in all honesty it was an amazing day; the librarian from work was playing for the opposite team which was shocking for both of us and ALL the chaps on the field were really welcomming.

So after the match, I went into town and instead of young groups of men looking at me oddly, they were saying 'Hello Simon!' with it. Unfortunately I remember no names other than Daniel, who was given an English name when he went to live in Australia for two years. However I feel more like a local from this weekend AND I had a stonking headache all day yesterday as the teachers drink like crazy (on the Friday night) and then I got back to Hallim at maybe 11pm and we had friends over from the city so we carried on until maybe 1-2am. That is a good 7hours hard drinking I think! So getting back to the point I played good football considering the night before.

Also on a note of badness my bike was taken the other day. Totally my fault really as I forgot to lock it up (I was quite excited about where I was going I think). So I went to the police station to report it but they were more keen to look at my pictures on my ID cards, with 'Ahhh Simon very pretty, very handsome', and then they asked to see my camera and looked through all the 200 something photos on it and then drove me back to the place where my bike got stolen, took a picture of it and drove me home.

Everything is an experience in itself here.

On the good side of the bad side, Jay is giving me his old bicycle and I'm getting money back for the bike (in a kinda of unofficial, but very official way :D). So overall it was a blessing in disguise.

So this picture is of one of the most famous men in Korea... King Sejong. He invented the Hangul writing format - 사이몬. So if it weren't for him, Korean's would have no written history, only oral, or Japanese written, or Chinese written, but most recently, English written.

And then the picture with all the gormless faces is the TaLK team of Jeju!! We are comprised of 4 generations at the moment :D. We got Aussies, Kiwis, Brits, Canadians, Americans, Koreans, Chinese peoples and South Africans; although he wasn't here this day, all in all we got 30!!

Then you got a picture of me school on the field trip. AWESOME day!! This week we have Halloween so are quite literally making things everyday until we have a party... hoooozar!

Today we went on a fieldtrip to Hallim Park.

We arrived there at 9.45, got the kids through and we all started walking through the park.

One of the assistant teachers and the gardner pulled Liz (an Epic teacher from Ireland), myself and Jay (me co-teacher) aside and took us to a hut where at 10.30am they cracked open a bottle of white alcohol (it tastes like cider mixed with milk) and by 10.45am we had got through three bottles of the stuff.

It was quite a shock and because I was really happy with the suprise, but also confused, the alchol just added to the feeling and I was so giddy all day. Then at lunch all the teachers got out the beer. I had the BEST nap this afternoon.

Originally I was meant to be teaching in the afternoon but its a bloody good job they decided to let us finish early. WHADDA DAY!!!

Haven't actually taken that many pictures this week... as it happens school is going really quite well so most of my attention is going onto keeping it steady I think.

Aside from today where I kicked three children out of the classroom. The 5th grade class got bigger again today and I cannot keep up with them; they are all at different levels and only bombard the lesson on a Wednesday so that means Monday and Tuesday are useless for them, and useless for me other students when they all come in because I have to teach something they all know.

AHHHHHH honeslty it's proper confusin. So anyway today one kid was cheating in a game so I kicked him out for a few minutes (harsh I know but there were so many of them doing it that I had to make a proper example of him.. worked perfectly :)) and then two kids weren't getting involved at all, and then I saw them pulling middle fingers at each other!!

I kicked em straight out; the one kid was GUTTED about it but the other was WAY too relaxed and said 'Oh ok, GOODBYE', smiled and waved.

As I wasn't too happy with his reaction I went down and saw my Mentor teacher at

the end of the day (she teaches as a 'proper teacher' to Grade 3) and she said that I did good to see her as she will tell thier teacher (the 'proper' Grade 5 teacher). This was quite a big move on my part as the kids are SO scared of thier 'proper' teachers and there may be tears involved.

However, usually the biggest threat is that the teacher will phone their parents and that scares them into line.

Although when I told my mentor teacher she said 'Ah yes, I know these students. They are orphans also and they do not want to learn, even in other classes'. So unfortunately there are no parents to be phoned.

I'm beginning to think that there are actually quite a few orphans in school now. Who knows; they may just place the word 'school' over orphanage whenever I walk in and its is actually an orphanage.

So just thought I'd show ya me room... inclusive of the complimentary pink sandals for the bathroom. The bin next to the toilet is for your tissue paper... AFTER IT HAS BEEN USED!! The water systems are wierd in South Korea, generally speaking you never flush paper down the hole.

Also I went down the Harbour yesterday morning and saw a hammer-head shark!! Thought I'd let you see it aswell :D.

Yesterday was beautiful; all my lessons went from start to finish and 'problems'.... they did not exist. What made it extra special was that my co-teacher was not in (as he is PROPER ill) so surviving a Monday without him was quite spectacular.

I left school, didn't bother changing so I was still in me shirt and trousers and began cycling home. It is ALL down hill so I had the wind blowing in me face on an empty road completely dwarfed by trees.

Some clouds pulled a shifty maneuvre so that light began spilling out onto the ocean and the boats and then onto the island giving a PROPER good representation to the end of the day.

AND THEN

I begin to hear many little voices which are getting louder, I turn around and a whole car full of kids are scrambling to try and get thier heads out of the car window screaming 'SIMON! SIMON! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! SIMON! SIMON!'

They had maybe 2 seconds of this and the car full of waving hands and screams over-took infront of me and after 5 more seconds it was so far ahead that it joined in with the ocean, the boats, the trees and the rest of the island in the evening light to create the

MOST PERFECT

end of the day feeling. If only it was a Friday!!

Have managed to do me lesson plans a whole HALF HOUR before the lesson starts so am just writing this real quick (am starting to realise that being organised is saving me so much time).

Last week I had a map on the board of Antarctica and asked the kids if they could pronounce a few of the labelled countires around it.

Who knows what country this is?!

'AUUUS-TRAAA-RIA'

YES! Well done, how about this one?

'South America!!!!'

AMAZING!!! How about this one?? Oh this one is hard!!

'fffff--fffaaah--fffffaahcklaa. fahckland? FAAAAHCKLAND!! FAHCKLAND ISLAND!!!' (Falkland Islands)

It knocked me off course quite badly. I was blinded as to what the lesson was about after that... I couldn't even laugh at it so did a sort of broken 'NO.... FORLK-LAND, FORLK-LAND-------- well done----- SO this country....'

I know I have a lot to catch up on but for this moment I only have 10minutes so it's not so good to start just yet. The picture with the rocks is a monument to the ingenuity of the wall builders around here. Most walls are built so that the wind can blow through them (i.e. they have holes in them).

On the beach there must have been maybe 50 of these small towers which are right on the beach front, surviving typhoons aplenty. There truely is a skill to balance apparently :D.

The picture of the beach at the top is Heopjae Beach... the really popular one 4mins cycle away from our house ;P!! the day was hot and the water warm and not one person was in the sea swimming. Koreans do have quite an odd attitude to the sun and sea.


This weekend we're heading up to Seoul for a 'TEFL Conference' which will involve one of the companies upsetting 11pm curfews. We tried to extend the flight so we could stay one extra night in Seoul and fly back on Monday morning for school but it was a no-go area.

MEANT TO SAY on Wednesday last week I had twelve 5th graders!!! Normally I have between 4 and 6... something good must be occuring here!?! Although saying that they did demand soccer, so we reached a compromise that the first 25mins will be English and the last 15mins would be football ONLY on condition that everytime they kicked the football they had to say an English word so it didn't look like a free lesson to the other teachers.

Ma bad for not writing anything in a long time.

This guy here is a thief who had been caught. I think this is why there is hardly any crime in Korea. There were water pistols by the side of him so anyone could squirt him if they wanted and he had SOOOOO much crap rubbed into his hair. Later on one of his shoes went missing aswell. He seemed to be having a thoroughly good time!!

I went for a meal at me co-teachers house yesterday and really was blown back by the food. Jay's (me co-teacher) mum had spent the best part of the day preparing the food for 4 of us to eat and the crazy thing was she didn't even sit down and eat it with us.

We had two huge plates of meat and, maybe 6 side-dishes and in the middle was a huge plate with EVERYTHING on. In the middle were sliced radishes (the radishes here are about the same size as a marrow... or courgette?? The bigger one out of the two) and around the radishes were slices of carrot, cucumber, red, green and orange peppers, sliced prawns, sea-food sticks, slices of radish, thin crispy beef and a load of other veggies I don't know. So the deal was that you get yourself a round piece of radish, fill it with a load of veggies and make a pancake style thing out of it and eat it in one.

HOWEVER

Jay's mum had made this special type of sauce which was made up of crushed pinapple, peanuts, cider, mustard and something else which was dribbled on the pancake and quite literally I was eating until I could eat no more. It was quite possibly the best food I have ever had here. Apparently even Jay's mum commented that I ate a lot AND she is possibly the 5th Korean to say that I use chopsticks very well.... GET IN!!!! Soon I shall be proper native.

So on Wednesday last week it was 'Chuseok' which is a day when the dead are remembered (I think), and most places are closed and it is SERIOUS family time for Korea. It truely is a day for food as well. Meself and Paul went to the city as the plan was we go out in the night, wake up early in the morning and climb the volcano (didn't quite go to plan). So in the evening we went for a meal in a pork BBQ restaurant. Now I remember saying that I'd get some photographs of the food here so I took this picture before we got started. The hole in the middle of the table is where they put charcoals so you can cook the pork in the middle whilst eating other food... now maybe you see why I love this food so much??

Anyway, whilst we were cooking the last few pieces of meat, a big dribble of grease came out of the chimney onto the food and dripped onto the charcoals, creating a good amount of

greasy smoke. Two waitresses came along to try and sort it out by throwing some water on it. As soon as the water touched the fire, the grease spread everywhere and we had a nice fire burning in the restaurant. So what did the waitresses do next? Obviously they threw more water on it. And what was the result? About 8 waiters/waitresses around our table, people stopping on the street and looking in because so much smoke was pouring out and an evacuation of our immediate vicinity. I was laughing a lot, but then I felt as though I should have been embarressed and then I felt as though I should have been very serious because EVERYBODY else was. So that picture at the end of meal was black with water and grease all over it. I was quite upset but it was definitely a Chuseok to remember :D!!

Here is the man of Jeju. These guys are everywhere on the island because Jeju LOVES them!!

Here is the sea infront of our house. The wind was so strong that day; I was standing on the pier and thought I would actually fall into the sea... admittidly the weather does not look that crazy at this moment.

After the meal with Jay last night, we went out with his mates in the city and it was the first time when I was completely surrounded by Koreans and I was the only white guy. It really hit me after the third beverage because it seemed like such an odd situation that I was in Korea drinking with a load of Koreans, but then obviously it made total sense a moment after! All night they spoke English pretty much, even though two of them couldn't speak English at all. I felt quite bad, but was quite honoured by thier respect.

So, talking of respect, hierarchy is so important here. If there is somebody at your table drinking with you, and they are older, then you have to turn around so they can't see you drink (as it's disrespectful to blatently drink infront of them). Also when you 'CHEEERS' with your drinks, the top of your glass must tap the bottom of thiers, bowing is SO IMPORTANT here. You must bow to everybody if you are in thier company and they are older, you cannot burp or fart either (as I found out the other day :S). If somebody leaves, everybody stands up, bows and says goodbye. Also the way you sit is so important; never look relaxed... legs crossed, arms behind your head, sitting side-ways on all massive NO NO'S!! When you pour a drink, do it with two hands, when you recieve a drink, recieve it with two hands, NEVER shake hands with an older person unless the offer first. It is a lot to remember. Jay was saying that if he goes for a meal with his dad in a restaurant then he will not talk at all, until at least he has finished his food.

So with reference to matey here, I was lying and it was actually his birthday. He was not a thief by and standards!! I am never telling a Korean when my birthday is... accordingly this is a regular thing!! Also saw another fight last night and at the end of it the two guys were hugging like mother and child!!