Went to North Korea this weekend!!







I only went maybe 5 meters into the country but I still stood there :D. It would seem that I went at the right time with regards to what happened yesterday. I don't quite understand what happened there but I think it's just a mixture of North Korean excitement for blood and the fact that they don't have much to loose.



Talking of North Korean excitement for blood, we went to one spot on the DMZ (De-militarized Zone) where 3 Americans tried to prune a tree which was blocking thier view of a guard tower. 20 North Korean soldiers turned up and told them to stop, but they didn't, so the North Koreans murdered them with axes.















In retaliation, the Americans sent a whole division with helicopters, B-52 bombers and artillery support the next day and chopped the whole tree down and futher more, pruned every tree in the area. God bless the American mentality eh?



On Sunday we went to the Korean War Memorial which was O.U.T.S.T.A.N.D.I.N.G! I could not believe how much information and art work there was there. The Korean War was huge and so it's representation as a museum is something not to be taken lightly.


QUICK HISTORY LESSON:



In 1945 The Japanese do thier unconditional surrender to the allies and have to withdraw from all the countries that they have colonised... including the Korean Peninsula.



Korea is SUPER happy because they are free again HOWEVER the Soviets move in from the North, whilst the Americans land in the South to help clear out all the Japs. Sort of the same story as Berlin, but no Japs, just Germans. But they didn't really clear them out. So not the same story, but similar.

















The country became divided under America and the USSR and by 1949 both occupying forces had withdrawn from the country. On June 25th 1950 the North invaded and so started the Korean War.


On the island of Jeju 1 in every 5 people was killed and half the villages burned down. There was a rebellion here and there is a cave where they found hundreds of bodies where people were running away from the 'Communists' and they all hid in the cave but there was too many of them and many died from suffocation and being crushed and the ones at the front were killed by the Communists. At least I think it was that way around. You can visit the cave so maybe I'll go and get me history right for ya.



So the metal dudes are structures outside the museum; for the first thing you see when you walk into that place it really does set a tone.



The pictures with the blue buildings are the North Korea - South Korea border. The blue buildings are South Korean and the grey buildings are North Korean. Half the building is in the South and half is in the North so North troops can walk in and out of the South Korean buildings and vice versa with the South Korean troops in the North's buildings.


So when George Bush visited one of these buildings, two North Korean troops enetered the building, took down two American flags and one wiped his boot with the American flag and the other blew his nose on the flag.... all infront of George Bush. Also the chap with the binoculars is a North Korean soldier.




The picture of me and the ROK soldier is in the half of the South Korean building which is in North Korea. This is the building that the flag incident happened in. Also the ROK soldier's give you a pretty hard thump if you get too close to them.... not personal experience but I saw it happen to two people in the room. Haha they sh*t themselves when it happened.

Then there are some pictures of me and my mates from the American Army and the Korean army. Top chaps. Top.

AND THEN there is this picture of a bridge. This bridge is also on the border; it is called 'The Bridge of No Return'. So called because at the unofficial end of the Korean War, I think something like 80,000 North Korean POW's and maybe 50,000 South Korean POW's had the choice of living in either the North or the South. The only deal was that once they crossed the bridge, they could never return.

Just a quick one as am shorlty to leave school;

Yesterday the old ladies at the bus stop had the best entertainment out of me so far.

I gave a stray dog a bit of attention and consequently it did not leave me alone. It just wanted to play but it kept humping my leg and I literally could not get rid of it. The old ladies were risking wetting themselves by laughing so much THEN they motioned to me to punch the dog to get rid of it.

For 10minutes I waited for the bus and for 10minutes I dodged this dog humping my leg. It was embarressing.

THEN this morning it was there again. I walked the long way around to the bus stop so it didn't see me, but it did and came straight at me like an arrow to an apple.

I ignored it and stayed motionless------The old ladies were looking at me------The dog came right up to my leg----- The old women anticipated the best moment of thier morning---- I continued to ignore the dog------AND THEN----- it chased a car.

HA!!! In your faces old women!! They were gutted!! Best morning this week :D!

Climbed the highest point in South Korea yesterday!!!

We had chaps over from the mainland so used it as the best excuse to finally climb the mountain, although I think over the last week all the leaves have finally dropped off the trees so unfortunately there was not so many spectacular colours occuring BUT it was a mighty fine clear day so we could see the whole island.

Koreans love hiking and walking so for the best part of the way to the top we were in a queue of people slowly trudging upwards and then once we were at the top, there were people EVERYWHERE. They've fenced the top in so you cannot walk around the crater of the volcano so myself and John decided to get some good pictures and climbed the fence and walked to a rocky edge and were there maybe 5minutes and then got PROPER shouted at my a man in the fenced area. He was really quite mad with us; I think he was the angriest looking Korean I have met so far (the chap who we had the fight with looked more sleepy than angry).

AH so talking of the man we had a fight with, I went to his restaurant and he looked quite embarressed throughout the whole chat, he apologised and then asked if I had had dinner. I said no, so he offered to make me some, so I said, only if you guys (the man and the lady translator) eat aswell.

It was a BBQ style restaurant so we had a the side dishes and he brought out a plate of meat and began cooking it. Once it was all sorted he went back into the kitchen to cook some other stuff and the lady decided that she was too full so I had to eat 3 peoples worth of food. I slept so well that night.

Oddly enough when I was waiting for the lady translator (Su Young), a man was walking toward me and he looked really quite sturdy and I thought to myself (no lie)

"Man I'm glad we didn't get into a fight with him"

Then he says to me 'excuse me, are you Simon?'

I said yes, became a bit confused and then saw he was wearing an apron and everything came into place. We waited together for maybe 3 minutes and it was awkward. It was really awkward. He didn't speak any English and my Korean did a quick escape out of my head leaving me with one word which I could remember, 'Today....'

Today is a major day for me; I'm planning an offensive against my Grade 5' and 6's so that more of them come to my lessons as the numbers are up and down everyday which is making it so hard for me to teach. Some of them cannot even read English and a Grade 2 or 3 would have a better knowledge of the language than they SO its proving difficult.

My main idea at the moment is to have an 'English Talent Show' where they practice a song, drama or dance or something over the period of 1 or 2 months and then we have the talent show where parents come and watch (bit like primary school plays) and the teachers are judges and then the winners get some AWESOME prize.

I've spoken to the big boss of TaLK scholars on Jeju and they say once I put a plan together, then they will see if they will fund me or not. I just need to keep chasing the idea.

That's the big plan to raise the enthusiasm; the smaller plans are going to be drawn up this evening. The older grades are so much harder to keep interested; all bar one of the students in Grade 3 attend after school English and it is almost the same for Grades 1 and 2. Grade 4 always stay the same but they are awesome kids so if new ones came in I think it would confuse me a little.

Today I am drawing my inspiration from stairs; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

I had quite an odd phone call last night.

A woman phoned, asked if I was Simon and then said

'I know one of your friends, but you don't know me, my name is Su Young, but you can call me Sue. Last week you got into a fight, is that right?'

I PROPER got scared at this point as I thought it was an official calling me to say that I was being deported. So I said yes and then she responded,

'Do you know the man who you had a fight with?'

'No'

'Do you know his name?'

'No'

'His name is 'blah blah' (it was too complicated for me to remember) and he wants to speak to you but he doesn't know any English and I'm his only English speaking friend. He wants to apologise. Can he meet you?'

SO ends out I'm being picked up by Sue at 8pm tonight then we're going to the mans restaurant so he can apologise.
I'm really intrigued to know what he is like sober; I say this because he started a fight with 6 people and he was by himself. He was drunk but even a really drunk person would think twice about starting a fight with 6 strangers. In all honesty I think I am a little nervous about meeting him again.

On a lighter note, yesterday in class for Grade 5 I asked em to re-write Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' and one kid called Wales (awesome name right) wrote;

I see Japan,
Nagasaki too,
I see them atomic boom
For me and you
And I think to myself
What an amazing Japan!

Korean's love Japan!

Although on a sad moment, one of the orphans re-wrote the lyrics about eating an apple with his mum. He was PROPER happy with it though so I guess it ain't so sad at all.

I gotta write some lessons!

Most mornings at the bus stop I'll be sat down next to all the old women farmers who have some serious back problems but have some serious smiles to counter thier backs.

Anyway they always laugh at me. I don't know what its about either. Some days I'll have a water melon, or a big bag of sweets, or bog roll (for Halloween), or when I drink my chocolate milk I can understand why they laugh but the other days are mysterious to me.

Today an old man came over and tried talking to me and was proper nice, as when he realised I couldn't speak Korean he left. Most days, if this happens, the person talking to me will stay there and say something to the old women and they'll all laugh. Today this did not happen.

I got on the bus and he was already on it and patted the seat next to him for me to sit down. He spoke more Korean and then just smiled. The old mans happiness made me super happy that he was investing this much confusion into a Westerner AND THEN it occured to me why he was so so nice. He stank of alcohol. It was 10.30am and not even Christmas day.

Either way, he was happy and consequently made me happy.

I had a really confusing class in Grade 3 today as half of them weren't there yesterday and they definitely had to do today what the class did yesterday (if that makes sense?) so I had to split the class in two and my co-teacher wasn't in.

What happens??

My Mentor teacher offers her help!! First day shes offered and first day it was needed :D.

So she looked after the half who had to catch up and to begin with I didn't know what to do with the other half, as, if we played games then we'd distract the others and they'd rush thier work to finish and join in.

SO

I decided to begin using my resources and read to them from one of my thousands of books. It was the most bizarre experience. My old primary school teachers used to read to me and here I was doing the exact same thing 17-18years later to a bunch of Korean children in Korea.

To start they were sat in semi-circle around me listening, really, quite intently. Although I was sat next to the board so if they didn't understand anything I could just draw it.

By the end they pratically climbing on top of me and pulling the most amazed, happy and excited faces to anything that happened in the book... you wouldn't think a book called 'Bear in the Square' would be that exciting but for them it was.

I don't think I've ever had a lesson with Grade 3 when they've been that quiet throughout the entire lesson.

For Grade 5 one student turned up so we just went a played outside recording his 'Daily Schedule' - I've set a competition project for Grades 5 and 6 to record thier daily schedule and the winner gets and AMAZING award. So today the daily schedule included;

'I balance with my friends' (I got em to climb a climbing frame and have 3 of em stand on top of it.... I couldn't even do it so fair play to em!!)

'I climb trees' (self-explanatory) and

'I do obstacle course' but he didn't win that one, I DID!! So he ain't using that in his project!

Also this week the kids filled out thier forms for after-school classes. I think they have a choice of eight different things to do.

SO out of 70 students in total in the school, just under 50 of them have signed up to do after-school English now.

It made me so happy yesterday to hear that... can't quite believe it. In my Grade 1 and 2 class today I almost filled every chair!! And not only that they are remembering what I teach them as we had a (sort of) test today. AND my lesson was being supervised aswell. Golden Day!

AND I've managed to get from 19th January to 6th February on holiday. Just shows how much ya can wrangle an official '7 days holiday' with talent show dances, weekends and national holidays!!

Although these weekend the POE (Provincial Office of Education in Jeju) are paying for us all to go in a submarine with windows to go look at fish, go go-carting and fly in hot air ballons across the island and I've book flights to Busan to go see mates from orientation for the weekend. I am gutted!! If there is a lesson here then it is don't go and see people you want to see; wait at home and there is a 2% chance of something 5 times as better occuring.

Saying that this weekend in Busan may be the best of my life so I am not bitter.... No, no I am not.

ALSO now I have found maybe 3 people who are super happy to teach me Korean for free, a man to help me make Korean food (ate tuna the other night and it wasn't actually that bad.... apologises to anyone who I criticsed in the past) AND a piano teacher maybe on the short-list aswell!!! I just hope the inspiration and motivation keeps up!!