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!!

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.