English Camp Sports' Day Misadventures

Every lesson I have a group of students who are bandaged, bruised, or encased in plaster. I have always wondered if students are just incredibly daring, brittle, or uncoordinated. Judging from what I saw today at the English camp sports' day, daring applies to very few students. For children who begin learning taekwondo as soon as they can stand, these children have the slowest reflexes and the most uncoordinated bodies ever.

Now, I admit that I throw like a girl (I am not talking about softball pitchers). I hate running, my right leg comes up when I shoot a basket, and I am not about to get close to a sweaty armpit to intercept a ball. Also, my depth perception tends to be quite off and my reflexes tend to be a bit slow of late. So keep in mind, that this story is coming from me.

Today was rainy, so we had to stay indoors in the ancient gym on the 4th floor. This gym is long and narrow with splintering wood floors that give way too much for comfort. There is a stage at one end, with a projector and a sound system, student artwork attached to tacked up metal cages lines the walls on either side, ceiling fans hang down way too low, and hundreds of chairs are shoved to the back wall. I was very shocked to find out that this gym is still used as a gym.  

The first event was dodge ball. We used one soft ball. In the Korean version, as far as I can gather, the ball is thrown up by the referee and it volleyed by the team captions to their team. You are safe if you catch the ball or the ball bounces before hitting you. If you get hit (before the ball bounces) or drop the ball, you are out. If you are out you go behind the opposing team and if the ball crosses the line, you can throw the ball and try to get the opposing team members out. 

So, Matt and I painfully watched as fifteen screeching, cowering students rushed from one end of the gym to the other in one large huddle trying to escape the one ball. Once in a while a student was brave enough to try to catch the ball, but did not often succeed. Many times they dropped it and then proceed to fall over it. If they managed to catch it, the students either hit their own teammate in the head or hit the wall (knocking off the racks holding the artwork). And none of the students seemed to realize that they needed to take the good throwers out first.  

I don't know how many times, the children were saved from outs because they tried to dodge, tripped and some how the ball managed to brush between their legs instead. And just like in a cartoon, the student put their heads between their legs to make sure the ball really did pass through. This made their butts perfect targets for the good players. It would have been funny, if it hadn't been so painful to watch.

The next event was team jump rope. Since one boy got injured by the soft dodge ball and was laid up with a heat patch on his bicep, I stepped in. I haven't done team jump rope since I was 10. But, it was like riding a bike and I did quite well. So well in fact, that my shoes came off and I landed on the floor barefoot, receiving a pretty gnarly hunk of wood through my foot, thus ending my short-lived jumping career.

I have never seen a group of elementary students so bad at jump rope, they cannot turn the rope or jump. I don't know how many students were strangled. A rope ended up wrapped in the ceiling fan (with the student frantically turning in circles trying to untangle the fan, only managing to make himself dizzy and the rope even more tangled). Needless to say, Double Dutch was out of the question. 

Pre-Vacation

Matt surprised me by knocking on my door Thursday evening immediately after I had finished cooking dinner--talk about great timing for him! I put him to work on Friday by making him attend summer camp where I played scientist. I blindfolded a student, hid a piece of candy in the room and made the other students give the child directions through a maze of desks to find the candy. Turns out, the kids really will play this lousy game over and over for a worthless piece of candy.

My apartment is out there...

After camp, we headed to Myeongdong for some shopping and then to Jonggak for some Indian food. Saturday we decided it was high time to go to Namsan Tower. We skipped the Teddy Bear Museum inside the tower and headed for the observation room. We rode up six whole floors in an elevator that had an animation of flying through the tower, out of its top and into outer space. It was quite something and left all the westerners giggling.

Seoul Tower

We declined the 12,000 won green-screened photo and attempted to look out over the city. Unfortunately, the smog and the lack of recent window cleaning made for poor visibility, but it was still nice to look over a part of the city. We then looked around the many gift shops selling tower cell phone charms, vials with silk flowers surrounding miniature towers, eyeglass cleaning clothes with the tower printed on them, and overpriced cardboard coasters depicting the tower. Oh, and I must not forget the souvenirs from England and Paris. Korea really doesn't understand the whole souvenir thing.
After the tower, I took Matt to his first Outback Steakhouse. He had his first true bowl of soup and bit of steak in one year. A small plate of cheap steak, steamed veggies, fries and some pumpkin soup never tasted so good! We topped off the decadent day by catching the late show to the new Batman movie. The movie would have been more enjoyable if people could leave their hand phones alone for a few minutes.
Sunday found us back in Myeongdong where we stumbled upon an arts and crafts sale. We hung out listening to a guitarist and I managed to find something crafty that I actually liked. We later headed to Kongdae to eat some BBQ pork with Matt's Korean friend from Jinbo.
Matt followed me to English camp today, lured by the hope of playing kickball. But sadly, it rained and so events were moved to the gym. This deserves its own blog post. I have since sent Matt back to Cheongsong where he can go back to work and prepare for our week in Jeju.

How Many People Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

In the western world we have the light bulb jokes.  We tell them and chuckle. But here, it’s no laughing matter. It’s reality. So how many people does it take to change a Korean light bulb?

            

Well, first, I have seven light switches in my tiny studio apartment. It makes it nice and bright, but eventually one of the 30-something light bulbs is going to burn out. Curiosity caused me to unscrew one of the light fixtures to find a Christmas-light-like bulb held in by two screws. I know what you are thinking, WHY!?! Don't think about it, it will only cause your brain to overheat. 

The first bulb to go out was the bathroom light. Being a person from the western world, where any store has a whole isle dedicated to various light bulbs, I assumed that this light bulb could be purchased at the big shopping center. As you may recall in Matt's blog post, he took on this task for me. He took the light bulb to the shopping center and asked the sales associate for the light bulb. It was the wrong one. Luckily, they did take the light bulb back. So after wasting  several hours on this task, Matt finally gave up and asked maintenance. In the end, it only took one person to change the light bulb. But the question remains, why does it take maintenance to change a 60 Watt bulb!?!

The next light to go out was the kitchen light. Placed strategically above the sink very close to the cabinets. I would have gladly ignored it, but it is florescent and does that whole blinky thingy. So 10:30 at night, I climb up onto the counter and set about trying to figure out how to get the apparently simple light cover off. After fifteen minutes, the light cover finally came loose, flying across the room and nearly knocking me off the counter. Then there was a mass of wires and electrical boxes inside the light--it cannot be a simple florescent light. After finally figuring out how to unplug the light. I tried to then put the light cover back on. The light cover is held onto the fixture by dime-sized magnets. But the magnets are not attached to the light cover in any way. So ten minutes of struggling to get the cover to defy gravity failed. Again I need maintenance or a strong man to hammer the light fixture to the ceiling.

So in conclusion to this riddle, it takes only one person to change a light bulb, if you just realize that you cannot be independent in this country and have to call for help.

In other complaining news, last month the school had the brick walkways redone. For an entire month the pavement was torn up. And carefully relaid and torn up again. The problem wasn't leveling, as all leveling seems to be absent and makes keeping your feet dry in this monsoon impossible. Also, they are redoing the walls around the building, taking down the white wrought- iron fence and building a "pretty" brick fence. Except, the brick layers seem to forgotten the spade to smooth out the grout and the brick fence can now be described as "goopy." 

This week has been English Certification Week. Basically, students memorize English and Korean phrases on a paper. I point to a Korean phrase and the students must translate it to English. If they translate three phrases correctly, they can go onto the Korean teacher who says the phrase in English and the student must translate it into Korean. This is always exhausting as you hear the same phrases butchered. But this is even more exhausting as you have thirty children lined up shoving each other, hitting each other, screaming at each other, and trying to give answers to the students taking the test. I spend more time trying to get the students to calm down for five seconds than actually giving the test. 

I also spend most of the time chasing away students who have no sense of respect for their teachers' possessions or space. As I am giving this test, students walk up and start going through my pencil cup, taking whatever they want, taking the scissors and cutting whatever is available on my desk (thank god I caught a student before cutting my new headphones), hitting the keys on my keyboard to see what I have up on the computer (and slamming the keyboard when the password prompt comes up), trying to pull my headphones out of the computer from the head phone themselves, oh and unplugging the monitor from the back. These are supposedly the wholesome Korean kids, mind you.

The rising water has forced the drunks to the top of the bridge.

As you can tell, today is a day I am done with the rude children, the USA shirts that are colored with Korean flag colors, the inability to wipe up urine and poop, and just the general confusing Korean attitude of desperately trying to make a dime and not caring how many dollars they lose trying to make that dime. Perhaps the fact that the sun hasn't shown in a week and the rain hasn't stopped for a day and a half has something to do with my attitude.