May 2013
1 post
Haaretz
It’s always the way, that when something is in your own back yard you never feel driven to explore it. There was always a known end to my time in Korea, which gave a sense of urgency to experience as much of the country as possible before leaving, whereas living in Israel feels permanent to a degree that there isn’t the same rush to see everything. That being said, I actually have...
April 2013
2 posts
Falafel
It seems like so many countries in the world have an Independence Day except Britain! Why doesn’t Britain celebrate one?! Oh yeh, right. Well this is awkward…
I celebrated my first Independence Day, Israel’s 65th, a couple of weeks back, and it still feels like a strange concept I can’t quite wrap my head around. I found myself repeatedly referring to it as ‘New...
Virtual haggling
In Israel everything can be haggled for; from the cost of fruit and veg at the market, how much you pay for your gym membership, health insurance, and probably your jay-walking ticket. If it has a price, it can be negotiated! Being the savvy British consumer that I am, I’m used to bringing up a plethora of comparison websites (which on a side note, that there are so many gave rise to the...
March 2013
3 posts
Gefilte Fish
Celebrated my first Passover Seder with Inbal’s family in Rishon LeZion, Monday night, which in some ways somewhat resembles Christmas, though obviously is completely unconnected and is actually very different. As far as similarities go, it’s an important holiday where the extended family come together to celebrate, and like the anticipation of Father Christmas visiting, a seat and...
Hummus
It felt like every other day was a holiday of some sort in Korea. Though, after trading in their history for a VCR (to quote Rage Against the Machine) most of these holidays are made up… school’s birthday… two valentine’s days… There are probably almost as many holidays in Israel, generally along the theme of overcoming persecution, of which we’re now...
Tel Aviv continued...
Life is busy is Tel Aviv, but lacking the weirdness (and annoyances) of Korea, and so the blog has become a little bit neglected as of late for both of these reasons. I Joined a gym closer to the apartment so I don’t unnecessarily burn calories walking there in order to get back into shape, and tomorrow marks the first month of studying Hebrew at the Ulpan, in which some of us have become...
February 2013
2 posts
January 2013
1 post
Election broadcast
Walking into the Ministry of Interior a couple of days back, we passed a large group of people protesting cutbacks to sign language translation services. It was the quietest demonstration I’ve ever seen. I’m in Israel and want to absorb and better know the culture, so after numerous recommendations I’m watching Seinfeld. I’ve got to say, these guys are funny! And...
December 2012
1 post
The Last Crusade
Finish work at 8pm, close enough to reach my bonus in the last four working days of the month after we return from Christmas in Jordan. Pack bags and cross town to Tel Aviv central bus station for a midnight coach to Eilat, arriving at around 5am to a convenience store where a small mixed group of young Russian Israelis, Ethiopians and general Lost Boys are finishing a night out, and where we...
November 2012
3 posts
Tel Aviv, Habibi!
After a morning of idle talk about a war which never materialises, there are the first sirens warning of rocket attacks in Tel Aviv since ‘91, beginning a seemingly newsworthy week for the city. Making our way from the office to the stairwell as the first siren sounded last Thursday, there was a mixed atmosphere of apathy and genuine panic, while loud booms could be heard followed by...
18 degrees Celsius has never felt so cold! Temperatures have now dropped from the mid-thirties and I’m definitely feeling the difference walking through the streets of Tel Aviv, past rows of cafes playing Orchestral Movements in the Dark’s Enola Gay on the radio more times than I’ve ever heard before; which is never. More of the usual in the weeks gone by: British parties,...
Hearing 'Nice to meet you' from a class I've...
kikinitinkorea:
I just…
It’s been over a year now since I started posting to this tumblr, and I have yet to ‘reblog’ someone else’s work, which seems to be how this blogging ‘network’ is primarily used, so I thought I’d share a site with the people back home and fulfill my tumblr’s potential.
Kikinitinkorea is a collection of animated gifs...
October 2012
4 posts
Only after leaving Korea have I come to appreciate the country for what it is, and that it could possibly be considered an interesting place to visit. Then again, there doesn’t seem to be any substance behind the random adjectives strung together in the ‘Dynamic Korea’ marketing campaign. The Independent lists the activities which qualify Korea as a top travel destination for...
Friday Night Fishing
BBC news posted a story about stray cats lurking around dust bins in Israel, yesterday [link]. I’d assumed there would be more than 2 million stray cats in the country, as a good number prowl our street alone, and though I do see a few familiar faces each day, while I was throwing out the garbage the other night a tiny bedraggled ball of fur emerged from the bins and attached itself to my...
Polska (Pt. II)
Our 20 day tour of Poland continues on a train from Warsaw Central Station to the ‘Manchester of Poland,’ David Lynch territory, hometown of my Kersland Street flatmate in Glasgow, and officially known as Łódź, where we have the ‘Volleyball room’ booked in the ‘Sport Hostel’ for the next few days on the edge of town in an area similar to Hulme with bleak high...
Polska
A long night packing bags on Sunday before Inbal’s dad gives us a lift to Ben Gurion for our charted flight to Katowice at 5:30am, and upon taking our seats the plane was a sea of black fedora hats of Orthodox Jews on their way to the old country. Having prepared for cold weathers, we step out of the terminal to a surprisingly warm 20 Celsius Polish morning, and take a minibus to our first...
September 2012
2 posts
Return to the Homeland
It was finally time for me to leave Incheon airport after spending over 48 hours in the basement level spa, leaving periodically for junk food and to check that a world outside still existed. Arrived to the spectacle of China’s yellow dust blanketing Beijing for a transfer which would have gone a lot smoother had I not been a single non-Jewish male traveling into Israel without an onwards...
Korea: A Summary
My teaching contract finished on Friday and I was allowed to leave in the morning to pack my bags as I had to vacate the apartment that evening. I said my goodbyes to a few co-workers and students, and gave a quick farewell speech to the teachers in the office which I’d hoped would be translated by one of the other English teachers present, but it wasn’t and there was a slight pause...
August 2012
4 posts
Post vacation
Return to Seoul after our travels and within 24 hours the monsoon rains fall again, providing an excellent opportunity to get a hit on my Yahtzee addiction. The water level rises as soon as the rain begins, and the photos below give an idea of how much the stream floods. According to the markings on the highway columns, the water rose just over 2m in the space of an hour, which was most...
Gyeongju and Busan
When our dear queen visited Korea in 1999, she asked to be taken to the most Korean place in Korea, and so was flown down to Andong, Korea’s spiritual capital (where the occasion was marked with the Important Intangible Cultural Property Number 69 choreographed dance performed by masked dancers). I’m assuming Andong’s authorities threw tarps over everything aside from a few...
Jeju
Disappear from school Thursday morning and take the early bus to Seoul, where we still find time for Paris Baguette on Friday before riding the subway to Gimpo airport during which we encounter a young Korean who studies English literature, has just seen Radiohead perform, and finds their hit single of 2011, Lotus Flower, to be very avant-garde. Boarding the flight, a kid is wearing a t-shirt...
July 2012
5 posts
As voted for by foreigners
While it feels like teaching ended a long time ago, the semester officially finished last Tuesday for the start of a three week summer vacation, though the students have two weeks of summer camp during this holiday. My summer camps took place over four weekends during term, so I have a week or so of deskwarming, taking a long weekend in Seoul after understanding Mr. Gim as saying I didn’t...
Korea: The Glorious Land of Four Seasons
Koreans have a colossal sense of national pride including a great admiration for their country’s four seasons, a uniquely Korean phenomena which was dramatized in the film Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring (2003: directed by Kim Ki-duk, and actually filmed in the nearby Juwang Mountains). As far as I can tell, there are only two seasons here in Korea: Very very cold, and very...
Korean Gift Culture
Took the subway to Insadong, walked to Myeongdong, then onto Dongdaemun, back to Insadong, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Gift shopping as we know it is extremely difficult in Korea. Koreans’ idea of a nice gift is a pack of spam or cooking oil. Such a big deal was made about how important it was to bring gifts for the principle, vice-principle, co-teachers, admin team, and the...
Monsoon Season
48 hours of the heaviest torrential downpours I’ve seen since living in Glasgow, in which the river swelled to at least five times its original width (see the comparison photos) before blue skies emerged with temperatures in the mid 30s. Day 3 of Summer Camp, scheduled on Saturday morning after a week of mid-term exams. Unsurprisingly the students were not interested, but it did provide...
Without Summer Camp this weekend just gone, I escape Cheong-Song and arrive for Seoul’s monsoon. The first pic was taken in Sept 2011, just by Carmen’s “Lan-da-mar-ka-taw-a”. Within an hour of the downpour, the small trickle not deep enough for ducks to swim, rose quite high submerging the cycle paths running down along side. It was an ideal weekend to search for the...
Visit Tyler in Andong Hospital on Thursday night, after he got taken out by a van while on his motorcycle. He’s sharing a room with about five other Koreans who promptly helped themselves to the pizza we brought.
June 2012
7 posts
Summer Camp: Day 2, and Jinbo Folk Festival
Second Saturday of Summer Camp, and joined by Carmen again to help teach three important Western celebrations: Halloween, Bonfire Night, and Christmas. Quickly degenerating into baby sitting as the students lose interest preferring to play on their smart phones all morning, but who can blame them — five hours of being taught purely in a foreign language on material which won’t be in...
Attendance Record
As well as being savages (which by the way, I feel entirely justified in using that term) Koreans are also seemingly severely cognitively-challenged. I have an attendance record which runs from the first of each month, to the end. I have my salary paid on the 25th. The admin team wants to see the record (with the vice-principle’s signature of course) on the 25th and then they will pay my...
Open Day and Summer Camp
After the bell rings at 4:30pm Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Gim shouts after me that it will be open day on Wednesday. Open day is the day when the students’ parents are allowed in to assess the teaching, and is something a lot of people seem to stress about, maybe because they have to spend a lot of time with their co-teacher fabricating an ideal lesson plan with the perfect balance of...
Corea Continue More
It was Remembrance Day on Wednesday 6th, and the school’s birthday on either the Monday or Tuesday with the other thrown in for good measure, leaving me with a nice five day weekend in Seoul, which is quickly becoming a tropical sphere with high temperatures and humidity. We were joined by a significant proportion of the city’s inhabitants at the packed 30,000 person capacity Jamsil...
May 2012
5 posts
Naver maps
Explore Cheong Song on Naver maps! Click the map below, then zoom into Cheong Song (marked A, which is the hospital just across the river from my apartment). Click the icon which looks like an alien head on the left just above the zoom slider (circled in the image below). The roads will then be outlined in blue, and you can click where you would like to begin your journey, though depending on...
Buddha's Birthday
Do you ever read the messages in your junk mail? The elaborate explanations about why you are the beneficiary of large sums of money are often hilarious, and I received a message last week purportedly from the FBI informing me that I have won the international lottery after my email address was selected from an online balloting system, and that my winnings are being held by the IMF, which I can...
English 101
As mentioned in previous posts, my High School ‘co-teacher’ gave little guidance on what I should be doing with these students for the 50 minutes I am responsible for them each week, so I took it upon myself to create an entire curriculum, with humble beginnings, starting out as simple Word documents and even some hand-drawn, cut, pasted and scanned work sheets, but which...
Lotus Lantern Festival
While I managed to avoid doing any preparation work for the Winter Camp last time, I planned a 20 hour English summer camp last week, for the middle school students taking place across four Saturdays in June and July, which because it is outside of my contract hours the school will pay a small bonus to compensate for four wasted weekends. Everyone seems to stress about the amount of work it takes...
What I Love About Korea!
So this blog has gone the way of most personal blogs and become a therapeutic outlet; a place for me to vent the many frustrations of living in Korea and having to interact with Korean people. But in doing so, I fear my wide readership may have misunderstood this as me not enjoying my time here, so I will attempt to clarify things by listing things that I like about Korea, in no particular order,...
Lunch lady poured ketchup over my orange segments before I could object, at lunch the other day. You know you’re ill if you aren’t enjoying your raw octopus and asparagus school lunch. Started printing out handouts just for the satisfaction of shredding them. After the co-teach seemed to imply that I didn’t do much work, I printed off almost 1000 pages of lesson plans. She...
April 2012
2 posts
28 weeks later...
(… actually a few days shy of 8 months in Korea) has provided plenty of time to reflect on life here as a native English speaker. To be clear, after everything I have said and written, I wouldn’t want to put anybody off from coming to teach English in Korea as it’s been an amazing experience and — not intending to sound schmaltzy — the best time of my life), but I would warn you that you will...
Cherry Blossom Festival
On the road between Cheongsong and Seoul it appears that I passed spring somewhere along the way and arrived in summer where we spent the weekend rediscovering the city emerging from hibernation. After our morning ritual at Paris Baguette (we’d have been on a first name basis with the store manager long ago if only we shared a common language) I finish my latte in Jonggak, and on to newly...
March 2012
6 posts
Out for dinner
Did I mention that it turns out the puppy (who was bought to replace the last school mascot at BuDong Middle School which died presumably from ill-treatment and being left outside in -20 celcius temperatures over winter) has been ‘disappeared’ by local townsfolk after he was left free to roam and bothered some chickens. I think the vice-principle has caught on to the fact that...
California Pizza
When I go to Seoul on the weekends, we load up on Western foods — quite expensive especially when compared to eating at Korean restaurants, but definitely worth it to balance out my stomach. Here I am eating spaghetti carbonara with walnut sauce at California Pizza in Lotte Mart, after an American taught me the correct etiquette for eating spaghetti.
Back in the Bau Haus
Beyond Cheongnyangni 588, Seoul’s largest and secluded red light district, there is a Lotte Mart (Lotte being one of the dominant business giants in Korea, with products and services ranging from department stores, savings accounts, insurance, own branded chewing gum and petrol, and pretty much every tangible item that exists in Korea will have the Lotte logo) which contains a cinema on...
New school year
It’s approaching 4:30pm and the end of my first full week of the new school year, before another weekend in Seoul as well as many in between now and before in which we also wandered into one of Seoul’s red light districts a-packet-of-condoms throw away from Carmen’s apartment. Caught a few movies in the cinema, which show a very limited selection of English speaking films, and...
There are a few Korean meals which I genuinely enjoy, as opposed to eating purely out of biological necessity, of which tangsuyuk (탕수육), known to you and I as sweet and sour pork with vegetables, is my favourite dish, and consists of battered strips of crispy fried pork in an extremely sweet gooey sauce. It is served in many Chinese-Korean restaurants, but the best I’ve had yet is at this...
After wandering around the vast grounds of the Imperial Palace, our guides take us to the next point of interest, Tiếng chuông Thiên Mụ.
February 2012
7 posts
WatchOne Minute in Hà Nội: a little movie I made while in Hanoi!
Corea Continue
Back in Seoul after another layover in China where we were kept in the freezing cold of the immigration queue for an hour because although the next flight was only a relatively short time away it was technically the next day so we required a visa, and we had been promised a complimentary hotel for our troubles but of course by the time we passed through, the airport services had closed including...
