stron's blog

I have removed my blog because the people I volunteered for did not take the time to thank my friends and family for making donations.

I will be teaching English in Tindivanum, Tamil Nadu, India, for a month early next year.  The position is as a volunteer. 

This weekend I'm going to Baengnyong Island.  Technically it is part of Incheon City but geographically it is located off the west coast of the Ongjin Peninsula, 12 kilometres from the Northern Demar

I'm keeping this brief because I'm going straight down to the pub for a beer.

I just saw a scooter accident happen about fifty metres in front of me.  Two scooters collided with each other.  One man got up and walked away, the other had blood coming out of his mouth and nose and couldn't move.  I ran to the nearby chicken shop (his employers) and did a smack-bang action with my hands, which communicated what they needed to know.  Everybody ran outside and surrounded the injured man.  I felt a bit useless so I left, but then I got worried and came back.  It looked like he wasn't breathing.  Everyone around him was in shock.  Someone had called an ambulance.  I remembered my first aid and told them they needed to clean his mouth to establish an airway (with mime actions).  A woman from the shop ran back to get a towel.  I opened his mouth with my fingers and cleaned out some of the blood.  He made a noise.  I checked his breathing with the back of my hand.  I kept holding his jaw open until the ambulance arrived, then helped transfer him to a stretcher, then everyone helped load him into the ambulance, and he got taken away.  A little girl who was watching looked very upset.  I hope he is okay.  Curiously, there was only one ambo.

Tonight I am going to (hopefully) begin a course in debating at a High School where I do extra classes.  I'm flying in the dark but here is a link from which I have taken ideas:

 http://www.paulnoll.com/Books/Clear-English/English-debate.html

Ha ha ha... (nervous laugh).  I'm going to be filmed by EBS for two days (if I understood correctly) so they can produce a ten minute segment on the life of a wonomin in Cheongwon.  They wanted a talented elementary school teacher to follow around for a couple of days and according to my co-teacher, I'm... well... I'm the only wonomin in Cheongwon teaching at an elementary school.  So, that acting certificate will finally come in useful.  Maybe I can break into Korean drama as a minority character.

The thing that scares me the most is that they want to focus on school life AND life after school.  I have NO life after school.  I actually dread going home most days, because there is nothing to do.  I have been trying to establish some boundaries, e.g. don't take schoolwork home, don't take novels to school, so I can at least have some kind of 'coming home' feeling.  But inevitably I end up on the internet for most of the afternoon at school, and on the internet for most of the evening at home.  I do my preparation between classes in the morning and my homework and study at night.  It's going to be a crushing revelation for the world (Chungcheongbuk-do at least) to see how boring my life is.  So I am faced with two options- let it be a piece of genuine reality t.v. and don't change a thing, so it can be an honest piece, or make up a life ultra-quick.  I just got told about this ten minutes ago, so I'll post this now and see how the story unfolds.

No, I am not returning home prematurely.  Instead, I have just returned to Melbourne, my adopted home, for two weeks.  I surprised my sister and my partner and had a wonderful two week holiday there. 

The holiday was something of a surprise for me, too.  I was told mid-February that I would be required to stay at school through spring break, the existence of the sprink break being something I learned about one week prior to that announcement.  I was also told I would not be able to take holidays during the school semester.  I could either take my remaining holidays over the spring break, or wait until July.  Seeing as my contract expires at the end of August there didn't seem to be any point in taking my holidays in July!

So I hurriedly booked a ticket, postponing my trip to Jeju (which I was most gracious about).  I got on a plane a few days later, after having made up a big story to my partner Suraj about how I would be unavailable for chatting on the phone for a few days because my mobile phone contract had expired.

How well are you learning 한국말? 

Everyone has different ways of learning.  It takes some people years to learn a language but they might learn to speak it more properly than someone who learns it very quickly.  I think it's important to remember that when you are struggling with a new language. 

I also think it is important to simply have a stage where everything is input.  Struggling through text-books in the first few months here is not the best way for everybody to learn.  I have realised that for me the best way to learn is just to listen and to read signs and absorb as much as possible, then go to the books.  You soak up so much from being in the country, you're always learning, even if you don't realise it.

There is no pressure to learn Korean immediately upon arrival.  Not understanding that learning language takes a lot of time and exposure is the downfall I am sure of many people who have been here for years and have not learned Korean (who even still use diphthongs when pronouncing simple Korean vowels).  Everybody knows that learning Korean requires a lot of study, but it also requires appreciation of being surrounded by the language.  When you start to really hear people you are starting to learn the language.  I think too many people think they can learn it from a book, and have higher expectations of themselves than what is realistic.