January update

I realize it's been over a month between my quarterly report and the long post about my Japan trip, and you may be wondering what I did for most of January.

My work load was really light - just two weeks of winter camp at the girls school. This included an hour a day of tutoring a pair of teachers children (11 year old boys). We read a bunch of Aesop's fables. The main goal was practicing pronunciation and building vocabulary; I think it went OK.
The main class was 1 or 2 hours a day with the 4 of the top 10 students who decided to stick around school for the vacation. Because the students were fairly advanced I decided to make it a discussion oriented Psychology class. These are students who have a good enough vocabulary that I can explain to them in English the meaning of almost any word, but they really need practice forming complete sentences and having conversation.
During my first couple months teaching normal classes the feedback I got from my students in terms of body language was usually limited to one of the following: polite attention that made me think they understood what I was saying and it wasn't super boring , vacant yet somewhat attentive incomprehension, total daydreaming, disruptive inattention, self conscious embarrassed blush / smile, a quick smile or chuckle at some corny joke or small bit of clowning from me, or a completely inscrutable oriental facade. So I was pleased to elicit a new reaction during this course - one of shocked interest; for example when discussing the dramatic changes in personality that happened during the famous Stanford prison experiment (a "prison simulation" where the guards quickly became abusively authoritarian, and the prisons submissive and dehumanized) the girls were listening with wide eyes and wringing their hands. So it was a fun class to teach and also nice to not have to repeat lessons multiple times.

Outside of class I didn't have too many new adventures. A couple of times I went "screen" golfing with some other teachers. This is one of those electronic things where you hit a golf ball through some sensors into a net and the computer simulates your shots as you proceed through a virtual course. It is fairly realistic, and I like being able to see all the stats (ball speed, rpms of both back and side spin, launch angle and deviation from straight angle), but it is much much easier than real golf. For one thing you are always hitting off a clean lie, so sand and rough are not much of a penalty. Also, and more importantly, it doesn't calculate slice or hook accurately. Your ball will curve off path a little, but not as much as it would with a poor shot in reality. Anyway its fun and good to get your golf fix on a cold day.

Also there was a big badminton event in Gurye, a city about 40min away. The big club there decided to throw a friendly match / party to celebrate their new president. It really was quite a production. About 8 local teams attended. There was a long and boring opening ceremony which included some kids banging on traditional drums, and many speeches that I didn't understand. Then there was a lunch, and finally some games. I'm not sure what the format was, and neither did some other people in my club. They told me "just enjoy your games." I played two doubles matches against other clubs teamed with two different partnets from my club. After losing the second one I guess we were out, but there was food and drink available all day. After a few rounds of soju my 'older brother' wanted me to play with him in a game for big money (80grand!). We lost a close one; I'll go ahead and blame the margin of our defeat on the drunkness of my teammate. So I had full confidence that he would sober up enough to pull through the double or nothing rematch. And so it was. So that was pretty exciting.
After all the games were over there was a big raffle. Everyone there was entered for free, and probably almost one in five won something. Prizes ranged from a top quality racquet to a bag of cucumbers. I ended up winning a pair of shorts. I had to ask if they were meant for women, but was told they were for men. Seriously these things are shorter than 70's basketball shorts. Near the end of the drawing they organizers decided it would be a good idea to get the only foreigner present to come up and pick out the next name. I was glad at this time that I had at least learned to read the Korean alphabet.

To check out some photos from the event look at http://www.cyworld.com/pims/main/pims_main.asp?tid=37274003 then, click on the bottom of three tabs of the right side of the notebook image. Also, I forgot to mention but there are a few photos from Japan on my flickr stream, but I have to apologize for taking very few.

One more quick note on the new foods front. The soup they served at lunch was dove meat. It was dark meat and a little oily, but good taste.