Birthday weekend in Cheonan...

On Friday night, we went out to the Red Rooster in Cheonan to celebrate the last embers of my birthday. This pub is very "rustic cafe" for those of you from Stellenbosch...and they serve watery Korean beer in big green bottles. Well after arriving with Cara and Matt, and scaring the Koreans off from a big corner table (sometimes it helps being a foreigner), I wondered if anyone else was going to turn up.

Luckily, I was wrong. Most of my foreigner friends from KNU church put in a showing... cool kids like Betsy, Jackie, Jo, Martie, Tina, Cor, Steph, Kim, Erik, Jason, Byron, Adam and Elisa, Gordon, Alfred and a couple more made the table burst at its seams. I got a good dose of red wine and interesting conversation, and I stayed over at Cara's place. Saturday morning was MacDonald's breakfast with a side order of real Americans, the hairdresser for some non-traumatic highlights... "eye-shopping" at Yawoori, and pasta for lunch with Betsy and Kim. I watched "Stardust" with Cara at the movies and then we went to Jo's place for girl's night with delcious salady-type food and some dancing in Jo's sweltering lounge.

I think I've milked this birthday for all its worth. But it was good while it lasted.

Happy birthday to me..!

So Tuesday, being the 21st of August, 2007 - was the occasion of my 25th birthday (although that makes me 26 by Korean years.)






I wasn't planning anything spectacular, as it was a regular hagwon teaching day, but my kids really rose to the occasion. Although Koreans don't traditionally celebrate birthdays much (Many of them use the Lunar Calender which means that your birthday changes every year! Very confusing...), I got plenty of cards and presents..and no less than three and a half birthday cakes!



So Tim, one of my grade four's set the tone with his chocolate cake with tea icing. (It had cherry tomatoes on it - which is normal for the Korean palate and really bizarre to me...) Later I got a vanilla cream cake from my local Paris Baguette owner (how cool is that?) and in the evening, one of my beginner adult ajumas brought me a chocolate cake. It was great, because it meant that I had a cake for each of my classes (and I got to blow out the candles and be sang for three times!) I also got a mini mousse cake from one of my high schoolers today. Man, I'm glad I didn't buy any cake for my students. If any of you out there are still thinking about birthday presents for me, stay away from anything sweet and creamy.

More SA music...

You've gotta love Johnny Clegg - international music spokesperson during Apartheid and able to blend Zulu and English together so seamlessly in his songs. A good song to practise your gumboot dancing to.

When you miss home...

This song is by Jak De Priester, its called "Sally Williams Naugat." In addition to having lost the love of his life, this song is about all the strange things you miss when you lose your love: like sharing nougat from the Spar, and Sunday breakfasts, Tuesday night cheap movies, fake-leather seats, foamy coffee, sms and DSTV.
Anyone from South Africa (whether they lost love or not!) can totally relate.

Paju English village

So today, instead of the usual grind of class time phonics and reading, we went to Gyeonggi English village on a field trip. The place is modeled on a quaint sort of Koreanised nineteenth century streets of London. Very different from the rest of Korea, that's for sure.



So the kids have to go through "immigration" and answer some English questions, after which we walked with them past the castle gates to the various role-play shops, post offices, banks and city hall. We ate a suitably Western lunch, where the Caucasian-looking waitress addressed us with "vat do you vant...?" which made me realise that not all the employees of the English village come from English-speaking countries!




We watched "A Long Time ago in Africa" theatre show which was fun for the kids and reinforced the vocabulary they have been learning. The English villages in Korea have been criticised for not being authentic villages, but merely simulations, and because they are so expensive to build and maintain and entertain the kids rather than educate them with useful English skills.



However, if the English village helps our kids to picture a world where not everyone speaks Korean and thus inspires them to study English and travel abroad... then it is fulfilling an important function.

Icheon pottery village

Today was Korean Independence Day, (hail, the once-a-month public holiday!) and I boarded the bus with Cara, Stephenie and Suzie bound for Icheon, home of Korean pottery both ancient and modern. (If Adam and Elisa have gone there FIVE times, its got to be good, right?)




Icheon is famous for its traditional Goryeo and Joseon porcelain. We got to the Icheon Pottery village and started wandering around the 300+ pottery shops and exhibitions. Then we got fortuitously recruited by some brave Koreans and followed them to a back room where the pottery was being made. I got to play with a wet wad of clay on the wheel, which I find extremely therapeutic (beat that clay! pretend it is your enemy!) I decided to make a curvaceous vase with some help from my very patient Korean potter-teacher and I think it turned out rather nicely.






After making the vase, I etched a Korean-ish design onto it and added some paints for color. It will now be fired and delivered. Since all the instructions were in Korean, I really have no idea what color it will come out when its finished. (Black flowers and pink leaves weren't exactly what I had in mind?) We had lunch at a delicious traditional Korean restaurant in the village and then did some more pottery window-shopping. I bought a set of three miniature Korean jade-colored vases, which I think are lovely. No use buying any of the really big porcelain pots, unless you want suspiciously heavy carry-on luggage on the plane! (Apparently people have been smuggled out in some of the human-sized kimchi pots...)

D-War (Jeju in the movies)

So on Friday I went to see the Korean-American movie called Dragon Wars, or D-War (디워) for short. It is based on a Korean myth about an Imoogi or giant evil snake that can turn into a dragon if it eats the chosen girl who has a dragon mark on her shoulder. So the Korean myths were fascinating but there was a bit too much high-tech monster fighting scenes for my taste. However, it showcased Korean scenery and had spectacular aerial shots of Jeju island. So it was awesome to see the spots where I had been on vacation in the movies! The giant snake first appears from Jongbang waterfall, which is surrounded by high rocks and pours out directly into the sea. So here are some more of my pictures of it...(unfortunately I didn't see the dragon.)