Hello everyone
Greetings from South Korea. As I am sure you will have gathered from our snippets of news so far we arrived without much hassle and have begun to settle in nicely. Jessica's school is relatively close while my own is on the other side of town.
Despite the cramped conditions in town, people still hang onto vegetable patches which I cannot understand – the land must be extremely valuable and yet they choose to grow cabbages. I assume this has something to do with the fact that the Korean culture places heavy emphasis on the quality of food – all of which must be fresh. Every street, outside of the residential areas, has several restaurants which often have live fish in tanks outside them. Even our local supermarket, which is about a three minute walk, has live sole. More exciting foods and fish are readily available at the market downtown – live eels, crab, trout, sole, sea bass, sea squirts, and a variety of other fish are all on sale. Scates and larger fish are also placed on the side walk.
Red meat here is expensive and will be a rare treat, mince in the local supermarket is selling at about R40 for 300 grams. We have heard of a supermarket that caters to Western tastes in at fairly reasonable prices, but it is located in Daegu and will be difficult to get to. Fortunately for us the Koreans love fatty meat, and as result lean steaks are less expensive than they would otherwise be.
First impressions of my school are that it is nice. The staff have certainly done their level best to make me feel welcome, sometimes I find communication difficult and my SA accent does not help.
I have been told a number of times that I need to motivate the students. Although the students have English classes four times a week, I only get round to seeing each class once every two weeks. My aim is to make the classes interesting and hopefully stimulate interest which will then lead to learning outside of the classroom setting.
Jess and I bumped into our first other English speakers this weekend. We arranged to meet at the closest point that we all knew on Saturday evening and then walked across to their house for dinner. It turns out they live across a small alley from us. I have mixed feelings about this, while I am happy to have met other English speakers I am not sure I want to know the people whose lounge I look down on.
I’ve been working hard and have not really had the time to look into the shenanigans of the South African politicians, nevertheless I was disappointed to find out that I cannot access the M&G for some reason.
I knew that Korea has its own script before leaving SA but mis-appreciated how little the roman alphabet is used. The only dictionaries we have been able to find so far use Korean script, so we have an extra hurdle in our paths – we have to learn an entirely new script before we can start making real progress in learning Korean. I don’t mind learning, but progress is going to be slow – not much goes in when one arrives home from a full day at school. Still I absolutely have to learn Korean.
Tomorrow is a new day, full of new experiences and further misunderstandings; but with some luck it will also include some new understandings.
Keep well. Send my love to SA. Eat lots of bread, cheese and everything else that is hard to come by here.
Julian
[The pics in the post were the last pics that Jess and I took in SA - notice how we are dressed for the middle of winter while the people in the background are in short sleaves :) ]
Greetings from South Korea. As I am sure you will have gathered from our snippets of news so far we arrived without much hassle and have begun to settle in nicely. Jessica's school is relatively close while my own is on the other side of town.
My school is about a ten minute ride from our apartment. I don’t intend riding for long though – soon I will purchase a scooter.
The ride to school takes me through the centre of town after which I ride along what is mostly a dry river on my one side and yellow rice fields on the other. It also takes me past sewers that have manholes with slits in them – not so yummy. It is hard to estimate how large Sangju is at this stage in comparison to Grahamstown, but it is definitely smaller. My guess at this point is that it is less than half the size with a far larger population. Once again I am uncertain but I recall hearing that the population is about 120 000. Three stories is pretty much standard here and it is rare to come across single story buildings. Our own apartment is ‘open plan’ – one single room (with a separate bathroom) - and small by South African standards, but it is well lit and we like it. Now for the bombshell: it is smaller than Simon’s bed room. It was not furnished when we arrived, and we slept the first night on the floor, but this has meant we have had some say over what has gone into it. Our contracts stipulate that the schools pay for the furniture which they have done.
The ride to school takes me through the centre of town after which I ride along what is mostly a dry river on my one side and yellow rice fields on the other. It also takes me past sewers that have manholes with slits in them – not so yummy. It is hard to estimate how large Sangju is at this stage in comparison to Grahamstown, but it is definitely smaller. My guess at this point is that it is less than half the size with a far larger population. Once again I am uncertain but I recall hearing that the population is about 120 000. Three stories is pretty much standard here and it is rare to come across single story buildings. Our own apartment is ‘open plan’ – one single room (with a separate bathroom) - and small by South African standards, but it is well lit and we like it. Now for the bombshell: it is smaller than Simon’s bed room. It was not furnished when we arrived, and we slept the first night on the floor, but this has meant we have had some say over what has gone into it. Our contracts stipulate that the schools pay for the furniture which they have done.
Despite the cramped conditions in town, people still hang onto vegetable patches which I cannot understand – the land must be extremely valuable and yet they choose to grow cabbages. I assume this has something to do with the fact that the Korean culture places heavy emphasis on the quality of food – all of which must be fresh. Every street, outside of the residential areas, has several restaurants which often have live fish in tanks outside them. Even our local supermarket, which is about a three minute walk, has live sole. More exciting foods and fish are readily available at the market downtown – live eels, crab, trout, sole, sea bass, sea squirts, and a variety of other fish are all on sale. Scates and larger fish are also placed on the side walk.
Red meat here is expensive and will be a rare treat, mince in the local supermarket is selling at about R40 for 300 grams. We have heard of a supermarket that caters to Western tastes in at fairly reasonable prices, but it is located in Daegu and will be difficult to get to. Fortunately for us the Koreans love fatty meat, and as result lean steaks are less expensive than they would otherwise be.
First impressions of my school are that it is nice. The staff have certainly done their level best to make me feel welcome, sometimes I find communication difficult and my SA accent does not help.
I have been told a number of times that I need to motivate the students. Although the students have English classes four times a week, I only get round to seeing each class once every two weeks. My aim is to make the classes interesting and hopefully stimulate interest which will then lead to learning outside of the classroom setting.
Jess and I bumped into our first other English speakers this weekend. We arranged to meet at the closest point that we all knew on Saturday evening and then walked across to their house for dinner. It turns out they live across a small alley from us. I have mixed feelings about this, while I am happy to have met other English speakers I am not sure I want to know the people whose lounge I look down on.
I’ve been working hard and have not really had the time to look into the shenanigans of the South African politicians, nevertheless I was disappointed to find out that I cannot access the M&G for some reason.
I knew that Korea has its own script before leaving SA but mis-appreciated how little the roman alphabet is used. The only dictionaries we have been able to find so far use Korean script, so we have an extra hurdle in our paths – we have to learn an entirely new script before we can start making real progress in learning Korean. I don’t mind learning, but progress is going to be slow – not much goes in when one arrives home from a full day at school. Still I absolutely have to learn Korean.
Tomorrow is a new day, full of new experiences and further misunderstandings; but with some luck it will also include some new understandings.
Keep well. Send my love to SA. Eat lots of bread, cheese and everything else that is hard to come by here.
Julian
[The pics in the post were the last pics that Jess and I took in SA - notice how we are dressed for the middle of winter while the people in the background are in short sleaves :) ]
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