It's a trap!

I know I have mentioned this before, but I want to expand on something...

Coffee

  I was told that the coffee in Korea wasn't great, and at the time I honestly didn't really give a shit as I wasn't much of a coffee drinker. For starters, I think the coffee is pretty good. For someone who arrived in Korea as a non-coffee drinker, I now have at least 2 cups a day. The coffee in Korea has lead me into a trap. 

I also drink various teas, but that is another tale.

  I have 2 different types of coffee that I keep in my house. One is just the normal, run-of-the-mill instant coffee from Emart or something. The other is a box of coffee sticks. My previous brand of choice was French Cafe, but actually they are a little sweet so the next box I buy will be Maxim sticks. These coffee sticks are hardly any coffee, all sugar and instant milk. They must be SO bad for me but I can't help but love how convenient they are. 

  Basically, you rip the end off the stick and tip the contents into a cup and add hot water. Amaze. And they also have an iced coffee stick for the warmer days... These are also the type of thing they have at school in the tea room, which is where I first discovered their sugary goodness. I used to LOVE the sugar, because I wasn't a massive fan of coffee but drank it to be social. Now, however, I tend to make my coffee at home with less than half what has got to be in these things. Still, they are tasty and easy. AND MAKING ME FAT I HATE YOU.

  The other coffee, the best coffee, is what they make at the cafe's. You can get any flavour you can think of, from lattes to caramel macchiattos, to sweet potato lattes. Whatever you want! My fave is just a regular vanilla latte, and I will have one pretty much every time I go out to meet people. Which is almost every day :s so that leads me to realise I am also spending a fair bit of money on coffee. 

  Your average cup of coffee in Korea will cost between 2400 - 5000 won depending on how fancy you wanna go. You can get to go coffee at all cafes.

  Another stupid phenomena that is the norm here is drinking your coffee (or whatever hot drink you are sipping) out of the stirring straw. If you look at this pic here, you can see the stupid stirring straw is sticking out of the drinking part. Yes, that is what I sip my boiling hot coffee through. and often I forget that the liquid is hot, and I will suck on the freaking thing and send a stream of scalding coffee down my throat and giving my tongue third degree burns. I do it every time, and yet I still get the stirring straw and use it to drink. Why? Because thats what everyone else does and we know I am all about conforming (awkward...).

  There are coffee shops absolutely everywhere near me, and only once you get into more rural areas do they start to drop off. In Seoul you can hardly walk 10 steps without finding another one (or a Paris Baguette which also have coffee), and each is about as good as the next. They have all the big brand coffee places, so if you are craving your soy milk skinny frappe from Starbucks then you can find it here too. I have seen Tom and Toms, Gloria Jean's and The Coffee Bean just to name a few. Dunkin' Donuts is huge here also, and they actually have pretty good coffee and its cheap. And they sell hash browns for like, $1.50 for 6. 

  My big beef with the non-chain coffee stores, therefore basically all of them near my place, is that they don't open until around 10am. So if you are a morning coffee person you would like to hope that there is a Starbucks around, or a McDonalds or something. Even some of the name chains don't open until a bit later, so wanting to stop and grab a coffee on your way to school is out of the question. 

  Another thing that is kinda annoying is that the coffee places usually have a pretty shit food selection. They don't really do sandwiches here, and the cakes are, well, Korean. So don't expect awesome snacks with your coffee. 

  This is all just my opinion, so if you find or know of something that goes against this please tell me! I am always excited to hear of a decent place to find coffee :) So you can see how I fell into the coffee trap, huh?

Till next time, citizens

xoxoxo

It's Cool in Fall

What is this?

  What type of blog is this?? 

I read on some page somewhere that all blogs should fall into some sort of category... Which got me thinking. Is this a travel blog?? I certainly talk about my travels, but I don't know if the whole content falls here. It's def not a cooking blog, although I do post what I am eating and have been known to add a recipe here and there...

Lifestyle blog? Maybe... But I feel that implies I need to either have kids or talk more about my sex life (gotta have one to talk about it I spose...)

So what will I call this? I think it is a "life experiences/conversational/mind dump" blog. Hope this title is ok with everyone...

*mental note to change the blog description*

#wantsmoretraffic

#missuseofhashtags

#hashtags4lyf

What really happens in Johto...

  Myself and a friend got chatting the other day, and for whatever reason our conversation turned to one of my favourite topics - pokemon. He raised some disturbing points that I want to flesh out here on my life experiences/conversational/mind dump (henceforth called ECMD blog). 

  First, I want to say that these are questions that can be applied to all Pokemon regions, not just Johto, but as I am playing Pokemon Ruby on my phone atm, note that I am referring to the Johto region and all Pokemon I mention will be from there. 

  Ok. So, you get given a Pokemon by the good Profession Littleroot, and you start catching Pokemon. You battle with them, and end up a champ. Let's apply this to a real life situation. You capture an animal and train it to battle until it passes out. Some of them you keep in the back of a van in the dark, others are sent to a warehouse where they are kept in dark cages and never seen again. The ones in your van you train to fight, and regularly challenge people and are challenged in return. You right your animals for money. You force them to grow up with growth hormones (yeah, "rare candy" my arse) or prevent them from growing. You do this repeatedly for your own personal gain. And yet people tell you that your animals like to battle. 

  Let's now look at what is happening in the world of Pokemon. I used to watch the show. It was good. Here are some interesting observations - 

You never see any farm animals, or see any regular fish or birds. 

You see Ash and his friends eating burgers and pizza and other things.

Sometimes you see Pokemon doing hard labour. 

Here is what I think:

They are eating pokemon. They need meat, and there are no cows or whatever so they have, as my friend put it, "pikachu steaks"... And for sport, do they hunt the deer Pokemon? And shoot the bird Pokemon? 

Is there illegal fishing of the sea Pokemon? WHO MANAGES THESE THINGS?

Do people keep goldeens in a bowl like a normal goldfish?

What about that Pokemon that kinda looks like a giraffe? I wonder if someone out there has pelts hanging on their wall of that one... 

  And we who are playing are like sick hunters... we look for the most rare pokemon, the ones where there is only ONE LEFT IN THE WORLD and we try to catch it. And then we force it to fight. What the hell are we turning our children into??

  As you probably know I am eagerly awaiting the next Pokemon game to be released. I will be all over that like Asians on rice. 

In other news...

  I was mega emo last Friday, just missing people who have left Korea and also home... I have had so many dreams lately where I am in Australia. Its prob cos of all the planning for my trip back in January. I will be home for about 3 weeks before heading back to the land of kimchi, so hit me up if you wanna hang. Anyway I had too many drinks and ended up yelling at some poor guy I know (overwhelmed him with English and girl tears. He was suitably freaked out), and then went and had a cry to Steve, Jinsook and Shanda. Sorry everyone... I am not usually a teary drunk, but I was feeling kinda overwhelmed. And lonely. I miss my old friends sooo much. Korea isn't the same without them. 

  I want to buy a new camera. I have pretty much decided to get the Sony NEX 5T, it seems to have all the cool features I want. I don't know much about cameras and stuff so this is a decision based of recommendations by friends. I will let you know when I get it and start posting stupid pics and hopefully doing some new videos. 

Ok, I think thats all I have for now. Let's talk again later, ok??

xoxox

ESL Teaching

  This blog is not really an ESL blog... It is more just ramblings and mind vomit. In saying this, we have to remember that I AM actually an ESL teacher, and occasionally I do some work. I also occasionally get asked by other people about my work, and what I actually do. I can't remember if I have done this before, but I will give you a brief run down of my average day. Let's pick Friday because it is one of my longer days, and also a more varied day in terms of the classes I take.

ESL on a Friday

  I leave my house/cell at 8:15. Get to school by 8:30 where I sit at my desk for 15 odd minutes, checking FB and reading the Herald Sun online. At about 8:45 I go into the classroom and turn on the comp in there and play cookie run on my phone until the kids arrive. Friday I have Grade 6 for the first 3 classes. Generally Co does not turn up to the first class, and I take it alone. Luckily, I love Gr 6-3 and we usually have a fun lesson. Lots of chatting and maybe watching something stupid on YouTube, as well as following the book. Then Co will come for the next few classes and they will be bored and not paying much attention unless they are called on. Then Gr 5, which is usually ok. Lunch is at 12:10 where I do exactly what I did in the morning, but this time with food. Then there is one class after lunch, on Friday's its Gr 4 who are awful and I usually take this class alone. Then, for the rest of the afternoon, I derp around online. If I am feeling especially motivated I might blog like I am now, or I might do some Korean study. And that, my friends, is my day.  At 4:30 I head home.

  Let's briefly go back to the point I made about me being an actual ESL teacher...
Here are a few tips I have thought about for teaching -  

 If you are teaching any grade, but specifically Gr 6, find some common ground. It's a pretty shitty age group, unless you can find something they all like. They all have their favorite songs, and like certain things on TV. If you can connect witht hem then you are half way there. It isnt about speaking their language fluently, its about understanding them on a more basic level. 

  Get to know who their fave k-pop stars are - the girls will love you and the boys will tease you. Personally I like Infinite and B.A.P (curtesy of the girls in Gr 6-1). Also get to know Larva, this stupid animated show they all love. Paint your nails a cute colour, or if you are a guy get a cool hair cut. It doesnt seem like much but little things will go a long way. 

  USE THE HAGWON KIDS THEY ARE YOUR FRIENDS IN CLASS.

Most of the kids I teach are low level English. I speak more Korean than some of them speak English (and this is a disaster, let me tell you). So if you have a kid in your classroom that has a decent grasp on the language make them your friend. Give them candy, pat them on the head whatever. You need him/her to help you out. I am lucky, I get along well with most of the kids, but the ones who fucl around all the time really grind my gears. I have the hagwon kids tell them off all the time. Works a treat.

  Threats don't work if you never follow through on them. I used to say things like "i'm gonna get Co if you guys don't shut up" but naturally he was no where to be found, so this turned into a hollow threat. Now I say "if you don't shut up I am leaving this class" and I leave. Ain't nobody got time fo dat.

  Teaching tools I love include:
- any online game. Obvs if its an English one that's cool, if you can turn it into a team activity even better.
- YouTube... I have soooo many videos I could recommend. And basically all of them you can turn into a lesson if you have a bit of time. And the kids love watching things.
- fluffy dice... we have these fluffy dice thingies in the classroom that you can use. Couple this with a deck of cards and you have hours of fun at your fingertips. Again, teams.

  If possible, ALWAYS DO TEAMS. They are stupidly competitive here. And you can use this competitiveness as a way to discipline too. For my little kids (Gr 3 and 4's) I give the teams points. If they are bad they lose points. The winning team gets stickers. Very basic stuff... and it generally means they will police themselves. If their friend sucks and it talking the whole team gets mad at them. This also works for the older kids but you need a better bribe than stickers. Leaving class 5 mins early is a good bribe item :)

  These are just things I have picked up as I have gone along. And most I have stolen from other teaching sites. It got to the point about 2 months ago where Co was hardly coming to any classes and I was like "Fuck, I actually have to teach these kids something" but I hate preparing lessons. And the other issue was that Co would never tell me if he was coming or not, so I didn't want to go to all this effort and prepare something only for him to turn up and make them study the book. So all my plans are based on something that I can pretty much pull out my ass at the last minute. 

Is this normal?

  For me? Yes. For everyone else in Korea? No. 

I am not required to do lesson plans, and I do not teach with Co. Either he teaches and I stand there or I teach while he is... well... wherever he is. The time in the afternoon is for lesson planning, and I actually have heaps and heaps of plans that I have made but will never use. So at least I have emergency plans if I need them.  As camp approaches I plan for camp. This is the extent of my planning. I also have a word doc of games I want to play, and activities. So I do plan, but there just isn't really anyone to plan for. Are my planned lessons very good? No idea, Co seems to think they are shit so I just leave it. 

  If you are coming to teach in South Korea, you will have a different experience to me. A different one to all my friends, and different to their friends. All schools and situations are different and you will come into this world with no idea what to expect, regardless of what research you do. All I can say is that I hope you get a good co teacher, and that you have at least one kid in every class that speaks some English. 

Field Trip

  I went on my first ever field trip with Gr 3 yesterday. I love these kids, they are still cute and they crack me uyp. We went to some Independence Park in Cheonan which was interesting. Let's just say if every single elementary student visits this park, I can understand why they all hate Japan. Not gonna lie, some of it came across as propaganda (not taking away from what happened, I also agree that occupation was awful) but the wording of some of it was... interesting. I wonder what the translation was like. Anyway here are some pics from the day - 

I took a heap more photos, I just think these kids are adorable. And for the most part they were very well behaved, until the very end where they decided it would be a good idea to run fully clothed through the fountain... We teachers were off having a coffee while the kids were running wild (something that would never happen at home I am sure) when one of the girls came screaming up to us to say that - 

- One boy has slipped and cut his head (bleeding very badly... just above his eyebrow)

- Kids from another school are yelling at our students for splashing them

- Some of the boys are taking their clothes off

We went running back over to the kids and yes, they were bleeding, dripping wet and getting naked. So the other teachers yelled at them a bit, the boys put their shirts back on and fixed the bleeding kid. They had stopped splashing the other school at this point so no harm no foul. We ushered them all back onto the bus and headed back to school. It was a fun day, and I got to go home at 4pm. 

  And this week our school has given us both Thursday (a national holiday) and Friday off, so LONG WEEKEND. 

I am sure there will be something fun to report next week!

xoxo