It's over

This goes out to the 6 of you that are faithful readers.

I have just finished the camp and am quite pleased about it. I am completely exhausted after having to MC the closing ceremonies the past two days. Tomorrow I am heading up to Seoul so I can get a close look at the DMZ (the area separating North and South Korea). After that I will post a bunch of pictures and may actually have something interesting to say.

The camp did pay in cash so I had to walk around half the day with my pockets bulging. Why Korea doesn't make a bill larger than our equivalent to the $10 bill mystifies me. I did feel like a drug dealer though.

I am really looking foreword to the bus trip up to Seoul because I will have a chance to listen to my freshly downloaded courses from Berkeley (that I got for free on ITunes) about US foreign policy after 911 and all about Byzantine rulers! Hooray!!!!

Camp III

The camp is going well, the kids still like me and I like them for the most part. The bosses took us out a couple of times, once to some Korean place where the head boss got wasted on rice wine, then on Friday we went to Bennigan's. I was surprised how good the food tasted and how full I got on almost nothing. It was a bit much since it was all the employees but I think everyone had fun.

After many of us went to a karaoke room and sang our hearts out. I did some Blondie which seemed to be a hit, but the Koreans doing their rapping stole the show. The (s)Hite beer was flowing and we all forgot that we had to work the next morning. There were numerous Irish songs (Cranberries and whatnot) so I think the island girls were happy. Mom would have been proud of my "Sweet Caroline".

I have pretty much decided to stay here for my full contract. It will be 5 months longer but I will be able to save enough to either go on some adventures or start grad school or something. At this point it looks as if the Trans-Siberian railroad adventure is off, but now I am looking into a trans-Pacific journey. I have to see if the dates line up but I saw some going from Busan (where I live) to LA, Houston, Tampa, or NYC.

Also, since I am sticking around I may take a ferry to China for a week or so. I get two weeks off in February and don't feel like sitting around boring ol' Korea.

Oh, and in 8 days I'll be 100% out of debt!!!!!!! The whole reason I came here was to pay back being stupid for a few years. I was able to do it in 4 months, so the rest will be pure profit!

Camp II

I've now been at the camp for 2 weeks and have settled into a routine. It is fairly easy since the kids are used to sitting in classes from morning well into the evening. Many of them go to their regular English schools after they are done at the camp. I am so glad I didn't grow up in Korea. There is very little living until after you finish university. Many high schools go on until 10 PM, luckily for me, I teach at a non-academic high school. It can be even longer for the guys since they must serve a mandatory 30 months in the military after high school.

One of the camp teachers is an older Canadian man who is a bit eccentric. He is quite loud and has no problem expressing his opinions. Unfortunately he seems to be quite negative about Korean culture and makes comments about this in front of the Koreans quite often. There was a big clash yesterday between him and all the non foreign teachers. It's a shame because he really seems to be a genuinely nice guy apart from that.

The other teachers and I were in need of some Western food so we made a trip to T.G.I. Friday. I spent the rest of the evening evacuating my system through every imaginable orifice and spent yesterday being coddled by the cute Korean teachers' assistants. My boss even offered to give me acupuncture but I had to decline. I think they are being especially nice to me so I won't side with the Canadian but I am just going to stay out of the whole damn thing.

It's amazing how well the kids understand. My 7-8 year old students catch on to anything I say fairly quickly. They are all sweet and almost always do their homework. Oh, and they never talk back. Why couldn't most of my American students be like that?

Camp

I started teaching at an English "camp" this week at a nearby university. It is me, two Irish girls, two American guys, one Canadian and one Aussie... and a few Korean teachers as well. I teach 4 different classes a day to two groups. So I have about 120 students in all. I can only remember a handful of their names (they have to use English names) but it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. I do have a cute teacher's assistant, so that makes the day go by a bit quicker.

I was hoping that some of the teachers would be from Busan so I could make so new friends in the area but it's not to be. Oh well, I will make the best of my time here.

I am staying in a dorm since it takes an hour to get to the school from my flat. I share a suite with the Australian girl which is a bit hard since now I need to remember to put the seat down all the time. She seems quite nice and we get along (she's only been here for 2 days though) so it shouldn't be bad.

We (some of the teachers and I) went out last night to get some beer and food. After having a pork omelet we went to the Girl and Beer bar. I was a little upset since there were actually 2 girls there but they were dressed in some weird anime outfit that wasn't very attractive on them. After that we ventured to the Beatles bar where we expected to find a Beatles theme. There was one small poster over the bar but the rest of it looked and smelled like all of our grandmothers' houses. Finally we went to ㄹㄴㄹ BAR (if you see ??? before bar it's because you don't have Korean installed on your computer) which was really swank and they even gave the one in the group who wasn't drinking a free Jack n'Coke. We had to leave shortly after since we have a CURFEW!!! They lock the doors to the dorm at midnight. I don't know what they do if there is a fire (I don't care, I am on the bottom floor) but what I do care about is why college students (the curfew is for everybody living on campus) aren't allowed out.

Anyway, I left my laptop on the subway this morning. Thankfully Koreans aren't into theft so much.