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EPIK Life: Desk Warming and Winter Camp

Before I get into Winter Camp, let me begin by detailing the Korean school year.

School begins on March 1st and the first semester ends in July.  There is a summer vacation from sometime in July until sometime in August.  (I know that "sometime" is pretty vague, but this is almost a direct quote from my Co-Teacher so I'm sticking with it).  The second semester begins in late August, maybe the final week, and runs strong until the end* of December.  There are two months of winter break; January and February.  

*It's worth pointing out that while students take their finals during the first week of December, we still teach until the end of the month.  It's a little strange to teach from the textbooks after the kids have completed their finals, but that's just the way it goes.

Two months break in the summer and two in the winter.  Seems like a pretty sweet deal, right?  And it is a sweet deal if you happen to be a student or a non-contract teacher, and you guessed it, I am not a student and I am a contract* teacher.  

* There are plenty of Korean teachers who are also contract teachers, and they are also required to desk warm during vacations. 

This means that I'll be showing up for school everyday during the winter break.  This is called "desk warming" and if you find yourself sitting in an expat bar around late-December or late-June, you'll find that the air is ripe with conversations about how much "this just sucks, man.  What am I going to do for 2 months?"  

Don't fret my fellow and/or prospective Guest English Teachers, most of us will have 1 or 2 weeks of camp to keep us occupied.  Then the students will come back to school for a week (?) in February...in order to....do...things...

It's also worth pointing out that we are allotted 10 days of paid vacation in the winter.  Couple those days with a few weekends and it bumps up to 16.  Not such a bad deal at all.

Camp is basically just an excuse to have some fun while teaching the students.  Kids sign up and come and go as they please, (or at least they did at my camp and my co-teachers didn't seem to mind).  My camp began after the New Year and lasted for 5 days.  Here are some of the highlights:

Superheroes:  When I was young, I loved superheroes.  Luckily, movies like Iron Man, Spider Man, and Batman are very popular here in Korea, so the kids also share my sentiments.  They got to create their own heroes, give them powers, and then design their costumes.  After that, we played a game where each team had to guess which hero I like more.  For some reason they just absolutely love trying to guess things about me.  In one class, the boys and the girls were divided into two teams.  The boys had 15 points and the girls had 1, so I decided to make the final question worth 14 points.  The girls finally guessed the correct answer and I almost had a riot on my hands.

Monsters:  They love horror movies here so I introduced them to some classic American horror films like Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Wolfman.  Then the kids played a game in which they rolled some dice and created a monster of their own.  Each side of the die corresponded with different monster parts.  They simply drew the part based on the numbers they were rolling.  It was good fun.  After that, we made our own monster masks.  Most of the kids wanted to make zombie masks so I used this as an opportunity to gross out my co-teachers by leaving still images from zombie movies up on the screen while the kids tried to replicate the gruesome faces.  Here's a few of my favorites:

Canape(?):  According to one of my co-teachers, Canape is some kind of French pastry(?) or treat(?).  I wasn't sure, so I looked up a definition using a highly reliable source, (not Wikipedia) and I came to learn that canape is indeed a French word meaning "couch".  Upon further investigation, I can confirm that canape is basically a small, decorative, handheld food that is eaten in one bite, also know as an appetizer.  Anyway, I  had no idea what to prepare for this but luckily my co-teachers already had a plan and a "recipe".  First, I'll just list the ingredients.  Pay close attention and try to visualize a "small, usually decorative, handheld food".

1 piece of toasted white bread cut into 4 squares

1 Ritz cracker

1 smear of cream cheese

1 piece of yellow American cheese, unwrapped and divided into 4 squares

1 slice of tangerine

1 cherry tomato, halved

a few raisins

Does this sound all fancy and French-like to you?  Well, allow me to continue.

First, smear the cream cheese on the toasted bread.

Second, place the Ritz cracker on top of the cream cheese.

Third, place the American cheese on top of the cracker,

Fourth, place the tomato and tangerine slices on top of the cheese.

Fifth, garnish with raisins.

So basically we just made a weird, open-faced, cheese sandwich that looked like this:

In case you are wondering, I didn't try one.  Something about it just didn't really pique my interest.  The kids seemed to enjoy it though and after about 5 minutes, it turned into "who can stuff the largest pile into their mouth", documented here:

Pizza Party: No camp would be complete without one.  I don't really need to explain this so I won't.

Pizza Famine

Busan: Jagalchi

A few weeks ago we traveled to Busan for the International Fireworks Festival. I've heard the festival is really a sight but unfortunately, because of the torrents of rain, I'll have to wait until next year to see things exploding in the sky.

Busan was by no means a bust though. Busan, the 2nd or 3rd largest city in Korea, (I could probably look this up but I'm going to be lazy), is located just southeast of Daegu, on the Sea of Japan. Even for late October, it was warm enough to run around in the water, and that's exactly what we did on Friday night when we arrived.

As I said, Saturday was a complete washout. It rained extremely hard for 30 minute intervals. The rest of the time, it just rained steadily. We made the best of the situation though. Our first stop was Jagalchi Fish Market. The market is located right on the water so we were able to watch some pretty impressive fishing vessels head in with the morning catch.

Let me explain how Jagalchi Fish Market works. The ground floor is basically a living menu. Each vendor has a designated area on one of the top floors for preparing and serving their goods. 

Step One: Find something identifiable while keeping in mind that you will eat that very fish a few minutes later. If find yourself growing particularly fond of a specific Octopus, step away, unless you respect it enough to devour it raw. It's tentacles will still be writhing around on the plate and they will attach themselves to the inside of your mouth. If you really think you're up for the fight, get ready to chew hard and fast. Don't dishonor yourself or the fish by letting it crawl down your throat, causing you to probably choke to death in front of everyone. The people are busy here. They have enough fish to clean and they certainly don't need to waste their time mopping you up off of the floor.

Step Two: Stand clear of the squid! They're feisty little bastards. We watched one leap from it's basket and nearly send two young girls into cardiac arrest. I was also lucky enough to be assaulted by the same squid that we were going to eat. I have to give it to this guy, he put up a fight, but in the end, I digested him.

Step Three: Head upstairs and get ready to eat. That's basically it. Pick some fish, watch out for the live ones, and then chew thoroughly.  

We circled the bottom floor once before deciding on our meal. We were lucky enough to meet a vendor who spoke pretty good English so we ordered from his baskets o' fish. Most of our meal would be sashimi, which is just slices of raw fish. We had tuna, what I believe to have been fluke or flounder, octopus tentacles, (as previously documented), squid, (again, see above), two grilled fish that were white, flaky, and delicious, (the nice woman who served us forced our friend to eat the eye ball. Really wish I would have recorded that but I was too busy fighting with tentacles), and some type of shellfish whose innards can only be described as looking intestinal. I would have taken more pictures but I wanted to eat my lunch before it flopped back into the sea.

Jinju

On October 5th, 1592, the invading Japanese army attacked Jinju Fortress with 30,000 soldiers.  General Kim Si-Min was set to defend the fortress with an army totaling only 3,800 people.  Of these 3,800, many were civilians.  After six days of combat, Jinju Fortress remained under Korean control and the Japanese army was forced to retreat.  The battle was recorded as "The Great Victory in Jinju" and it is one of the most important battles of the Imjin War.

Each year, Jinju holds a lantern festival in commemoration of this victory.  The river, along with the confines of the fortress walls, are adorned with lanterns of all shapes and sizes.  Wobbly footbridges span the river's surface and for 1,000 won, festival goers are able to (slowly) cross the water for a closeup look at some of the lanterns.

Jinju Fortress sprawls the rivers edge and winds its way up into the hills.  After the sun set, we made our way inside.  I'll let the pictures do the talking for me.

The river 

paper cranes

topical

the original John Wayne

the first joke ever told

this guy took all of my money

Kim Si-Min

some guy who followed us around

On the other side of the river was a bamboo forest where it must have been mating season.

At least the tigers were on their best behavior.  

Chuseok in Gwangju

Five weeks into the semester and we are afforded a long weekend on the account of Korean Thanksgiving, or Chuseok as it's properly called.  While there are some similarities between American Thanksgiving and Chuseok, (them being family time and LOTS of food), there were no pilgrims or Indians or 25 pound stuffed turkeys with pumpkin pie chasers.  That's not to say that there weren't plenty of other delicious eats to be had.

Proof

This spread was first offered as a tribute to the family's ancestors before being prepared and passed around the table.  

I guess I forgot to mention that we were staying with Caroline's friend, Yuri, and her family so let me back up.   

Our wonderful hosts

That's Yuri (on the right) and her boyfriend Jun-Yeong (on the left, duh).  Jun-Yeong drove us around all weekend and I felt bad for not being able to say much to him, (he spoke very little English and I speak VERY little Korean), but we were able to share a nice moment over a plate of chicken when he recited every position on the baseball field in perfect English.  Jun-Yeong is a fan of the Kia Tigers and later that night they defeated the Lotte Giants and advanced to a playoff game.  

After eating (way more) than our fill on Sunday, we ventured out into the country on Monday afternoon.  Our first stop was Damyang where we strolled through a bamboo forest.

All of that hiking burned right through the massive amounts of calories we had consumed a day earlier, but lucky for us there were dozens of noodle shops along the river on the outside of the forest.  This particular region is known for its guksu, which is a type of buckwheat noodle.  I ordered the spicy noodles and was not at all disappointed.

cold, spicy and delicious

Satiated, we made our way further out into the countryside where we hiked around an old garden from the Silla Kingdom.