Oh the Agony!

*Warning* This post is somewhat football heavy.

Part of being an England fan means being all too aware that the world cup will be a tense and sick-inducing time. We always start with the hope that somehow we are magically better than we are, followed by praying that we can scrape through a game on sheer luck. And finally the all too inevitable demise, probably involving penalties. Not to be a pessimist or anything, it's just we all know that the famous year of 1966 is getting further and further away into the past. I remember the first time I got into watching football- It was 1996 and I was 12. England got to the semi-finals of the Euros, getting beaten by Germany on penalties. I couldn't believe it. I thought that if I wanted it enough then we would win. That was my introduction to the pain and anguish of what it means to be an England fan. And we haven't got that far in a major tournament since.

Here is a little snapshot of the English desperation, as early as the first game. Lovely.

I knew that buying a ticket to Brazil for after the group stages was a heck of a gamble where England are concerned, but to flop out in this pathetic manner-the first time we've been knocked out in the group stages since 1958, and the earliest we've been knocked out ever- feels like a personal insult! It wasn't what we had in mind when we imagined getting on the plane, but hey ho. Needless to say I'm leaving my England shirts at home. What we have to remember is that we're still going to party in Rio in the lead up to the final, which is hard to feel bad about. I'm now an honorary South Korea fan- it's nice to feel some closeness with another team, to at least have a decent reason as to why you're supporting them. Alas, after last nights result against Algeria, I fear for them too.



 ANYWAY, enough about that. In much more positive news, my sister got married last week. It was a perfect English wedding: beautiful setting by a river, beautiful bride, nice weather we never thought we'd get, lots of drink, food, cake, dancing and of course the dodgy speeches! One of my favourite parts of  the day was when the high heeled 'single ladies' battled it out to catch the bouquet. What a tradition!

Congrats you guys!

Thirty and in Dirty Blackpool

As usual, the act of being at home has rendered me terribly busy! I've been here, there and everywhere, seeing people, catching up and of course eating and drinking too much. Oh yes, and all that on top of bashing out a 60,000 word first draft of a story in preparation for my dissertation. It's amazing how a pen can run away with itself!
My 30th birthday was a momentous occasion, and I must say I'm feeling completely older and wiser now. Ha. I've been thinking about everything that happened in the decade that was my 20s. At the beginning of it I was in my second year at university and working at pizza hut. By the end of it I'd had 16 other jobs spanning six different countries, as well as in four different cities in England. I got married. I became an aunty (three times!). I visited lots of wonderful places and met countless wonderful people. 
Yes, my 30s have got a lot to live up to, but I feel sure they're up to the challenge!

Last weekend was my sister's hen night in sunny Blackpool. As is obligatory in these sorts of situations, we were drinking by 10am on the bus and arrived to overcast skies and heavy rain to drink some more. She had the full fluffy pink works including everything there is that is 'willy' (willy lollipops, willy whistles, willy straws, you name it). We headed out to a transvestite show, which I have to say showcased Blackpool's absolute finest. That sounds sarcastic, but it's really not. In it's heyday Blackpool was the place to go: ballroom dancing in the the tower, shows, fair rides on the pier and donkey rides on the sandy beach. Unfortunately with the decline of the British seaside holiday (which the crappy weather is largely to blame for), Blackpool seems to now have a sign at the gates saying 'hen and stag dos only.' The result is a load of dirty people being loud and getting paralytic. I saw a fair few collapsed people and ambulances by the time the night was over. Not to mention the fact that Blackpool is known for having a pretty down-and-out populace. 'Funny Girls,' however, was wonderful. Set in a proper theatre, it included tap dancing, ballroom dancing and acrobatics. There were tributes to Michael Jackson and the Spice Girls, and even an amusing montage from The Sound of Music! Despite being up on the balcony I went to order at the downstairs bar, simply to get a closer look at the trannies serving the drinks there. They were amazing! What struck me was the difference between the Dame Edna-esque trannies of Blackpool and the lady boys of south east Asia. The hugely tall compared to short, the larger than life wigs compared to glossy home grown hair, the stuffed bras compared to the real fake boobies, the gruff voices and stubbly chins compared to the high pitched girly laughs and baby soft cheeks. The adams apples compared to the lack thereof. The transvestites compared to the transsexuals. The list goes on. 
One of my favourite parts of the evening was wondering what the 80 year old woman in the booth next to us thought of it all...

All in all I have to say Blackpool proved itself as a right laugh-if a bit of a dive. 

The hens out in the sun (if you ask me 7pm is way to early for this sort of thing!)

Tranny Sound of Music aka 'Rachel's highlight.' Terrible picture but hey...

It's really quite pretty when you look at it this way

Hoping to be back a little sooner next time. But in the words of the north, I'll say turrah for now!

 

Travel, study, pack, enjoy!

At the moment it seems that life leaves little or no space for blogging. In the last couple of weeks in Korea I was finishing three pieces of work for my research methods module and packing up our flat (annoying as we're going back but weren't allowed to keep the room). The packing really put into perspective how much stuff we humans accumulate in life. Just six months of being in Korea resulted in boxes and boxes of stuff to leave there for the summer! You have to wonder where it all comes from and why we really need it.

We stopped off in Amsterdam on the way back, but not without hitch. One of the things I'm beginning to realise about travelling so often is that it results in fairly frequent (and expensive) f*ck ups.

So here's the story:

Our boss booked the ticket through a travel agent, with a change in Amsterdam on the way to Birmingham International. After deciding we wanted to stay in Amsterdam for a couple of days, we phoned KLM to change the second ticket, but they said only the travel agent could change it. We couldn't get in contact with the travel agent, so we bought another ticket instead, with another airline.
At Seoul airport we were told it was against the conditions of the (first) ticket to pick up our bags halfway through the journey, therefore our bags would be sent through to Birmingham, despite us not wanting them to. Pretty annoying when the journey has been paid for twice! The robotic 'customer handling agent' refused to do anything about it, but said maybe in Amsterdam we would be able to stop our bags.

11 hours later, at Amsterdam airport...
We were told it was impossible to give us our bags, but if we didn't board the plane then our bags would be offloaded and held until we paid the release fee of 275 euros per bag. Which was obviously insane, not to mention more money than buying a new flight. So we bought a new flight.
We went back to Birmingham and left one bag in the lockers there. The wait time for the flight was four hours, which we spent mainly in the airport bar. This resulted in us drinking too much and (Lee) telling far too many people that we were on our way to Amsterdam, "but had already been there once today."

What a crazy world.

Amsterdam was, of course, wonderful, and I hold out hope that we'll be able to live there one day, when we make our millions. I love the bikes, the canals, the friendliness, the relaxed atmosphere. I love the cafes and the red light district. I love that every bar has a resident cat! We went to Anne Frank's House, which was interesting, being something I've known about and seen pictures of for as long as I can remember.

And now, once again, we're home. It always feels so strange in that all the waiting and missing everyone fades to a distant memory, as we seamlessly slot back in. As always, it's like we were never away.

This summer is set to be busy and extremely fun. Plans include meeting two very important babies, going to a very important wedding, writing a very important dissertation, clearing out my very important (not really) stuff, helping my parents with their very important move to Kent, and going to Brazil for the all important World Cup!!!

And now I'll leave you with a picture of dear Coventry on a lovely sunny afternoon. It's not all bad here! 

Middle Ground, Where Are You?

The atmosphere  here in Korea continues to be a somber one, in the wake of the sunken ferry Sewol. Our camp has been affected by the government's decision to tell schools to cancel all field trips for the rest of the semester. Within a week of the accident 80% of the school groups had cancelled, rendering the corridors, classrooms and open spaces here eerily quiet. The impact of this is that some Korean staff are not having their contracts renewed, and all the hourly paid workers-maintenance, catering, shop assistants, counsellors- are out of a job until things pick up again.
On the one hand it's an extreme measure, on the other I can't blame the government, schools or parents for wanting to safeguard their children after such a tragedy.
Out of the 325 students who went on the trip from the school in Ansan, only 75 survived. Most of the survivors are still in hospital with many students receiving psychiatric treatment. It's hard to even begin to imagine what survivors, family and friends are going through right now.
There's been a lot of discussion and anger about the failure of adults both on and off the boat to respond to the disaster as it was happening. The image I keep getting in my head is of all these obedient children waiting in their cabins whilst the adults failed to rescue them. There have been some arguments blaming the Confucianist values of Korean society, the values that mean young people respect their elders and do what they're told. I don't think it's fair to say the children would've escaped on their own had they not been Korean, but I still can't shake the feeling that the questionless conformity that exists here may have played a part. Funny really that this was the subject of my last blog before the disaster.

In more tragic news, last night I read about the horrific incident in a Leeds secondary school in which a teacher has been stabbed to death by a student, in front of her entire class. I can't even begin to process the implications of this, our first teacher to be murdered inside a British school. I just don't understand how a fifteen year old with a grudge could feel justified or indeed have the guts to take a kitchen knife to school, walk up to his teacher in the middle of class and stab her repeatedly in the neck as she tried to get away. It blows my mind.

Apologies for being full of the joys of spring today. What strikes me about these two awful incidents is that in a way they represent polar opposites. The first shows a failure of adults to help students who trusted them, the other shows a teenager's complete lack of regard for a teacher's life.
I would like to live in a society somewhere in between Korean and English cultures, but I honestly don't think it exists. Here we have babies sent to the orphanage if their mothers are unwed; at home we have a welfare state that encourages young mothers to pretend they are single so they can get maximum benefits. More and more I am realising there is no middle ground.     

To end on a (much needed) lighter note, last week I taught a magic class, in which I wowed and amazed a class of 11. One of the high points was a trick in which I put a paper woman into an envelope, cut her in half and then put her back together again. Sometimes I have these out of body experiences where I look at what I'm doing in class at this school and think- huh, is this really my life? Am I really 'teaching'? 
Then there was mind reading trick. The English level in my class was pretty low so I carefully selected the kid I thought could handle it. I told him a few times (with elaborate actions)  to write his favourite animal on a piece of paper. When he finally understood, he slowly and meticulously wrote a word that I swear must have been at least ten characters long. I then asked him to show it to the other students... this also took what seemed like a lifetime. Then I told him to write five other animals on the other pieces of paper. He said, Ney? (Korean for 'Yes' but often also means 'what the heck are you talking about?'). I repeated the command several times in as many ways as I could and as simply as I could until finally he said 'Ah!' and nodding his head enthusiasticly, he got to work on writing down the other five animals. As you can imagine this process was also a long one. Eventually, I heard those magic words- teacher finished! I took the papers off him, ready to perform my magic. The audience waited with bated breath.
I looked at the first piece paper. PIG.  
This was going to be fun, I just hoped I could pull it off.
Then the second one- PIG.
Oh no.
Then
PIG
PIG
PIG
PIG.
 
Abracadabrah- so I guess your favourite animal's a pig then?

And that, my friends, is what we call an ESL teaching fail.



 P.S If you feel like looking at the first chapter of my dissertation story, you can read it here. Any thoughts, comments or criticisms would be greatly appreciated!

  

As Tragedy Unfolds

I felt today that I needed to write about the thing that's been at the forefront of my mind for the last couple of days. It's not a happy topic by any means, but right now a necessary one.
As the families of the passengers on board the now sunk ferry wait to find out if there are any more survivors, I feel like I am waiting with them. 
The story has made international news at home and in the US, but in case you don't know, a ferry carrying 459 passengers, travelling from Seoul to Jeju Island in South Korea, sank on Wednesday. The majority of the people on board the Sewol were high school students on a field trip. Reports are inconclusive right now as to what happened exactly but they think either the boat hit a rock, or turned too quickly causing cargo to shift to one side. Either way, the boat fell on its side and then later capsized. As of this moment 25 are confirmed dead and 280 are missing.

I've been reading all the updates and the tale that is unravelling just seems to be getting worse and worse. Of course it gets worse by the minute in that the likelihood of finding survivors is becoming less and less likely. But there are so many other things too. The weather and sea currents are so bad that the rescue mission is almost impossible. In fact three divers went missing at one point but thankfully were later found. In the official statement released by the parents, they say that they were at first informed that all the passengers had gotten off the ferry and that they should go to pick them up. When they got there, of course they found the reality to be entirely different. Some parents apparently went out in their own boat with private divers to try and help, but had to turn back due to several of them fainting from distress. I can only begin to imagine how distraught they all must be.
Police are now requesting an arrest warrant for the captain who abandoned ship rather than trying to help his passengers. Aside from the fact that it's against sea law for a captain to do that, it's difficult to get your head round how he could've left all those children and saved himself. I can't pretend to know I would be brave in that situation, but I like to think I would try and do what I could to help. There are reports coming out now about adults who died doing just that, and I hope they will be remembered forever by those people who were saved. The captain has released a short statement saying he's 'deeply ashamed and so sorry.' I think it would be easy to blame him for what happened and to condemn him for what he didn't do, but at the same time I have no idea if I would be able to act in a different or better way if I were in the same situation. The vice principal of the school was rescued but has now been found to have hung himself, near the gym where all the parents are waiting. I think this shows the extent of guilt any adults survivors must be feeling at this time. Whether we believe what they did was right or wrong, it's definitely fair to say they've been through something terrible.

What really gets to me is that unlike a plane crash, there was a window of opportunity in which many more people could have been saved. They ferry was only 25km off the coast of Korea, and there were fishing boats nearby that quickly picked up people in the water. Reports have said that passengers were told to 'stay where they were' and then never actually instructed on how or when to try and escape. And then it was too late.  It's so angering. I know it's generally not advised to jump into freezing cold water, but I think a lot more people would've had more of a chance than they do now. 


Anyway, apologies for such a depressing post, I just wanted to say something about it. And now all I can do- along with the families, the people of Korea and the rest of the world- is put my trust in the rescuers, wait and hope for a miracle. 

Questionless Conformity

The trouble with working in Korea is that it lulls you into a false sense of security in terms of your classroom management skills. The students are generally so well behaved it borders on scary. They are also easily controlled due to their love of doing things en-mass. For example, if you say "be!" to a group of Korean kids they will respond with "quiet!" before shutting up completely.
We often have over 100 students together, and so we adopt this simple crowd control technique to get them to stop talking and listen. It goes a little something like this:

Teacher: "clap 1 time!"

Students clap once.

Teacher: "clap two times!"

Students clap twice.

Teacher: "clap 3 times!"

Students clap three times and then (as if adhering to an unwritten code) put their hands on their heads and are quiet. 


They all do it, everyone one of them. To not do it would to be not Korean.

Last week I was in a group activity and the kids were being pretty loud. My colleague decided to make them clap once, clap twice, clap three times. Then they sat there in silence, hands on their heads until she-like a drill sergeant- shouted "3!" again. They clapped three times in absolute unison before putting their hands back on their heads. My colleague sternly surveyed the obedient crowd before once again demanding loudly "3!" 
This went on for a while, the students sitting their with their hands on their heads, waiting to be commanded to repeat the procedure. It was weird. Sure, it's nice to have such obedient children, but the likeness to robots is sometimes a bit much.

When I left Korea the first time I took 'clap three times' with me, and remember being a bit put out by my European and Saudi students' reaction to it. As in "teacher, what they hell are you doing?" My seven year old Saudi boys would just look confused and then shrug at each other. The concept was even lost on the Japanese students we taught here a few weeks ago. Interesting as they share many similar 'passive and obedient' traits to their far eastern neighbours, but not this one.

I'm aware that the film Frozen has become something of a worldwide phenomenon. I like it. I get it. I've even been practicing some of the piano music. But to like it is not enough here in Korea. Much like their obsession with soju (they've single-handedly made it the worlds most purchased alcoholic drink), the nation has been struck with Frozen mania. Actually, it's more pinpointed than that: it's "Let it Go" mania. The kids sing it in the corridors, they sing it in the classroom, they sing it on their own or as a class choir. In our fashion show they insist on dressing the girl as Elsa, and the boy as Anna (to which he never objects) before parading down the catwalk to the song. 
And on top of all this, I've heard it in so many bars I've lost count.
I sometimes feel like a switch on the motherboard was at some point flicked to "you will love this song with your very being."

Sorry Korea, you know I love you but sometimes you are too creepy!


In the spirit of things, I'll leave you with an excellent rendition of "Let it Go," sung by an impressionist as various different Disney characters.

 

The Madness of Masters

Since starting back on my MA last October I've found myself spending a lot of time feeling guilty about not blogging, but not having enough inspiration or drive to get a post done. The fact is, since I began this blog it's been an outlet for my writing, but I guess since I've been studying again I've been spending my brain power on that instead. Also it doesn't help that because of the time difference, my online class takes place from 3am-6am once a week. I'm not really a night owl at the best of times and this absolute invasion of my usual regular sleeping pattern is offensive and brutal, and definitely f*cks me up for the next couple of days. 

Last semester I had to frantically try to plough my way through books that I had little interest in, purely for the sake of being able to put them in my bibliography and then pretend that they inspired my work. You can see how much I 'enjoyed' reading those books on my review blog here. I really and truly hate reading fiction simply because I have to. Come to that, I hate reading a story simply because someone else says I should, or because it's deemed a 'classic.'

My Research Methods module is currently in full swing, and will later lead into the dissertation. I'm so excited to be working on the story I've been creating for a while now: my fantasy story for children, which all started from a map. 

I'm devoting my time to developing characters, creating communities and coming up with a weird and fun plot, and it all counts towards my masters! This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I chose a creative writing MA rather than a sensible one such as teaching. 
And as if the fun of what I'm working on isn't enough, the research makes it even better. My research has consisted so far of taking notes on handbooks about writing for children, devouring numerous children's books and watching films. 
Then last week my tutor recommended a way in which to research the development of fantasy worlds: she said I should look at computer games. As a result I'm currently waiting for World of Warcraft to download on my computer. I don't mind telling you I'm a bit nervous. Nervous to suck at it and be outcast from taking part in quests, as veterans (or gaming nerds-call them what you will) worldwide see me for the fraud I am. Nervous to get killed in the first five minutes, and most worryingly of all, nervous to get addicted. 

So that's it. If you never see another blog post here you'll know why.