Life Update

About two weeks ago, we were told that our apartment was being put on the market. Due to some change in the law, the owner of our flat had to sign something for us, as foreigners, to continue living there. Unfortunately the owner lives in Japan and so was unavailable. We didn't want to hand over a set of keys and risk our stuff walking off, so we had to endure people looking round our apartment when we just wanted to kick-back and relax.
This went on for three days, with visits everyday. A week ago on Tuesday we were told that we would have to move out the next day because the new tenants wanted to wallpaper. We were not happy about how we were being messed around and felt helpless and undervalued. It kind of sucked. Plus we had no idea where we were being moved to, or what the new apartment would be like. The only upside to the move was that I got Wednesday morning off work to be there for the move. Fortunately the movers were great. Really respectful of our stuff and quick. Our new place is only a couple of blocks away. The layout it almost a carbon copy of the old place. It was kinda filthy when we moved in. Courtney and I spent several hours scrubbing and cleaning before we started to feel good about the place.
We've had this past week off work. We were planning on going somewhere in Korea during our vacation time but we've just chilled out at home. Last weekend we took part in an art event that benefited the Korean Woman's Association. I donated a photo to be auctioned and Courtney did a live painting. It was a great night and we were honored to be a part of it.
We've managed to get the apartment the way we like it, and now we like it a little better than the old place. We know how to get the hot water working here, we don't have any English channels here so we don't watch TV. We've got ourselves an internet connection finally and hung some of our work on the walls.
I've finally started to take an active interest in bushcraft. I've been trying my hand at some simple wood carving. So far I've churned out several spoons, each one a little better than the last. I'll need to get a crooked knife if I want to carve out the bowls, but I'm not sure how I'll get my hands on one of them in Korea. As detailed in the last post, we went out, made a fire and cooked on it today. That was a lot of fun. I've read a great deal on many of these things, camp-craft, bushcraft and the like, but actually trying them out is a whole other ball game. It's a lot of fun and has a much steeper learning curve.
I've been reading the Zen Habits blog and one of the many suggestions for improving ones life is to wake up earlier. I'm naturally more of a morning person than a night owl so this has been easy for me. Even though it's our vacation I've been trying to get up at 6 a.m. with reasonable success. It's nice to be up while the day is still young, knowing that most people are still asleep. It gives me a chance to see the world wake up around me. I haven't been using the time very productively yet, but I will start setting myself tasks to do soon. Come April, the sun will be rising about the same time as I do, so I will take that opportunity to hopefully get out and take more wildlife photos. I've been kinda lax with it at the moment. During the work week, it's dark when we get up and the light begins to fade when we get home but the days are gradually getting longer and becoming better for me to take pictures.
We'll see how everything goes.

In the woods

Courtney and I went up the hill behind our house today. It's a cool little walk. There's an old bunker up there, and a load of trenches, so I guess the area used to be used by the military. We however were up there to cook sausages.
We collected some firewood. I took my firesteel with me, Courtney wisely took a bic lighter. We went up the old bunker and decided to set up 'camp' on top of it. Less chance for the fire to get out of hand. Neither of us have any real experience starting fires in the woods, let alone trying it with a firesteel. We had tinder and kindling and what-not but after a lot of faffing about we resorted to the lighter. Even then it took us a couple of attempts to get going. A lot of lessons learned from it:
1) have all your tinder, kindling and fuel ready before starting the fire.
2) build a base to work on, don't try starting on the ground.
3) have a little bit more of everything with you than you think you'll need.
We did finally get a nice little blaze going and whipped out the sausages. Court got hers nice and crispy before quickly tucking into it. We then learned another very important lesson. Korea individually wraps its sausages in plastic. I don't think Courtney will soon forget that lesson. With the plastic wrapping removed, the sausages were still terrible imitations of meat. Still we didn't go up there to have a culinary experience as much as we went up there to dink around in the woods. All in all, it was a pretty cool way to spend an afternoon. 

New Portfolio Site

I've just set myself up with a free trail with zenfolio. I've been meaning to sort myself out with a proper website for a while now and zenfolio looks like it suits my needs quite well. Please check it out here and feel free to leave some feedback.

Unbelievable

From the Guardian's Environment News:

"80% of our calories are provided by just 12 plant species (eight cereals and four tubers), despite the fact that 30,000 edible species of plant are known."

Depressing

Just read this from A Photo Editor. Bascially the article is about two new laws being considered by the British government. The first concerns 'Orphan Works'. These are images that have an unknown creator. The new law would allow these to be used commercially if the author cannot be found after a "suitably diligent search" without defining what a suitably diligent search is. So if you have any images online that don't have your name or copyright plastered over them, then they could be used without your knowledge or consent.
The second law is a lot more straight forward. It basically proposes to ban pro photographers from photographing anyone in public who might object to being photographed. They don't have to object, they just have to be someone who might object.
And people wonder why I've been out of the country for over a year now...

Birds in Flight

 

  

  A couple of shots from the river near our house.

Teaching Craziness

There are three broad categories of teaching institutions in Korea for most foreigners entering the country:

1) Public School
2) Private English Schools (Hagwons)
3) English Villages

English Villages are pretty crazy places. They're like English language theme parks. Schools send groups of kids there to experience situational English. The foreigners aren't so much teachers as they are performers. It's pretty rough on them, teaching the same lessons to different kids, day-in, day-out. As a result, the staff turn over rate is pretty high.
Hagwons are a little more hit or miss. I was fortunate enough to be a part of a very nice, family run hagwon that treated me very well. From what I've heard from my friends here, the larger chains are a lot more impersonal and don't treat their staff that well. As private enterprises, hagwons are interested in keeping their customers happy. Their customers are the parents, so a lot of silliness goes on to make sure the parents are kept happy. At my hagwon, the students took a lot of tests that meant nothing and were rather easy, just so the hagwon could send home good results.
Public schools seem to be the most stable institutions to teach in. There's a contract that's the same for all foreigners across the country, as well as one, national textbook. This means that you have to be quite creative to make the lessons interesting but you also have a Korean co-teacher with you in the class. People's experience's with their co-teacher's range from amazing friendships to want to inflict serious harm.
Now that I've given you a brief outline to the options available you'll understand my confused and disappointed state. We signed contracts at a public school and were led to believe we'd be teaching the public school curriculum. However we're teaching in the school 'English Centre'. This means we teach hagwon style afternoon classes with regular students. That part of the job is pretty good. We see the same kids three or four times a week. The downside is that as parents are paying for those classes we're under pressure to keep them, and not the students, happy. Our morning schedule has been absolutely nuts since coming here. I haven't had one week be the same as the last yet. That's not so much the fault of the school. We've come in at a turbulent time, in between semesters. So students are graduating, new schedules are being drawn and re-drawn. Unfortunately for us, because of our school's special English Center, it looks as though we'll be teaching random students from other schools. From what I can gather, we'll teach the same weekly schedule again and again and again to random students from the Incheon area. Much like an English Village.
Needless to say that, applying for what we thought would be a public school position, and finding ourselves somewhere between hagwons and English villages, we are more than a little disappointed.