"Can you sing it?"

Those are 4 of the most dreaded words that could be said to me. They are also 4 words that were uttered to me last Thursday.....

I was teaching my 1st grade class at Jinseo on "open day", where teachers and parents can walk into any classroom and watch the class. My teacher wanted to do something that involved lots of talking, to try to promote and advertise the students and their English skills. Fair enough as well. The problem was that she decided to do this via a song. We went through the class as normal, reading the song, explaining the song, etc etc, and then she wanted the students to sing it. She sort of gave me an indication to sing along with it, but i pretended to not not hear or see. None of the students sang, so it was a bit of a let down for her. We went through the song again to help the kids understand it, and then they tried singing it again. This time I made a few grunts and moans to pretend that i was trying. Unfortunatley, the teacher interpreted this as me really really wanting to sing. So straight after the second attempt, she asked me those fateful words, "Can you sing it?". I was hoping the question was rhetorical, or that I could say yes and then we just move on like nothing happened. But, because I am a professional, I answered her enthusiastically with, "ahhhh, yea..... sure". I then asked her, "with the melody?", hoping I could just read it without singing it, but no, she wanted the whole 9 yards. By now, there were 3 other teachers in the room, the Vice Principal and 2 parents - by far the most that had been in the room at any time. I begrudgingly asked her to play the music and i let it rip. Here are the lyrics to this touching and emotional masterpeice:

How pretty the tree is!
Oh, how gentle the sunshine is!
Theres a rainbow beyond the hill.
...Birds are singing songs witht their melodies.
Oh oh oh, see in the green green field the bright colours of the pretty flowers.
Im singing like the birds dancing with the breeze.
Theres love in my heart

I was a little slow to start, but when I figured I cant stop now, and ive already made an arse of myself, I let loose a little more and finished strong, as this picture will attest.



Well, this picture was taken at a karaoke place downtown and after alcohol, but it was was earily similar to me perfomance at the school. The students in typical Korean fashion applauded loudy after I finished, but they applaud each other for popping pimples, so I know it wasnt worth very much. I then swore revenge on my teacher and waited for my face to return to its normal colour. I also basked in the thought that was not gonna do something so akward and ridiculous for the rest of the day. Or year for that matter. T hings can only be more comfortable from here. I do have to say, why the hell did I have to do that. I didnt read anything that said I may be required to sing songs about pretty flowers in front of live humans. If I did, it may have altered my decision. Also, is it not middle school that I teach? This kind of stuff fits right in for the elementary school kids, but middle school?? Come on, they should be over this crap by now. And poor kids having to listen to me sing! They are the real victims in all this.

I also went on a "Cultural Day" with the other public school teachers in the area. It was meant to teach us about Korea, Jinju and to meet the other teachers. I know about 85% of the teachers anyway so that wasnt a big deal. But I am wondering about that other 15%. What do these people do?? Do they ever leave their house? What are they doing with their lives? These people have been here for extended periods of time too, it isnt like they arrived last week. If I had been here for 6 weeks and hadnt met anyone, I would have just started walking into EVERY single bar in town on Friday and Saturday night until I found some foreigners. I couldnt i magine not hanging out with people over here and some of these people have been here for 6 months or more, not 6 weeks! Honestly, id go crazy without all the people here, I dont know how these people do it. Anyway, other than me musing about what these people do we did see some stuff in and around town - The Jinju Castle Museam, the Bronze Age Museum, the Herbal Museum, and one other Museum that no one really knows what it was showcasing. So we certainly got our fair share of Museums for the day. Next trip will be the freshwater museum, the candle museum and sock museum, im told. It was good going to the castle museum because i hadnt actually been inside the castle before, even though its the main attraction of the city and right downtown. The best part of the day was archery and lunch. The worst part w as making some weird traditional Korean masks. The irony in the masks was mine actually turned out really well, which it absolutely shocking. The only thing Im worse at than singing is art, and im particularly bad at making masks of any discription, but this one turned out to be one of the best. I wont mention that the museum girl helped me more than anyone else (awesome job by the way, instructing classes at the museum on making plaster masks). The herbal museum was cool because it had this wierd outdoor childrens theme park kind of thing. None of it really made any sense but was pretty cool to look at. The highlight was definately the large bear and tiger heads that you could walk in. I was just a little disturbed though by the use of the tiger and bear because they were used as mascots everywhere in the museum and it was sort of promoting the fact that bear and tiger parts are used in alot of the old herbal remedy things. or i think thats how it went. either way, i dont want to think about how you kill tigers and bears and then chop off their wangs and make a tea out of it. I have some cool photos of me that are taken on someone elses camera, so once ill get them ill post them. A pic of me at archery and of the big bear head will have to do til then...

World Cup Fever

Well World Cup is here and it was responsible for one heck of a weekend. Unfortunately, the euphoria of the weekend was quickly extinguished by the Socceroos Monday morning, who took the faith I showed in them by waking up at 3:30 and repayed me by laying a massive turd all over the field in South Africa. Not one of my prouder Australian sporting moments, and it leaves me brutally exposed to ridicule from my fellow ex-pats, considering im always flapping my gums about how good Australia is. Should be in for a bit of a spray this week but once Thursday rolls around, all will be forgotten when we watch Korea run around again. The game on the weekend was a beauty, as I will explain in a moment, and its on at 8:30 again, so it couldnt set up any better.

Things kicked off on Friday night where we watched the opening match downtown. It was a good omen for the weekend as about 30 people rocked up, which is one of the biggest crowds id ever gone out with since id been here. The night was good and everyone was just frothing for Saturday to roll around.

When it did, we went to one of the local Universities to watch the game. It was being played on a big screen projector in an ampitheatre set up, which held about 5 thousand people i reckon. When we first arrived I just knew it was going to be insane. It was all dark and you could make out the red of the Devil horns some members of the crowd were wearing (Koreas mascot is the Red Devils) and the ampitheatre just rose up all around and imposingly enclosed the mad and crazy koreans. It was truly a an amazing sight and incredible atmosphere. The chanting had already begun when we arrived - mostly Daehan-minguk (clapclap clapclap clap) - and didnt stop the entire night. Literally. There was not a second of silence from the crowd. The Koreans were going histerical at the tiniest of things - the winger would pass the ball BACKWARDS to the full back and the crowd would go nuts. When the ball was anywhere within 25 metres of either goal, hysteria turned into manic schizophrenia and people were seriously having nervous breakdowns. In between the fits they managed to compose themselves and cheer or whack together those "thunder sticks" or noise makers that are exceedingly annoying. When the goals were scored obviously the crowd erupted, and I went idiot and ran onto the front stage with Korean Youths who were dancing and celebrating. The cheering of the Koreans in general was quite strange - it was 100% honest; they have massive pride in being Korean (like most people have with their country) and they were just expressing their pride in their country - but it comes off like alot of things in Korea - slightly cheezy and exagerrated. We Aussies have pride in our country but you would never see us cheering the way the Koreans did. All in all, it was a fantastic spectacle and I was happy to see the Koreans win - partly because i was rooting for them, and partly because I didnt want anyone to go home and kill themselves if they lost.

We rolled on into town to a favourite establishment of ours - Go West - and watched the 2nd game of the night. Halfway through the game and pretty much already massively pissed it dawned on us that it was still over 3 hours to the nights main event - USA v England. But like the troopers we are, we soldiered on staggered to Rock Bar for the finale of the night.

My allegiences for the game went something like this - I in no way wanted USA to win, but I also was not actively cheering for England. I just cant bring myself to cheer for either team. It would just go against every reason of my being. However, once the game started, and after seeing the following friends of mine turn into the ugliest of ugly Americans, I found myself hoping desperately that the Yanks would go down.


Now im all for dressing up, and to the best of my memory my Yankee friends werent being jackarses in any way (other than just being American), but what you cant see is the back of the shirt. Now, this shirt (and 2 others) had the English flag being utterly disgraced by the worst means possible. Absolutely unmentionable here. Once I saw these, I knew I couldnt let these guys win.


This is part of the crowd that enjoyed the match. We were well trashed at this point and quite a few were struggling big time. I remember watching the 1st half pretty closely and then not much of the second. I also remember seeing a few of the party passed out - one on his girlfriends shoulder and the other in his chair. One guy (standing up on the right in the red shirt) was completely out of it and ended up with dirty words and body parts drawn all over his face. Dont really need to talk about the outcome of the game, other than its fitting that the game was a draw, and the main focus of the night wasnt the result was it? I thought it was more about giving shit to the Yanks. When we left at 5:30 it was well bright outside and sleep was a welcome thought. Great night.


My male Co-Teacher took me out to his hometown after school last Tuesday. He is from a small, small, small village outside a small, small town about 40 minutes north of Jinju. Its in the mountains, very close to Jirisan, the biggest mountain on the mainland. He grew up in absolute poverty - his father was and still is a farmer, but true to Korean form, did everything he could to put his son through school and university. It paid off, as Mr. Lee is a deadset champion. I met his father, went to his old school, then drove back though the mountains. We took a drink from a "special" spring, which spews out some sort of "special" water. I dont really feel too different since i had the water but it did taste nice and cool. We took a look at some traditional Korean houses then went to get some dinner. This was good. Well, entertaining at least. We started off with fried fish - the same you would get with a typicall fish and chips in Oz - however this wasnt ordinary fried fish. Instead of having fried fish fillets, it was fried entire fish. Head, backbone, everything. Except maybe the guts coz I couldnt taste them. It tasted fine, like normal fish, and the bones were relatively soft, but not soft enough to not notice them completely. Then we had a fish stew. Again, it tasted fine; it was a nice tomato sauce and had potatoes sitting at the bottom. However, it was using the same fish as the first dish and these fish are literally the size of the poddy mullets we used to catch at Lake Cathie. You get the fish out of the stew and then pick the meat off the fish because the bones were to hard to eat. You probably got a mouthful of meat for each side of the fish, and it took about 2 minutes to extract said meat off the spine. It was a very picky and tedious meal and took some serious patience. I probably ended up having to pick 20 or 25 fish from the stew and spend about 45 minutes on the meal. Tasted good though. Only problem with the day was I didnt have my camera as it was an impromptu adventure. Really fun though.

Aiiiiiiiiiiight, til next time

I get knocked down, But I get up again.......

Whats happened recently:

- I guess ill start of with a bang. Last Friday night was a pretty big night. The weather has been hot recently - an im talking hot; 28-30 degrees everyday for the past week or so - so a few of us decided to kick off Friday night by drinking down on the River, instead of at a bar. It was a good time; everyone bought something to eat and drink, it was a beautiful night and the atmosphere was sick - we were sitting across from the castle which is lit up at night as well as town and the bridge which are colourful. There are no problems drinking in public anywhere, anytime so we have freedom to do whatever we So everything was fine and dandy at this point.


From here, things become a blur. We head into town for the night at about 12:30 or so. Somewhere on the massive bridge across the river, APPARANTLY I had to relieve myself. I say apparantly because even though there is a photo of it I still dont believe it. Photoshop can do wonderful things these days. We drank and took photos of ourselves in compromising positions all night long. We leave at about 5:30, and everyone plans to go to the beach for the day. As im walking home I decide I will just catch the bus there right now because if I go home to sleep, I wont be up until 4 in the arvo. I was probably a little ambitious at this point but I figured I know how to get there (1 hr bus ride and taxi) and when I get there ill just sleep on the beach and wait for everyone to show up. Genius! I packed my bags and went to the bus stop. I got the ticket and asked every bus that showed up "Samchonpo?". Eventually the bus to the beach showed up, so I jumped on, sat in my seat and passed out. This was 6 AM at Jinju. I wake up to a tap on my shoulders. I was pretty spaced out as I stumbled out the bus. The penetrating sunlight was torturing my eyes but I could sort of distinguish what was around me. Slowly i begin to make sense of what going on as I head for the station terminal. I begin to realize that I recognise this place. Ive definately been here before. No, it cant be......... Its Jinju F****** Bus Station!!!!!! I look at the clock and its 9AM. I had just spent 3 hrs sleeping on the bus while it went to the beach and came back. ARGH!!!! Luckily i was too much of a zombie to really gather any emotions other then confusion, otherwise I might have been slightly pissed off. To make matters worse when i get in the terminal I spot some friends of mine that were heading to Jirisan for the weekend. They see me a mile away and wave so I approach them. I must have looked like a corpse. They ask me what im doing and I literally could barely say a thing for the first 2 minutes. It was a couple of English words mixed with groans and silence. I eventually manage to have a conversation with them about what happened. They kept asking me "Boy, you look shit Jake", and "How much did you drink last night?" and other similar questions. In my defence, if you ask me anything, or look at me within 5 minutes of waking up, im usually in the same state. After a while they said they had to go catch their bus, but I think they were just trying to get away from me. I leave the place devastated im not a the beach and admit defeat - I wasnt going to go through that again. I walked home and passed out. No beach for me. I dont think I can truly describe in words how confused and retarded I felt during that whole episode.

- I went to work at a school that I hadnt been to in a month. I only go to this school 1 time a week and for 3 weeks straight, for various reasons, I didnt have to teach on those days. So I rock up to the school and was instantly disapointed. The 2 HOT ENGLISH SPEAKING KOREANS that used to work at the high school and middle school were gone. So devastating. They were only on 2 or 3 month contracts and they were up while I was away. Too bad. I was also disappointed to find a layer of yellow dust had settled over my chair, desk and computer. My desk is near the window and the teachers like to open the window fully as the temps are getting hotter. I hadnt been at the desk for so long that dust had built up to ridiculous levels. I took about 10 minutes to clean the entire thing up. I sat in my chair without realising and my paints were bright yellow. Strange. I was also saddened to see that my computer hadnt been upgraded from windows 1997. Yes Windows 97. Are you kidding me???

- I got a bit of a shock when the students at one of my schools started wearing uniforms. They had been exempt until now but they now had to wear the summer uniform. I was looking around the class and then stopped at one student, Im Ha Jeong. Ha Jeong was wearing a skirt. I thought, this cant be right, Ha Jeong is a guy, maybe there is a reason he is wearing a skirt. I decided that no, its not because he cant afford shorts, and its unlikely he has to wear his sisters skirt. I was completely bamboozeled. Ha Jeong is the loudest kid in class, always trying to push the limits with the teacher, getting in trouble, playing soccer with the boys, and to top it off, he looks like a boy. I would have put my house on it that it was a guy. I was almost going to ask him, "why are you wearing a skirt", but thought I better not. When I got the chance I asked my Teacher is he is boy or girl and it turns out of course that Ha Jeong was a girl. It also turns out the my Teacher made the same mistake as me when she first arrived. So im not that crazy. But one point that this whole thing raises is its impossible to tell between girls and guys names. I had no idea if Ha Jeong was a typical name of any gender, and its similar for every name. For example; So Won is a boy, So Hui is a girl, Yeong Jin is a boy, Ye Jin is a girl. Its so hard to look at a name and know if its a girl or a boy. The only thing ive learnt is that if the name has "Dong" in it its usually a boy.

- Had a game of Poker recently and unlike last time, actually won a hand. I even knocked out a few people and won enough hand to come 3rd. Unfortunately only 1st and 2nd collected. But the most important thing about this game was we held our World Cup Draw. 16 Men in the draw, so 2 teams each - 1 crap team, 1 good team - and 1st, 2nd and 3rd get a piece of the pot. I have to say, I couldnt really have picked a better team ----- Brazil Baby!!!!! So im gonna be a little dissapointed if I dont get something out of it. I have Uruagauy as my second team as well which isnt to bad but really, they aint gonna do squat. Cant wait for it all to start!!!! Speaking of which, Saturday night there are 2 games; S.Korea and I forget who and USA v England. USA and England are the 2 most represented nations here in Jinju so its fair to say there will be some serious national pride being thrown around. I bet the "God Bless America" references and "Born in the USA" requests will be uncountable. Not to mention the local team playing beforehand as a nice little warm up. Should be a cracking night!

- Must quickly share with you this tale of child punishment. A certain teacher (who may or may not have been a part of the lashing I talked about last week) had 2 students directly in front of each other, only centremetres apart. There heads were bowed slightly and he had one hand behind each students head. He then proceeded to push the two head together, literally causing the students to headbutt each other. Most creative thing ive seen yet. It was like watch a pair of Big Horn Sheep battle for mating rights. They got a few whacks in before the teach got them both in a headlock and ran their head in the wall. I was almost in stitches and the kids werent too far off either. A few parting slaps across the back of the head and it was over. Wow, just wow. I have to say though he wasnt trying to kill the kids or give them a concussion, but it definatly was an intriguing way to punish.

Thats it for another week. I need to show you a picture of something so here is me doing what I do WORST. You can tell by the look on my face this isnt a natural activity for me and im in some sort of discomfort.


Truth be told, I was in the middle of the best damn rendition of "Tubthumping" (I get knocked down, but i get up again.........) anyones ever heard and the look and posture are just a genius at work.