It's been a while...

Today I taught my last class at Jisan Elementary School and I come away with a stack of adorable goodbye letters from my students and a mind distracted by the personal learning experience that has been the past year.  Some readers may have noticed a distinct lack of blogposts in recent months.  If you are disappointed, then allow me to apologize.  The fact of the matter is, living and working in Korea has given me a unique insight into life here that you wouldn't get from simply passing through.  


After four months, I was ready for a vacation, which I took in Vietnam. Returning to a bleak period of sitting at my desk in a cold classroom with nothing to do but ruminate on all of the things wrong with my situation, I hit a low.  Once you get past the period where everything is new and seen through rose-coloured glasses, you begin to scratch below the surface of the culture.  You find things that annoy you to no end, you find things you don't understand, and you find yourself comparing your life to a much rosier one "back home".  Thus, I got to a point where whenever I went to write a blogpost, all I could think of were negative things to report back and essentially whine about.  I couldn't get past it.  This is NOT what I wanted my blog to become. 

With just under a month left and another period of desk-warming ahead of me, I am looking back and realizing that while there are so many things that I think are ridiculous about this country, there have been some great times as well.  After Louise left I fell into a great group of new friends with whom I've shared these experiences.  Some of my best memories will be the times we all gather on the weekends and simply talk about what obscene thing happened at each others' schools that week. Having that to fall back on was a saving grace.


Some of the highlights of the past few months:
+ Going to Boryeong Mud Festival to wallow and swallow with big group of friends was a riot. The town in known for its mudflat and beaches.  When the two are combined, it is a big tourist trap and we came in droves.  Busloads of white people stormed the beach and establish a beer-soaked beachhead.  Tubs of mud were smeared over every inch of your body and it was virtually impossible not to get in the spirit, even for the usually conservative Koreans.  It was a debaucherous weekend capped off with skinny dipping in the sea at 1 am with big group of waygooks while the rain was pouring down.  The "beach police" attempted to corral us but it was a feeble attempt and they actually seemed to be enjoying it.

+ Going to Busan to compete in the Busan Futsal Tournament proved to be a fantastic last outing in the colours of the Daegu Devils.  Midweek training and weekend games got me through this year with a sound group of lads who all love football.  When I signed up for the Devils back in September, I was really happy with the promise of banter and belonging with a competitive atmosphere to boot. The team did not disappoint.
 The last tournament was a great example of this.  A few of us went down the night before and the rest, in true Devils fashion, decided to stay in Daegu on Friday and travel in the morning.  They were unable to resist the temptation of going to the exact same bar that they do every time and had to handle a day of football running on very little sleep.  Our participation in the tournament hung in the balance until minutes before the first game as the last members of the team arrived in a cab, looking as fresh as ever and pulled on their kit.  To our own surprise, we managed to make it through the group stages unbeaten.  Next came a crossbar challenge where players had to hit the crossbar of the net from halfway.  With all the participants looking on, I made it to the final round against a lad from Ulsan.   I hit 4 out of 6 attempts but unfortunately that still wasn't good enough  and my rival came away with a bottle of vodka for his team to enjoy. I was gutted but more focused on the next challenge; the quarter-finals.  Two great games of football later, we found ourselves in the final against a strong team from Changwon.  It took extra time and a goal form the tournament MVP to separate the two teams but unfortunately we came away as second-best.  A night on the town in Busan followed and a day on the beach recovering the next day was the perfect hangover remedy.
  
+Sports day at school was a hilarious showcase of a generally unathletic populace and their strange idea of what constitutes exercise.  A set of state-proclaimed warm up routines performed en masse in the school playground was a bizarre spectacle only topped by the amount of pomp and circumstance around the kick-off of the days events.  some of the best events were;  the crawling under bedsheets held down by teachers race, the kick an american football along the ground while holding a broomstick horizontally relay, the throw as many beanbags into a washing basket as you can in two minutes melee, and of course the large bouncy-ball rolled by ajummas (grannies) that showed up out of nowehere 100 metre dash.  

+Going to see Korea vie for a place in the next World Cup versus Kuwait as well as staying out until the sun came up on several occasions in order to watch the European Championships and Champions League Final.

+Finding a stray dog on the street, naming him Kimchi, and cleaning him up was a highlight but having him reclaimed but some asshole that kept him in a wooden box was a low.  When I went back the next day, Kimchi was nowhere to be found and I haven't seen him since.  It was a really sad reminder that attitude towards dogs here is far behind where it is in Western countries.

Over the next couple of days I will be working on another blogpost entitled "I live in a country where..." that will hopefully outline  the more comical parts of life in Korea that I've come across over the last year.  Thanks for tuning in again and sorry it had been so long.