Alcohol...

Friday...

A day off was announced, as all the Korean teachers were being taken out on a trip to the beach...which is nice. If they accidentally leave behind my teaching partner, Mr. Yang, then I'm sure I will be ok on my own.

This was a chance for me to begin planning lessons for a load of primary school teachers who are due to visit for a week in July. I have been given 6 titles only, and asked to make up lessons for each of them. They are: daily life, describing, the post office, the tourist info. centre, games and quizzes, and skits. They want the plan soon, as the centre will print it's own colour text book based on what we plan. I was handed a text book from a previous group, and it looked really good, until you open it. Inside is a book of lessons planned by people who have never planned lessons before, and all are randomly set out in each teachers own unique style, with spelling mistakes and bad grammar as an extra bonus. This place just gets better by the day! I decided to go see the ear doctor instead of planning...

I found him this time...but it wasn't without one small error. Below what must be the ear doctor sign is what I thought was the ear doctors' surgery...just beyond some blackened glass doors. I opened the door and went inside. It didn't look like the right place to me. It was a small room, with wooden seats, a desk, and a man sitting smoking at a computer playing a game. There was nobody else there. I did see a white coat hanging up, and some cotton buds for cleaning ears on the desk...but it still seemed odd. There was no door other than the one I had walked though. The man glanced over, but ignored me. I got out my phrase book, and walked over to him. I pointed to 'ear' and 'doctor'...and the chap tried to read it. But his couldn't even see the words. He held the book at various distances from his eyes, and I gestured to ask is this place the ear doctor. He nodded, and shook his head, and then got back to his game and his fag. I decided to leave. Once outside I realised it wasn't the ear doctor at all - the sign outside was for the floor above.

The doctor I finally saw said I have a fungus growing in my ear, which is nice (his English was good as well). He gave me some pills to take and told me to come back in 3 days. I looked up this problem on the internet, and it says the condition can last from a few days to a few years, and can be serious, or not. I'll just go back in 3 days and see if it's still there.

The evening came, and I was invited out to sample the night life and bars of Gongju. Out too was a chap I didn't know, and the Korean/American who dresses up as a man in the freak show. Someone had warned me that she gets violent when she has been drinking, which was good to know. She is actually very loud and hyper even before alcohol intake. The other chap, from Canada, was very laid back indeed.

Fortunately, the Korean/American girl fell asleep after drinking one small bottle of sodue (Korea's own alcoholic drink...like Sake in Japan). But during the drinking she did become very, very loud and couldn't sit still for more than a minute. If the Canadian chap and me chatted then she would demand attention. I would put her in the 'incredibly annoying person' category. But anyway, she fell asleep after a particularly long and loud squawk, so that was ok. I found that the Canadian chap Paulx (I have changed his name slightly to protect his identity) has very similar view to me about the teaching centre. He works in another part of it that deals solely with training teachers. I asked him if he thinks it can survive one more year, as that is the length of my contract, and he said it would as nobody knows it's crap yet, and they are clever at passing it off as a success story by interviewing happy kids (who have been given some sweets) and using photos of many happy faces (cut off below the shoulder so as not to show the sweets in their hands).

The evening progressed to a karaoke bar, where I met lots more westerners from Canada and America. The Korean/USA lass woke up and was far too excited to be classified as a normal person. We ended up in the apartment of a 60 year old Canadian woman with red hair and a poodle. She also worked at the place where I work, and was going away for 2 months...so had a kind of party. She is very outspoken I thought, and direct with finding out who you are. A bit later, for some reason, she decided to show us all what was in her secret drawer. I'd rather she hadn't, as the image of someone that age using that kind of device is not something I asked to have in my mind. When everyone decided to leave at about 4am, she declared she thought I was nice, and that I and the Canadian chap could stay longer. We declined politely. I can see how she fits in with the people here. Thank God that was a leaving party.