More of the same

  Yangji, Korea Rep.
Monday, October 15, 2007

· Yangji, South Korea
· GMT +8:00 hours

More of the same
Week two of camp passed by without much fanfare and for that reason alone this entry should be short enough. While the week rolled by in the same manner as week one, there definitely was a different feel to week two, mainly because by the time it began we'd all drummed up a very good rapport with not only with our own students but with all 27 students. It's still strange to be calling them - mostly middle-aged businessmen - students. But students they are and, like their younger counterparts, their efforts to dodge lessons are no less obvious.

The week that was

01 The beginning of the end of 'activity' time?

This week saw the whole camp spend a big chunk of Tuesday afternoon in a Yangji 10-pin bowling alley (picture 01). It was probably this activity, or maybe Meg's class activity to a nearby Buddhist temple the following day (pictures 02 & 03), that prompted The Professor (remember, he's the on-site boss, the educational coordinator for the camp) to call a halt to the clearly out of hand the off-site activities in a bid to limit them to what they should be: English practice sessions in a non-classroom, preferably active, setting. The Professors changes brought a collective groan from the majority of the students and amidst a lot of Korean conversations on the subject, us teachers, who couldn't care less if we spent 1 hour or 10 hours a day in the classroom, sensed the beginnings of some sort of mutiny. Of course nothing of the sort transpired and we all made it to the end of week two having logged more classroom hours during the week than we did in week one.

04 Surprise? Kind of.

The week was nicely broken up on Wednesday evening by Meg's birthday (pictures 4, 5, 6 & 7), a birthday she'll be remembering for a while - it's not often one gets to be fussed over by 27 Korean men.

The working week was rounded off by a night spent in the private home of the owners of Echo Green Town (EGT) (pictures 10 - 16).

10 Me Casa, Tu Casa

The aim was to get us away from the army of SK (a Korean oil refining and marketing firm) employees descending on EGT for the night (Friday), and away from the mayhem that they would no doubt cause. We were told it would be a good opportunity to experience a real traditional Korean home. Well, not quite. In parts the house looked like a museum and about the only traditional aspect of the house that we could see was the heated marble, yes marble, beds we slept in. Still, it was a mighty impressive house, a house that left us in no doubt that there is plenty of money to be made in the corporate getaway business. Again see the pictures for the whole story.

The rest of our weekend mirrored last weekend (minus the bit that saw us hoofing it

17 KITT

into Seoul in a fruitless search for a Windows XP CD); yesterday, Saturday, we paid another visit to the driving range, where Meg finally conceded that Korea was indeed a modern country (picture 17), and for the rest of the weekend we hung around EGT being driven mad by the repetitive piped Korean folk music (we had it for 2 weeks solid now), preparing for work week number 3 that lay ahead and watching TV and DVD's in the Honeymoon cabin.

A rarity
And that, our adoring readers, is that for week two, and all brought to you in a manageable sized entry. The short entry might be as a result of there being 17 pictures accompanying this entry and the fact that I still have to spend time uploading same. That's either a good or a bad thing, depending on your tolerance for viewing our pictures. Either way we hope you enjoy them and check back for more of the same next week.