So long farewell, auf weidersehen good-bye

  Yangji, Korea Rep.
Friday, November 30, 2007

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

The final lap
So, by way of a 3 night trip to Japan, a 4 night stay (total) in Busan and a night on a ferry, we made it back to the all too familiar setting of Echo Green Town in Yangji for the last week of our KE English camp. We had suspected long before the start of the last week that it would be a totally different week to the other 7 weeks of camp, and so it proved to be. The students, fresh off a one-week stint in another English-based camp, were, as expected, totally preoccupied with the end of week, and end of camp, presentations, presentations they spent the whole week preparing for - that and their mid-week interview, the third such interview they'd been subjected to since the first day of camp back on October 1st. Us teachers had come to realise over the course of the camp that the grading we give these guys for their interviews & presentations went a long way to determining their future. That was something that didn't particularly sit well with us, considering we'd struck up a good friendship with each and every one of the students over the duration of the camp. But we also learned that it was something we had to deal with. Anyway, so preoccupied were the students all week (admittedly it was a slightly shorter, 4-day week) with their presentations that they couldn't find time for a single game of soccer, kick-volleyball or billiards. They couldn't even find time for a trip to the driving range, nor could they muster a few hours out of their schedule for a DVD. However, all was not lost and some sort of normality was restored when the students put aside time for a (singular) late night drinking session, albeit one that was timed to have the least impact on their wellbeing - meaning their preparations for the all important presentations.

Overall it was a strange, very un-KE camp like sort of week, a week that went like this -

· Day 105 - Monday, November 26th -

01 Table quiz, minus the tables

Spent the morning quizzing the students on their experiences in the 'other' week-long camp they had just participated in. While we were genuinely curious as to their thoughts on the camp, what we really wanted

02 A Class

to know was if they still had us top of their 'Best Western Teacher' pile. We needn't have worried; to a man they all had, and more than a few actually told us we'd been missed. The afternoon was spent introducing the students to the British and Irish pub favourite, the table quiz (picture 1).

03 B Class

After that the students donned their Sunday best and posed for pictures, pictures that are to adorn their company yearbook (pictures 2 & 3). A yearbook? All sounded very secondary/high school'ish to us.

· Day 106 - Tuesday, November 27th -
An easy day, a hard night. Final camp interviews took the whole day, leading us nicely to the

04 Official Farewell

farewell camp dinner that evening. Experience had forewarned us and we knew this was going to be a dangerous night (not that helped us in any way).

· Day 107 - Wednesday, November 28th -
Off all camps difficult days, this was by far the most difficult. They say a problem shared is a problem halved, but that isn't the case with a hangover as both mysef and Meg suffered through the day, as did the students. The whole day was given over to 'self-study', meaning the students worked feverishly on their following days presentations, leaving the teacher free to count down the hours until bed time, which came earlier than it did most other evenings.

· Day 108 - Thursday, November 29th -

07 Looking forward to the reunion(s)

The last official day of camp and also the dreaded final presentation day. We felt reborn, having shaken off the effects of yesterday's hangover, and sat through 27 high quality presentations, after which we couldn't help but praise the students for their efforts in camp. We then congratulated them for the obvious improvements each and every one of them made to their overall English ability. Modest as ever, the students retorted that their improvement was a result of our efforts.

"Hey guys, you can lead bring a horse to water..."

In the early afternoon we, for the last time, bid all but 8 of the 27 students adieu before starting to prepare for our own departure from camp the following morning. We had one final

08 The last night

gathering with the remaining 8 students that evening, but, by KE camp standards, it was a tame affair. The students had a meeting, in Seoul, with their CEO at 10am the following morning and understandably they didn't want to reek of alcohol. So you see, it may have taken until the last night of a 8-week camp but finally it was proven to us that yes, these guys are capable of restraint when it's called for. The final act of the final night was for me to collect my winnings from one final game of 110, the card game I had introduced my class to a few weeks earlier. Seemingly the guys have become quite addicted to it and have relabeled it "Irish card game". Sweet....my legacy.

· Day 109 - Friday, November 30th -
Today we rose early to wave the reaming 8 students off, finish our packing, say our final

09 Taxi!

goodbyes to Echo Green Town and hop, sea of bags in toe, onto the bus for Seoul. That's where we are right now, waiting to be ferried to our next accommodation. We'll be staying with Jay, a friend and the boss of Camp Korea, our next, and before the KE camp our only, Korean employer. He has been good enough to put us up for the weeks leading up to our next reporting date for work, December 20th. What we're going to do between now and then is anyone's guess, but right about now we're not worrying about it.

Day 104 to 109 Observations (November 25th to 30th 2007)

· 3 Meg
Appearance is everything in Korea. The students wasted no time reminding me upon their return to camp how lucky I was. Why, you might ask? Well, according to them the Western teachers they had for their week long English camp the week previous, while good teachers, were "large", or about as large as most Koreans view the average Westerner to be. They then explained that they had missed Meg during their week away because the female teachers they had "were not as beautiful" and at least "3 times the size". Their words, not mine.

· Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
It's finally winter in this part of the World and it actually snowed in Echo Green Town during the week we were away. Yep, there were still remnants of the year's first snowfall on the ground when we returned to camp last Sunday. But that's all we've seen of snow so far; we still haven't seen any actually fall to the ground and Cyrophobic Meg is getting impatient (she is Canadian after all).

· The Gifts
Last night we were presented with a fancy traditional Korean nacre (mother of pearl) lacquer ware presentation box, one that was personally signed by the CEO of KE, the guy who greets you on the KE website and the guy who visited us all during the third week of camp. BTW, just in case you hadn't picked up on it yet, KE is the company the students work for.

"This is an important gift, one that is only given to VIP's," we were told by the students as they admired the CEO's signature on our boxes, not intentionally implying, we assumed, that we were anything other than VIP's.

Nice to know, we thought, wondering what we were going to do with two of them.

This gift was the last in a string of gifts we received during the camp - Megs coat, my Countess Mara gift set, bottles of wine and tins of Danish Butter cookies come straight to mind. But materialistic gifts were not what this camp was all about. We'll never forget being treated to countless restaurant meals and countless trips to the bowling alley, driving range and billiard hall, trips on which we were forbidden, each and every time and under pain of death, from spending so much as 10 Won of our own money (10 Won being the smallest unit of Korean currency). This was also the case on trips to the The Korean Folk Village, the botanical gardens and a temple. Oh, and we can't forget the night we were put up in the home of the owner of Echo Green Town (end of camp week 2), the weekend we spent as guests of KE in a suite in Lee's Hotel, Yangji, (end of camp week 4), the personal taxi ride one of Henk's students, Dan, gave us from Yangji to Incheon, just so we could make the EPIK seminar and the motel him and one of Megs students, Anderson, put us up for the night in (end of camp week 5), the recent weekend away, courtesy of 'The Famous Five', in Gyeongsan, Gyeongju & Deagu (end of camp week 6), and most recently, the hospitality (and ferry upgrade) afforded to us by Nick in Busan (end of camp week 7).

Yep, we've certainly been spoiled. Which bring me nicely to......

So long farewelll, auf weidersehen good-bye
So Echo Green Town and 'The KE Global Challenge' is no more. Well, for us teachers it is no more. For the students the adventure continues, at least for another few weeks. They are embarking on an all expenses paid, 2-week overseas trip visiting business interests in the likes of Libya, Vietnam, Dubai, China and Hong Kong. It's all part of the 6-month 'Challenge Program' KE has them on, 8 weeks of which was spent with us. And as for us? Well, we've had a blast over the past 9 weeks and in some small, very small way we feel sort of guilty that we got paid to do what we did. The 8 weeks we spent in camp have certainly been the most fun I've ever had in Korea, a place I come to have fun. We've all had one hell of an education about Korea, its food, its people and its cultures, and from the best teachers imaginable. But the best part of all is that we now have 27 new friends to call on whenever we feel the need, knowing we'll always be given a warm, Korean welcome (and that a bottle of soju will never be too far away). To think both myself and Meg had reservations signing up to be part of this camp now seems ludicrous. But it's true - we knew we'd both be leaving our comfort zone of teaching Korean kids and I, for one, was intimidated by the thought of being in a class with 9 successful businessmen. But I'll pass the next few weeks as best I can and will report to Camp Korea longing to have a class of my own (I won't - this time around I'm a head teacher, a sort of supervisor/coordinator for other teachers) just so I can give my class students, girls included, the names Chan, Victor, David, Peter, Bond, Nick, Leo and Jack.