Time for More Pictures!

Okay, since I haven't really been able to describe what rural is like here, I took a couple pictures of Song-ri (where my school is located). Further down the post are a couple more Osan pictures for comparison. And! All these pics are clickable. For those who don't know, click them to see them up close, nice and big, in all their detailed glory!

This is a lane I walk down every day on the way to school. This is a road that cars actually traverse. I don't know what happens if two cars going in opposite directions encounter one another. I imagine a lot of reversing. At the end of the lane you can see a home with a gate.

I believe this will soon become a garden. You can see a small green house on the left of the picture and houses in the background.

A typical view from my walk

A slightly different view of the same spot on the same said walk.

This is one of the entrances to my school. It is the one nearest to my classroom. I pop out of here quite frequently to fill my water bottle from the delightful fresh water available outside. You can see two of the spigots on the left. Those two are not for drinking. The principal explained that that water comes from the river. Two more spigots (not pictures and further to the left) have fresh, pure, clean water. People from the village often fill their water bottles here. People do not drink the tap water here. They buy or boil. I don't really know why. I usually bring a couple liter bottles everyday and fill them for home. Thus saving ourselves the cost of buying water and the nastiness of boiled water.

Our school has a soccer field. I'm told the kids really love it. From now on I'm calling it Football as is proper. That's what the rest of the world calls it and now I'm in the rest of the world. :D The green netting is for golf. I guess we have a driving range or something in the bank. I've been promised a tour of that (and I'm assuming an golf style ass whuppin') once the weather gets nice. It's almost nice. Getting warmer daily.

Just a view down the walk outside the school. Those doors at the end lead to the cafeteria where they serve me yummy foods with names I can't really pronounce. Sometimes I'm kind of scared at what I may actually be eating. While eating lunch one day the principal asked about dog. Yes, they do eat it. He said it is quite delicious and is something akin to a comfort food for him. It's good when you're sick because it's full of vitamins and minerals. This may have been a joke, but he said after an operation a few years ago, he got a dog and boiled the whole thing in a large pot. He made the this big motion with his arms to show that it was rather large. He then ate dog everyday for something like a month. I guess it worked because he recovered from the surgery just fine. I'm still not trying dog.
First class of the day, 6th graders! Il-kyu made them set all their phones aside. Mostly so they wouldn't fiddle with them all class. This is only one of the piles. I believe a cellphone is a "necessity" for elementary school children now. I've seen them even in the hands of the 2nd graders. I need to remeber to do as in the example above for my classes without Il-kyu. They loved their damned phones.

Oh yes, I promised a couple Osan pics for comparison. This is right behind my apartment building. At the back of the picture you can see the little market that is very near to my home. Actually I think there's two markets in there. I'm also told there is a fried chicken place, but that didn't appear open when Mel and I looked.

Oh! We had fried chicken on Saturday. We found a little place right around the corner from us (5 minute walk due to crosswalk lights). 21500w got us a large plate of half fried and half spicy chicken. The spicy was covered in a sweet sauce. We couldn't find boneless so we threw caution to the wind and just tore into boned chicken. I'm pretty sure one of my pieces had a spine. I do not like boned chicken. They served us some of those buggle things while we waited for the chicken. And we had beer! Beer and chicken mmmm. It was just Cass though. Cass is like Miller Lite or something. It's pretty tasteless, it's yellow, I suppose there's some alcohol in there.... There was also a couple sides. One was something like pickled squash. The other was like coleslaw with what appeared to be a mustard dressing. It was not mustard. It was some sickly sweet substance. It was pretty good.

More Osan! On the left is actually just another view of the market I showed in the last picture. In the background is the building across the street that contains said chicken place!

Okay, here's my last picture. Sunday night we decided to get another pizza. We wanted one with the "bites" on the outside. They're basically dough balls with a little cheese in them. The place had a mexican one or a deusche one. Unfortunately the mexican one was no longer available (much to our chagrin) so we ordered the deusche one. Those items on there that look like hot dogs? Pretty sure they were hot dogs. Really good hot dogs, but still hot dogs. This one had corn just like the last one and also came with a side of sweet pickles. However there was some really good garlic dipping sauce.

So, that's that. Oh yes, so I guess the "afterschool" classes are ones I teach all by myself. No Il-kyu to help! :O Having not known this, I had nothing prepared. Il-kyu gave me a game to play with the kids which seemed like a good idea. There were 4th grade, 6th grade, and then Top Class English (volunteers and best of kids from 5th and 6th grade).

So, we played the game. It took them like 5 minutes. The rest of the both classes were riviting games of hangman! However, once we arrived at Top Class English, there was a problem. Some of the Top Class students were also in the 6th grade class the period before. So, they were kind of hangmaned out. The 5th graders however were all gung-ho for hangman. So, we played a couple games of that. I dug up another game on the internet when I thought the 6th graders could take no more. It was an "alphabet soup" game. Basically a scrabbled word fill in the blank game full of bad puns. Then I showed them pictures of and about me and mine via the facebook. So that killed that class.

The afterschool classes shouldn't be too bad. Il-kyu has material for them, we just didn't have time to get it together. He had to go to the immigration office to take care of my alien registration card. The Top Class could be a bit harder though. With the 5th and 6th graders together, there seems to be a large age disparity. The 6th graders seems a lot older and more mature than the 5th, so finding activities that appeal to both could be difficult.

Anyway, hopefully you find yourself entertained. That's it for me.

Aaron