Well, it’s back to work after the nice vacation. Unfortunately, I’m up to my eyeballs with classes and lesson planning for the next few weeks. After next week, my schedule becomes much more manageable, but until then I’ll probably post only on the weekend. I hope to get a few photos up of my trip to Thailand and Laos, so stay tuned for that. For now, though, I’ve gotta get ready for my early morning classes. More later.
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It’s the end of the fall semester, so, as usual, I’ve been busy with final assessments, grading, paperwork, meetings and other duties. But soon, however, I’ll be vacationing in Laos (mainly) to visit with my friend Nai and his family. Korea’s weather is starting to turn wintry cold, so spending some time in a more tropical clime is very appealing, of course. I’m not going for a long time–just a bit more than a few weeks. My Air China flight to Bangkok leaves next Monday around noon, and I’ll be back in Yeosu on January 5th. I got a pretty good price on the flight about a month and a half ago, but that price came with some long layover times in Beijing, five or so hours going and more than seven hours coming back. Going to Bangkok will be the worst leg of the trip. I’ll be leaving Yeosu on the 11 p.m. bus to Incheon Airport, which arrives around 4:30 in the morning. Since my flight doesn’t take off until around noon, I’ll have a long wait. Incheon, however, is one of the top rated airports in the world, so I don’t mind hanging around there for that amount of time. Then, I go to Beijing and have a wait of about 5 hours until I go to Bangkok. I don’t arrive in the “City of Angels” until around midnight. From there, I’ll take a taxi to my hotel, probably not getting to sleep until 2 a.m. A long day, indeed. After goofing around in Bangkok for an all-too-short while, I’ll take the overnight train to Nongkhai on the evening of the 21st, arriving there the next day around 8:30 in the morning. I’ll spend a few days in Nongkhai with Nai, then we’ll cross the Friendship Bridge into Laos, and . . . hmmm, not really sure. We might head up to Vang Vieng or Luang Prabang, or we might decide to stay at his family residence for Christmas and New Year. Christmas in a Buddhist, Communist country–an interesting place to spend the holidays, to say the least. Finally, after whatever adventures and strange situations that occur in Laos, I’ll take the train back to Bangkok and take a flight back to Incheon on the 4th of January, including another long layover in Beijing. Such is the cost of cheap airline tickets. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep you posted about the trip, so stay tuned for more later. Once every semester, our special English class (Vision English) students and teachers go on a field trip to various attractions around Yeosu. (Here’s a previous post about the field trip.) We were supposed to take the trip today, but it was postponed until next Saturday because rain was in the forecast; we were told of the postponement a few nights ago. Everyone was disappointed, because we, the students and teachers, had been working all week on oral presentations that the students have to give at each site. Not that the work was wasted, but everyone was rarin’ to go. As soon as I found out about the change of plans, I looked at the Korean Meteorological website. Sure enough, they were predicting from one to two inches of rain on Saturday. In the back of my mind, I wondered how accurate the prediction was, since the KMA seems, more often than not, to be unerringly inaccurate with their forecasts. I also noticed that they were calling for an 80-90% chance of rain in the early hours of the morning, with a smaller and smaller chance of rain as the day progressed, finally petering out around noon. In the back of my mind, I thought that we could probably have the field trip after all. Sure enough, we got just over an inch and a half between midnight and 6 a.m., when it stopped raining. It’s now right around 10 a.m, the time when the field trip would have begun. Guess what? We’ve got beautiful blue skies and lots of sunshine, with absolutely no rain in sight. It figures. Hopefully, there’s no rain in the forecast next Saturday. Here are a few more photos from my recent trip to Laos and Thailand. This is one of my favorite views of Bangkok, looking into the Silom area and taken from the statue of King Rama VI in Lumphini Park. I probably should have tried to take a panoramic shot to give a better sense of the beautiful skyline that surrounds the park, but this small sample will have to suffice for now. Maybe next time.
After a few days in Bangkok, it was on to Phuket and Patong Beach. We spent a week there, lazing away the days on the beach while getting a sunburn and enjoying the nightlife. I’m always tempted to try the para gliding offered at the beach, but the price seems too steep (about $20) for the short ride (about 2 1/2 minutes). It’s kind of fun, though, to watch people taking off and landing.
The beach is usually crowded, but it’s not too bad to sit under an umbrella and read a book or “people watch.” You can’t see the lifeguard station in this shot, but at least one or two people had to be rescued every day due to the strong undercurrent in this area. The guards kept warning people out of the restricted area, but there were always a few people who ignored the warnings or accidentally strayed into the red zone. Fortunately, no one drowned.
Near day’s end.
Ok, that wraps up my vacation shots. I’ll try to get some Yeosu photos up soon, although this week sees the beginning of a 3-week kids’ camp and next week marks the start of a week long camp for children of faculty members, so I’ll be quite a bit busier than I have been. I arrived back in Yeosu yesterday afternoon, tired after a nice vacation, but ready to settle back into the daily routine of work, which begins again tomorrow. The flight back from Bangkok took off in a steady rain at 11:20 Friday night, and landed in a very dense fog at Incheon airport around 6:30 Saturday morning. I hopped on the bus to Yeosu, via Gwangju, at 8 and got back to my apartment at 1:30 yesterday afternoon. I can never sleep on airplanes or buses, so, like I said, I was pretty tired and, to some extent, still am. I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation. I’ve got some photos that I’ll post soon, and I’ll start processing some of them this afternoon while I’m peeling off skin from my legs that got sunburned on Patong Beach on Phuket Island. Though it’s rainy season in that part of the world, there was still plenty of sunshine. I’ll try to give a full trip report with the photos, so I better get started on that, and, as always, more later. No, I haven’t forgotten about posting or been too lazy to do so, but we’re beginning the final part of the spring semester, which means assessments and lots of paperwork. I’ll try to get something posted soon, but I’m making no guarantees. I’ve got lots of photos just begging to be put here, so I hope to get some up before I leave for Thailand and Laos on June 11th. Stay tuned. It’s that time of the semester again, when the Intensive English students and teachers go on a field trip to tour some of the attractions in Yeosu as part of the English course. We’ve had two of these events in the past, about which I’ve written here (in 2009) and here (in 2010). Both of the previous trips were taken in the fall, but because of the revamped Intensive program, we’re taking trips in both the spring and fall this year. The fall trip should present no weather problems, but late May is starting to get close to the rainy season. It’s been rainy and misty all day today (Friday) and the forecast is calling for showers tomorrow, with heavier rainfall after 6 p.m. We should be finished with the trip by then, but KMA forecasts have proven to be wrong in the past. Hopefully, we won’t get soaked. Of course, I’ll try to get some good photos and get them posted here in a timely fashion. It’s kind of holiday “season” here in Yeosu. From May 5th through June 9th, there are four holidays, all of them on weekdays, so no work on those days. Unfortunately, we have to make up the classes that we miss because of those days off, a demand by the university that irks me to no end, as I’ve mentioned before. Some of the new teachers this semester said that it’s the first education institution that they’ve worked at in Korea that demands that holiday classes be made up. Our contracts state that we get all national and university holidays off, but that’s a bit of a half-truth if we have to do the classes at another time. It’s kind of like your boss telling you “No, you don’t have to work on Thanksgiving Day, but you have to come in on Sunday to make up for it.” Sheesh. Not much I can do about it though–grin and bear it. May 5th was Children’s Day, today is the celebration of Buddha’s Birthday, and June 6th is Memorial Day. In addition, June 9th is the Founding Day of the university, so classes are also called off for that event. Buddha’s Birthday is celebrated on the 10th in many East Asian countries and it’s celebrated on the 17th in some others, to coincide with the full moon. For the last two or three weeks, all of the temples here have been gaily decorated with colorful paper lanterns. If you didn’t know where the temples were located, you’d know their presence by the lanterns.
It’s been overcast and a bit rainy today, but between the sprinkles, I took a short walk down the road below the dormitories to a small temple, about 15 minutes away. I assumed there would be some events and ceremonies going on, and there were. Lots of people were present in the main temple–gentlemen dressed in suits and sporting flowers in their lapels, ladies wearing their finery and suited ushers showing people in. I would like to have shot some photos of the temple, but it would have been totally inappropriate for me to try to do so. Therefore, I contented myself with taking a few shots of the small grounds outside the temple. There either was already or there was going to be a parade, and this dragon float looked ready to roll.
He had a friend to accompany him, in the form of this tiger.
Here’s a shot of the outside of the main temple, where the ceremony was being held. I could hear the chanting of the monks and the clanging of gongs, and I really wanted to go in. Not this time, though.
The paper lanterns are quite beautiful and I love the details on some of them. Here are four for your viewing pleasure.
I was also out and about on Children’s Day and got a number of photos of the Turtle Ship Festival that is always held at the same time. I’ll put some of those up in the next post. More later. Yes, it’s been rather busy around here with the start of the new semester. In addition to the usual paperwork, lesson planning and getting used to the new schedule, I was assigned a new office in another building. At first, I kind of resented being asked to move, but the administration had a whole floor in the Natural Sciences building remodeled to support the new nighttime Vision English course. All the classrooms there and my office, which I share with three colleagues, are basically brand new, and we also have new computers, a new copy machine and a new printer to work with. Pretty nice, and since I got all my files and what-not moved over, I’ve started to feel quite comfortable there. Beginning next week, all of my classes will be in that one building. I’m not complaining. We’ve been getting some pretty decent weather lately, so I’ve also been spending a lot more time jogging and being outdoors. The weekend forecast is calling for highs in the 60s F., so my bicycle will probably want to take me for a ride. I’ll try to get some photos up and I’ll get back to posting more often, now that the semester seems to be rolling along smoothly. More later. Whew, the previous seven-week session finally finished yesterday and none too soon, what with all the kids’ and other classes. Lots of overtime, so I’m not griping too much. Still, most of us foreign teachers have a very welcome eleven day break until the spring semester begins.
Usually, the spring semester begins on March 1st, but that date is also a holiday in Korea, Independence Movement Day, when Korea announced, in 1919, its independence from the imperial Japanese occupation of the peninsula. So, classes begin on March 2nd this year. My scheduled classes, along with the other teachers’ classes, have been cut drastically. No more large amounts of overtime, unfortunately. Although I might gripe about how much work I have to do, when overtime payment rolls around (later this week), I’m pretty satisfied. Anyway, the Language Center has hired three new teachers, two ladies from the U.S. and one guy from Ireland. We usually have 6 instructors; now, we have nine. Fewer hours for everyone. One of the new teachers, by the way, was a graduate student at the University of Montana. She got her Master’s degree in Forestry there, and she and I have been emailing each other quite a bit, so I look forward to meeting her in person. Small world, eh? The reason for the new teachers is that an older program has been revamped. We had some special classes for English students the last couple of years, the classes in which we took field trips, about which you can read in this post. The classes used to be held at 8 and 9 a.m., Monday through Thursday, and students had to attend them for both the spring and fall semesters. So, what could the students possibly have against such a wonderful schedule? The early hours, of course; some of them dropped out. So the Powers-That-Be decided to change the time and reduce the attendance requirement. Now, classes will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, but students only have to attend for one semester. More hours per week will be taught, so there is the need for more teachers. I was chosen to be one of the teachers, so I’ll be working those 3 hours per day, Monday through Thursday, and I’ll be teaching regular freshman English classes 3 days a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. That’s a pretty nice schedule, 21 contact hours per week, but, as I said, fewer hours than I’m used to and less overtime. However, I’ll be getting a bit extra pay per month, since my boss asked me to be the coordinator of the special classes. And, we’ll still get the field trips, which I really like. Anyway, here’s to my first day of vacation. More (days) later. |
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(Rolling eyes, looking at watch, waiting . . . waiting) More later–eventually.
