English Competitions and The Land Down Under

On Friday I had the dubious pleasure of being a judge for an English competition for the region. This means I get the whole day off school for a couple of hours work in Damyang, a beautiful place just outside Gwangju that is surrounded by mountains and amazingly beautiful scenery.

I was judging the high school students and was a little surprised to find that on average, they weren't much better than my girls middle school I taught at last year. I'm not sure if I should be sad at the low level of the schools in the region, or happy that my old school was so amazing. A little of both I think.

Anyway, for the lead up to the competition, I've been helping two of the girls at the Wando Girls Middle School. They are super cute (as is their teacher ;) and they were very thankful for the help. One of them has decided to call me "big brother".
On Saturday, I met up with them and the super cute teacher to have lunch and see how they went in the competition. Sadly they weren't to confident with the results, but we spent a fun afternoon hanging out in Gwangju. At one stage I commented that I really did feel like a big brother being dragged out shopping with his sisters... Not that I've ever done that with my real sisters. But I have done it with many adopted sisters over they years.

At some point during the afternoon I came across two of my friends from Mokpo; Neal and Crystal. While I was talking to them, the girls were giggling and whispering behind me so much (while looking at Neal) that finally he stopped talking mid sentence and asked them what they were giggling about. They turned bright red and one of them got up the courage to tell him that he was "soooo handsome". At which point I think Neal got a little embarrassed.
Then a minute later, two more guys that Neal knew came up and started talking. To be fair, one was very tall and both were fairly good looking, so you can imagine how the girls were now reacting. When we walked away I turned to laugh at them and they just said to me, "Stu we love you!" They weren't so much loving me... but loving the fact that hanging out with me, they got to meet all my good looking friends. Too bad these kids are only about 16 years old. They would have loved to go along to one of my get togethers.

So after all this fun in the city, I jumped on Billie and headed down to my next party. Virginia had her house warming BBQ in Mokpo. It was a fancy dress with the theme of any song title. At first I was thinking I might do "You can leave your hat on" but very quickly chickened out of this one.
Then I was thinking about dressing up like a bottle and handing out little phrases like "Be good to your mother" or "You are so cool".... can you guess? That's right: "Message in a bottle."
My next thought was to make a little boat out of cardboard and wear it around my waist & stick months of the calendar on the sides & have a bottle of water hidden in it that dripped.... "6 months in a leaking boat"
However all these were a little difficult to do last minute (except the first one I guess), so I settled on buying a white t-shirt and some pens and drew on it a tall man (6' 4"), a VW van, a woman who glowed and a beer keg that was flowing beer. There was a lightning bolt and a strange lady giving out breakfast and a guy throwing up. There was also a man running towards some shelter and a guy who was selling bread with a sign saying Brussels behind him.
Have you got it yet?
Oh and of course there was a large map of Australia drawn upside down.
You must have guessed it by now....




"Travelling in a fried out combie, On a hippie trail, full of zombie.
I met a strange lady. She made me nervous. She took me in and gave me breakfast.



How about now?


"And she said, 'Do you come from the Land Down Under? Where women glow and men plunder.....'"

You got it. "Land Down Under" by Men at Work.

Kind of appropriate I do feel.

So the BBQ was lots of fun. drinking and eating on the rooftop overlooking the see and islands off shore. Always a nice way to spend the afternoon. The party moved into the apartment and got much louder. By the time we decided to move on to a new location (p-club) I'm sure the combined association of Koreans living in that apartment were already drawing up a formal complaint and petition to get the waygook kicked out of there.

P-club was the usual bar thing. Nothing exciting. I got to spend about the last half an hour listening to the mumblings of a drunken Queenslander... you know... the kind of person you hate to meet overseas cause they give your country a bad name. Mind you, he wasn't loud and obnoxious. He just couldn't string to coherent words together.

Sunday was kind of interesting. I went to a local gym with Melisa (The Other Wando Chick) and saw a Korean sport called Gumdo. How this sport differs from Kendo, I'm not too sure. In fact, a friend here who came along and knows Kendo fairly well, said it was the same sport. But as I'd never seen either, I found it great to watch.
Everyone was dressed in big baggy pants and lots of padding, with a face mask that looked like the grill of an old MG sportster. They were in a square and faced off, then started wacking each other with swords made out of bamboo. Talk about fun.
I was watching the kids first and couldn't believe the obvious skill with a sword of these little people who probably maxed out at five foot tall. Man they could move fast.
The bigger people were fairly good too. I have to say, I'm proud of one of my students from the girls school who was there competing. She won 3 of her 4 fights. She did much better than the rest of her club.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for this week.
Till next time......

"...... where beer does flow and men chunder. Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You'd better run, you'd better take cover.........."