Pióro

Matt’s reading the guide book. He comes across an entry about meditation classes. He remember a time when he was kinda interested in Buddhism. He kinda knows what dharma, kharma and vajra mean.
“Hey. A meditation class sounds really cool, eh?” says Matt.
“That’s a friggen’ dumb idea,” says Warren.
Matt is slightly taken aback.
“What do you mean?”
“Think [...]

Thailand is nice. Or so I hear.
I’ve only just left my air-conditioned hotel room.
We arrived in Bangkok last night, me with a raging fever and pain every time I tried to swallow. You never really realize how often you swallow until each swallow feels like burning.
We found the aircon room last night, and this [...]

Let me get all Euro-centric for a sec. Koreans got a weird sense of hygiene. The feet thing I can understand. We were staying at a love motel in Seoul. Ah, love motel, let me explain. You see, in Korea it is not uncommon to live in small digs with parts of your extended family. [...]

Stereotypes aside, karaoke is big here in Korea. But karaoke is the Japanese name. In this neck of the woods the art form is called norae bang. You can find norae bang in the weirdest places: on big make-shift stages set up in a market to platforms erected within labyrinthine subway stations. We saw one [...]

Arthur is an English teacher from our sister camp, Camp Korea. Our camp was called Pantech and Curitel, named after the huge telecom company that sponsored the camp. Both camps were based at Howan University, just outside of Gunsan. It turns out that Pantech and Curitel don’t know much about kids. They sent some dude [...]

…see Warren and Agnes site. These guys are the homies who scored us this gig in Korea. Follow the link to WSRGraphics in the side nav.

Okay, how’s this for nuts? Me, 12 Korean children (10-13 years old) and raging disco hits. That’s right I’m teaching these kiddies how to git down. I have a class each day that involves something a little “creative,” i.e. not exactly teaching English in the strict sense. So I’m trying to teach these little dudes [...]

First day of class and I’m trying to learn the names of eleven Korean children. All the names are nuts and totally butchered by my heavy Western tongue. (I swear the consonants are lighter in Korean.) My assistant teacher suggested that I give them all English names. Before I could say, “Isn’t naming children a [...]

14 hours on the plane.
3 hours on a bus.
In Gunsan by 7:00 am Korea time, just in time to start our full day of orientation.
Luckily, we got to bed by nine, and had a solid ten hour sleep.
Also lucky we brought boots, cause there’s like two feet of snow on the ground, and it keeps [...]

A few days before Christmas, Matt’s friend and former co-worker Warren hooked us up with a sweet job in Gun-San, Korea.
We leave tonight.
It’s been pretty hectic getting ready on short notice, but the opportunity was too good to miss. For two weeks we’ll be teaching at a winter camp for kids. One of the perks [...]