A girl sidles up to me and motions at me to lean closer so I can hear her over the noise of the crowded bar: Are you the one with the badges? I feel like a very weird sort of drug dealer. It turned out that I had some badges left over from school, so [...]
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This morning, I was the Irish representative in the English School. As I mentioned before, I feel grateful but guilty when receiving gift after gift from the generous people of Korea, so St. Patrick’s Day was my chance to give back a little. For all the school staff, I made cards (involving lots of glitter!), [...]
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I keep having very humbling moments that remind me to think twice before getting frustrated with students who appear to be making no progress whatsoever. The latest one was last week during my Korean conversation class. My teacher had decided that I wasn’t being pushed hard enough – particularly as I can speak English in [...]
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With an hour to kill before the movie we were going to see, Kay (Korean English teacher colleague) decided that now was the time to address my increasingly regular and panicky musings about where on earth I’m going to find summer clothes to fit me. Korean women are impossibly petite. I’m talking an average of [...]
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I remember when you’d sit us down in front of the TV to eat breakfast on the first warm day of the summer holidays, then sneak out to set up and fill our huge paddling pool in the back yard, as a surprise. I remember watching the leaf-covered Henry on Neighbours with you and The [...]
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Yep, really. I stumbled upon a story last week about a Korean guy who found true love… with his favourite pillow. Now, first of all, does this means that it’s OK in the eyes of the Korean law to marry an inanimate object?! I mean, in the US and UK there are even laws against [...]
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The latest Korean holiday to be upon us is White Day. I find the name slightly disconcerting, because it brings to my mind images of the KKK or something like that, but the “white” refers to the traditional colour of gifts given on this day. It’s actually a Japanese holiday, but it seems that this [...]
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Today I did something I haven’t done since my university days – came to work not much more than 4 hours after getting home from a night out. Urgh. Last time I did this, I was working in the Glasgow Tourist Information Office’s bureau de change, and ended up sleeping under my desk. Nobody noticed, [...]
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I really lucked out with my classes when I first got here. I had the top two kindergarten classes in the school, and I’m convinced that they were mostly children of above average intelligence. They understood everything I told them to do, and they asked interesting and intelligent questions. They knew that they weren’t supposed [...]
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My favourite Korean word is 없어요 (pronounced “ops-aw-yo”). It always makes me smile. You might see it translated as “it isn’t here”, but it can also have a broader meaning like “there isn’t any”, and the even broader “it doesn’t exist” or “no”. And it is used all the time. You can hear this word [...]
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You Say Goodbye, I Say… Historical Snapshots It Just Makes Me Happy
