Into the sunset

My life in South Korea is done, and my sister's wedding is fast approaching in South Africa. My last few days at English Village are a whirlwind of final dinners and goodbyes, and relief that I'm going to miss the latest directive from the "management": African accents are to be replaced in the future with American ones. My American accent is so poor I'm embarrassed to even try in front of my friends for fear of angering them with the imitation. And anyway, which of the thousands of US accents would I choose? Oh, mad Korea.

In my last week, it snows. Yes, in mid-March, it snows. Poor Korea lucked out on the weather front...


Also in my last week, Shabu Lady discovers that I'm leaving and suddenly realises that she loves me! She really does! (Or maybe she's just thankful that she no longer needs to put me on my own table at big Shabu dinners...)

So. Korea. I won't miss people peering into my shopping bags, picking things out so as to have a better look at my groceries. Or the nightmare of having to deal with social and administrative hierarchy. Or the staring on the subway as I stand swaying in my foreign skin. The smell of silkworm pupae sizzling on the street. Having to explain for the hundredth time to an offended Korean just why I don't like the wonderfood that is Kimchi. The food and the wholesale worship of meat, no matter where it comes from. My tiny box they call an apartment. Sharing space with a million other people. Being met at the door of a shop by an assistant shaking her head at me and shouting "No big size! No for you!"

I'm going to miss shabu shabu and the local Indian restaurant, where curry comes with a side of pickles, and the friends that I've made from, truly, all corners of the English-speaking world - at least I now have a place to stay in a thousand different cities. The elderly lady in the shop who holds my hand when she babbles in Korean as if that will help me understand - and her wide smile. Couples' shirts! Someone going 3 blocks out of their way to show me where I need to go. Living two doors down from a cousin, and 4 doors away from my closest friend. Shopping in Seoul!

Korea has been an amazing ride; I can't see myself back here again, but then I have many friends at EV who said exactly the same thing right before they started looking into visas for another year. It's the first place I've ever truly experienced culture shock and that's a good thing. Without culture shock, the world is just one endless high street of McDonalds and Starbucks. In Seoul, the first Starbucks was met with such fierce animosity that it was the first Starbucks ever to translate its sign into another alphabet, Hangeul, as a compromise (it reads Seu-ta-bug-seu Ko-bi, and I love it!)


The other day I found myself thinking of the way that I get upset when people aren't nice to me on my travels; I write in my diary that "people in [insert town name] aren't as friendly as in [other town name]" and feel sad that I haven't had as good a time as I might have. But travel involves meeting people who are going about their lives, having a good day, having a bad day, trying to come to terms with the influx of people from other places, tourists who spend the equivalent of a month's local wages on a room for the night and then demand smiles all the time. The shock of having to adapt to Korea has left me smiling: if Korea, who looks to America as an adoring child looks up to a heroic baseball player, can still be so different to the McDonaldised West, then perhaps there's hope for the rest of the world.

Rediscovering the joy of teaching

Dongsan High School is with us this week. A Christian specialist school, it's considered among the top five schools in Korea, and every year, they send their freshman students for a week at English Village, before they even start proper school. It's a chance for freshmen to get to know each other, form relationships, do a bit of teambuilding, and compete for the clubs and societies that mark this school as different from the average - which consider clubs as a waste of time that distracts students from their studies...

They are a joy to teach. My first day, I'm so used to herding unruly middle-schoolers, my jaw drops when the students walk out of their hotel ahead of me, in two perfect lines, making their way to our homeroom without even being told. I can stalk at the back, talking to two girls, who tell me "We're very excited about this great opportunity to study with real foreigners." Apart from the pristine language, who ever knew English Village students could be so thrilled about studying English!

The lessons are a pleasure; even the lower-level kids are interested, and the high-level ones actually laugh when the teachers joke with them!

On the Wednesday, we're walking them to the classroom when we pass the school teachers' hotel at the bottom of the road. A teacher is watching TV just inside the open door, and one of the girls lets out a scream of delight. Before long, we've lost them all, a crowd of teenagers cheering and clapping as Kim Yu-Na, the country's top figure-skater, takes first place in the initial round at the Winter Olympics. She's not a singer or a society princess, but Yu-Na is more than a celebrity in Korea - kids here worship those who rise above the crowds to excel in anything. When we complain, the girls reluctantly leave the doorway to get back in line, but our headteacher, who's standing nearby, says that it's ok for them to take a couple of minutes to watch the performance, and the smiles on their faces as they run back to see uplifts me. Later, my coteacher plays the full video of Yu-Na's triumphant piece; she's absolutely perfect, slipping along on the ice as if humans were made to move on two razor thin blades.

Each day, a member of the Overseas Class appears holding a bundle of newspapers for the students and teachers. The Overseas Class is an elite group of students fluent in English. The freshmen actually took a test to be considered for this class while at English Village. Because they couldn't be expected to skip any classes or initiation for the exam, it was written at 11pm - and that didn't even raise an eyebrow from my coteacher, who explained that these children, the cream of the crop, have been raised from birth attending English private lessons and piano classes from 7am until midnight in order to give them the chance of attending such a school as Dongsan. The newspaper is impressive, written at EV, rushed back to the school where it's printed on the private printing press they own, and then driven back to EV the following morning for the students to read over the morning break.

It's a bit of an ego trip for English Village. Their newspaper, commenting on the opening day, calls the teachers "of a high quality, and very handsome and beautiful like princes and princesses."

On the other hand, the headline is "Students Meet Foreigners". Yes. As if we were an exhibit in a zoo. Ahem.

On Friday at lunchtime, I'm with a number of teachers in the pizza restaurant in the Village during the freestyle skating, the second and final round. The Japanese and American contestants are awarded decent scores, but not fantastic. Kim Yu-Na comes on. The restaurant has filled with children, teenagers and parents, and one of my colleagues climbs on a table to turn the volume up on the flat-screen; everyone falls silent, the chefs stop clattering, and we all watch Yu-Na effortlessly break her own record to take the gold, 40 points ahead of her Japanese rival. I can't believe that even the young schoolkids, who haven't been herded in by adults but have hurried in of their own accord in time for her display, are absolutely engrossed in the TV, and when Yu-Na's score is announced - clearly so far ahead as to be unbeatable - the restaurant bursts into tears and applause. It's emotional...


My students compete in a debate they've been preparing for all week. My girls have to compete against boys - until now, they've not been allowed to cohabit classrooms with the opposite gender - Dongsan is strictly Christian. Not sure entirely why it's even co-ed... The boys are also terrified, hiding their fear behind jokes and laughing and formal handshakes. They're more fluent, but my girls have much better grammar. The boys win...




























I listen to their hard work, and then later, can't believe it when a head teacher tells me I was actually assigned the lowest level class in the school! These kids weren't fluent, by any means, but they were miles ahead of any of my previous students - even better than some of our Korean teachers! Polite, well-behaved, interested, willing to participate, smart, creative... At the closing ceremony, I eye their foreign English teacher, wondering if he's going to be leaving the job anytime soon - for these kids, I'd return to Korea.

The Deep Shame of Havingnothingtodo

Since the Swine Flu Episode, schools have been cancelling by the busload, and even the day programmes have been hit hard by the inherent Korean fear of foreigners and their diseases. I've not had much to write about really. The Village has been amazingly quiet, even on the weekends, and I have to admit I'm starting to miss being badgered for my autograph when I go to buy a coffee - amazing but true. I've started to fill the space in my heart with photographs of my new home (not so new anymore - I celebrated my six-month anniversary this week!) This is our deserted main street, normally not visible under the tramp of stilettoed heels.

Here's a photo from the City Hall looking up the main street.


The Village is filled with signposts made in the style of London signs - until you look closely at them, when you notice the Americanised spelling. There are more Americans here than any other nation, but when we combine, the Canadians, Brits and Antipodeans outnumber those who use American spelling. It can be annoying when we're in class and a Powerpoint uses a different spelling to the one you've just used on a board, and your kids point out to you that you're wrong! I just see it as my mission to show Korean learners that there's more than one way to spell favourite...


One bonus of the silence is the number of animals who now venture into EV. I sat one morning and watched a dark brown Tree Squirrel leap about the courtyard below my balcony - none of us had ever seen a Korean squirrel before!



There has been a little excitement - film crews, taking advantage of the silence, have been busy. We've had a music video, a horror movie (with tiny little blonde actresses, about 5 years old...), a soapie episode, and a school uniform photo shoot... um, well the last isn't very exciting, I'll admit.

As for work... well, we don't have any. For the past three weeks we've been doing workshops, talks, lectures, discussion groups, team-building exercises, training, briefings, debriefings, and a LOT of coffee breaks. I got to teach a special elementary program one week, and the sight of the wee ones running round screaming and pulling each other's hair... well, it brought tears to my childless eyes, I tell you. I miss the monsters. I really do.

At the end of our 3rd week post-Isolation, we started observing Day Program classes and Edutainer edutainments in the street. Lots of fun and very interesting to see how they adapt to the environment and time constraints and still manage to teach something to the kids. We even took part in a game one morning - every single OWP teacher working that day was there, so around 50 adults packed onto the verandah type space. Oh, and one very small kid and his smaller baby sister. We hustled them up to the front and made sure he was included in games and challenges and he didn't seem fazed at all. Once a friend of mine called to him and told him to come sit by her, and he looked a bit cross, turned to her, very theatrically put his finger to his lips and loudly whispered "Shhhhh!"

This is our team winning one of the challenges...



Because of the lack of work, we've been given the option of unpaid leave for the last week before the Chuseok holiday which Harry jumped at - on Saturday morning I was up at 5am to drive him to the airport and see him onto a plane to Japan for 2 weeks. It's been odd not having him around! Funny how quickly you get used to situations!

It's all good though, as I now have less than a week till I leave for Bali on Friday night. Very excited, mostly about the fact that I'm meeting my sister in Bangkok. We'll be in Indonesia for a week, then it's back to EV, and management swears we have a program booked for after Chuseok. Here's hoping...

In The Trough

This week, paranoia and fear hit English Village. Scared to leave their rooms, teachers took voluntary unpaid leave rather than work with their colleagues. Other teachers were villified for walking their dogs and sharing meals with friends. Management was charged with reckless endangerment and a petition was started. Masks were brought out. Today, the village is eerily silent; yes, ladies and gentlemen, the dreaded pox has arrived.

The deadly swine flu (well, 2 people did die last weekend in Korea...) was brought into the village by six teachers here to train on a drama course, after they went home for the weekend and contracted the disease. They continued to walk around for another two days before leaving for good; on Sunday four EV drama teachers were isolated and tested for the flu, their first tests came back positive on Tuesday; schools withdrew their kids within hours and the Village was closed to day visitors. On Wednesday one case was confirmed. On Thursday afternoon, the regional government had an emergency meeting with EV Administration and teachers were sent home for the afternoon. Still in training for a phonics programme, 20 of us continued to attend the course, and being the largest group we were the first to be told that quarantine was going to be applied to all teachers - so of course, the minute the course ended (a day early - cram those phonics...) we all rushed out to catch taxis and lifts with friends to the local shops where we stocked up on pot noodles, eggs, milk and beer - all the essentials - before the edict could be made public. Luckily nobody ran screaming down the streets when they saw us - they were obviously the public who hadn't yet seen the local newspaper, or the KBS reporters hanging around at the closed EV gates.

So quarantine kicked in Thursday night and we're all locked up for the duration. By lunchtime on Friday, I was already suffering from cabin fever... Apparently there's a limit on the number of movies you can watch in one go. The village is so quiet - not even the usual people wandering past my balcony or congregating on the benches to chat. Everyone is wearing masks when outside, and we have nurses coming daily to our apartments to check temperatures. Of course, we figure that if any one of us has it, the rest have already been exposed, so at least I've had Cait and Leigh with me all day - we've decided to fight the boredom with milk tarts, yoghurt cakes, and scrabble. Hooray!

We also - I have to admit - had a bit of a party last night in Harry's apartment. Hey, whatever works to make us feel better about being stuck here for a week!

On The Buddhist Trail

5am is a funny time to be up and about at EV. It's still dark at this time of year but by the time we leave our apartment building at 5:45 the dawn is sneaking in. Everything is perfectly quiet. The lights are out, the speakers are calm, birds and frogs the only sound, until Jack the cat spots us and softly yowls for a scratching of ears. The night guard at the back gate is brewing tea in his little room, but his call is as cheerful as ever.

This time we're on our way to Seoraksan, a famous, mountainous national park on the east coast, via Seoul, where we meet up with the good folk of the Seoul Volunteer Centre. Unfortunately, being the furthest from the city, we are the last to arrive and the drive starts with a talk, in Korean, by the leader. Apparently all the other foreigners (we're the only native English-speakers) understand Korean, because they all laugh and turn to look at us. I catch "yong-uh" ("English") as she indicates the three of us huddled at the back of the bus like naughty schoolkids. When Bo Young - another leader, and a friend from the last volunteer jaunt - comes to our seats, I ask her to translate; she sums up a ten-minute speech as "We'll be stopping at a rest stop in 45 minutes."

We're the last ones on the bus at the rest stop too.

Oh dear.

When we arrive at Seoraksan it's early afternoon, and we're taken straight to Naksan-sa ("sa" means Temple) where we cross a bridge to the biggest Buddha I've ever seen. His grey bulk towers above a prayer platform where a child and his mother are bowing over and over.

Lotus flowers float everywhere in ponds and sculpted troughs but they're difficult to see for the tourists milling about (Korean and Western both). There's also the usual brightly painted wooden buildings which are such a feature of traditional Korean architecture. I especially loved a particular hanging fish - I want one for my verandah when I settle back home!

After Naksan-sa, it's off to the main Visitor's Centre for the National Park, where Cait, Leigh and I try to keep our hands out of trouble - surprisingly difficult with all the little buttons that make stuffed animals speak and little lights flash on a 3D map of the Park - but also understandable, as the tour is being conducted in Korean. We're slightly amused by the cameraman who's documenting this trip (Koreans love to film absolutely everything and then make mini-movies); the minute we stray from the main group, he's there, filming every movement. At the Centre we meet the rangers who will guide us over the weekend.

From the Centre we're taken to the campsite where we'll spend our first night, and where a group of very excited 6 - 13-year-olds are eagerly awaiting their first ever English visitors! They've been brought here by the Korean volunteer who teaches them English in their isolated village twice a month. We come bearing gifts: we're laden with E-Mart bags filled with the ingredients for three foreign meals, which we're going to teach the kids to make. (First we play games, but I'm glossing over that. As one of the first two to go out - I magnanimously give my winning place to a child - I am penalised and have to write my name in the air using my bum...) My team has chosen, well, Bo Young has chosen to make jacket potatoes, and I, as the only 'Brit', am appointed Top Chef. We set to with gusto and despite never having made them while camping without any of the required equipment, they're a huge success, and my chief chef (Yun Bok, aged 12) is grinning from ear to ear as he delivers a quickly memorised speech to the judges on jacket potatoes and how to make them.


The judges, however, vote Team C's Vietnamese rice-paper wraps "winner". I definitely saw money change hands though.

Dinner is followed by entertainment; a boy plays a Korean flute, a ranger rocks the panpipes, three little girls sing a folk song, Cait dances to K-pop and Leigh teaches everyone a dance from a lesson at EV - the CHICKEN DANCE!!! It's awesome! :)

By the time the Chicken Dance has had everyone laughing and bouncing around, the kids are firm friends with us, clambering on our shoulders and pulling the hairs on our arms with amazement. One even falls asleep on a volunteer's lap! It's sad to see them go. Not least because it means it's late and time for a shower, and there's no hot water. Even better than that, there are no cubicles either. Cait, Leigh and I hover outside until the last elderly lady leaves with her towel, then we race inside to the big communal shower room and shriek and hop about under the showers, which are not just not hot, but are actually fed with icy mountain water.

The next day, after a noisy night in the luxurious tents set up for us, we're up at 7am for yoga with a pony-tailed teacher from a nearby temple. He seems especially taken with the three Englishes and comes to talk to us afterwards, accompanied by the video camera, of course.

It's soon time to say goodbye to the campsite - which is a beautiful place watched over by the foothills of Seoraksan. There's even a fresh spring next to the tiny shop, which is run by a wizened old couple who charge less than the markets in town for fresh vegetables and pot noodles. I wish all campsites felt like such a self-indulgence as this one.

Bar the lack of hot water, of course.

We head for the park where we split into our teams (we three make the token English in each team.) My group is handed a pile of plaques and we wander up the trail with a ranger, labelling pines and ginger trees. Korean hiking is unrecognisable to anyone with experience of Western trails. You know those winding, rocky paths in Cape Town, where you're not quite sure if you're on the right track until you suddenly come up against a bare cliff face and have to double back and find the hidden fork? Well, Koreans don't have that problem. Koreans have a wide deck with handrails which leads them up the mountain to the exact spot they're aiming for, with bridges over rivers and handy rest stops with benches and picnic tables. It's rather nice for a change... :) (Just kidding - give me the tough natural route any day!) So we set off down this "trail" for about 20 minutes, have a picture taken at a rest stop, and come back down again, via a bustling temple. Each of us has put up one plaque and had our photo taken while strapping it to the tree. That was the extent of our eco-volunteering. Yep. The guy had put up 500 plaques the previous week on his own - if he hadn't had to be explaining trees to 6 ignorant tourists, he probably would have put up a couple of hundred more that day...

The mountains themselves are beautiful. It's been overcast the whole trip, but here the dull grey fog transforms into white wisps of poetic mist, wreathing rocky crags. A cable car rises into the cloud, and this scene is what convinces me I must come back on an independent trip sometime. Unfortunately, we'd been told not to bring backpacks or cameras because of the strenuous hike we'd have to go on... but here's a photo someone else took so you can see what I'm talking about.

Later that day we bid our bus driver farewell for the night and climb into a minibus which races us through a perilously windy route over a river and along the sides of densely forested mountains, dropping us in a carpark in the middle of nowhere, apparently. Just around the corner, however, the forest conceals our third temple of the weekend - Baekdam-sa.


This is far and away my favourite part of the trip. To reach the temple we cross a bridge that spans a wide, rocky river bed - a small stream runs down the centre. The wide stony banks are littered with towers of rocks.



They are a form of meditation crossed with a wish. As you search for the perfect stones to incorporate into your tower, you consider the desires you have for your life and future, and the routes you might take to reach your goals. Balancing the stones on each other absorbs all your attention and suddenly you realise you've reached the pinnacle. You're then permitted to make a wish, although I think this is just a way of vocalising the wishes you've already been meditating on and setting yourself a goal, rather than a penny-in-the-well kind of wish. I built mine after a long day of rushing from place to place and it was such a pleasure to lose myself in the calm solitude of the temple - although there were plenty of people about, the river bed itself seemed to block out noise, and the concentration required meant I looked up from my finished tower and everything came flooding back into my senses - quite a shock!

Leigh, Cait and I spend almost all our free hour before dinner sitting on the banks, building towers and chatting about things. What a joy!

Our room is in an old building built on a platform around a courtyard, with sliding paper-and-bamboo doors. Shoes have to be left outside (as is usual in Korea) on the steps.



Temple life is far from luxurious and guests receive barely more than the monks themselves. We are sleeping in a room divided by a paper wall from the boys' room - 12 girls sleeping on mats squeezed up next to each other!


It's a restful night. Well, apart from the 3am call for prayer - a series of monks strolling through the compound beating drums and singing. We're up at 5:45 for icy showers (not for me, though. Cait and Leigh just have to deal with the smell) and breakfast, which we can't eat as we're all bibimbapped out (bibimbap is veggies on rice, cooked in a peculiarly Korean way), so we raid the little shop for pot noodles and coffee and sit on the river's edge. It's lovely to be up so early in such an enchanting place.


Forest animals think so too - we're visited by little chipmunks that dart close to our feet in search of discarded titbits, and a raccoon dog, which seems completely unperturbed by the humans invading his space.

We leave - reluctantly - at 9am for the Visitors' Centre where our park rangers await. They show us a movie of their duties and Leigh and I admit to goosebumps as we watch - they are firemen, policemen, paramedics, search and rescue, community pillars and teachers, rolled into one small Korean body. The photos of search-and-rescue missions in the wintry mountains convince us that we need to be back before the snow starts to fall - beautiful to look at, amazingly dangerous to hike in!

Then we're surprised with a little ceremony in which the director presents each of us with a certificate of volunteer work, encased in a bound folder that puts my Degree to shame. We each have to go up to the stage to receive them - very official. We feel slightly guilty for the very little bit we've actually done for them!



It marks the end of our trip. Well, of course, apart from the group photos outside with the specially made banner we've been carrying around all weekend (this is another peculiarly Korean trait - they make banners commemorating every group excursion, and take photos of themselves holding them). THEN it's the end of the trip, we're on the bus, and the bus is on the highway to Seoul. Amazing how fast 3 days can go.

I'm pleased I went, though, despite the language barrier and lack of actual volunteering time. I met some really awesome people from all over the world - hopefully I can keep in touch with them.

Well, I wouldn't want to pass up the offer of a free couch on my next big journey, would I?

;)

My Week In ESL Hell

Every once in a while, a bunch of kids arrives at English Village so special, so unique, that they will never be forgotten. A day spent with these awe-inspiring students leads even the most dedicated teacher home to cry quietly in his apartment and call "Mummy!" in his sleep. Teachers dropping like flies - sickness, exhaustion, sudden calls from home that mean they cannot come to work that day... Such is the life we have led this week with the amazing, the jaw-dropping, the fantastic Suju Middle School.

Starting on Monday with the Survival English lesson - where I discovered my class didn't know how to ask somebody's name. A cheery "how's it going?" met with 26 blank faces - but the more formal "How are you?" still only raised a mediocre "I am fine" from about 5 students. I don't have an issue with low students - if their attitude is right, I can adjust lessons and language to suit them.

On Tuesday, my first student was dragged kicking and screaming "But it's not fair!" (in Korean, naturally) to the Head Teacher's office for some Korean-style discipline (writing letters for an hour while sitting in the most uncomfortable position at the teacher's disposal) for talking repeatedly in class and ignoring his teacher. By the end of the day, my class was the class teachers were groaning about when they saw their name on the schedule to teach them.

On Wednesday three students sexually harassed one of my friends, touching themselves and calling her over. I lost all 3 to the Head Teachers for the rest of that day, and most of the next one. Teaching another class Science, I refused to allow two groups to take part in the experiment after their appalling behaviour, and was harassed for ten minutes by outraged girls who couldn't understand that their parents' payment to EV didn't guarantee them luxurious treatment, but perhaps should be a reason for working hard to justify the sacrifice made in their low-income homes.

On Thursday I arrived in my class - on my own, my co-teacher being 'sick' - to find 5 girls sobbing uncontrollably in the bathroom and refusing to be in the same classroom as the boys, who had commented on their periods and called a slightly chubby girl a fat pig. The Korean counsellor talked to them in Korean for my entire lesson, discovering that the girls had retaliated in equal fashion. They spent the evening writing apology letters instead of watching a movie.

On Friday my Korean co-teacher lectured them in Korean for 30 minutes - and an angry tirade in Korean scares even me, so harsh a language is it - while I stood over two boys standing against the wall outside with their hands above their heads. We refused to give prizes to the kids with the most stickers and instead chose 3 students who we felt had at least tried (and were probably being bullied for it). Taking the boys to the Concert Hall for closing ceremony, I had to call over a head teacher to shout at a boy (the main protagonist of the week) for swearing at me in both Korean and English.

Closing Ceremony finally began, and the MC - one of my coteachers - congratulated the school on being the most incredible school in our 3-year history, noting that he could see many of the teachers actually had tears in their eyes. The pleasure that can be taken in taking the piss out of people without them understanding a word is hard to quantify.

There were more than tears in my eyes as I saw the kids off that afternoon, and the staff gathering for the meeting were clearly overjoyed! Next week another school is coming from the same place - I'm giving it one day before I decide whether or not to call in sick for the other four.

Drinking makgeolli, meeting popstars... a day in the life....

The entrance to the festival

On Saturday we were invited to the Paju Flower Festival in nearby Paju Book City, a village of super-modern eco buildings, similar to Heyri Art Village, but with bookstores and publishers. Preparations have been going on for the Festival for the past 6 weeks, and when our bus drew up to the Village, the green hills that we usually see from the windows of the bus to Seoul drew gasps of admiration - they were blanketed with splashes of yellow, orange, red, blue, white... The gardeners had been hard at work.

There were 7 of us representing English Village, plus a few Korean administrators, and we all donned flags from various countries - I was given the Union Jack, which I at least have a connection to - Cait got Australia! Then we gathered behind the EV flag, borne aloft by one of our cartoon mascots (a poor Korean part-timer squeezed into a large-headed and very hot furry costume), and followed the brass band in front of us down the street. We were cheered on by people sitting under canvas tents along the sidewalk - mostly dignitaries in suits - as we waved our hands regally, and gave the peace sign to cameras and film crews. The route was short - we walked for around 10 minutes - then we were able to stand on the sidewalk and cheer on the other groups taking part. One attraction was the float carrying three gorgeous girls playing strings.

Schoolgirl floats

They were more than matched in attire, if not in talent, by the girls wandering around in teeny ladybird outfits and knee-high stiletto boots. The sexualisation of innocent storytime creatures... I read a great piece recently on Korean women and their strong need to be beautiful - "Korean Psychiatrists Discover Shocking New Mental Disorder" - which would have been funnier had it not been so true to life, I thought it was a real report for the first few paragraphs... One of the pop songs at the moment has a girl telling her boyfriend "I don't want you to tell me you like me because I'm nice... let's be honest... you like my legs... you like my butt..." and is, unfortunately, not ironic, as a Western equivalent might be.

After the parade was over, we were taken out for lunch. We chose a bibimbap stall where we sat down with our CEO. First up was the makgeolli - a milky rice wine. Tasted a little like a sour apple juice - mmm! Makgeolli is traditionally served with pajeon - traditional pancakes, stuffed with various fillings - a little like the Korean version of a pizza. Ours came with seafood - although I wasn't a huge fan of the tiny suckered legs poking out from some slices, I knew I loved pajeon from previous encounters, so just became very selective when choosing my slices!

However, lunch is never just lunch for us in Korea. Soon, our CEO, who had gone off to a nearby table in the VIP section, came back with a small unassuming gentleman: the mayor of Paju, wanting to buy us a few bowls of makgeolli. We were, of course, obliging. He was very sweet and welcoming and told us we were good for his province. Then, from the table next to us, a pretty young girl got up and came over to talk to Rick (our Korean administrator). He translated for us: she was a popstar, and she wanted us to pose for a picture with her. Now, to my mind, this was slightly topsy turvy to the way we would have done it in the west, but never mind. To the gasps of a group of boys who'd noticed her in the dark tent, we posed for a few photos with Bae Seul-gi - she of the "don't say you like me for my personality" video.

Strange times! We laugh in the teachers' room that it's going to be tough readjusting when we leave Korea - we're going to cry at strangers "But why don't you love me? Don't I have a small face? Adore me! Adore me!"