Arriving

Having newly arrived in Portugal, I spent my first night at a celebrated hostel in Lisboa - one of the best in the world, according to certain sources. Amazingly spacious and beautifully done up, and clearly having cost a great deal of money right in the centre of Lisboa, I have to say I felt more at home in my sister's sweet hostel in London, where the staff's personality is there to see on every wall and in every room. The next day I was off on the railway line down the coast to São Pedro do Estoril, a small village just 20 minutes from Lisboa. I'd found a room there online, but, regardless of the enormous pool in the garden, the steep walk to the train station, from where I needed to catch a train to Cascais where I'll be working, was enough to convince me on the first day that unless I wanted to scare small children in the streets with my scarlet complexion and wheezing, I needed to find somewhere to stay in Cascais itself. Unfortunately, Cascais being as popular with wealthy Lisboans as it is with retired Europeans, rent costs twice as much in the centre as anywhere else in the area.

Sometimes life astounds me with its inventive coincidences. On Tuesday I went into Cascais to get some paperwork done. First stop was the Town Hall to get my Certificate of Residency, which I needed to apply for my Social Security Number. Unfortunately, you can't pay for the Certificate without the SS number - a rather strange governmental catch-22. Luckily, the lovely lady behind the computer, while quite underwhelmed by my attempts at Portuguese and urging me to take classes soon, offered to use her own Number for the receipt. First hurdle cleared. Town Hall having taken less time than expected, I decided to go to the Finanças office and walked all the way there up a steep hill, only to remember, at the door, that I didn't have my employment contract, which I'd been told I would need. So back into town I went, searching for an internet cafe in the cobbled streets of the old town, but not a single one was to be found. There's another Finanças office in another nearby town which I'd heard could be faster than the larger Cascais one, so I was about to give up for the day in Cascais when, outside the train station, I noticed a big official looking building advertising its Internet Space. I went inside to find a completely free governmental initiative where I could print my contract. Gotta love Europe. On my way out, I paused to look at an advert for yoga classes on the community noticeboard, and right next to it was a handwritten note offering a room to rent. Not being entirely happy in my current place, I took down the phone number. Back at Finanças, I glanced down the street to see an internet cafe almost next door... The dire warnings of two-hour waits evaporated in the face of a wait barely long enough for me to catch my breath. And guess what? They never even asked for my contract. Typical. That evening, my telephone skills utterly deserting me in my time of need, I texted the woman with the flat and set up an appointment to see it the next day. It's ideal. Cheap, close to town and the school, near a gym and a park, in a spotless apartment with a Portuguese woman, her fascinating English-professor mum and a tiny cat. Where would I be if my Finanças information had been right?!

I'm settled into the room now, and have been to see the director of my school; I have a bank account, a tax contribution number, a certificate of residency, a written income confirmation and a local resident card. Feeling proud. Still to get: my social security number, and a health card, which relies on getting the former. I anticipate the social security application with trepidation - I need to be there by 7am to get into the queue to get a number to get into a queue to see an officer, and then I don't know if he'll see me without having the forms, which are unobtainable without seeing the officer... Portuguese bureaucracy nearly rivals Zimbabwe's! But the sun shines, the sea beckons, and the cafe round the corner from Social Security serves amazing pasteis de nata; I'm already thinking of signing up for another year!

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.