Pictures - Weekend in Hyeonri
Our friend Jose lives in Hyeonri, a rural village near Inje. This was a long weekend for us, so we spent Friday and Saturday night with him. We went whitewater rafting on Saturday and took a nice hike Sunday morning.
It’s a gorgeous place. Here are some pictures:
Pictures - Gangneung Cherry Blossom Festival
These pictures are from April 10. Erin and I rode our bikes to Gyeongpo Lake to check out the cherry blossom festival. Enjoy!
Pictures from Thailand
So here are a bunch of photos from Thailand. In order, these are from Bangkok, Koh Lanta, Sukhothai, and Ayutthaya. The pictures look OK for the most part. I think the colors look a bit washed out, but I’m certainly no photographer and it’s just a point-and-shoot camera.
Again, these images are resized and watermarked. If you want a clean file, just let me know.
Enjoy!
Pictures from Korea
Here are a handful of pictures from my vacation in Korea. The weather is way too nice to be on the computer today, so I’ll keep this brief. These are pictures from Seoul and Gyeongju, in that order. I’ve watermarked these pictures with my website name; if you want a clean image or a full-resolution file, just let me know.
(We did not go to the Seoul Museum of Chicken Art, but there’s always next time.)
Successful Troubleshooting!
I just sorted out a very geeky problem I’ve been having, and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. Prior to coming to Korea, I ordered myself an Asus EeePC 901. For the most part, it’s been a fantastic machine. My one complaint has been the wireless performance. It’s mostly OK at my apartment, but on the go it has a real hard time connecting to access points. If the signal strength is anything less than stellar, it’s just pretty flakey. It may be a linux-related driver issue; I’m not sure.
Regardless, I’d had enough, so I ordered an Intel 4965 AGN card prior to my parents’ visit. The original Ralink card used 2 antennas. The new Intel card had jacks for three. I’m pretty sure that three antennas are required for true 802.11N speed, but I haven’t done a lot of research on it. Something about MIMO (multiple input/multiple output) support. I thought 3 was probably better than 2, so I spent $5 and ordered one. I don’t use N networks now, but I figured I might in the future.
Ideally, I would have disassembled the machine and found a good location to stash the new antenna, but the wire was really short, and I didn’t want tear everything apart. I just stuck it under the (shielded) access panel. I knew this was a piss-poor location, but I figured that I wasn’t using wireless N anyways, so it probably didn’t matter.
I made this update right before going to Thailand. Everything seemed to be working well. The new card connected to networks faster than the stock card, battery life was better, and it seemed to do a better job with weak signals. I didn’t do a lot of testing, however.
I only used wireless a few times in Thailand, but things didn’t go well. The connection was laggy, and Skype had terrible delay or dropped calls. I blamed it lack of bandwidth, but the problems didn’t go away when I got home. Even on my (excellent) Korean connection, I had problems using Skype.
Tonight I tackled the problem. Ping showed terribly inconsistent latencies, and tons of duplicate packets. At first I blamed my crappy router, but my other laptop had no problems. Traceroute didn’t help narrow down the source of the problem.
I pulled the new wireless card and re-inserted the old card. Problem solved. This had me really frustrated, because the Intel card is pretty much brand new. I tried the Intel card again, but without the third antenna. Bingo! Low latencies and no dropped/duplicate packets.
I don’t know enough about the hardware or the wireless N specification to really understand this one, but it appears that the case shielding was messing up the third antenna, which caused the problems. I’ll watch it for a few days, but the problem seems resolved.
I love easy fixes. I suppose the moral is to do things right the first time, but methodical troubleshooting is critical when problems arise.
Dinner meetings
We’re back from Thailand. It was a great trip, and I have tons of pictures and lots to talk about. Look for updates soon. Also, we had a great time in Korea with my parents. Again, pictures and updates to come.
I hate to rant on my first post back, but there’s something I have to get off my chest. I hate dinner meetings.
Here’s the background: We got back to Gangneung on Friday and had to go to school on Monday. No classes, so we’re sitting at our desks and planning. We’re told sometime in the morning that we have a dinner meeting for the teachers that are moving to new schools. As far as I can gather, this happens about every semester. Teachers have to go to a new school at least every five years, to avoid stagnation and corruption, I guess.
Dinner meetings are pretty common; we have them for all sorts of reasons. This is maybe the 6th or 7th such meeting that we’ve had thus far. Here’s the scenario: Erin and I catch a cab to the beach. We sit down in a big room with all of the teachers from school, maybe 50 total. There’s no formal order to seating, but all the women sit on one side, and the men on the other. (Side note #1: the male teachers at school speak very little English and tend to ignore me.) I have the option of sitting awkwardly with the men, or sitting awkwardly with the women. I opt for the women, because I can sit with Erin, and because they speak English. I side as close too the men’s table as possible though. Regardless, this seems to be some sort of testosterone-related faux pas. Nobody wants to talk to me.
Side dishes come, then raw fish. (Side note #2: I can’t stand raw fish.) At some point, soju is brought out. The drinking begins. The men start drinking heavily, or at least pretending to. Same with the women. They pour water into shot glasses if they don’t want to drink soju. After a few drinks, both the women and the men are getting red-faced and giggly. I’m sitting awkwardly at a table.
A few more drinks, and the third course is served. Some kind of fish soup. Soju is still flowing. At this point, I get flagged over to a different table, where Erin is pounding beers with some of the younger female teachers. I join in, because company is nice. We have a couple drinks, but my head really isn’t in it.
Then the real fun starts. My co-teacher is one of the older male teachers, and seems to be the de-facto MC. He stands up and starts asking teachers to sing. Last time this happened, Erin and I got called up and performed a horrendous rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” for the teachers that were leaving. Thankfully, we were not called on. It should be noted that I have a terrible voice. I’d prefer not to demonstrate that fact publicly. I’m also not much of a drinker. Even if I were, no amount of rot-gut soju could make public singing a comfortable experience. NOT being called up was the best part of the evening.
After 20 or 30 minutes of singing, the group decides to move on…to a norebang. This translates to “singing room.” You guessed it…more singing! (A norebang is a building full of little rooms with screens and kareokee machines. Drinks and food are often served. It’s part of Korean culture that I do not understand at all.) At this point, Erin and I made our excuses and left with another teacher. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to be TOO much of a big deal.
As I’ve made clear, I really hate these meetings. It was better last semester, because one of the temp English teachers was a male who spoke excellent English. He made the whole situation a lot easier. It’s frustrating for me, because I’m pretty sure that if I drank a half-gallon of soju and generally acted foolish, I’d fit in much better. I’m certainly not saying that every teacher does this, but plenty do, and it drinking is a pretty big part of male bonding in Korea. It’s just really not my style.
Enough of my whining. We were able to escape the meeting after 2 and a half hours, which isn’t too bad. At least we avoided the norebang.
Vacation!
I’ve been even lazier than usual with this blog, but here’s a quick update:
- School camps ended Friday, January 23. They were reasonably successful
- My parents arrived in Korea the same day. We spent about 10 days traveling. Everything went really smoothly. We saw Seoul, Gyeongju, and Gangneung. Pictures will be up later.
- Erin and I are currently waiting in Incheon International Airport. We’re about to fly to Thailand for 17 days of vacation. If you currently live someplace cold, enjoy this weather forecast.
That’s all for now. (Erin is kicking me off MY computer.)
The completely finished newspaper
The last version of the school newspaper that I posted (here) required a few changes. In addition to the missing photo and a couple typos, the school requested some alterations. First, the article about school violence was cut. Honestly, I expected this would happen. It talked about a tragic incident at a nearby school, in which one student accidentally killed another. I gently suggested that the author of the story choose another topic, but he wanted to write about this one. I figured I’d go along with it. I thought it was a story that actually mattered to the kids, and I’d back it until the administration said otherwise.
Because I no longer have the newspaper class, and the kids are busy with exams, I wrote a brief story about the school festival to fill the hole. I hated to cut the kid’s story, and I certainly don’t need to practice my English, but there wasn’t much I could do.
The second correction involved the soccer team story. Evidently, the new team, Gangwon FC, held their draft in December. Because of this, the information in the article was out of date. Again, I can’t really get a re-write from the kids, so I ended up re-writing one paragraph and making a few other changes to the article. It’s not really something I was comfortable doing, but the school wanted things changed ASAP. My co-teacher seemed fine with me doing the writing.
I emailed both students to explain the changes. I know it’s like a small thing, but it’s their work, and changing it doesn’t seem ethical to me. I suppose I should learn from my own lessons. I taught the kids that one of the first steps in writing should be identifying the audience. You have to be sure that what you write is suitable to the given audience. The class decided that the audience for the newspaper was teachers, students and parents, but that’s not really true. The newspaper is a bragging point for the teachers and administration. More than anything, the goal is advertisement for the school and the people who run it. As such, the stories must reflect positively on the school. Unfortunately, this means that accurate information and “appropriate” content are more important than demonstrating the honest (but sometimes flawed) work of the students.
But ignore my cynicism. I’m still fairly proud of the final copy, and it was (generally) a fun project.
Almost finished with a frustrating project
One of my tasks as a native English teacher has been continuing the English newspaper class started by my predecessor. This has been a fairly frustrating project from the start. On my very first day, I was shown a two-page printed newspaper, and told that I had to edit some things before it could be published. I had to find the file on the hard drive, replace a photo, and make some minor tweaks to the layout. I’d never used Microsoft Publisher before, and couldn’t read the Korean menus, but I’m fairly tech-savvy and managed to get it sorted out.
Then the real fun began. I was told that I would teach a small class 3 days a week, with no co-teacher. The end result of this class should be another issue of the newspaper. The rest was up to me. Along the way, I was given several other assignments. For the first few days, we prepared a script for a skit contest, which was later cancelled. We spent several days in October making decorations for the classroom (because a comittee was coming to inspect the school). In between these projects, I focused on newspaper-related topics. We learned about formal and informal English, the use of statistics, and the writing style expected in a newspaper. This ended up being one of my favorite classes. I was a little unsure of myself, but the kids were hard-working and spoke excellent English. They made things easy.
About half-way through October, we picked topics for the newspaper, and began to work on stories. At this point, I was assuming this was a regularly-scheduled class, and would continue until final exams (the first week in December). I was wrong.
The third week of October, I was told that my class would conclude Oct. 31st. I would then have November/December to assemble the paper and get it printed. This left me only 6 class periods to actually finish the articles. I had planned for 12-18 classes. I recruited Erin to help me work with the kids, and we got busy. In the end, my students did some fairly impressive work. I had 9 stories (1 from each kid). Topics included the local English contest, a new soccer team in the province, the Large Hadron Collider, and the sub-prime mortage crisis. Given the timeframe, it was very impressive.
On the very last day of the class, our co-teacher asked me what topics the students wrote about. I explained that they chose a variety of stories; some were school-related, others dealt with local, national, or international issues. I was told that it is a school newspaper, and as such, it should be about the school. I didn’t say anything at this point, and it hasn’t come up since. The kids did fine work, and the school should be proud of it.
In the last couple weeks, I have typed the articles that were hand-written and fixed typos and minor errors. I contacted the students to approve any changes. I got the text into Publisher, and spent a few hours adjusting the layout. I found a couple photos to use (under Creative Commons licenses, of course). It’s been a surprisingly time-consuming project, but it’s almost done. I’m waiting on a couple photos, and then I’ll need to make some final tweaks to the layout. I was convinced that the end result would be pretty crappy, but I think it looks OK. Next semester will be better, but I’m proud of it. I promise I’ll post a PDF when everything is finished.
Even if the students got nothing out of it, the entire class has been educational for me. I’m starting to realize how difficult it is to plan a cohesive series of lessons. Coming up with ideas that are interesting, useful, and build towards a final product is a hell of a challenge. It’s also been a real eye-opener to learn how time-consuming a small project can be. I’ve certainly got a new respect for good teachers. Effective lessons are rarely easy to execute, and teaching energetic students while meeting the expectations of supervisors is a frustrating and sometimes impossible task.
I guess that’s why I’m making the big bucks…
A bunch of hiking pictures
I’ve been lazy about uploading pictures lately. Today I don’t have to teach elementary, so here is a big batch of hiking pictures.
The first gallery is from our first real hiking trip. We went to Seoraksan National Park with Ben (a Canadian English teacher) and Mihyun (his girlfriend, also an English teacher). We hiked to Ulsanbawi, a rock formation in the park. When I say hiking, I mostly mean stair climbing. The heavily-traveled trails are pretty tame, for the most part. Certainly strenuous, but not technically difficult.
The giant buddha is a bronze statue near the entrance of the park. The other statues are at a shrine on the beach that we visited on our way home.
These pictures were taken from a hill near our apartment. It’s wooded and there are some trails going up it. It was a hazy day, so you’re not necessarily looking at smog. The city is a bit smoggy, but I think it’s usually a mix of exhaust and smog. It’s not the prettiest city I’ve ever seen, but also not the ugliest. (This is an unattractive angle, however.)
These pictures were taken on our second trip to Seoraksan Nat’l Park. Erin and I went alone, and it was insanely busy. We should have known better than to visit a popular park on a holiday weekend. We hiked a an easy trail up to a cave in the mountains. It was a beautiful walk.
These pictures are from last Sunday. We went to a small mountain near Yongpyeong Ski Resort with Ben, Mihyun, and another teacher. It was a gorgeous walk, but we got a late start and the trail was a lot longer than we anticipated. We turned back about halfway up. I didn’t take many pictures, but the changing leaves are gorgeous. Korea is pretty if you can get out of the cities.
More writing to follow soon…
