Hoengsong and Sokcho. Camp and Pokemon

I haven't taught at every GLPS camp at Minjok Sagwan High School in Gangwon Province, near Wonju, but I have been to many and greatly enjoy them. I probably enjoy them more than the students but I will save that kind of commentary for the end of this post.

It has been six years since I lived in Gangwondo and the places I remember have changed greatly. This post will be something of a tourist's report of my visit.

I had been suffering a slight abdominal pain, low and in front of my left hip joint for nearly a year.  Will trying to get in shape using the rowing machines at camp, something worked the pain is gone!

But I didn't exercise much as the temperature was high all camp.  I think we saw rain twice, both early in the first week of camp.  The rest of the time, we cooked.  I took the dog for walks but she didn't get as much time outside was either of us wanted.
Camp Pictures!

My son on the steps on the right. He joined a class attempting to safely drop eggs from great heights.

A student taught me about Hot Pepper Dragonflies.  This one, Crocothemis servilia only turns such a beautiful red during mating season. 

These two of a spider were the only good ones I took.  My phone camera would only focus on the distant sky.  What really drew me to this individual though was his loss of legs.  This is a four-legged spider!

Walking stick.

Some of my students had trouble doing actual research outside rather than just catching critters.

I found this salamander after one of the two rains we experienced.

One weekend, we returned home.  Good for us, but boring to write about.  The next weekend we went to Sokcho.  My son was born there eleven years and a few months ago but he hadn't visited in the six years we'd lived in Busan. He was very interested in seeing our old apartment and seeing what he might remember.

But mostly he was interested in Pokemon Go! In Korea, this game can only be played on Sokcho so far. This audio interview (autoplay) explains why. Basically, Korea is officially at war and Google isn't allowed to publish certain details on its maps in Korea so the resolution isn't good enough for game play (Daum does have that level of details for some reason).  The block of globe that Google aloted to Japan has a funny wing that reaches into one part of Korea - Sokcho - so the game is live there.

Sokcho is Pokemon-crazy with sign everywhere directing you in where to go and how to play.

It is horrifying to think that people are so into Pokemon that they throw their pets into the garbage!

Below, Ulsan Bowi was barely visible through the heat haze.

 After cooking in the direct sunlight, we found my only friend who still lives in Sokcho after six years and hung out on the beach.

These tetrahedrons are huge and break up the motion of the surf to protect the piers.  They are mostly jumbled together so I found the long view below fascinating and unique.

We also swam at Mul-Nori Soo-young Jang, a concrete box near the camp.  I didn't take any pictures but here is what I can tell you. Yoo-bi Castle Pension has rooms and campsite for rent. They also have a pool filled by stream water that is wonderfully refreshing. To find it, use Daum maps and enter "강원 횡성군 둔내면 영랑리 119 새주소강원 횡성군 둔내면 강변로영랑6길 115" in the search bar - hope you have the Hangeul character set on your computer.

Happy dinosaur holidays!

The little guy really loves his dinosaurs.  I did, too, at his age, and, to be honest, still do.  He received  some gifts for Christmas and more than half were dinosaur-related.

The little guy is seated in front of 'T-rex' boardgame, with 13, wow! 13, dinosaurs.  On the sofa are some dinosaur books, dinosaur print underwear, a growing dinosaur (see below) and a BBC DVD called Walking with Dinosaurs.

Not shown is a nearly life-size T-rex that That's good Engrish gave him.

After three days in water, this dinosaur doubled in height and thickness.  It is now dry but still feels unpleasantly squishy to me.

This crossword was in an otherwise excellent dinosaur games book.  Okay, three words on the right and three words to fill in. Easy?  No.  Nowhere on the right is there an 'M' word, but the 'E' in 'teeth' would fit if the crossword had a 'T'.  To relate this post to Korea somehow, let me just say that problems with English proofreading can occur in English-speaking countries as well as here.

Language and KwandongAlex

This is the second in what I hope to be a fairly regular series about how my son speaks and learn English, which he calls "Canada talking".

In the first, I drew attention to the way he overuses the present continuous, with phrases like, "I don't want to be doing that. rather than "I don't want to do that."

Today, I am amused by his struggles with the present continuous and two-part verbs.  In the morning, "I am get upping", "When are you get upping?" and the like are common.

another common sentence construction uses "I don't know how to do that."  The other night he was sleeping in my bed with me and kicked me a few times.  I told him not to push me off the bed.  His response was ,"I don't know how to not push you off the bed."

Language and KwandongAlex

"I don't want you to be going."
"No, I'm not doing that."
KwandongAlex, age 4.5 -western age.

I want you to focus on the continuous forms of the verbs above, rather than the negativity.  These were just two fairly recent examples of the way my son talks.  He is normally cheerful.

I normally focus on the content and, like all parents, I understand most of his pronunciation quirks without thinking about them.  I don't concentrate much on how I speak either.  Oops, that's wrong.  I concentrate very hard on how I speak to my students, but not so much on relaxed speech at home.

Still, I am not thinking that is the way I am speaking to him when I am staying at home.

Yeah, that looks really weird.  I don't talk like that.

Cold night

Hand of an artist

It's well-known that, on Christmas Day, many kids will take a fantastic toy out of its box, set it down and play for hours with that box. In a similar vein, after my son finished painting the last of my supply of computer paper, I looked at the results and took a picture of his hand.

Hmm, needs more red.

Santa's Village

Santa's summer Ho-ho-home is in Bracebridge, Ontario because Bracebridge is halfway between the equator and the North Pole -yeah, that makes sense.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Santa's Village - I had enjoyed going there as a child and my son likes it now but they did not hire me when I applied 28 years ago. The first job I applied to and they shut me down, while hiring all my friends.*

The roller coaster in the trees is a good example of the rides there. The coaster was exciting enough for GeorgianBayAlex and the views were scenic enough for me. As the pictures show, this coaster had the right combination of terror and fun for the little guy.




Santa was there and greeted each child warmly. A few of the elves appeared tired but most were perky and in character.
We went to Santa's Village with my mother and my sister and her kids. There we met four of her friends and their mothers and kids. It was a big group going around. One of the grandmothers invited us all to her house for dinner and play by Lake muskoka. This duck wandered by and let me get extremely close, even while a Golden Lab was playing ten or twenty metres away. Strange, but beautiful.
---
*Is this a typical Korean ESL teacher story? A loser who wasn't hired by the local equivelent of McDonald's goes on to work in Korea? Much as I hate that stereotype, I fit it in this regard (ONLY!)

Posted by GeorgianBayBrian.

Balm Beach

We had some incredibly hot weather yesterday - a welcome change for the locals as this has been a wet spring and start to summer here.

Pictures are again out of order - not broken but not n the order I took them in. Click on any to enlarge.

To cool off, we had some ice cream. Mom and I ingested ours but GeorgianBayAlex choose to apply his as a salve. Perhaps he was uncertain about the name of the beach: Balm probably refers to the cool water more than the ice cream available nearby.

Mom and the little guy at the edge of the public beach.





The beach was nice although some kids nearby had a very limited vocabulary -there's more than one adjective available.

There was a lot of pollen in the water.

There is also controversy at the beach. In Canada, property owners can only own land to the high water mark of a lake. Practically, that means anyone can walk along a shore. That would be fine except that beachgoers ocassionally leave trash behind - less often, I think, thanvisitors to Sokcho Beach, but frequently enough.







This cottager has put up a fence that actually extends to into the water to deter walkers. You might be able to see burn marks on the fence, which has also been attacked with chainsaws and police are frequently called to the scene.

any taller and we will be calling God's wrath upon us.

Books aren't just for reading, you know.  I built a little apartment building for his dinosaurs to live in last night.  It was fun to build, fun to look at and lots of fun to knock down.  It's also fun to build ever taller ones.

I guess we'll be going outside with a wheel-barrel for the next one.  And a lightning rod to deflect the bolts sure to come against our presumption.

Staff party in the country

Coming up on five years at Blogger, soon I hope to learn how to put my photos in order.

On Saturday, the little guy and I went to a pension owned by a coworker for a staff party.  We had a great time and, although this was the first pension I had visited, I really recommend it (Sumbi pension).

We've got to get the little guy a pet.  He loved the many animals at the pension.

The one, literal, blot on the landscape is the big-ass cement factory.
I will have to ask coworkers for permission to post their photos, but this one of ESL prof/yoga master Jenna might be good promotion for her.
Our host expected more children at the party and prepared a treasure hunt.  As my little guy was the only little guy, he found lots of presents.  I'm not sure, but perhaps the whole game-ploy was to let the others chat and relax without me bothering them.

"Yeah, KwandongBrian, you and your son look for toys for a few hours.  Have fun", snicker.

We did have fun, in part because neither I nor the people who made the clues had been to the pension before so many places were described haphazardly. 
He collected enough toys that when it was time to go to bed, he asked me if it was his birthday.  You'd think it was, especially with the great cake.
We all had a great time and I may post more pics after asking permission.

obsessed with numbers

The little guy is just shy of his fourth birthday -by my reckoning; here, he has been five for several months - and suddenly loves reading numbers.  Walking through a parking lot, with all those license plates, is an ordeal now.

For the record, this started a few weeks ago, perhaps at 3 years ten months, or a little later.

It reminds me of when I first learned to pronounce Hangeul.  I was an adult at the time, so I remember it clearly.  After a month in Korea, I could reliably struggle through a word or short sentence.  Riding the bus home in the evening was exhausting because I found myself trying to read each sign we passed - and street signs are horribly thick here - but almost never finishing before we had passed it.  Obsessively on to the next one.  And the next one...

He sometimes has trouble distinguishing between '6' and '9'.

Time to work on his actually writing them.

Well, KwandongAlex was taken

This man is not my son.

I like the blur feature for obscuring phone numbers and such.

Not quite sure of the value of this

...but it sure looks cute.

Last week the big fella (no longer the little guy) had his first Tae Kwon Do class.

We were asked, in an entirely friendly and well-meaning way, to not hang around the gym during his first classes as he would be distracted.

I did, however, watch the end of his classes as I waited to pick him up, careful to stand back from the door I peering through, to see him but not be too obvious (foreigners can distract whole classes of children easily).

The first time I watched, he was mostly playing with his belt like a snake. On a later visit, I saw him practice with some classmates of similar age or size. They must have had more experience because they were kicking from what I know as 'fighting stance' (one leg leading,body twisted slightly, hands
up in fists) and jumping on ocassion from left-leg-leading to right-leg-leading. The big fella was just jumping up and down, body squarely facing the instructor.

But, he had a happy smile on his face.

I am satisfied with the instructors and the big fella's training. So long as he has fun with other children, and learns a little, I will be as happy as the litt...big fella.

Oh, these photos were taken at home, if you couldn't tell.

Really exciting stuff - for KwandongAlex

My little guy, as with all little guys, loves big machines. In our apartment, we have three excavators and five dump trucks, a few trains and many fire trucks (as displayed in a previous post). Oh, the trucks and such in our apartment aren't that big, I just want to be clear.
Anyway, I thought that snow removal in Sokcho consisted of dumping snow from the roads into the ocean - the melt water and carried pollutants will end up there in any case.

Apparently not. In Expo Park, a vacant parking lot is up to 15 metres deep in snow. We, KwandongAlex and I, watched six or seven dump trucks unload their cargo there in about the same number of minutes. Both Excavator drivers waved to KwandongAlex - They must know that their job is the dream and main aspiration of all boys under 5, 10...ah, heck, I would love to know how to drive one.

Nitpicking about wonderful Christmas Toys

As a father, Christmas really is more about giving than receiving (although I liked the shirts and hiking pants, mom).

The little guy received several books and toys that we both really like but I have a few minor points to bring up - constructive criticism, if you will.

This Talking Microscope looks great and I can't wait to use it with the little guy - but I will wait because inside the case were three Triple A batteries while the machine uses three C batteries. Some shirts were packed in the box with the 'scope so I can't be certain if the error happened at the factory or enroute to my home.

Matthew Reinhart's The Jungle Book (What the book / Amazon) is fantastic. These books are no longer described as 'pop-up' books but as examples of 'paper engineering'. The new, fancier title is well-deserved. Still, the book is described as appropriate for ages 4-8 (and that is a group with huge variety!) while I think the book is more appropriate for ages 5 or 6 to 45; again, as a Kipling fan, I love it.
On these pages, Baloo is offering to care for the man-cub, thwarting Shere-khan's scheme to eat the little guy right away.

I am also a fan of Lego and the little guy has played with the remnants of my thirty-plus year old Lego pieces for the last year or so. I had planned to get him a box of general parts- various squares and rectangles - but E-Mart had sold out so I got him a fire truck set. He also likes fire trucks so it's a perfect match. The Lego truck has a trailer and is at the bottom of the picture.
Everything went together fine but I have to complain about the packing. The set consists of three or four parts (the fire fighter was of three pieces, is that enough to be counted as separate?) Inside the box were three plastic bags, each with many pieces. Is it too much to ask that the bags each correspond to one part? One bag - one trailer, one bag- the truck, one bag - the contents of the trailer: makes sense to me.

No. The fire fighter's head was in one bag and his body in another. The wheels were in one bag the the tires in a different bag. And so on.

I put it together for the little guy, with some help from him, but it could've been a little easier.

I hope everyone's troubles are as minor as mine and that they have the same wonderful weather to enjoy as I do.