Knives, Trees and Dust..

Now I am solidly into my fourth month here in Mokpo and of course it came as no real surprise to me yesterday morning to discover that we were once more bereft of water. It did come back on today - just after I had finished washing with bottled water in a bucket again- timing! And in all the panic about the water I forgot to tell you about the irony of it raining heavily outside while the taps inside ran dry. Or that we were engulfed in dust for 3 days- the first day it hung like a fog in the air. My students told me that it came over from China and that it hits Mokpo at this time every year. Pretty determined dust it has to be said. All of the cars were covered in dust and in fact a lot of them still are. Pretty worrying when you think that we were breathing that air in. Best not to think about it I reckon.

So I have been thinking about some of the differences between Korean students and those back home in England. I have already covered the amount of time that the kids spend in various school and after school classes. I see a lot of kids running around in their Taekwondo outfits and they are very sweet- bearing in mind that most of the kids I see are fairly little and not at all threatening. Just very sweet and smiley and pleased to see what they think is an American- they chase me down the street yelling 'miguk' which is American. I soon put them straight with a very firm 'yonguk', which is England. Not surprisingly the kids are big into their pens and pencils and have some of the best pencil cases I have seen- with some of the funniest English on them. But the really surprising thing, from my point of view, is what lurks inside the pencil cases- they all seem to carry knives. Not hoofing great machetes or anything like that- just little craft knives to sharpen their pencils with. Not pencil sharpeners here. Or very few at least. Can you imagine if the kids back home routinely carried little knives?? I told my adult class what a shock it was to see kids as young as six carrying knives and it was really a concept that they couldn't get their heads around. I don't think that we even started to sharpen our own pencils until after the age of seven and I wouldn't trust myself with a knife to do it even now.

And there seems to be no big stigma for the boys to carry pencil cases covered in hearts and all pink and words like 'My love for you is endless just as there is no end to the universe' written on them. In fact one of my middle school students pulled out a cloth to wipe his glasses on and it was absolutely covered in big pink flowers. Imagine the reaction that would get from his classmates back home. I am not saying that it is right to laugh at boys for having pencil cases covered in cute rabbits, I am just saying that a boy doing that back home would be lucky to make it through puberty.

This Friday is Arbor Day- a National Holiday. On this day, thousands of Koreans plant trees to help the reforestation program. Some of my students have told me that they will be going to the mountains on Friday to plant trees near the graves of their grandparents. They told me most of this by drawing me a picture on the board of a grave mound- complete with dead grandparent in a coffin- you just have to love the kids sometimes! Of course the plans for the Mokpo crew on this day have little to do with trees and more to do with soju. We are off to Pusan and I will tell you all about it next week!
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