English Summer Camp 2011

Way back, in the last 2 weeks of July, it was hot and humid and raining lots which meant: 

a) that it was another sticky Korean summer 

b) I was spending all my free time researching what we would do on our holiday

c) it was time for another English "Camp".

Yes, it was English Summer Camp 2011 and my first camp at my new middle school in Hanam. In fact, this was our third English camp in South Korea and we were starting to feel like old hands at it by then I think. (To read about our previous English camps or to have a look at our old materials, click here for Summer 2010 and Winter 2010). In common with "camps" at both my previous school and Rowan's school and in fact most (if not all schools) in Korea, there wasn't a scrap of canvas in sight and certainly no camp fire as camps here just mean an extra curricular program which the kids attend during the holidays. 

It's the end of the road for canvas fans.

Goodbye Gwangju, hello Hanam

Careful readers of this blog may have noticed that we are more than a little behind in our posts, well I say ours, Sophie is still keeping going, I haven't posted anything in so long that I barely remember it's existence! Well there is a reason that we got so far behind, and to understand why you have to cast your mind back to a lovely spring day back in March this year...


Everything was planned out for for the next year, we'd decided to stay at our schools, which despite their idiosyncrasies weren't bad places, we were used to the curriculum, we'd built up good relationships with the students and teachers and were generally looking forward to doing another year. Then it all fell apart. Sophie got called down to the office at her school one morning to discover that her school wasn't going to be able to renew her contract. It seems that the organisation which runs the foreign teacher's program (called GEPIK) had decided that it was going to "streamline" it's hiring process to make it more "efficient"  - bywords for money saving job cuts if ever I've heard them! So their decision was that there would only be two periods a year when foreign teachers could be hired (in September and March) and there would be no hiring outside of these months. Unfortunately for us, we were hired in May (outside of the hiring months) and missed the cut off date for the new rule being introduced by five days!

My 5 minutes of (semi) fame

My school has a rather nice TV and audio broadcasting suite that I get to use every week and that hosts a student radio broadcasting club so I'm told. Usually, on Thursday and Fridays mornings, I have to come into school early to do an English audio broadcast to the whole school called "Morning Class" which is a kind of annoying as I hate getting up any earlier than normal. Also, there always seems to be some kind of problem with it - either the sound doesn't work or the video we have to show to the students doesn't work - always something and everyone in the whole school gets to hear it when it goes wrong and presumably they connect the screw ups with me, the token English teacher. Oh well, what can you do. I have no control over the technical aspects of the broadcast, I'm just there to provide a native speaker voice so I've learnt to just accept the farcical screw ups that happen every week and try to see the funny side.

I'd never even realised that it was possible to do TV broadcasts too until, in my last week of normal classes before school broke up for the winter vacation, I found out that I had to host a short morning program on my school's internal TV channel. I have to admit that I wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of being on TV at 8.30am with the prospect of having to overcome all kinds of technical hitches but I suppose that's the price you pay for fame. The program was a chance to showcase some of the best performances from the previous week's English Storytelling and Pop Song Contest. The contest was pretty entertaining. I was one of the three English teachers (the other two were Korean English teachers) who acted as the judging panel. We had to mark each team's performance on fluency, pronunciation and showmanship. We were showered with handfuls of chocolates by kids competing in the contest in an attempt to bribe us which was quite funny. There were about 10 teams who entered from the 1st and 2nd grades and some performed English pop songs while others told stories in English. Most of the students gave really impressive performances with good pronunciation and excellent fluency. Some of them had even made props for their performances which was a nice touch. We even had a seasonal Christmas pop song from one team which was kind of nice considering Christmas isn't really a big deal over here though as I had to listen to it repeatedly the day before at rehearsals I was a bit sick of it by the time of the actual contest. I started thinking to myself that all I really wanted for Christmas was to never hear that bloody Mariah Carey song ever again. Bah humbug!

This girl was the overall winner of the competition. She did an excellent recital of one of Aesop's fables, "The gold ax and the silver ax", complete with handmade props, fake mustaches and different voices!

One of my favourite performances though was one of the worst. Two 2nd grade girls gave a spirited performance, singing some American pop song, but their English was terrible, they were pretty badly out of tune and they didn't seem to know any of the words except for the chorus but they gave it their all and really got into it. One of the girls was even doing some air guitar! However, one of the Korean English teachers wrote on the comments section of her score sheet "They seem to be enjoying themselves" - ouch! That really cracked me up - I must be an evil person!

The winning teams all got cash prizes of varying sizes, 40,000 won for 1st place I think (abut 25 quid), and we thought that was the end of it. But no, next week it turned out that three of the best teams would have to perform on school TV so all their peers could watch them - a terrifying prospect for young teenagers I'm sure. Unsurprisingly, it was difficult to get any volunteers for the TV program as apparently many of the winners were worried that they would get laughed at by their peers for speaking English well. One of my co-teacher told me this bullying of kids with good English skills is quite a big problem in Korean schools but I suppose the same could be said for kids with good French in British schools - I'm sure they would get laughed at or seen as a teacher's pet too. Luckily, one of my colleagues had the stellar idea of persuading the students into doing it by telling them that they would have to give their prizes back if they didn't. This had the desired effect and on a chilly Thursday morning three of the teams gathered in the broadcasting studio and sat around looking fairly petrified while I tried to cheer them up with a bit of clowning around. I was pretty nervous too to be honest but it all went well, no technical hitches for once, and the kids did a great job.

She was really nervous but did a great job singing "Because of You" by Kelly Clarkson - a horrible song in my opinion but, luckily for the competing teams, I wasn't allowed to judge based on whether I liked their song or not!

These three girls did a really nice performance of the fable "The town mouse and the country mouse" and they'd drawn these scenes themselves to illustrate different parts of the story.

The girls standing in front of the camera with the Korean flag just behind them and off to the side a little. The two girls on the sides look pretty nervous but they were fine once they were talking.

Me playing the role of host and trying not to look as foolish as I felt - and failing miserably!

Our cheerful and very professional camera crew! I think they were drawn from the school's broadcasting club.

The best thing of all though, was that this ended up being my last morning broadcast of the year as we didn't have to do one on Friday as that was the last day of term. Hurray - no more rushing to school for Morning Class at least another 3 months!

Thank you for your listening

Recently I spent a fortnight conducting speaking tests at my school, I originally thought great, a whole two weeks when I won't have to do any thing except sit back and listen to the kids speaking. Of course it turned out not to be as easy or fun as that! Within a few hours I was bored stiff of hearing the same stilited answers over and over again or of trying to drag any kind of English at all from a depressingly high number of students.

I'd first done some speaking tests a week or two after we arrived in Korea. I was told there were a few students who had been absent during the previous tests just before I arrived. I was just told to ask them a few questions and then give them a grade from their answers. Having only been teaching for just over a week and not having any idea what they had been asked in the previous test or how they had been marked I was more than a little apprehensive about the whole thing. Luckily the two students I had to test were pretty easy to grade and I gave them both a B.

When it came to organising my own speaking tests 6 months later I got little more guidance in how to arrange the test. I was just asked to put together some questions about the last few chapters and ask each student a selection of three or four of them. I created an unecessarily complex grading system which awarded marks for vocabualry, fluency, grammar and listening then combined them into a A-E grade. In common with most Korean testing the system was heavily weighted towards the top marks and the only way it was possible to score E was not to speak any English at all.

The tests were filled with highs and lows from the depressing moments when I got blank looks to such taxing questions as "How are you?" or "What is your name?" to the highs where I started to get invovled in deep discussions with the more able students. The best fun moments of the tests though were the unintentionally funny answers, a couple of which I had to try hard not to laugh at. Some of the best included: "What is your dream job?" "Chicken" and my personal favorite "What are the paralympic games" "Starcraft?" (A very popular computer game in Korea).

Overall the answers seemed to be a mix between the depressingly bad and impressively good, not many seemed to fall in the middle ground.

Sophie also did speaking tests at her school recently although hers were set up differently to mine. The kids at her school had to prepare a short speech about what they wanted to do on their winter vacation and give 3 reasons (often pronounced "lesions") why they want to do that. And they always, always had to finish it with "Thank you for your listening". That's what they've been instructed to say by their Korean English teachers - head-smackingly frustrating but what can you do. Apparently, it's a bit of a memory test really and in common with my tests it's impossible for the kids to fail. The lowest mark they could get was 16 out of 40 and they only got that if they didn't speak any English at all. Of course most of the kids just stumbled through a short speech about how they wanted to visit their grandmother's house for winter vacation because "grandmother is funny", "I can play computer games" and "grandmother gives me many money'. Failing that, their reasons might be "my grandparents have more TVs than in my house" or on a nicer note "I want to see my cousins and play snowball fight with them". So most of the answers were pretty basic and places they wanted to go varied from grandmother's house to Everland (a big Korean theme park near to where we live) to going abroad so that they could experience flying on a plane for the first time.

There were a few funny and more detailed answers though including the girl who wanted to go to France to see all the handsome French boys and to eat lots of brad and the boy who said he wanted to go to Afghanistan for his winter vacation so he could "join the Taliban, help Afghan children and shoot the gun". The most disturbing answer that Sophie got for her speaking tests was the boy who said that he wanted to visit a "war place" for his winter vacation because:

1. I want to die, because I wouldn't live in this world.
2. I want to kill people because I'm stressful about person.
3. I want to shoot the gun to people, I'm good at it!

Unsurprisingly, Sophie was a bit worried by this and spoke to the boy's co-teacher about it though apparently she did given him a good mark as she doesn't want to be a target when he goes on his murderous rampage. Sophie also had one opinionated answer in a speaking test - a rare thing in Korea! The boy said his 3 reasons for wanting to visit Sapporro, Japan were:

1. The snow in Sapporro is beautiful.
2. There's a snow festival in Sapporro
3. Japan attacked Korea many times in the past so many Koreans hate Japan. But this is the 21st century and Japan and Korea must help each other so he wants to visit Japan to find out more.

It's nice to hear someone in Korea being positive about Japan. There is a long history of conflict between the two countries and many people in Korea are understandably upset with Japan's conduct during the years when they occupied Korea but clearly the times are a-changing.

Sophie did a full round of speaking tests back in the summer too that were set up the same as the winter ones. For the summer tests, her students had to talk about their dream job and give 3 reasons for why they wanted to do it. The most popular jobs included doctor, dentist, teacher and cook. There were a few more interesting occupations cited though including baker, geneticist, political journalist, interpreter and a couple of kids who wanted to be diplomats. Sophie said it was a shame she couldn't give the students extra points for originality.

Most of the students said they wanted their dream job because they wanted to make a lot of money or because they wanted to help sick people or support their parents or more amusingly because their parents wanted them to do it. One kid said he anted to be a doctor so he could help poor people and by helping them he may allow them to know the love of Jesus! Another girl said she wanted to be "a good mom" when she grew up so she could "make babies and babies have to obey me"! She had her priorities sorted out by the sounds of it!

Thank you for your reading!

GEPIK Orientation October 2010

So almost 6 months into our year in Korea and it was time to go do some training. GEPIK (Gyeongi Education Program in Korea) Orientation is mandatory for all Native Speaker English Teachers in Gyeongi Province. It would have been more useful when we first arrived but we came at a weird time due to the teachers before us leaving early. The training was at a residential course for 3 days in some far flung corner of Gyeonggi province. We got paid our usual wage (i.e for working 8.30am to 4.30pm) for the time we were there and they put on a bus to get us down there which was nice because the training centre was miles from any kind of civilisation. We had an early start to go and catch our bus and made it to the bus with exactly one minute to spare before the advertised departure time. It turned out we needn't have bothered running though because the bus waited around for another ten minutes while the driver had a fag.

Before we arrived at the training we had contacted them to ask if we could be put in a room together since the rooms we were staying in were for two people and we came to Korea as a couple, applied for our jobs, as a couple and live together in the same apartment as a couple. However, we were told this wasn't possible as sleeping arrangements had to be split up by gender, no exceptions - who knows what we might get up to! No-one was able to give us a straight answer as to why this was the case. We were given at least 3 different reasons why we couldn't share a room including that it was against GEPIK rules, it was against the rules of the company that managed the facilities and also the classic 'it's against Confucianism'! It was only for a couple of nights but it was pretty annoying and we did kind of feel like they were treating us like children. Also, we only have one set of basic toiletries as we usually share accommodation so it made having a shower and brushing our teeth a bit of a pain in the neck! Our same gender room mates were cool though and we did our best not to be too pissed off about it despite the GEPIK staff being really pretty unhelpful about it all.

We arrived at the training facility and were immediately made to line up by gender to get our name badges and room keys. After dumping our stuff in our rooms we went to the rather chilly main hall to attend the opening ceremony. This started with us all being made to stand up and pay homage to the Korean flag whilst having the Korean national anthem blasted at us which was quite surreal. Then we were treated to a performance of Samul Nori, a traditional form of Korean percussion music that originated form farmers' folk music. The performance was really interesting and even included a bit of plate spinning!

Samul Nori performers at the opening ceremony of GEPIK Orientation.

Sanul Nori means "four objects" (samul) "play" (nori) because it is performed with four traditional Korean instruments including 2 drums and 2 gongs.

Plate spinning skillz!

After the long opening ceremony, we had lunch which was really not very appetising. They attempted to cook Western style food but failed miserably and it didn't help that the food was all cold as well. This was a real shame as the whole training facility was freezing and we'd really been looking forward to some hot food. The only decent meal we had at the training was bibimbap presumably because it is a Korean dish.

Our delicious welcome dinner. It consisted of cold spaghetti with tomato sauce (the only warm thing on the plate) freezing cold, lumpy, mashed potato and a cold burger in some kind of brown sauce. Mmmmmm!

Then we started on the first round of lectures on GEPIK, Korean culture, co-teaching and the Korean education system. Some of these lectures were useful but I have to say that most were not, partly because we had been here for 4 months already I guess. There was lots of talk about the differences between Western and Korean culture and their different styles of education. This would probably have been quite useful for the first time teacher fresh off the plane but for us and the majority of teachers who had been there for a month or more these lectures were a bit pointless. The bottom line seemed to be that whatever was asked of you, no matter how ridiculous, you should just accept it and do it because it was due to cultural differences and/or Confucianism! Also, some of the lectures didn't seem very well informed and some of the more experienced Native English teachers in attendance were actually correcting the information that lecturers were giving us which was a bit worrying. We did get shown a funny and informative video though about a (fictional?) English teacher called Mario and his experiences of cultural differences in Korea including the classic one where he tries to phone in sick with a heavy cold and his Korean co-teachers come to his house to take him to hospital. This point was used to explain to us that Koreans go to the hospital for much more minor things than people in the West do and that Koreans also don't really take time off sick unless they're completely incapacitated, things that we have already found to be true.

By far the best lecture we attended was one called classroom management by a guy called Tim Thompson. Unlike mots of the other lectures it was actually packed with really useful information and tips for teaching and he didn't feel the need to bellow at us in a patronising manner like some of the other speakers had. The points he made were really insightful and his teaching and discipline tips were really helpful. In fact, we have both started implementing some of his ideas in our classrooms now, particularly Rowan who has now split all his classes into teams to try to use competition and student's loyalty to one another as aids to discipline. I think he is having mixed success with this at the moment but he says that discipline is better than it had been before so that must be a good thing.

The Orientation schedule was actually quite long and demanding. They obviously didn't want us to have too much time to ourselves in case we got up to trouble (apparently in previous years GEPIK Orientation had been treated as a non stop drinking party by the English teachers so now we were paying the price with a midnight curfew, a no soju rule and with not being allowed off the training centre premises without a pass which no-one seemed able to get!) The training was for 3 days but we only really had lectures for the first 2days. The lectures went on until 6 pm on both days followed by dinner until 7pm and then on the first day there was an optional Korean language class for beginners or an optional lecture on how to jazz up PowerPoint presentations until 8.30pm. After all that, we had to prepare a demo lesson presentation with the person who had been assigned to us as our partner earlier in the day. Most of us met up with our partners in the computer room and had to fight to get a computer as there weren't enough computers for everybody to work on. Some people spent ages working on their presentation, making pretty PowerPoints and props and were still beavering away until 10.30pm. We were still working on ours until about 10pm so we were pretty knackered when we were finally able to enjoy some 'free time'. We had a pretty quiet night that first day and after just one beer we said goodbye to each other and went to our separate rooms on our separate floors. It was a very misty morning on day 2 so Rowan went for a wander and got some photos of the training centre's grounds in the mist, including the extremely high, vertigo inducing assault course.

GEPIK in the mist.

Part of the assault course in the mist.

An important message that everyone should pay attention to - this was pasted up on the wall outside the training centre.

We had another packed morning of Korean culture lectures and then in the afternoon it was time for us to do our demo lesson presentations. I did my presentation about the present and past tense and it seemed to go ok. Rowan and his partner Jeanette did a presentation called Costumes and Cultures and it was an absolute scream! It was an outrageous collection of bizarre national stereotypes including unlikely claims about how all Scottish people wear kilts, eat haggis and toss the caber and how Canadians wear lumberjack shirts and only eat maple syrup and pancakes. It included some ridiculous accents, impressions and various other silliness. Other people in our group said it reminded them of something out of Monty Python. They ended up being voted the best presentation which evidently irked the coordinators a bit as it possibly wasn't the most serious of the contributions so they decided to award a second prize to a team who hadn't taken such a comedic approach. Rowan was very proud of the GEPIK branded mug he won as a prize and used it to drink from for the rest of the training.

The training centre was surrounded by really pretty, peaceful countryside and was set in nice grounds too.

After dinner on the second day we were all amide to take part in some kind of bizarre mass games in the main auditorium. This hour of enforced fun was called Movin' and Groovin' and it was compulsory. We were all split into large random groups of which ours was the most unenthusiastic and each group was assigned a GEPIK coordinator. Our leader seemed to be as unenthusiastic as were were. We then had to make up some kind of cheerleading chant for our team using our coordinator's name. Ours was pretty lacklustre but some of the other teams really went to town and made a huge amount of noise. I think it didn't help that our group was right at the back of the auditorium so we couldn't really hear what was going on and what we were supposed to be doing. Then we played some team building games and had to do some silly dancing. This was quite amusing but seemed a little pointless seeing as we were all going home the next day. Team building games are surely better used as an ice breaker on the first day. I'm sure it would have been more fun if we had been allowed to have some beer whilst doing the games as well! One of the weirdest moments was when the GEPIK coordinators all had to get up on stage and have a dance off for points for their teams. Some of them seemed to really enjoy it and went for it but some just looked really embarrassed and I felt quite sorry for them.

Me and a couple of crazy girls we met on orientation amused ourselves in the auditorium by racing each other on our wheeled chairs. It was fun!

Everyone gathered for thye Movin' and Groovin' mass games.

After the mass games we were finally free to drink and make merry, though we were under strict instructions that if we wanted to take photos we shoiuld not put them up on Facebook etc. and tag them as GEPIK Orientation as the anti-English contingent in Korea would seize on it as proof that we hadn't actually been doing training but had just spent the 3 days partying at the Korean tax payers expense. This despite the long hours we put in and the fact that most of the people on the training did treat it seriously and did work hard and attend all the required lectures. It seems that there is a small but vocal section of Korean society who don't want us here and think that English education is a waste of money. They're welcome to their opinions of course but I'm not sure that GEPIK should be kow-towing to them really. Therefore, the following pictures do not contain any alcohol in them and merely demonstrate the fun we had that night making new friends and playing table tennis whilst of course remaining completely sober! (No we didn't buy and drink any of the beer on sale in the training facility's on-site shop - that would have been wrong.)

One of the many games of table tennis that we played on our last night at training. We played it using our hands instead of rackets and loads of us played at once. Once you took your turn you had to run to the side and the next person took their turn and so on until there were two left then they played a normal game.

I won a game of table tennis eventually so was allowed to wear the ping pong crown for one round. Notice that I'm holding a bottle of water in my hand as I'm a true sporting professional.

Some people got together at the end of the night for a bit of a sing-a-long but this was soon broken up and we were herded to our rooms - it was midnight after all and there was a risk we could all have turned into pumpkins.

It was a good way to end the Orientation and we had a really good night. I think we deserved it as well after all those lectures. On the third and last day, we handed our keys back in and had a meeting in the morning to go through the terms of our contract. This was actually pretty useful and allowed people the chance to ask questions about their contracts and get advice for any problems they were having. Then it was all back on the buses and we were back in Moran by midday, effectively giving us a half day off which was a nice bonus.

People are smiling because they're leaving and it's Friday and we have a half day off. Nice-uh!

Overall, I thought the training had it's good and bad points. I made some comments on the feedback form about how I thought the Orientation could be improved, such as by having more practical info for first time English teachers (e.g. how to set up a bank account and transfer money home, how the recycling and household rubbish rules work in Korea, how to pay bills etc.) as many people struggle with those things, less repetition on Korean culture as we kept getting told the same things over and over and more lesson planning help, maybe with some demonstrations of good lessons by experienced teachers. After all, most of us at the Orientation were first time teachers with little or no teaching experience and the things most people were worried about were things like classroom management, good English games and effective lesson planning. Still, we met some cool people who we have since met up with and the ping pong was fun!

My first day at school

We had to get up at 7am - much earlier than I am used to getting up for work! Our working hours are 8.30am - 4.30pm here. Both Rowan and I were picked up from our apartment by our co-teachers and driven to school which was great as we didn't need the stress of getting lost on our first day.

My first day started with a bang. I met the Principal and the Vice Principal who were both very nice. There was lots of bowing and shaking hands and I gave them my gifts - we had been told it was a good idea to get in their good books from the get go. My Principal and VP are both men and the VP seems to speak quite a bit of English but the Principal spoke only a little. Then I got to briefly see my staffroom up on the 5th floor and the main staffroom on the 2nd floor where my main Korean handler sits before being whisked back outside the school where I was told I would be addressing the entire school on the PA system and introducing myself which was a bit daunting at 8.40am! Apparently the school was having a special disciplinary meeting where all the students had to line up in the playground and the PE teacher with his massive stick (corporal punishment is still practised to some extent in Korean schools although it is technically illegal now) seemed to be giving their names to the Principal. It was to these lines of students that I gave my English address on the microphone. I was fairly confused about all this but it seemed to go ok.

I then had to teach my first lesson, straight away, 1st period. I had hoped to be observing a few classes before I started teaching as I haven't taught before but this clearly wasn't to be! Luckily, our friend Dean had given us a basic intro lesson plan we could use so I spent my first few classes that day introducing myself and getting the students to introduce themselves and then letting them ask me some questions. Some of the most popular questions they asked me were 'Do you have a boyfriend?' 'Do you have a baby?', 'Who is your favorite singer?' and of course 'Do you like kimchi?'. They also asked me my height quite a bit and when I told them they always seemed very impressed - teachaa very tall! Anyway, the first few classes I taught in my first week were pretty hard work and it's been a steep learning curve - that first day of teaching was mental but I think I learnt a lot (I hope!).

My English classroom and the site of my first ever attempt at teaching

I have been automatically signed up for school dinners as I think most new Native English Teachers are. The lunch was interesting, not like school dinners back home. First of all you get metal chopsticks and a spoon not a knife and fork. You also get a metal tray with 5 round bowls punched into it, 2 large and 3 small for your food. On the first day I got kimchi and rice (you seem to get that every day), some kind of soup, a slice of watermelon, some kind of tofu and green beans dish and whole dried anchovies (at first I thought they were beansprouts but the tiny eyes gave them away) all of which I had to eat with chopsticks and a spoon!

I had one class in the afternoon and then I was taken to the main staffroom to attend a staff meeting which was all in Korean so it meant nothing to me. I had to introduce myself to all the teachers at the beginning of the meeting then I just sat there trying not to fall asleep and scoffing more watermelon.

I finally caught the bus home with one of my co-teachers at 5pm feeling exhausted but having had an exciting if slightly bizarre day. I was keen to ask Rowan how his first day had gone and whether his school had thrown him straight into teaching like mine had. Imagine my surprise when I got home to find that Rowan had been to the school, been shown round and introduced to people and then been taken back home at 9.30am and told he had the rest of the day off! Just the first of many instances of Korean public school randomness.

Packing, repacking, packing, repacking....

So after months of looking for English teaching jobs in South Korea we finally found a couple position that will allow us to live together in the same apartment - woohoo! Unfortunately, we had less than a month from getting the positions to actually leaving the UK and going to Korea so we've been insanely busy doing TEFL courses and getting all our documents together.

So on our last day in London we were still desperately packing and repacking out bags to get them to the target weight of 20kg each - yes we were allowed to bring a grand total of 20 Kg of checked in luggage each plus one piece of hand luggage up to 12kg each. Not much for a whole year in a country that is very proud of its 'Four Distinct Seasons' and where the people are considerably shorter and smaller than your average Westerner. We flew out of London on a Thursday evening and on the same Thursday morning we were still a few kilos over the weight limit and seriously starting to panic.

In the end, we had to make some sacrifices to the Korean Airlines god including:

• several t-shirts,
• a couple of pairs of jeans,
• bedsheets (as we were told we should bring bed linen as it's hard to get good bed clothes in Korea)
• bath towels (we were also told to bring these with us as Korean towels are usually really small, like hand towels) - we brought 3 flannels instead as a compromise!

We did bring a few weird things with us:

• an electric ukulele and mini amp plus a few books of uke tunes (for me, Sophie 'Uke Master' Hale)
• an envelope of za'tar seasoning (for Rowan, the chef of the outfit of course)
• one cheese making kit including rennet tablets (cheese isn't widely available in SK)
• loads of deodorant as Koreans apparently don't really sweat so deodorant is expensive and hard to find in Korea
• loads of painkillers and Lemsip for all the colds we will apparently catch off our students
• a couple of nice, patterned pashminas for decorating the walls of our apartment plus some random photos and posters

We also wore our heaviest clothes including our winter coats, the pockets of which we stuffed with loads of books and a piece of cake which caused some confusion at the airport scanners! All of that stress and when we got to the airport we were still a couple of kgs over on both bags but they didn't seem to mind. Lucky considering how expensive the charges are for being overweight on your bags. Bit unfair that people flying from the US get to take 2 x 23kgs bags of checked in luggage EACH. Lucky bastards!