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Our Apartment

Sorry it has taken this long! Here is the inside and outside view of our apartment!

Teachers in Mokpo BEWARE of this "GnB" Academy!

This is what our friend is going through right now!  Please pray for her and pass this story around!  There are many GnB Academies in Mokpo, this one is the one located across the street from CGV cinema!

Early in May, I had a 'run-in' with my boss Tyler who has been increasingly unpleasant, pushy and trying to shame me in front of my students. He is sneering when I ask him questions, he changes his mind about how he wants things done, and then tells me he told me about the change when he did not, he changed my work hours and makes me sit for 2-3 hours with absolutely nothing to do 3 days a week b4 my classes actually begin, and then gets mad when I pass the time with my magazines or do a word search puzzle or write a letter. Well, the huge argument started out with a disagreement about what time I arrived at work (he was not there, but he decided what time I actually arrived). I told him his watch must have been mistaken because I was there on time! well, it blew up into something huge where he called me a liar, and then I just couldn't hold the knowlege back any longer that I had regarding the teachers and the girls.... I told him HE was the liar and well, continue reading the following letter I wrote to Andrea King for the rest of the story....

Hello Andrea ~ 

(name hidden) suggested I contact you for some guidance regarding an issue that has come up at the academy for which I work.

Right after I started work here, a teacher told me that she was quitting because of the Directors "unprofessional behavior" toward her. She was nervous to tell me any details and I did not press her. Korean men behave differently than my western assumptions, so I just let it be.
However, last month, a different teacher came o me and wanted to have some advise from me. She told me a story involving she and the Director that was much more detailed than the first teachers story and was quite alarming. She filed her notice to quit 2 days after talking to me about what she should do. The second teacher is also leaving for reasons she is 'embarrassed to share'. The third and final teacher says she is quitting because Director treats her like 'dung'. I am the only foreign teacher here at this academy, and in 6 months that I have been here, there have been 6 teachers that have worked here and quit.

THEN, 3 weeks ago, during a classroom topic discussion about 'bullies' with three of my 13 year old students, they told me they hated Tyler, the Director, because he 'touches them when he scratches his private thing'. Saving the girls identities and keeping my promise to the teacher who still has 30 days to work there, I confronted him with the information and wanted to know what his answer was. He demanded the names, and I refused to give him names. He fired me immediately for being 'a Liar', and contacted the Immigration Board to cancel my E-2 VISA and told me I had until the 31st of May to leave the country or face jail, but I have to work the entire month for him still. 

My dismissal papers are signed by his wife, Spring, who is the actual stated director of GnB English Academy, who also works as a teacher in two different grades for the public school system here in Mokpo. (illegal)

I do not want to leave the country, I love being in Korea and I love teaching! How do I straighten the mess out with the Immigration Board and how do I go about getting a new contract with a new school? 
I have plenty of people to speak for my Character.....

Please help me with some guidance and advise?

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,
Elisabeth Miller
GnB English Academy, Mokpo, si 
with 'Tyler' and 'Spring', Directors


--- On Thu, 5/7/09, Andrea King .com> wrote:

From: Andrea King .com>
Subject: Re: Teacher in Mokpo, si
To: iamsusi@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, May 7, 2009, 9:36 PM

Hi Elizabeth:

The only way that you will have your name cleared with immigration, in order to get another job in the immediate future, is to fight this on a legal level. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to get another work visa from immigration until your current contract has expired. It's a kind of penalty they put on teachers who leave early, and/or fired. The only other way around it is to get a "Letter of Release" from your employer, which is basically a letter to immigration stating that they release you from your contract and your are free to seek employment elsewhere. Judging from your relationship with them, they may either agree to do this to keep you quiet, or deny you as a means of maintaining their alleged innocence. Either way, if there is a possibility of child abuse here, I think you need to report it!! If you are still in contact with your former Korean colleagues who also had allegations against this man, they should consider contacting the authorities as well--if not for themselves, but for the students. I am sure they can find a way to do so anonymously. 

Here is a link to the National Police Agency: http://www.police.go.kr/KNPA/main.jspThere is an interpreting service, which is on the website. You may also want to contact your home Embassy to see if they can refer you to legal aid in Korea, if it comes down to that. I would also consider contacting the Korean Labour Board, as I am quite sure it is not legal for your employer to essentially blackmail you into working a month for free, in order to get a plane ticket home. Most hagwans assume that teachers will not pursue these things, and a great deal of them do not know labour law. I don't know if there is a clause in your contract which absolves him from buying you a ticket home, or paying you a month's wages if you are terminated. You should read the fine print of your contract to make sure he didn't weasel his way around this!

Maybe you should consider calling a lawyer. You could also seek the advice of ATEKhttp://atek.or.kr/. They might be able to refer you to someone who can help.

Lastly, I would find every Korean blacklist on the internet and report this. Websites such as www.eslcafe.com or www.efl-law.com often welcome these words of warning to potential teachers. It's important to help future teachers avoid these predators! 
{(I do not know how to post any of this on any web site.... )}

Best of luck!

Andrea
-- 
Program Coordinator, Foreign Language Department
Jeollanamdo Office of Education, Muan Gun, Samhyang Myeon, Namak Ri, 1457 Beon-Ji, 534-821 www.jne.go.kr
Office: 061-260-0538 FAX: 061-260-0535 Cell: 010.4423.0741 Home: 061-285-0804 

Chan-sa's First Trip To Oedaldo

Our New Baby

We found her on Rose Street( A shopping district). Two little Korean boys were holding her and playing with her, but it was apparent that she was a street dog(Very dirty and skinny). She came running up to us and loved us right away!!  Its like she had known us our whole life, we felt an emotional connection right away as if God had sent her to us from heaven!  So we brought her home and named her Chun-sa!
"Chun-sa" means "angel,"(in Korean) and she has been the epitome of an angel over the past week! She loves sitting in people's laps, cuddling and being petted. She can "sit" already, and she hasn't had any accidents in the apartment!  I didn't think we were ready for another dog..... but I guess God knows best!

Thank you God! :)

Busan Aquarium Hyundai fish tank

Busan Aquarium last weekend

Last weekends trip to Busan Aquarium

Our Trip last weekend to Busan

"Last weekend's trip to Wando and Haenam"

This last weekend, Susan and I got to go to the very First World Slow Walking Festival in Wando-county South Korea. Wando is an island county, made up of many little islands the most prominent being Wando, or Wan island. It started like this: 

Susan's director called me and asked if I would like to find 25 foreigners to attend "The world's first slow walking contest" for FREE!  I thought that it would be something I could definitely win and the price was perfect!  So I pulled my resources together and found 26 foreigners,including us, who wanted to go on this free trip!  So the trip would comprise of our friends, or friends of friends.

Alas I was mistaken. Slow walking, it turns out, is merely normal walking at leisure, as opposed to the fast walking, done with wild hip movements, flailing arms and Olympic medals every four years. No one was going to win this contest, not for being first, not for being last. It was completely non-competitive and was intended for enjoyment, peace and harmony. And the walk took place on a beach; a really nice beach on the southern side of Shinjido, or Shinji Island. It was very tranquil. 

We got to go on the trip to Wando because it was the very first world slow walking festival in Wando and someone wanted it to be an international affair, so they sponsored a bus that would be leaving from Mokpo if we could get at least 20 foreigners to come. The trip included not only the walking festival but also a trip up the monorail at Ttangkkut at Land's End in Haenam, and dinner at a restaurant next to the Daehueng Temple, a famous Buddhist Temple in Haenam. 

The entire trip, we were told, would be at no cost to us. At least we were told we wouldn't be charged any cash for it. And the first thing we were told after the bus got moving was that if people asked if we had paid, to tell them yes. A sum of thirty thousand wan was the agreed upon lie to tell. So as you can see the cost was already beginning to mount. Later they passed around a list with our names on it that we were supposed to initial and after each name was the price for each item of the trip, the bus, lunch, the monorail, the festival, the dinner. it amounted to about 95,000wan, so the cost was increasing. When we arrived at the first venue, the beach, one of our number was asked directly if we had paid and how much. This was the acid test. Apparently, whoever was asked gave a satisfactory response, because we were not kicked out of the festival. 

So there we were, living the lie. It was a very nice festival. We had seats right up front, or as up front as one could get. We were right behind the dignitaries, including the provincial governor and the congressman from that district which included Haenam, Wando, and Gangjin. We were supposed to have a photo opportunity with the Governor but it never happened. 

We all sat in chairs near the front of the audience, the only ones in front of us were the dignitaries and staff people who had spent a big part of their lives getting ready for this event. And it began with three guys in strange hats with funny little drums walking out onto the stage and singing something about Africa. They were from Africa, these three guys, but at first I thought they might be Koreans in Black Face. I was sure glad I was wrong, because these guys drummed and sang songs from the Ivory Coast (known to the French speaking world as Cote d'Ivoire, including people from Ivory Coast) I told Ivory she could change the pronunciation of her name to Ivoire but she said no. 

The drummers were comical and really good. They played two songs and then a troupe of dancers came out and did African folk dancing to the rhythm of the drumming and singing. The Americans were thrilled with the show, including me, but the Koreans did not join in as much as we did, in shouting “woo“, when the drummers wanted us to or in clapping rhythmically along to the drumming and dancing. We had a good time. 

After the dancing, came the speeches, all in Korean, with a brief translation in English so the cost of the afternoon was mounting again. One thing they did was to have an artist, with a five foot tall paint brush, paint some lettering on a large banner. This banner was twenty feet wide and fifty feet long and covered the entire stage. The "Artist" took his time in writing out what ever it was he wrote. I don't know what he wrote, because it was entirely in Hangul,(Korean language) and in a stylized cursive version of Hangul that apparently required some dancing and dramatic pauses in the writing of it.  Susan couldn't even sound out the syllables, the writing was so hard to read. But at the end of the writing performance, the artist dipped his hand in red paint then slapped the banner with his hand by way of signing the artwork. Five of the dignitaries also were required to sign the banner in this way, so they all got their palms red, so to speak. 

The speech that was the most interesting was given by the Finnish Ambassador elect. He was an older man with very curly long grey hair including his beard, and he chose to speak in Italian, that being the language the interpreter could speak, but he threw in a couple of English words and a couple of Korean words and a couple of French words so it was a fascinating speech. The translator only translated into Korean. Why Finland's Ambassador elect to South Korea was at this particular event is hard to tell. He may be the same Finnish diplomat who "discovered" the Moses Miracle that happens every year on Jindo, a largish island just over west of Haenam, a few years back. Every year in February, but sometimes in April or June as well, the tide goes way out near Jin Island and a small land bridge appears between that island and another much smaller one across the way. A certain Finnish diplomat was invited to come to see this happen away back in the 1990s and it became known to the world at large from this particular diplomat's report. I think this is the same Finnish diplomat who discovered Jindo, and soon the world will learn about slow city Wando and their slow walking festival. 

Wando was picked to have this festival because of all the beautiful walking trails they have. Few of which are hiking trails so you can "Slow Walk" them. The opening ceremonies ended with the awarding of a couple of plaques to two very beautiful women, one, a model who was incredibly beautiful and whose hair never moved an inch even in the winds off the beach. The second was a pop singer whose name is Shinji and since the island we were on was also Shinji, they gave her two awards. Then the brass band played. The band was called "Funny Band." It was essentially a brass quintet featuring two trumpets, a trombone, a tuba and a French horn accompanied by a drummer. They started with a take on the Louis Prima song, Sing, Sing, Sing, and they were pretty good. But the announcer told us in English that "Funny Band" wanted their music to be a “happy virus” to infect every one with joy. They also played When the Saints Go Marching In, so they were essentially a Korean Dixieland Brass Quintet with drums. When we were about to go walking the band had taken off their stylish sparkling tuxedo's and, wearing jeans and t-shirts, they were playing a version of Pachelbel's Canon in D, so the funny part was that they dressed up for Sing, Sing, Sing and dressed down for the Baroque style symphony. It was sweet. 

After the "Funny Band" came Shinji, and she was really fun, because she had two guys who were her back-up dancers and one of them also did a little rap bit during the songs. He was supposed to be tough, I guess, judging by the way he threw his hand in the air like he was Eminem. He had a biker hat on, slightly tipped to one side, and a scarf on his neck. The other dancer looked like he played linebacker in college but had sunk to doing this for a living. He was only wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans but he looked really uncomfortable and unsure of the moves until they got to the part where they made what looked like some sort of swimming move. Man he really threw himself into the backstroke thing and what I liked best about it was that Susan and Ivory were trying to match the dance moves, because not only were the backup guys dancing, but Shinji was doing it too, although she had to hold the microphone up so she couldn't do all the moves. It was pretty sweet. The African Drummers and dancers got back on the stage to close out the opening ceremonies and then came the slow walk. 

The entire crowd gathered at a sort of gate but really just a banner held up by two poles, there, near the stage, and when the signal was given, began slowly walking up the beach. Strolling along at an amiable pace, not in much of a hurry. Slow walks on the beach can be pretty romantic, if there aren't hundreds of people walking with you. After about a quarter of a mile, there was a big table with bottled water for all the participants -- like the tables of water along a marathon run, but I didn't see anyone just take a bottle, throw it over their heads and keep walking. It was much more serene and peaceful. After we took group pictures of the lying foreigners, we got on the bus and took off at a slow pace back to the main land to get a chance to go to the very edge of the main land at Land's End. The whole slow thing had become infectious after all.

I forgot to tell you about lunch and the amazing Amish woman we met. Well, lunch was at a restaurant in Wando-eup, the main “city” of Wando. You know you are in Wando when you see what looks like a very fake, but beautiful waterfall just off on the right as you are driving in. We ate sitting on the floor and we had a dish called bi-bim-bap. It’s a rice dish that usually has a dollop of hot red pepper paste just in the middle, but this restaurant served the paste on the side, so some of us just skipped that part, not me I added extra!!  The interesting part of the restaurant was that the front window had a water fall too. There was a thin stream of water, all along the window, top to bottom, side to side, so the light could stream in but you couldn’t see anything clearly, because there was running water there. It would have been a lot cooler if it hadn’t been directly behind me so I couldn’t lean against the glass without getting soaked. So sitting on the floor, eating rice with a spoon. Lovely.

We also met Lisa, who is teaching English in Mokpo and is 49. She was very interesting but one thing she said stuck out. She said her daughter told her, when she had mentioned the idea of coming to Korea to teach, “Why not? You’ve always been on the other side of normal anyway.” That seemed quite an unusual thing for a daughter to say, until we found out that Lisa grew up Amish. She left the Amish community only about ten years ago, in her late thirties, so being on the far side of normal for the Amish is probably closer to normal among the rest of us. But it was interesting talking to Lisa. We had a great time. 

When we got to Ttangkkut, Land’s End, the tour guides were getting tickets for the monorail and I took a few pictures with our camera, I will post them, or send them and you can see what I got to see, only not as breathtakingly beautiful because the perspective is all wrong and you can’t feel the wind or the sun, or smell the trees or the ocean, or hear the ocean or the birds. So it’d just be a teaser. 

We got on the bus again after the monorail ride and we were going to eat dinner at a restaurant neat a Buddhist temple called Daehwangsa. It is an ancient and large Buddhist temple and when we arrived it was dusk and just about as beautiful as you please. The dinner was supposed to be “Temple Style,” and we didn’t really know what that meant. But we found out. Temple style means that there were just tons of little side dishes all over the table, about five different ones in front of every person, and every body got one bowl of rice, but that was your only dish. If you wanted to eat the side dishes you had to share because they weren’t the same five in front of everybody. 
Dennis, an interesting semi-retired gentleman from Atlanta, recently out of Saint Petersburg Florida, asked how we were to proceed, and I told him that if he wanted anything at all, just reach over and get some with his chop-sticks that’s how it is done in Korea. So when they brought in a big piece of fish we just dug in. I found out later it was swordfish. Good eating. They brought in several other dishes as well, not all of them appetizing. I got to sit with “Tommy” the tour guides’ son who came along on this trip with all these adult English speakers, and he had a really good time because almost everyone played with him at one point or another. But he really seemed to like me. He grabbed my hand and led me to where he wanted to sit for the meal, and so we sat. 

So to sum up: Robert Heinlein used to write about TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) and it certainly proved true this weekend. Finnish Ambassadors are a caution and no mistake. African drummers and dancers can really rock the house, even when there is no house just a stage on the beach. Wando is a beautiful island paradise only it’s part of Korea and they have winter there. Oh, and next time I go to a slow walking festival, I’m going to walk even slower. 

Miss you all