In Korea, yes you can. A Korean man has married his dakimaura, a.k.a. a body pillow with a Japanese anime girl drawn on it. The girl depicted on the newlywed pillow is Fate Testarossa from the anime Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. Recently, a man in Japan also married a character from a computer game. These two marriages to inanimate spouses has me wondering several things. Are these marriages considered legal? Do both “couples” receive marriage benefits from their respective countries if their spouses are inanimate or virtual? How does one divorce a pillow or video game character? Is sleeping on another pillow considered adultery? There are petitions in Japan to make it legal to marry their favourite characters, whether they are pillows, cartoons, or from video games. The man behind the petition is Taichi Takashita, who fell in love with the character Mikuru Asahina. He is prohibited from marrying her by law and started the petition to try and change the laws to permit marriage between the real and the virtual. Takashita said that he prefers virtual life over real. There are also many groups on Facebook that discuss marrying characters from games, comics, movies.
Posted in Awesome Korean Things, Korean Adventures, Korean Things, Random Korean Things, South Korea, Uncategorized | Tagged Korean marry pillow, man marries pillow | Leave a Comment »
Last week was my first week back at school. There have been many changes over the winter break. Changes I thought would never happen at my school. For the past two years, I have been teaching (or trying) to teach classes of 30 teens English without the support of the Korean teachers at school. Some teachers would come to class then sneak out the back door as soon as class begun, leaving me trying to keep a class in order. Usually I could hold my own in the class and keep the class going, but sometimes having a Korean English teacher there would have greatly benefitted the students with learning. My Korean is pretty limited and I can’t often translate things effectively into Korean or English for them sometimes. This year, I have FOUR teachers to help me in class and so far the difference is night and day compared to the past two years. The students are learning more and the classes are flowing much smoother and I am also enjoying teaching again. It’s also been great to see my students again too.
Seventeen days to go! I’m off to Suncheon this weekend to explore where I’ll be living in two months and meet some people. It should be good. Have a good weekend!
Posted in ESL, Jeollanamdo, Mokpo, South Korea, Suncheon, me | Leave a Comment »
At my high school for the past two years, there have been eight of each grade (1,2,3). Korean teachers across Jeollanamdo have been laid off and as a result, high school first graders have been compressed into seven classes at my school. I now teach fifteen classes a week instead of sixteen. Both classes I visited yesterday had around thirty seven kids on average per class in them. Yowza! But there is a silver lining to a larger class size. I will finally have Korean teachers in class to help me with teaching and coteaching which will be a very welcome change from teaching solo the past two years. The downside to a much larger class size is students will get much less time with a teacher than before and (perhaps) a slightly reduced quality of education. I also feel for their homeroom teachers who have even more kids and even more responsibility as well.
I don’t know about cities outside of Mokpo and whether this is the norm at other schools but all my friends teaching in high schools have said that their first year classes have been cut down to seven as well. I would be interested in hearing what other people are experiencing.
Posted in ESL, Jeollanamdo, Mokpo, South Korea | Tagged one less class | Leave a Comment »
This should be read by anyone who will be coming to Korea for the first time or is thinking about coming to Korea for the first time. Roboseyo’s open letter can be found here.
Posted in ESL, South Korea | Tagged coming to korea?, new teachers korea | Leave a Comment »
The beginning of the 2010 school year for me and my students (who aren’t seniors) begins Tuesday March 2. Which I’m both excited and sad for. I miss my kids and also am sad because the end of teaching at Mokpo Girls High School draws nearer and nearer. I only have 29 days left in Mokpo and lots to do until the end. I’m also stuck waiting to hear whether the job I thought I had in Suncheon is actually available or not. I hate the wait.
Being home is going to be great and will be home just long enough to enjoy it and not be overly bored. It will also help me to appreciate all I have going for me not only in Korea, but also in life in general. I’m looking forward to gardening, photography, family, friends, cooking, eating, and relaxing in general. I miss Keady Market, etc. So being back homr will be nice. I haven’t really seen my sister in two years and it will great to have some time to catch up with her before she heads back to France this summer as well.
Go Canada go!!
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
I was going through my external hard drive, looking at old pictures, when I came across the one below. I fell in love with the picture when I took it back in the Fall of 2007 and forgot about it. The picture combined three of my favorite things. Those being photography, farm life, and auctions. This photo was taken at an auction held after an old farmer died. He collected whatever he could and his collection over sixty years made for some rather awesome sights and buys. But the row of tractors fascinated me the most. Only the tractor in the background worked. All the rest were long dead or in need of serious repair to ever work.
Posted in Bruce County, Photographs | Tagged rural | Leave a Comment »
If it’s broken, it’s left on the side of the road, behind someone’s house, or apparently on an island. While going to Oedaldo last Sunday, I took the opportunity to snap some pictures of the junk boat island that is on the way to the island. Everytime I pass the island, I notice there are different boats or the older ones have been broken down (and hopefully recycled). There is so much waste in South Korea and so many things just being tossed away or abandoned. I do hope that these boats are recycled or reused and not just left here to rust.
Posted in Awesome Korean Things, Jeollanamdo, Mokpo, Photographs | Tagged Mokpo | Leave a Comment »
The winds of change are starting to be felt. I should be moving to Suncheon in late May to teach at Keumdang High School. I will finish my contract up at Mokpo Girls High school in late March, move home for two months and do my visa, and come back in May. I’m hoping there are no unseen snags that I will have to deal with but so far things seem peachy.
Posted in Suncheon, me | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been using Ubuntu for nearly three years and I’ve been generally quite happy with (usually) how simple it is to use and how most of my things work with the OS. I was happily using the 9.0.4 distro for quite some time and decided to upgrade to 9.1 Oops.
The release seems rushed. This may have been to try and beat the release of Windows 7 but thats up for debate and speculation. I’ve had nothing but problems with this release.
My video colors are off and inverted. The video players (movie player, vlc, etc) will only work if Firefox is not running or has ever booted during the session. Firefox isn’t as stable or reliable in this distribution and uses huge amounts of system resources.
Complaints with 9.1 seem to be quite common and it would be a good idea to not upgrade quite yet. This release feels rushed and how it handles also feels just as rushed.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Do I stay where I am or do I move on? What is happening is that my options for Korea in the immediate future are to either stay at my school or the next option that I will briefly outline. Option two involves going home after my contract ends for three weeks, redo my entire visa process (for unexplained reasons I can’t extend while in Korea), then fly back and work in Suncheon at a high school.
I’ve been at my school for two years and it has been a real positive experience overall. My only problems were not having a classroom of my own to use and a pretty crappy apartment. My school is aware of these issues and said they will find me somewhere better to live (within the same budget as where I am now) and would let me use a class to teach. I have some time to make a decision.
I do want to apply for Teachers College this fall and staying at my school would allow me to not have to move or deal with the dreaded visa process all over again. I would move home at the end of April next year and would give me some time to volunteer in a classroom to gain class experience. Again, I have lots to think about and consider.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
-
Blog Stats
- 1,958
Categories
Archives
Category Cloud
Pages
Meta
-
Flickr Photos
More Photos
