Start of Spring with Zoo animals and Cherry Blossoms

Coming onto my second month teaching in South Korea has bit a tad bumpy; learning everything there is to teach different age groups of children is a near-never-ending cycle for the first while. I had hoped to handle everything by the end of the first month, but I can safely say there is still much I need to sort out, and most of it seems to rely on memory more than skill.

I'm not going to fudge anything about it, teaching is tough work; it requires not just dedication, but also time and patience to handle things. I looked online for information on being a better teacher and the biggest thing that comes up is Teachers are just that, teachers. We aren't friends, we are there to be guides and support staff to students who want to learn and do well. We are responsible for them as our charging and nothing more; we stick by the rules we set, the lessons we teach, and must always, ALWAYS keep to what we say. Its hard, certainly a different set of ethos and rules from my prior fields of industry, but something I want to master and something I know I can achieve.

Teaching children has always been, for a long time, something I've wanted to do; ever since High-school, I wanted to teach children, perhaps not the younger aged ones, but there isn't anything wrong with dealing with young and old students; and sometimes the younger one's tend to be a lot easier to handle (plus time-wise, it works a lot better if you want to go out and live life.) I still want to teach older kids, perhaps Middle School, but that can wait, and for now, I'm saddled with wonderful classes that I am quite glad to be teaching, and despite the rowdy kids that are present, the poor attitudes, even the slight annoyances, they are my children, they are my students, and I will make sure they get a good education through my class or die trying (not literally of course.)

Taking up the first week of April with a field trip to a zoo was something unexpected. It actually wasn't much of a Zoo, more or less something called an "animal School" which is like a zoo, only not as expansive towards animals and carries a wide range of other things to entertain; it reminds me of something from Zoo Tycoon, it had that feeling anyway.

The children were sent to a large building near the back of the "Park" (lets call it that) and there we were met by trainers who were going to exhibit live animals to the classes. It felt more like a petting zoo than anything, and since the organizer girl who talked to us spoke in Korea, everything she might have said that could have been important was lost on me. We did however know a few things; be gentle with the animals, no screaming or loud noses, and don't certainly try poking fingers into faces of the animals.

They were going to show four animals. First, to start things off, was a giant Albino rabbit. I've never seen an Albino rabbit, but let me tell you, white fur and red eyes is both awe-strucking and freaky at the same time.

Second to be introduced was a turtle of sorts. Not too sure what kind, but he was cute, definitely not the swimming kid and a bit of a far-cry from a turtle you might have as a pet. He was quite curious for one, and seemed to take a liking to my camera a few times.

Then there was one of my faves; a banana python; a bright yellow and pale python. Probably the chillest snake you might ever see, I took a liking to him/her (not sure gender) and found it to be quite an adorable little reptile, though owning one, not so much; they seem a tad too much to handle if they don't like you too much.

Finally, there was the monkey, not too sure which kind of Monkey, but
he was a small monkey, quite energetic, and loved to sit on people's heads. I had seen in pictures of prior field trips that the children have come to this place before, and it was a rightful thing to do. It certainly is a good experience for children to interact with animals. Mind you, some of these kinds of animals may not be the safest of creatures (the snake especially), but letting them experience animals up close and even touching them (let alone learning to be gentle) was always a rewarding experience, even reminiscing myself when I went to a petting zoo, though we had a lot softer types of animals like hedgehog and chinchilla's.

Suffice to say, the trip was pretty smooth, unlike CoCoMongo Eco Park, I didn't have to worry about tiring myself out. Once we finished with the animal's for the petting zoo, we went out in search of more; finding exactly what we wanted a few feet from the entrance of the 'show room' we were in. I'm not going to post pictures of the animals we saw, there were fennecs, cute desert foxes, some porcupines, horses, goats, meerkats, wallaroo's and sea otters; all of which were sleeping so it seemed moot to really do much about it. The real excitement came when we went to the 'ferocious' animal section. Now I'm not sure whose bright idea it was to name a section like that, but the first thing we saw coming in were elephants... yes...elephants. Big ol'gray elephants sleeping standing up. I really didn't expect to see those right there, but they were marked as such in that park, which seemed odd. A bit way down from the elephants, we ran into what really were ferocious animals; Lions, Tigers, Leopards and Jaguar's, most of which were not really doing anything but sleeping or prowling around their enclosure.


 The real downside however was that we didn't have a lot of time; apparently since we took the school's shuttle buses to the park, they had to be back before 1:30pm to pick up the afternoon kids from their homes. Shameful, but understandable, and the children had spent a good amount of time there so it wasn't a total loss. Easy day, easy weekend to follow.

Everywhere you go, no matter North America, Europe, or Asia, places all have their own beauty as the winter fades away for the sickly, gnarled mess of winter, and eventually turns into the warmth and beauty of the Spring in all it's greenery and colorful flora. One thing however that sets Asian countries apart (at least the one's I know of better than others) is that they carry a special sort of vegetation that both instills beauty, pride and a sense of awe; Cherry Blossoms.

Both lovely in design and fragile in appearance, Cherry Blossoms only last for a short period of time among many of the tree's littered around South Korea, and Seoul especially. A common occurrence in many Anime's I've watched is the gentle blowing of cherry blossoms pedals all around the protagonist as they ponder something great or small. Its symbolic in its beauty, the pedals draw many people out to watch and each time the pedals bloom, festivals are often had to draw more attention to the beautiful flowers along with exhibits, artists and companies showing off their products. This is a yearly thing, so each time it happens, festivals such as the one I had went to this Saturday near Han River Park was something worth seeing.

I met up with one of my Airsoft buddies, Eddie, and a few of his friends as we ventured down the main road along the Han river. It was breathtaking, even with the cloudy, windy conditions, the pedals from the blossoms would whip past us in a beautiful dance of nature. We walked a good while as we watched the cherry blossoms and took loads of pictures, eventually coming across the actual festival grounds.
(There was a Marithon at the same time, which was at the same place I had my SeoulESL meet a month

earlier.) It was a splendid display to see all the cherry blossoms along the street in full bloom, even with the bad weather we had (windy and slightly drizzly) we wandered along the path of white pink and green to the festival grounds, finding both families and couples dazzled by array's of spring flowers and advertisements for tv shows, movies, and lego toys.

I know it's not a lot to say, but picture's do a lot of justice. I had a very good weekend, enjoyed it with good company of friends and bought a few books too. We went to Itaewon afterwards, a very EXPAT friendly part of Seoul, so we were able to not only have awesome Mexican, but seeing so many foreigners was quite cool.

I should spend more time down there, it'd be a blast!