Going home

Korea was an easy place to live. 27 hours make a full time week, a meal out costs a fiver, beer is plentiful and work starts late. However, because of this, it isn’t the healthiest place. Like a tree’s age can be counted by its rings, generally you can tell how long a teacher has been in Korea by how many extra inches they have around their waist since they arrived.

Despite having an incredible year full of new experiences and new friends, leaving Korea, for my health’s sake at least, wasn’t all sorrow. Nobody wants to be the last to leave a party, but it’s hard to be the first.

(Perhaps the best ever song about going home, apart from Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea obviously)

Different people have different responses when it comes to the time to go. Some count down the days on their facebook walls as if the whole thing was a prison sentence. Some people cry, some people just stay. For the most part people are mixed like I was. Heading home my first feeling was joy at seeing my family. Actually my first reaction going home was ‘Finn Air – £500 for excess baggage – robbing bastards!!!,’ but after stealing a cushion and headphones from the flight, my sense of justice was restored and I went back to being happy at seeing my family. That was followed by sadness. Not at the end of the highlife, Korea is as close as one can be to being back at university, but without the need to eat baked beans for 42 days straight. I was sad at the fact that due to their homes being in USA, Ireland, Australia and Canada, I probably wouldn’t see my new found friends again.

With regular travelling people come and people go, and that’s part of the deal. You know you’re probably not going to see them again, so moving on isn’t hard. However to live in another country for a year means to put down roots. Friends are made and plans are made with them. Your life is a normal life, but in another country. When the time comes to leave that means not just leaving a country, but your friends, groups, plans, local bars, favourite restaurants, colleagues and hardest of all in my case, students.

The culture shock I experienced going to Korea was only eclipsed by the culture shock going back to England. In the spirit of easy reading, starting tomorrow, each day I’ll be posting the main differences between the two countries.

Tune in tomorrow for the first difference: neighbours.

Honesty in football ... no really

Not to sound smug about it, but my blogging has been tempered of late, due to the glorious weather we’re experiencing here in Korea.

It’s been hot, but not too hot, with a little wind and almost entirely dry; perfect weather for soccer, cricket, tennis – all manner of outdoor activities. And so it was that last week I found myself in a dingy student’s union with windows, playing ping-pong with a Jehovah’s Witness.

This isn’t a habit of mine, I was asked to play by a Korean friend going by the English name of Brian. Regular readers may remember him as the man who tries, on occasion, to convince me to believe blood transfusions are not needed during major surgery, and that snakes are capable of coherent conversation. Of course those of us with half a brain know all these beliefs have just plagiarised from Harry Potter.

Mental lapses aside, Brian is a nice guy, and so I agreed to play. In England, compared to the layman, I consider myself a decent table tennis player. Those who know their way around a table will most likely beat me, but those who ask what end of the bat to hold may fall to my less that dramatic spin. Brian claimed to be the same. I envisaged an even match. A gruelling encounter of Federer Roddick proportions. Two men sweating enough to rehydrate an African nation, grunting with all their masculine might; enough to make even the Williams’ sisters jealous.

It wasn’t to be. He destroyed me. The warm up went well enough. We traded gentle rallies, chatted between points, and occasionally during. It was all very lawn tennis. At one stage I found myself flirting with a vicar’s daughter whist Brian made us Pimms. I had found my calling card. A sport I could do without actually having to do much.

But then we started a real game. I took the first point and all was going well, but then Brian switched. Like the old man at the end of Street Fighter, he suddenly changed. Red ran into his eyes. He ripped his shirt through sheer muscle growth and began to scream. Then the massacre took place. I was well out of my depth in a sport that became scarier than I could imagine sport involving a 2gram ball could be. White bullets rained on me until 5 minutes later the torture was ended by a grinning Brian saying 11-1, do you want to play again?

He had told me he was only average, and the scary thing was, compared to other Koreans he is. I looked to the table next to me at two students having a quick rally before a night out. It took the ball stopping for me to realise there even was one. All I could see was a blurry white line linking their bats.

Ping Pong needs the kind of skills that Koreans excel at, the rest of Europe see as important, but we in Britain often struggle with in sport: technique, finesse and intelligence. Especially in football, the difference between Europeans and Koreans, is those skills are coupled with a strictly enforced honesty in Korea.

I play 5 a side on pitches around the city. The pitches have teams waiting around the edges and operate with 2 rules: first to 3 and winner stays on. There’s never a referee, but there’s no need. Honesty is expected, and so is self enforced. Handballs are admitted and fouls apologised for. In my entire time here I’ve played 5 a side over 30 times, and I’ve seen a disagreement once.

Teams order themselves on the side to determine who goes on next. There’s never a problem, just honesty. It truly is a fantastic thing to behold. Should the same thing happen in England, especially in a city centre, there would be arguments by the minute, voices raised as standard, and most likely a knife would enter the equation at some stage.

In 11 a side games, even with a referee, it’s exactly the same. Players won’t complain if they’re judged offside, they just get on with the game. There’s no nasty tackles ‘to let people know you’re there.’ If they handball and the referee doesn’t see it; no problem, it’s admitted to anyway. People here remember football is a game, to be enjoyed. The result won’t change a thing, and as long as they’ve given their all, which their tremendous work ethic demands they do, Koreans don’t let it change their mood either.

The best part is: it’s infectious. You can’t help but do the same. When such standards are expected as the norm, it creates an environment where you don’t want to look like the worst person on the field, an environment where nasty fouls aren’t cheered by small minded thugs, but condemned by all those watching; the perpetrator made to feel, rightly so, guilty.

In Korea, football really is the beautiful game, honestly.