It won’t stop raining … a relentless torrent has flooded subways, streets, and a few of our classrooms here at the Seoul English Village in Korea.

Maybe, the worst has passed …but this is summer, when Korea gets it’s yearly quota of rain in a few months – or in this case in a few days of raging surging monsoon, preceded by showers with gaps of sun, hot sweaty humidity amid broken umbrellas and trees – ripped by winds as a typhoon passed across the Korean peninsula this week.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I watch the constant rain from my 3rd-floor room out the balcony-sliding door window as happy sparrows dart about snatching moths and other insects from sheltered railings and roof overhangs. In view rivers of rain rage down the neat brick-work paths to the fountain square below the clock-tower and I wish I had a bottle of red wine handy but I don’t, and won’t, as I can’t be bothered dressing and going out into the storm.

I have been in south Korea around 3.5 weeks of which 3 have seen me working – teaching English (back into it: my first work since finishing with the U.N. in East Timor in March 2002) and yes, it’s okay, but strange to have a conditioned routine and be part of a system again. The dress code is casual and I still wear my earrings, have head sides shaven-no.1 and sport my long single dreadlock like a Chinese Manchu coolie; the kids – this MTV generation love it and I get a lot of compliments daily but I suspect some of the straighter, older Korean staff disapprove of my look (although they would never openly say so). However, I think I’ve nearly settled in – like I’ve installed and gotten functioning my English-teaching-straighter-acting-MRP-is-apparently-working software in my head and so far, only a few glitches.

There’s been a few parties – 2 company-paid ones that extended into crazed nights on the town with other teachers – Korean & international – and one of the first nights I managed to somehow separate from our group – god knows where but met some strangers and ended up at a huge electronica dance club drinking soju – Korean vodka – and then I got a taxi across the city – like London-sized – intending to get home before getting out lost and drunk and wandering into a police station early morning for them to phone my school to get directions from the 24-hour-school-security office so they could then give me a lift home to the English Village.

Wow, the rain is easing … but within seconds of writing it’s gotten heavy again.

Anyway, about this English village: It’s a pet project of the Mayor of Seoul – who is looking to be Korea’s next President – and he’s had the facilities built double-quick-time in 6 months instead of 12 and leased the teaching requirements out to YBM who are Korea’s largest English teaching corporation. YBM have language institutions across Korea and it’s they who employ me.

The village has only just been completed and there’s still work to be done, like the common laundry room and teacher’s social room to be finished and swimming pool to be filled – although I believe the rains have seen to that. Basically, the idea of this place is to recreate a campus like the West – complete with westerners – so the students feel like they have gone overseas and to save parents money in sending them overseas they have brought a western world to Korea. The effect is a little comical, like toy town, and I’m expecting Noddy & Big Ears to make an appearance one drunken evening.

There’s about 30 foreign teachers living here on campus and about 15 Korean-English speaking teachers who commute, plus lots of Korean admin, security, cleaning, cooking staff. As foreigners – mostly Americans & Canadians – we each get a brand-new studio apartment with ensuite bathroom, balcony, and the expected bed, table & chair, wardrobe, drawers, TV, A/C, heating, simple kitchen with sink, cupboards, fridge, cooker, and also as a plus a paid cell phone, free broadband internet in-room and all utility bills paid.

Also within the village and in separate dorm blocks stay students, usually a week – but there are also day groups and so a large café serves all – including us teachers 3 free meals a day. However while Korean food is tasty, a café serving 400+ students a day means the bulk pulp food ranges from quite okay to seriously fucking bland, depending the daily menu. (Rice & spicy, pickled cabbage – Kimchi – for breakfast is a disaster … Luckily, there’s a functioning 7-11 store in the village). But all up: SEV or Seoul English Village is a nice, comfortable place surrounded by high trees and real nature on the edge of the Bukansan National Park in Suyu in northern Seoul, a bus ride or 20 minute walk to the nearest subway into the sprawling monster modern city, surrounded and amid mountains and humped granite peaks.

I’ve made friends mostly with many crazy mid-west Americans (and a few Canadians, a Kiwi or two, and an Aussie; it’s like a mad family) who like to party … And our 3rd-floor porch landing on building “Arctic” – teachers blocks are named after oceans; student blocks after continents – has become the location of Club Arctic … Within the first week, a warning was issued to us about “the rules” and a breeching of contract regarding visible alcohol and partying but it was more about a an overzealous, dum-arse manager than any rules broken and the issue soon blew away – especially so when I pointed out in a teacher’s meeting that we were far away from the students and that “we were drinking from non-descript vessels” – mugs, with no alcohol bottles exposed – and that only with the benefit of adult psychology – not kids – would anyone perceive what were were actually doing … Our spot – the shared covered area outside my room – is the ‘keen’ teachers meeting point before hitting town. David, 32, from Utah, ex-TV news cameraman turned teacher-having-too- much-fun-in-Thailand, lives behind me in the Arctic block and is keen on partying, even thru he broke his foot the first weekend before starting work here when he was climbing the mountains behind us – read: steep monsters but hiking trails, when he twisted his foot, slide off nearly to his death but didn’t and was lifted out by helicopter cradle and is now is on crutches in plaster; that’s the kind of dedicated characters we have drinking here at Club Arctic.

My fellow international teachers are a mixed crew of pleasant straights and chancing crazies all looking for a new direction in life, most are mid 20s to early 30s and have a degree, while a few have some ESL experience. I am among the eldest and one of the few that are experienced … However, experience isn’t necessary – but it makes the job much easier – as this school is not about formalities of dress, grammar or conventional English teaching but about using situational English in role-plays, conversations, fun and games in purpose-built classrooms that are decorated in different themes. But truly, it’s largely it’s about kiddie chaos and a corporation making good money but the village is novel and the kids enjoy it – what 13 year old wouldn’t want a week away from their parents? – and, we get paid to fool around at crowd control.

There’s been a lot of craziness … A girl decks a boy with a punch to the nuts; you’re poised to teach English-speaking 13 years and suddenly find you have a class of twelve 4-year-old non-speaking kindy kids and so I get out the crayons and start speaking Arabic; it rains so much it floods out the office block and the Korean administer becomes a shrieking, headless chicken with a bucket and shovel; the opening ceremony with the mayor and officials and TV coverage, with teams of 100s of workmen the night before going 24 hours to complete the project for the opening, then after the dignitaries have gone they spent 2 weeks – day & night noise – deconstructing – ripping up asphalt roads and brick pavements and laying drains that were never done … It’s all about face here; even if the face is false.

As teachers we are contracted to teach 23.5 hours per week and that includes game classes, orientation, sports, and other muck-around activities. For teaching there’s no prep needed and often the lesson plan is modified by myself on the fly for the 45 minutes. It can be tiring – as you would expect from kids, but fun, easy work.

There are 53 classrooms on campus: from a large airport immigration hall – complete with passports stamped and teachers dressed as officials – to a restaurant; clothes shop; grocery; bank; hair salon; post office; police station; medical centre; transportation – catching a bus, taxi, the subway; fire station; an airplane interior; TV talk show studio & weather forecast studio; a hotel; library; newspaper room; dance class; art; computer; science lab; cooking (making chocolate cakes); music; magic; a real movie theatre (with popcorn eating in class!); mini-Olympics gym; a family house stay with sofas & TV; pool – swimming and snooker classes; Sony PlayStation games class; mini golf; nature trails, etc. That is the teaching … I did Art class last week – numerous spilt paint pots and chaos, but fun; this week is telephone calls practiced in bold-red English boxes with students dialing each other on 911 emergency calls. I understand that I’m in a giant play school; it’s surrealism without drugs.

Love, flowers & teaching lots of little crazies – MRP

PS: Off course it’s still raining. And the forecast tomorrow says more and … still the sparrows’ sound happy. At least it’s not cold, yet. I wonder: will I stay for winter?