Back to it.

Ah, Blogs.  I love them.  And hate them.  Chadwick has had me so busy lately that it has been difficult to muster up the time to write on this blog.  However, seeing as how most of the traffic Erin Henkels and I get on these blogs happens during the international teacher hiring season, I thought it a good idea to freshen this puppy up a bit.

Also, I'm thinking of applying to a writer's symposium for Rock and Ice magazine, so I had better start practicing the written word again.

Mainly, if you end up here looking for information on Chadwick or New Songdo, I would push you over to Erin's post over here.  It's a pretty complete picture of our point of view.

Also, this video of our Well County housing is hugely popular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2_KTWt6C0s

I'll try to get some more posts up soon.  But, between Erin's blog and my video, lots of potential hires questions should be answered.

Cheers,
Tim

Chopsticks

I'm riding on the train to Seoul, and for some reason I can't get this chopstick thing out of my head. Koreans use metal chopsticks, which at first seems like an incredible idea. They are reusable, they don't burn when you are skewering a piece of meat off the grill, and they are probably more sanitary. They also don't hold things. I have pretty good chopstick skills, but I'll be damned I can grab a single noodle with these slick polished sticks. Wood is the way to go. Raw fish? Wood. Noodles? Wood. Even that last grain of rice sticks better to wood. I'm happy to say when a country does something right, like Internet access in Korea, but seriously, the next time I'm at a Chinese Restaurant, I'm grabbing a shit ton of wooden chopsticks.

Ski Patrol Asia

This season I was able to complete a long goal of mine since I started skiing, joining the United States National Ski Patrol.  I always wanted to do it, but when I was in Colorado, I just never felt like giving up my powder days:)  Selfish, but honest.  Now that I am in Korea, where the skiing isn't really that amazing, it's a perfect opportunity to join the patrol and give back a bit with some volunteerism.  The U.S NSP only patrols outside of the United States in two locations, Germany and Korea. When I found out that Korea was on the list for, and the classes were free, I signed up! So, I enrolled last fall, faithfully attended classes two nights a week through most of October, November, and December (and it's a 2 hour commute to Seoul!), and passed all my ski skills tests in January.  We hosted a big international ski festival at the beginning of February, and I worked my first injury on a steep icy black diamond.  The unfortunate patient had a pretty clean boot-top tib/fib fracture that we put some traction on, splinted, and got her down to the hospital on a toboggan.  The Korean ski patrol did the toboggan work, and are great partners.  Just a few weeks ago we had the Ski Patrol Banquet, generously hosted by Berhardt, one of our patrol volunteers and manage of the Hilton Hotel in Seoul.  At the Banquet I was presented with the Ski Patrol Candidate of the Year award, which put a perfect ending point to a great season spent with new friends helping others out on the mountain.  I'm already looking forward to next season!

Ja-Pow

One of the great, and I mean, great privileges of teaching internationally is the opportunities for travel that are afforded to this lifestyle.  Erin and I continually pinch ourselves in amazement, as we plan trips to Thailand, Japan, Pakistan, and other far-flung corners of the world.  This "perk" isn't lost on us, and we do our best to maximize every vacation we have.

This Spring, that maximization effort was directed to Japan.  Japan has fascinated me since I was a little boy, listening to stories of my mother growing up there while her Dad served in the Navy.  And more recently, Japan has fascinated me as I listen to rumors of skiers, landing in the remote Northern Islands, hunting for un-tracked deep powder snow.

Those rumors are true, as we proved to ourselves over our spring-break with two friends from the Singapore American School, Brian and Chris.  The four of us rendezvoused in Aomori Prefecture, one of the most rural parts of Japan.  Our destination was Hakkoda-San Ski Resort, but "Resort" is really a misnomer.  In actuality, Hakkoda-San is a cluster of five mountain peaks, with a very small ski resort on the lower flanks of the mountain, and a 100 person tram that takes backcountry skiers to the top of the mountain.  From the top, the mountain range is yours to explore!  You can get an idea of the terrain pretty clearly from this picture.  If you look carefully, you can see the cut in the trees where the tram goes up from the far left ski run, cutting diagonally all the way up to the mountain where a building lies at the summit.

March is a crap-shoot for snow conditions, and we didn't know what we would be getting, but with a 4.5 meter base, at least we knew that there would be snow.  As it turns out, we got dumped on.  And, as it turns out, when it is snowing in Northern Japan, the only thing you can see is snow.  Snow up, snow down, snow all around you.  It is, truly, skiing by Braille.

 

With huge wind cornices, gaping tree wells, and potential for avalanches, this was a pretty exciting introduction to skiing in Japan.  We felt our way down the mountain, and I think we were grateful (at least the first day) that we had hired a guide.  Skiing at Hakkoda really necessitates a guide, because you can end up at the bottom of the mountain, along a road, with several miles to hike to get back to the tram.  Our guide organized our transportation for us and also helped us find our way in these white-out conditions.

Our first two days of skiing were filled with deep snow, white-out conditions, face plants, wind, and cold temperatures.  We loved it.  Mostly.

In the evenings we would retire to our hotel, positioned at the foot of the tram, and we would enter into a cycle that lasted the whole week.  Ski hard all day, making 2 to 3 full runs down the mountain, soak in the hot springs at the hotel, drink a beer from the vending machine while sitting in the massage chairs, gorge ourselves on a huge sushi-laden Japanese dinner, and then had back to our rooms for some late night whiskey and cards or dice games.  There was absolutely nothing else to do, during the week it seemed we were the only people at the resort.  But, hey, vending machine beers and hot-tubs were good enough for us!

On our third, or was it fourth?, day we awoke to something spectacular.  Sun.  Hakkoda-San sees this bright yellow orb very rarely, and everyone, locals included, were lining up to make runs down parts of the mountain that were previously inaccessible due to the poor visibility.  I lugged up my big camera, figuring that the sun wouldn't last long, and I had better document what I could while it was shining.

We skied three sun-soaked runs, trying to get in as much as we could before the next day, when it was forecast to get windy, and even possibly rain.  And it did, but that was okay because during our week we saw the mountain in all its colors.  We had white-out powder days where we could get lost in the terrain and soft snow, we had gale-force wind days that swept the mountain clean of any snow and shut the tram down, there were sunny days with views all the way to the ocean,  and we even had that rainy day that melted the snow off of the snow-monsters, revealing tiny trees who had broken free from their frozen cells.

We spent six days, living at the hotel, skiing in the backcountry and wondering how we could ever go back and ski a "normal" resort again.  Here there were no lift lines, no loud music blaring at us on the mountain, no people cutting us off, just the four of us, one huge mountain, and miles and miles and miles of untracked snow.

Here is a slideshow of my best photos from the trip.  If you would like more information on skiing at Hakkoda-San, drop me a line!

Publicity

 Our school here in Korea has been getting some great press lately.  Here is a nice article, translated below, that gives a feel for what we are trying to accomplish here.

December 2011

Avenuel

The True School

“Be a good person, not just a good student.” This is a phrase that was found written in a classroom of Chadwick International in Songdo, Incheon. After spending a day at Chadwick International, I realized once again how education can play an important part in shaping one’s life.

After driving on the 3^rd Gyeongin Highway from Gangnam for about 40 minutes, you will arrive at Chadwick International, established in Songdo International City. As the largest foreign education facility in Korea, Chadwick International is a global educational institution with its main campus in California, United States. As I stepped onto the campus, I remembered the saying, ‘the starting point of education that prestigious private schools believe in begins from the design of its building.’ While looking at the school’s clean and beautiful facilities built on a 14,000 pyeong land, I could also see that the school put in a considerable amount of effort to accommodate the students. The building with facilities such as gymnasiums, swimming pools, and auditoriums is located between the elementary school building and the middle and high school building to minimize the movement of students. In spaces between these buildings, there are gardens and places to rest. What impressed me is that they used glass plates for walls and roofs to let sunlight pass through classes, aisles, and stairs inside the buildings. Rays of warm sunlight in late fall fell onto the students who were circled around a teacher during a class. Such sight can warm anyone’s heart.

Chadwick International Shows the Model for Open Education

I began observation of classes at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. All the classes in the Elementary School were based on the IB curriculum, which is based on creative ideas of students, made up of 15 to 16 students and a teacher in the classroom. I felt a spurt of strong energy as I saw boys focusing on tightening screws on their self-made robots and girls concentrated in calculating the distance between cities and countries using a very huge map. I saw a music class where students played African drums while singing a song, and also observed a class that designed buildings suitable according to each city characteristics using computer software. These classes seemed more like an extension of playing. In the Cisco Tele-presence Room, students from Chadwick School and Chadwick International were having a discussion over a given topic. In the auditorium, which could accommodate 700 people, students took the role of actors, producers, lighting directors, and audio directors to come up with a play. In the aquatic center, which has capabilities for scuba diving classes, there was a swimming class in progress. I was impressed that there wasn’t an atmosphere of competition and separation of superior students. Teachers carefully observed each student to find items that interest him or her the most, and led the class accordingly. Chadwick School’s educational philosophy, which believes that the role of the school and teachers is to help students become a person of honesty, responsibility, respect, compassion and fairness, has been realized at Chadwick International. A phrase, “Be a good person, not just a good student,” that someone wrote on a whiteboard of a classroom seemed like a class motto. That single sentence made me feel strange to a point where I wondered if I was actually in Korea. Jeff Mercer, the headmaster of Chadwick International, said, “Chadwick International has a great meaning as it is the first step that Chadwick School, which has 75 years of tradition, has taken in Asia, and we are doing so based on a ‘One School, Two Campuses’ model. This school has also been a milestone in the history of Chadwick. The uniqueness of Chadwick International is that this campus in Songdo shares the same educational philosophy as that of Chadwick School in California, which has implemented the same excellent curriculum that has been proven for 75 years, with the unique characteristics of Korea and integrated into the curriculum in good harmony.” I was also informed that students of Chadwick School received attention for their academic achievements last year. This is a natural result that derived from the educational philosophy of Chadwick School.

On the way back to Seoul, I saw students coming off buses, carrying a heavy backpack, and heading their way to private teaching institutes after school. I came to think about what would’ve happened if I received different type of education from that of what I had already received during my childhood. I remember raising doubts after hearing news that Chadwick School was going to establish its second campus in Songdo, Incheon. I wondered why Chadwick, one of the most prestigious private schools in the U.S., wanted to build its second campus in Korea. However, after visiting the campus, my questions were answered. Chadwick International in Songdo, Incheon, is an important milestone of open education in Korea that could enhance the minds of students.

Toilets

THIS is what I alluded to in my video from our home bathroom! Koreans must have the cleanest bung holes in the world! Two different warm wash sprays, blow dry, heated seat, and a deodorizer! Sounds like a hair-dresser for your arse!

Lunch

Lunch is always interesting at school. We have International and Korean options every day, though both usually involve rice. I love our food, it's what food should be like back home in schools. It's homemade, balanced, always incorporates fresh salad and never has sweets. The cafeteria distributes an educational flyer with recipes and health tips. Now if I could just get used to boiled octopus.