Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rawiri]

As part of summer camp at one of the elementary schools i work at we had a day at the english village in Paju today. All up there were 26 kids, me and a k teacher. We all went to a boat exhibition in the morning, then had lunch and were left with about an hour and a half to kill before the bus came back to pick us up. After wandering around and seeing everything apart from the restaurants were closed i met up with most of the kids and decided to play a little game.

There were about 15 kids with me at the time and i managed to explain to them that when pointed out a foreigner and said GO! they all had to run over, surround them and all start yelling HI!, WHATS YOUR NAME? WHERE ARE YOU FROM? HOW OLD ARE YOU? etc.etc.

Ok...so it's probably not the best thing to be teaching these guys but damn it was pretty funny, we were all sitting there and would spot a lone waygook walking towards us, the kids would be champing at the bit to ambush them but i would say Wait.....wait....NOW then boom! they would all be off running.

This provoked some funny reactions, one guy sprinted away with a couple of the kids chasing them, the russians tended to be quite dismissive, but most of the teachers werte pretty cool about it.

The roles were kinda reversed though because when all my kids were standing around waiting for the ambush, other random groups of people would come up to me and ask me to sign their passports and take photos/talk with me.

Not a bad day out and i have to say that some of the russian ladies working there are smoking hot!

[Milwaukiedave]

Rawiri,

I also went to Paju English Village with a group of students during a camp for my area schools. It was an interesting day. The only downside is the activities there are pretty expensive. We did a couple of the free activities and the students did one activity (making a robot, making cookies or making a toy. However most of the free activities only happened once every three hours and are limited to 30 students per session.

It was pretty hot that day, so the kids played in the foutain and I took my water bottle and tried to get them wet. We got a lot of free time to wonder around and have lunch while the kids were doing activities. All in all it wasn't a bad day.

[Guri Guy]

Yeah it is expensive there isn't it? I found it a little disappointing as I thought the place was also rather disorganized. I have been there three times on school trips and I think the place is slowly getting worse. Affordable, easy access to English my *ss.
Furthermore it seems 70% of the "native speakers" are Russian. I have nothing against Russians but their accents were a little strong and I had a hard time understanding some of them, let alone my students.
The magic show/English lesson thing was pretty good though. We had our students play in the fountain too as it was super hot that day.
All in all, I wasn't impressed with the place.

[tomato]

Our group took a field trip there too.
I agree that it could be better organized.
We spent an inordinate amount of time standing in line.

We started to eat lunch at one eating place, but we found that it wasn't large enough to accomodate large groups.
So we went to another eating place.
I don't see why they couldn't have several eating places in a commons area.

I was in another group which took a trip to Korean Folk Village.
We didn't spend so much time standing in line there.
I don't see what the difference is.

[Yesanman]

Sorry but did you say the 'English teachers' at Paju English Village are all Russians? WTF?
Got to tell my kids' mothers that. They've been dying for me to take some of the kids there.
Now I can get out of it easy.

[wormholes101]

I had the a similar impression: came away thinking they should have named it the Paju Russian Village.

Nothing against Russians mind you... their English is 99% good which is plenty good enough.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Nice one.

You may also wish to check out: http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=56593&highlight=Dancing+monkey

[Milwaukiedave]

Not all of the workers there are Russian. The ones that work in the shops as well as some of the ones that perform in the circus are Russians. I believe that they have native speakers from the US/Canada/Australia/NZ/GB.

[Milwaukiedave]

YBS after reading your post in the thread you mentioned, I have to tell you that we also though the fact that these people lived there and ate there was kind of weird. One of the native speakers we were with said she was freaked out by the whole thing and that it must be like living in prison.

We thought it would be fun to hide cameras around the place (including in the dorms) and see what REALLY goes on there). I bet the people that work there could tell us some good stories.

[SuperHero]