Hello from Korea!
Guess what?! IT'S HOODIE WEATHER! Yes!!! Today, for the first time yet, I came home and threw on a hoodie, and I felt great. The temperature could drop a few more degrees to make it perfect, but it was practically there. For some reason it seems that 2 days ago now, someone threw a switch and Bam! it's Autumn because it's been very comfortable the last couple days. I'm hoping that this keeps up for a while, so that I can continue to enjoy it for weeks and weeks and months and months. That probably won't be the case, though; I doubt that even Korea is that awesome. Not only did I comfortably wear a hoodie today, but I also actually wore a full ensemble to school as well [button down, tie and, of course, sweatervest (by the way, I just looked for the spelling of "sweatervest" and this definition from Urban Dictionary popped up: "An article of clothing often worn by 'ridiculously' good looking teachers that make them somehow even better looking" -- so true; case in point -- yours truly. haha)]. It was great. Up until now it's just been too hot, so tee-shirts have been the norm, and I'm a little tired of it. Go figure. Tee-shirts and shorts to work everyday … how can one get tired of that? I don't know, but it happened. Anyway …
as you might be able to tell from that first paragraph, it's been increasingly uneventful over here for me, so today's message will simply be a collection of little things that I found interesting, fun or funny from the past week. Now, the only drawback from the hood tonight has been this: almost as soon as the cottony warmth enveloped me, a ferocious runny nose also took hold. What a bummer. This is actually irrelevant to life (other than the fact that I'll be sniffling about every 10 words or so throughout this whole message … so you should probably have some extra sympathy for me a give me a pat on the back next time you see me since I'm such a diligent writer and will even compose when the conditions are not favorable … haha), but it does bring me to my actually amusing anecdote: today in class, one student in particular also had a rather ferocious runny nose. [By the way, the Korean word for runny nose is "ko-pi", which translates to basically "nose blood."] On any given day, there's at least one or two students with this same problem, so it's very common during my lectures or presentations or at any time, really, for me to notice a little trickle on a child's face, grab some tissue and wipe it up; with those especially persistent runs, I might even encourage a little "blow" out of the student. On this specific day, though, this case blew the rest away. We were reading and working in our English Land workbook and eventually this student said, "Teacher." I looked, and she was pointing to her nose, and so we went through the typical motion of me grabbing some tissue for her, she cleaned it up, and I thought, "Great. Problem solved." A few minutes passed, and before I knew it I heard that same "Teacher" from the same student, and sure enough, there was that same problem back again. My response, unchanged: grab some tissue and let her clean it up. Again, problem solved. A few more minutes go by, and yet again, "Teacher," this time with a little more urgency. Each time I noticed this runny nose it seemed to be getting a little worse … that trickle seemed to be going down a little farther, and so this time I grabbed the tissue, but I, myself, wiped her nose and coaxed a "Blow" from her. As far as nose blows go, hers was rather lackluster, but I let that go; sometimes you've just gotta work with what you've got. Ok; problem resolved, so I continued on. Up until this point, that was the most often I've had to help one student with a runny nose during a single class, and additionally, most often I'm the one who notices the runny nose before the student starts to complain because you know how kids are … they have sleeves and hands and things like those, so do they usually need tissues? Of course not. So due to both the frequency and severity of this nose run, I tried to pay a little more attention to that student after the third attempted fix. And here's what I saw this time around: about 3 minutes after I wiped her nose clean, and after some "nose blood" had apparently pooled inside her nostrils, she purely and simply exhaled forcefully out her nose. And of course, two torrents of snot just ran straight from her her nose to her lip … and a little beyond. Immediately I grabbed more tissue to wipe her nose … and almost laughed out loud … while simultaneously gagging a little bit. haha. Ok, I don't know if my writing here will actually convey my full amusement at this situation, but truly it was just completely ridiculous that a 5-year-old would blow snot out of her nose and then want a tissue. haha. Again, I have to chuckle.
A few times by now students, both the older ones and the younger ones, have noticed differences about my appearance from what they're accustomed to, and seeing their reactions and/or how they even describe the differences to me has been really interesting to me. On a daily basis, kids will touch my arm hair or (especially) my beard and mustache because the density of my hair is more than what they'd expect to see on other Korean men. It's just something new, and it's cool. Maybe sometimes in the back of my mind, I really just feel like a petting zoo animal, but even in that case I think I'm ok with it. Twice now I've been called/compared to an old man, and both of these times have happened pretty recently. The first instance happened at Haba during my speaking class, and it was the same day as our Chuseok activities. Because I had been outside in the heat for most of the day, I had a little extra sweat built up in my hair, such that I'd run my hand through my hair, the hair would stand up. The kids seemed endlessly amused by this feat, and for some reason (that I still haven't pinned down … although maybe it's the same as the second story) they called me a grandpa and/or just an old man (because the Korean word for these people means both). The second time not only was I compared to grandpa, but I was also apparently similar to grandma. haha. Yesterday at Oedae during my first class, at one point I simply put my hand to my forehead and pushed back my hair, and the kids were surprised/amused by what they saw. They noticed the lines in my forehead when I raised my eyebrows, and they were immediately reminded of wrinkles on old peoples' faces. Once I realized that this was what they were talking about, we talked just a little bit about why that's different for me than for what they expect. This included a quick discussion about how our facial structures are different and why those differences appear. It ended up being a very interesting conversation we had at the beginning of class, and ultimately it just reinforced what Joshua's been saying to me for as long as I've known him … I am pretty much just an old man already.
Here's my quick list of firsts for this past week as well: I made a boat out of a leaf for the first time ever; I ate intestine for the first time ever; and I just bought lots of chocolate for my first chocolate party ever. On Sunday I went hiking with Sunny and her two kids, aged 7 and 9. Not only was the day exceptionally pleasant, but it was also fun to spend some time with kids who happen to be the same age as my two youngest brothers. Additionally, even though Sunny has a boy and girl, they were very good natured and with bruises up and down their legs from their activities, I could tell that their resemblance to Adam and Jesse didn't stop at age only. We spent a couple hours on the mountain, and at least half of that time was spent with the kids just playing with the outdoor equipment or taking a break or something else, which was such a pleasant change from when I hike alone; it's during those solo hikes that I take a few breaks (until I've reached the summit) as possible, so the pacing on Sunday was phe-nomenal. At the end of the hike, the little boy took a bamboo leaf and asked, through his mom, if I could make a boat, which I didn't even know was possible, and then his sister proceeded to bend and tear and contort the leaf into a sweet little boat. After she finished, I grabbed two more leaves, and asked her to show me, thus now I've been a bamboo-leaf-shipwright-extraordinaire, and my first vessel is currently docked atop my TV. Mmmm. What a sight. haha. A little bit later Sunday evening, I ended up going to dinner with Dianne, and we went to a little shop that's actually pretty close to my apartment and just down the street from Oedae. There we had two dishes, "maw-ri gook bap" and "chal soon deh." The first dish was a soup that had pork and bean sprouts and various other little vegetables, and it was very tasty. "Maw-ri" in Korean means "head," so the meat in the soup probably came mostly from the face and ears and that part of the pig. The second dish was served on a plate, and it looked like one had taken a sausage, cut slices and turned those slices sideways on the plate, which is essentially what it was. The skin of the "chal soon deh," though, came from an intestine … according to an internet article, it's usually a pig's or cow's intestine … I didn't really ask the owner which one this came from though. haha. This was also a very enjoyable food, and the texture was especially interesting. As has been the trend so far, I was very pleased with both of these dishes and look forward to having them again in the future.
Last but not least, chocolate party! Woo hoo! haha. At Oedae, as you may remember, there's only one class that I have 5 times a week, so I've obviously grown a little closer to this group of students than students in my other classes, and this week we've been working on another bigger writing assignment. I've been trying to spend more time with all my classes on writing -- getting them to put pen to paper more often, so this week's writing is a "How To" essay. Partly because I do want to reward them for good work and party because I just want to do fun things during class I promised them that if their writing was very good, we would have a chocolate party on Wednesday. That was Monday; today in class, each student stood up and read his/her essay, and I was very impressed by what they did. Granted, I have, since then, proofed all but one of the essays for grammar, syntax and mechanics, and the students did make quite a few mistakes, but true to my word, we will have a chocolate party tomorrow. Thus I had to go shopping for chocolate items, and it was pretty pleasant. Out of this quick anecdote come two reflections that I've had of late: first (and the more trivial of the two), I've been having a serious love affair with peanuts ever since arriving in Korea. Whew. I didn't know that I ever liked them so much until lately. I've been pounding peanut butter and dry roasted peanuts like none other, and tonight I bought one 2-pack of Atlas candy bars, which I had intended to save until tomorrow, then I arrived home and noticed the peanut on the packaging … and the rest is history. Needless to say, we'll be short 2 Atlas candy bars at tomorrow's party. haha. And in case you wondered, the Atlas bar tasted pretty awesome. If you can find them wherever you are, I recommend you get one … right about now. To sum up: peanuts are awesome; eat them. Unless, like Tabitha, they are your Achilles' heal, in which case my advice is this: avoid them like the plague because I like you and don't want you to die from something silly like eating a peanut. Second, with this bigger emphasis on writing, I have had to spend more time proofing my students' work outside of class, and you know, I really do thoroughly enjoy it. During my short time here, I've been reminded time and time again of two things that I really enjoy: proofing work and speaking help (I don't know the proper term here, but it's essentially speech pathology). In both of these areas, my joy and excitement stems from the idea that I can actually help someone improve and ultimately do a better job for him/herself in this skill. I look forward to times when I'm continually able to employ both of these abilities and keep aiding others.
Alright. It's now time to do some Korean studying and hit the hay. Woo hoo! I hope that this email finds you well and happy and all that jazz. I will say, before I reach the typical "ps" section, I'm feeling a little lazy and unmotivated right now, so I'm not yet going to upload the 3 pictures that correspond the contents of this message -- partly because I'm lazy and partly because it's only 3 images. I should get them up soonish, though. I will try to step it up a notch and keep taking pictures to keep you all engaged … even if the subjects end up being little more than flash cards and sweaty socks foam a long hike. haha.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Ben's Korean Adventures, edition 11
Hello everyone.
Quick first note: at the end of this message I've added a link to the Picasa album that now holds some videos from here (new and older). In case you've had trouble seeing them on Facebook, please use that link :).
I have internet at home! Woo hoo! Last Thursday a technician stopped by my apartment to set up service for me, and we had some trouble at the beginning, but it's been up and running swiftly from that point onward, so I have no complaints. I will even add that when downloading one particular file I experienced the fastest downloading speed of my life with just over 2.7 mbps. Whew. It kind of blew me away. haha. Due to that development, I've spent a fair amount of time over the past few days Skyping with a bunch of different people, and that's been a welcome continuation/addition to my daily routine. I also spent some time yesterday rearranging my apartment yet again. By this point, I believe that I've moved every large thing at least once or twice, so I'm pretty sure that I've finally found all the lingering dust bunnies around my apartment … hopefully I can keep it this clean for the long haul. Now that things have moved around, I have more space for hosting people over here, although I do need find a small couch and coffee table to make the experience better, I think. Woo hoo! Last development for my apartment: I bit the bullet and bought some sweet speakers yesterday as well. mmhmm. I came to Korea with a set of JBL desktop speakers, but I'm pretty sure I fried them within my first 2 days here -- I didn't realize that the electrical output was so much higher here than back home, and unfortunately their power converter couldn't handle that load. So now they just sit in the bottom drawer of one my cabinets … but these new ones are wicked sweet, so I'm slowly getting over my loss.
So right now it's actually Monday night … just before I go to bed … and I didn't have to work today (or tomorrow) because of the Chuseok holiday that's happening today. This is commonly known as the Korean Thanksgiving, and it's one of the 2 times a year when Koreans would typically have a big gathering with their families. Dianne explained some of the happenings one day, and it's a time when family members would traditionally get together and commemorate their ancestors and have a big meal and spend time together as a whole unit. I did a little wiki searching, and apparently Chuseok can also be linked to a general harvest celebration idea as well because of the timing each year. And it actually aligns with the Lunar calendar, so next year it won't be the same day according to our usual means of counting days. In anticipation of Chuseok we had a fun day on Friday at Haba where some traditional Korean clothing, called a Hanbok, was available for the foreign teachers to wear while we helped with/supervised a bunch of games around the school. The kids themselves all came to school dressed in their own Hanboks, and it was super cute. You should check out the photo albums because I'll post some pictures of the happenings … as well as some specific shots with each of my classes, so you'll get to see the same kids that I meet with each and every day. The games we played included: "Yut Nori," "Neolttwigi," "Tuho," and "Jaegi Chagi." Yut Nori is one game that I haven't yet played for real because the set we had for the kids was a huge altered one, but from what I understand, one would have 4 short sticks that are like dowel rods cut in half down the middle (so each one has a semi-circular shape … while still being a stick). One would toss down all 4 sticks simultaneously, and depending on how they land (ie- which face is up … the flat one or the round one) points are scored and one move a little marker around a board. For the sake of the kids we simply had very oversized sticks that they kind of tossed … sometimes they just pushed them over. haha. It was funny to watch.
Neolttwigi looks a lot like a simple see-saw, and that's pretty much how it functions. It's comprised of a long plank with a center support that keeps it off the ground, and the two people on it would stand and jump up and down to alternately launch one another. For this game we ended up having teachers on either side of each student so that we could "help" them jump up and down -- truthfully, we ended up doing most of the work … although we would say, "Jump! Wait! Ok, jump!" to the kids, it was actually more of a "Pause … lift … pause … lift" routine for us. I tried to play this game with a couple of the other foreign teachers with mixed success because timing is a huge issue; I look forward to the next time I encounter this game for adults. Our Tuho game consisted of letting the kids throw bamboo sticks (with feathers attached to one end) into pots a couple feet away. These sticks were a couple feet long, so it was actually a pretty solid throwing game, such that naturally, when the kids weren't actively engaged in the game, the teachers -- both foreign and native -- tried their luck and tested their skill in this game. I think that Matt was the overall champion of the day with 6 in a row from 12-15 feet out and 1 (lucky) distance shot of 20-25 feet. it was great, and that'd be a super easy game to replicate back home … new lawn game, anyone? The last game, Jaegi Chagi, reminded me a lot of playing with a hacky sack back in middle school. In our version of the game, we had small bells attached to little streamer balls [whew … my descriptions are a little lacking sometime, aren't they?]. The kids would take these, and in the same way we would use a hacky sack, and kick them up into the air … trying to kick them up repeatedly with smaller taps. Most of the kids weren't coordinated enough to make more than one contact, but that was ok -- it was still fun/funny to watch them. Beyond these games, there were some other activities that I never really saw happening, although there was one more game that I'll mention that isn't really a traditional Korean game, but instead it's a variation that we used just for fun. This last game was essentially a race game, where two students would start at one end of the gym, race down past two teachers sitting in chairs and try to return to the starting line before the other person made it back. Sounds like a pretty simple, right? Yeah, it was. Here's the kicker, though, that made it hilarious for those in the know: before the kids made their run, they had to put a "Ki" on their backs. The Ki looks like a woven basket/carrier, and Dianne explained its significance to me. Apparently, traditionally if a child would wet the bed, in the morning the parents would make the child wear the Ki and go ask neighbors to have some salt. Now because other parents would do the same thing, they obviously knew that the kid was a bed wetter, and they would give him/her a hard time. haha. hilarious. How this became a game at Haba, I have no idea, but regardless it remains so funny to me.
Beyond Chuseok I want to tell you about a few more things in this email. First, I had two more interesting Korean meals over the past weekend. One I had Friday night with a few other foreign teachers, and we had actually intended to go and have a different meal, but when we stopped at a particular shop, that meal wasn't served, so we ended up settling on "Budae Jigae," which is also known as a military stew/soup. This soup contains a little bit of everything, and it truly was very interesting. Here's a quick aside: granted in my dining out experiences at home and around the States are probably still pretty limited, but regardless I think it's safe to say that at most every place I've ever gone, all the food prep and cooking has been done in the kitchen out of sight. Here, though, there have been so many times when we've gone out (or I've just noticed through a window) that food is still prepared behind a counter, but then it's brought to the table to be cooked. In the middle of the table is a gas burner for cooking and often above the table is a special vent to collect any fumes/smoke. In this style, the budae jigae was brought to us in a big dish for us to cook at our table. All the ingredients this time around were either fresh vegetables or precooked meat, but even with completely raw things, this often happens … and I've decided that it's one of the aspects of Korean dining that I like the best. Back to budae, though, this soup contained: hot dog, spam, fish cake, mushrooms, rice cake, ramen noodles, spices, onions, garlic, tofu, some other noodle, and maybe some other things I wasn't aware of, and we cooked it all in a broth. This dish originated in the post-Korean war times when meat was scarce, and they would take leftovers from the American soldiers and combine it all into the soup. This was quite the meal. Everything was alright, except that the jigae was a little too spicy for me. If there were a version with less spice, I might have it again … but of course because it was so spicy, we just felt justified to get some ice cream afterward, so I guess I can't really complain too much. haha. The other meal I had this weekend, on Saturday to be more specific, is called "Samgyeopsal," which translates to approximately "three layered flesh." This meal consisted of another one of the table burner units, a plate of thinly sliced pork and some fresh vegetables that we grilled all together. Although the taste was different, the meat reminded me a lot of bacon because of the cut, and that's why it has its name -- if you think about bacon and visible layers of fat and meat, those are the kinds of differences that the "three layered" name refers to. And this food, as with others that I've had, required us to simply fry the food and eat it in a wrap style, adding the meat and veggies to some sauce and cucumber slices and eating it all inside leaves. This was, without a doubt, another exceptional meal that I've had here, and I look forward to eating it again.
Alright. This message is getting to be about as long as any other, so I'll wrap it up with two more amusing things. One of these came Saturday night after going to the aforementioned restaurant and having the meal. I went out that night with Dianne and JiHye, and it was a very fun evening. After dinner we stopped by a Starbucks and then decided to go see a movie. Some have asked, by the way, about movies here, and there are many Korean movies … obviously in Korean, but there are other movies shown as well -- a number of Hollywood Blockbusers -- that play in English with Korean subtitles. A few weeks ago I went to my first movie here, and we watched "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," which was enjoyable enough. So this time we went to the theater, not knowing exactly what was playing, but because of my linguistic handicap, Dianne and JiHye specifically looked for English movies, and the one that just so happened to be playing around then was "Final Destination 5." Now, for anyone who knows my taste in movies and knows this movie series' reputation, do you think this was a wise decision? Exactly. It wasn't. haha. I've never seen any of the Final Destination movies simply because they've always seemed to follow the horror/suspense tracks … neither of which appeals to me … but ultimately, because I've not seen them before, I wasn't certain. So about the time that we decided to watch that one, I told them that I thought it was a horror movie, but I wasn't certain. JiHye and Dianne didn't know the movie either, so we decided to bite the bullet and go with it anyway. Maybe 10 minutes into the movie is when people really begin to start dying. oh, my. And then after that, because some of the main characters escaped their deaths during the initial slaughter, they must encounter death in many suspenseful ways throughout the rest of the movie. During this whole fiasco, I couldn't help but cover my eyes (and one of my ears) and kind of groan with each terrible piece of the movie I saw. oh, my (again). Right after the first of those initial survivors met her violent demise, I turned to both Dianne and JiHye and simply asked, "Soju Club? Soju Club?" haha. Fortunately they both shared my misery and sentiment and, and we cut out of the movie early. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever walked out of a movie, but I felt so good with that decision. Whew. Lesson learned: don't choose a random movie and stick with your gut. The rest of the night was much more pleasant, and I even got to hear a birthday song at the restaurant about half a dozen times when we breached the midnight hour. The last story for today: I have always been a fan of pop music, and most of my music library right now consists of Billboard Tops from the past 60-70 years, so just within the last few days I became much more interested in Korean Pop music, often known as simply K-Pop. First of all, quite a few K-pop songs are just as catchy as American songs -- granted, I don't really know what they singers are saying nor can I really sing along right now … but still, it's been great. Next, K-pop groups seem to come in 2 varieties -- boy bands and girl groups. The boy bands include, from what I've seen so far, somewhere between a couple and ton of singers/performers. And the girl groups are the same. For both, I haven't seen any groups yet that play their own instruments, so they end up singing and just dancing during performances. I read up a little on these kinds of groups, and they can be compared, in a little way, to groups like Spice Girls or the more popular American boy bands like Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC. Two nights ago I even spent about a couple hours just going through video after video of the K-pop music, and it was great. I was actually searching for one particular song that I'd heard a number of times so far … but then I simply got caught up in the awesomeness of it all. haha. Additionally, just for your enjoyment, I'm even going to attach a few songs to this email when I send it … so that you can experience for yourself what I've enjoyed so far. And if you get a chance to invest a little time, check out the music videos as well … they're great by my standards (enjoying both the music and the dancing). If you download and listen to the songs in iTunes, some of them will have both the Korean and English names … and some others just have English names. In either case, you should be able to see what you're listening to. Enjoy.
*extra information: songs that I attached to the original message -- Wonder Girls "Nobody", iNFiNiTY "Be Mine", Seo In Guk "Shake it Up", After School Red "In the Night Sky", and T-ARA "Roly Poly". If you want to check out the songs, just do a google search, and you should find them.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to check out the Chuseok activities, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.651383415404.2129752.15300236&l=b884f7436c
or
if you want to see some of the food I described, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.653550462624.2130724.15300236&l=23968996e5
or
if you want to see some shots from in and around my newly-adjusted apartment, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.651854775794.2129990.15300236&l=9d3ed5f37b
or
if you want to see some the videos I've posted, visit:
https://picasaweb.google.com/115494611185738572069/KoreanExploitsTheVideos?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIOmw5qrwpWSygE&feat=directlink
Quick first note: at the end of this message I've added a link to the Picasa album that now holds some videos from here (new and older). In case you've had trouble seeing them on Facebook, please use that link :).
I have internet at home! Woo hoo! Last Thursday a technician stopped by my apartment to set up service for me, and we had some trouble at the beginning, but it's been up and running swiftly from that point onward, so I have no complaints. I will even add that when downloading one particular file I experienced the fastest downloading speed of my life with just over 2.7 mbps. Whew. It kind of blew me away. haha. Due to that development, I've spent a fair amount of time over the past few days Skyping with a bunch of different people, and that's been a welcome continuation/addition to my daily routine. I also spent some time yesterday rearranging my apartment yet again. By this point, I believe that I've moved every large thing at least once or twice, so I'm pretty sure that I've finally found all the lingering dust bunnies around my apartment … hopefully I can keep it this clean for the long haul. Now that things have moved around, I have more space for hosting people over here, although I do need find a small couch and coffee table to make the experience better, I think. Woo hoo! Last development for my apartment: I bit the bullet and bought some sweet speakers yesterday as well. mmhmm. I came to Korea with a set of JBL desktop speakers, but I'm pretty sure I fried them within my first 2 days here -- I didn't realize that the electrical output was so much higher here than back home, and unfortunately their power converter couldn't handle that load. So now they just sit in the bottom drawer of one my cabinets … but these new ones are wicked sweet, so I'm slowly getting over my loss.
So right now it's actually Monday night … just before I go to bed … and I didn't have to work today (or tomorrow) because of the Chuseok holiday that's happening today. This is commonly known as the Korean Thanksgiving, and it's one of the 2 times a year when Koreans would typically have a big gathering with their families. Dianne explained some of the happenings one day, and it's a time when family members would traditionally get together and commemorate their ancestors and have a big meal and spend time together as a whole unit. I did a little wiki searching, and apparently Chuseok can also be linked to a general harvest celebration idea as well because of the timing each year. And it actually aligns with the Lunar calendar, so next year it won't be the same day according to our usual means of counting days. In anticipation of Chuseok we had a fun day on Friday at Haba where some traditional Korean clothing, called a Hanbok, was available for the foreign teachers to wear while we helped with/supervised a bunch of games around the school. The kids themselves all came to school dressed in their own Hanboks, and it was super cute. You should check out the photo albums because I'll post some pictures of the happenings … as well as some specific shots with each of my classes, so you'll get to see the same kids that I meet with each and every day. The games we played included: "Yut Nori," "Neolttwigi," "Tuho," and "Jaegi Chagi." Yut Nori is one game that I haven't yet played for real because the set we had for the kids was a huge altered one, but from what I understand, one would have 4 short sticks that are like dowel rods cut in half down the middle (so each one has a semi-circular shape … while still being a stick). One would toss down all 4 sticks simultaneously, and depending on how they land (ie- which face is up … the flat one or the round one) points are scored and one move a little marker around a board. For the sake of the kids we simply had very oversized sticks that they kind of tossed … sometimes they just pushed them over. haha. It was funny to watch.
Neolttwigi looks a lot like a simple see-saw, and that's pretty much how it functions. It's comprised of a long plank with a center support that keeps it off the ground, and the two people on it would stand and jump up and down to alternately launch one another. For this game we ended up having teachers on either side of each student so that we could "help" them jump up and down -- truthfully, we ended up doing most of the work … although we would say, "Jump! Wait! Ok, jump!" to the kids, it was actually more of a "Pause … lift … pause … lift" routine for us. I tried to play this game with a couple of the other foreign teachers with mixed success because timing is a huge issue; I look forward to the next time I encounter this game for adults. Our Tuho game consisted of letting the kids throw bamboo sticks (with feathers attached to one end) into pots a couple feet away. These sticks were a couple feet long, so it was actually a pretty solid throwing game, such that naturally, when the kids weren't actively engaged in the game, the teachers -- both foreign and native -- tried their luck and tested their skill in this game. I think that Matt was the overall champion of the day with 6 in a row from 12-15 feet out and 1 (lucky) distance shot of 20-25 feet. it was great, and that'd be a super easy game to replicate back home … new lawn game, anyone? The last game, Jaegi Chagi, reminded me a lot of playing with a hacky sack back in middle school. In our version of the game, we had small bells attached to little streamer balls [whew … my descriptions are a little lacking sometime, aren't they?]. The kids would take these, and in the same way we would use a hacky sack, and kick them up into the air … trying to kick them up repeatedly with smaller taps. Most of the kids weren't coordinated enough to make more than one contact, but that was ok -- it was still fun/funny to watch them. Beyond these games, there were some other activities that I never really saw happening, although there was one more game that I'll mention that isn't really a traditional Korean game, but instead it's a variation that we used just for fun. This last game was essentially a race game, where two students would start at one end of the gym, race down past two teachers sitting in chairs and try to return to the starting line before the other person made it back. Sounds like a pretty simple, right? Yeah, it was. Here's the kicker, though, that made it hilarious for those in the know: before the kids made their run, they had to put a "Ki" on their backs. The Ki looks like a woven basket/carrier, and Dianne explained its significance to me. Apparently, traditionally if a child would wet the bed, in the morning the parents would make the child wear the Ki and go ask neighbors to have some salt. Now because other parents would do the same thing, they obviously knew that the kid was a bed wetter, and they would give him/her a hard time. haha. hilarious. How this became a game at Haba, I have no idea, but regardless it remains so funny to me.
Beyond Chuseok I want to tell you about a few more things in this email. First, I had two more interesting Korean meals over the past weekend. One I had Friday night with a few other foreign teachers, and we had actually intended to go and have a different meal, but when we stopped at a particular shop, that meal wasn't served, so we ended up settling on "Budae Jigae," which is also known as a military stew/soup. This soup contains a little bit of everything, and it truly was very interesting. Here's a quick aside: granted in my dining out experiences at home and around the States are probably still pretty limited, but regardless I think it's safe to say that at most every place I've ever gone, all the food prep and cooking has been done in the kitchen out of sight. Here, though, there have been so many times when we've gone out (or I've just noticed through a window) that food is still prepared behind a counter, but then it's brought to the table to be cooked. In the middle of the table is a gas burner for cooking and often above the table is a special vent to collect any fumes/smoke. In this style, the budae jigae was brought to us in a big dish for us to cook at our table. All the ingredients this time around were either fresh vegetables or precooked meat, but even with completely raw things, this often happens … and I've decided that it's one of the aspects of Korean dining that I like the best. Back to budae, though, this soup contained: hot dog, spam, fish cake, mushrooms, rice cake, ramen noodles, spices, onions, garlic, tofu, some other noodle, and maybe some other things I wasn't aware of, and we cooked it all in a broth. This dish originated in the post-Korean war times when meat was scarce, and they would take leftovers from the American soldiers and combine it all into the soup. This was quite the meal. Everything was alright, except that the jigae was a little too spicy for me. If there were a version with less spice, I might have it again … but of course because it was so spicy, we just felt justified to get some ice cream afterward, so I guess I can't really complain too much. haha. The other meal I had this weekend, on Saturday to be more specific, is called "Samgyeopsal," which translates to approximately "three layered flesh." This meal consisted of another one of the table burner units, a plate of thinly sliced pork and some fresh vegetables that we grilled all together. Although the taste was different, the meat reminded me a lot of bacon because of the cut, and that's why it has its name -- if you think about bacon and visible layers of fat and meat, those are the kinds of differences that the "three layered" name refers to. And this food, as with others that I've had, required us to simply fry the food and eat it in a wrap style, adding the meat and veggies to some sauce and cucumber slices and eating it all inside leaves. This was, without a doubt, another exceptional meal that I've had here, and I look forward to eating it again.
Alright. This message is getting to be about as long as any other, so I'll wrap it up with two more amusing things. One of these came Saturday night after going to the aforementioned restaurant and having the meal. I went out that night with Dianne and JiHye, and it was a very fun evening. After dinner we stopped by a Starbucks and then decided to go see a movie. Some have asked, by the way, about movies here, and there are many Korean movies … obviously in Korean, but there are other movies shown as well -- a number of Hollywood Blockbusers -- that play in English with Korean subtitles. A few weeks ago I went to my first movie here, and we watched "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," which was enjoyable enough. So this time we went to the theater, not knowing exactly what was playing, but because of my linguistic handicap, Dianne and JiHye specifically looked for English movies, and the one that just so happened to be playing around then was "Final Destination 5." Now, for anyone who knows my taste in movies and knows this movie series' reputation, do you think this was a wise decision? Exactly. It wasn't. haha. I've never seen any of the Final Destination movies simply because they've always seemed to follow the horror/suspense tracks … neither of which appeals to me … but ultimately, because I've not seen them before, I wasn't certain. So about the time that we decided to watch that one, I told them that I thought it was a horror movie, but I wasn't certain. JiHye and Dianne didn't know the movie either, so we decided to bite the bullet and go with it anyway. Maybe 10 minutes into the movie is when people really begin to start dying. oh, my. And then after that, because some of the main characters escaped their deaths during the initial slaughter, they must encounter death in many suspenseful ways throughout the rest of the movie. During this whole fiasco, I couldn't help but cover my eyes (and one of my ears) and kind of groan with each terrible piece of the movie I saw. oh, my (again). Right after the first of those initial survivors met her violent demise, I turned to both Dianne and JiHye and simply asked, "Soju Club? Soju Club?" haha. Fortunately they both shared my misery and sentiment and, and we cut out of the movie early. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever walked out of a movie, but I felt so good with that decision. Whew. Lesson learned: don't choose a random movie and stick with your gut. The rest of the night was much more pleasant, and I even got to hear a birthday song at the restaurant about half a dozen times when we breached the midnight hour. The last story for today: I have always been a fan of pop music, and most of my music library right now consists of Billboard Tops from the past 60-70 years, so just within the last few days I became much more interested in Korean Pop music, often known as simply K-Pop. First of all, quite a few K-pop songs are just as catchy as American songs -- granted, I don't really know what they singers are saying nor can I really sing along right now … but still, it's been great. Next, K-pop groups seem to come in 2 varieties -- boy bands and girl groups. The boy bands include, from what I've seen so far, somewhere between a couple and ton of singers/performers. And the girl groups are the same. For both, I haven't seen any groups yet that play their own instruments, so they end up singing and just dancing during performances. I read up a little on these kinds of groups, and they can be compared, in a little way, to groups like Spice Girls or the more popular American boy bands like Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC. Two nights ago I even spent about a couple hours just going through video after video of the K-pop music, and it was great. I was actually searching for one particular song that I'd heard a number of times so far … but then I simply got caught up in the awesomeness of it all. haha. Additionally, just for your enjoyment, I'm even going to attach a few songs to this email when I send it … so that you can experience for yourself what I've enjoyed so far. And if you get a chance to invest a little time, check out the music videos as well … they're great by my standards (enjoying both the music and the dancing). If you download and listen to the songs in iTunes, some of them will have both the Korean and English names … and some others just have English names. In either case, you should be able to see what you're listening to. Enjoy.
*extra information: songs that I attached to the original message -- Wonder Girls "Nobody", iNFiNiTY "Be Mine", Seo In Guk "Shake it Up", After School Red "In the Night Sky", and T-ARA "Roly Poly". If you want to check out the songs, just do a google search, and you should find them.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to check out the Chuseok activities, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.651383415404.2129752.15300236&l=b884f7436c
or
if you want to see some of the food I described, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.653550462624.2130724.15300236&l=23968996e5
or
if you want to see some shots from in and around my newly-adjusted apartment, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.651854775794.2129990.15300236&l=9d3ed5f37b
or
if you want to see some the videos I've posted, visit:
https://picasaweb.google.com/115494611185738572069/KoreanExploitsTheVideos?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIOmw5qrwpWSygE&feat=directlink
Monday, September 5, 2011
Ben's Korean Adventures, edition 10
"And that's why you don't ever trust red peppers."
Oh, hello from Korea! Sorry, that's actually the punchline to my story … so here goes: just yesterday (Saturday) I decided to do make it a productive day and do run some errands -- I finished writing a letter, I got my hair cut (which was pretty sweet … and now I look ballin' … haha), I restocked on vegetables and I used up all the vegetables that I bought last time in a soup. I described how when I got the vegetables the vendor was really nice, and she gave me a bunch of extra things, and that included about 8 or 9 smaller green and red peppers. Because I'm not a spicy/hot food kind of guy, I just left them in the fridge up until earlier this week. On Tuesday or Wednesday I made some food, and I cautiously cut up, tested for spiciness and used 2 of the green peppers in one dish I made. That left me with 7 more peppers yesterday. This time around I tried the same approach … I cut up one of the red peppers and tried a piece or two, and at first it was fine, so I ended up dicing the remaining 6. I even thought to myself, "I think that the seeds are the worst part … so I better take them out." You see, I don't cook with such things, but I was pretty sure I remembered that from somewhere before. So before the dicing, I carefully sliced open each pepper and used my thumbs to push out all the seeds and the core from each pepper. During this part of the cooking, I had just been cutting up vegetables, and I realized that rather than a vegetable stir fry, I'd be better off trying a soup, so I put my cutting on pause and made a quick trip to the store to secure a chicken (yes, that's right, I used a whole chicken in my soup), but as I walked home with my grocery store trophies (I also bought some BBQ-esk sauce to try out and some milk), I noticed something peculiar … my lips were kind of on fire. "Huh," I thought to myself, "maybe those peppers are a little spicier than I thought." I arrived at home, put the chicken and some water and seasoning in the pot, and sat down at my desk to wait for the water to come to a boil. And that's when it hit me -- my hands were on fire. The pads of all my fingers and even the back sides of both of my thumbs felt like I had dipped them in oil and struck a match. It was ridiculous. And annoying. And painful. And every time I had to go back and stir the soup, the steam only served to aggravate the pain. Basically, each time I returned to kitchen, the heat from cooking was saying, "Hey Ben, here's some salt in your wound." haha. My only consolation came from going to the bathroom, filling up the sink and just letting my hands soak. It took about 2.5 hours for the burning to go away; lesson learned. And that's why you don't ever trust red peppers.
That was part of my excitement yesterday. Granted, the day began really well -- I had such motivation to be productive -- but that burning juice incident really put the kabosh on my desires to do anything. On the upside, the soup turned out pretty well, and that makes the 2nd successful batch to be frozen. Yes! Ok, I just remembered this: sorry for that uber-long message last time; I write my messages from Mac when I'm at home, and then I copy/paste the message into an email. Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, I made a mistake with the copy/pasting, and I didn't realize until after I clicked send. I'll do better henceforth.
Back on the topic of food: last Sunday I ended up going with a group of teachers and one teacher's two daughters to a great restaurant about 30 minutes north of here. We had a BBQ duck meal, which was very good. That was the first time I'd ever really eaten duck, and I was pleasantly surprised. I'm a pretty big fan of chicken, so I figured it's be alright, and the meat had been marinated and cooked very well, and after everything was set, we basically had platters of meat and a bunch of side things to eat with it. I would take a leaf, put on some duck, add a slice of fresh garlic, pour in a little sauce, wrap it all up and "mmmmm, delicious." You get the drift. Of all the things we could add to the meat, one "condiment" towered over the others in awesomeness -- some sort of fermented garlic sauce. Apparently the garlic sits for a year before it can be used, and with that result, I can understand why. A few people over the years have commented on how much garlic I use when cooking (usually because they think I use too much … what a silly assumption), so as you can imagine, that sauce was just delightful. I do regret now not asking if I could buy a bottle to take home because according to the Korean teachers there, that's not a usual thing to find -- it must have been some house specialty, but I do wish I could put it on most things that I eat. Mmm. Hopefully we go back there again soon. haha. We finished the meal with rice dish called "Jook," and the flavor was something that I couldn't really pin down. Dianne and Sunny described it with a Korean word that they said doesn't have an English equivalent. And I believe it. I don't remember the flavor right now, but it wasn't what I was hoping. At this point in the meal, something became more apparent than it has been before -- I do miss dessert after a good meal like that. Having a sweet dish after a meal apparently doesn't really happen here, thus in the case of jook, I had been hoping for a sweet rice dish to follow up the duck, so I was a little disappointed after that first bite of not-so-sweet food. Meh, that's how it goes.
Another food thing: pizza! This has been a very comfortable/pleasant aspect of living here, and I'm very glad for it. I just did a quick search of previous messages, and I didn't find anything … so hopefully this is new for most of you. Pizza here is really good by my standards. So far I've had it from two different shops with one being known for a higher quality product than the other, although it's from the lower quality (and cost) joint that I've had the most so far. For the past few weeks now I've been having "Pizza Sunday" (which happens just before Mondu Monday … which has been a great way to start each week), so after I finish all of my things, I'll go order a pizza from "Nan Ta 500" where the cheapest pizza is ₩5000 or about $5. I feel that it's pretty comparable to Papa John's pizza back home, and you know I'm a sucker for that stuff. This pizza, though, uses a different dough than what we have back home. I think it tastes a little sweeter, although I'm not exactly sure. So far, my pizza experience hasn't been too much different than back home, except for this: the use of sweet potato on/in the pizza. Sometimes, just inside the ring of the crust, one can find a smaller orange ring … which is sweet potato. And there's even another pizza that has sweet potato stuffed into the crust. Oooh … that one is good. I bought it expecting there to be cheese in the crust because that's what the picture looked like, but nope, it was definitely sweet potato. So … for those of you back home, mash up some sweet potato and add it to your pizza next time … you won't be disappointed … unless you don't prepare it well … but that's your own fault. haha. Speaking of this interesting topping on pizza reminded me of another interesting thing I ran across: at the grocery store one day, I got to sample a cake with some things on top. Can you guess what those things included? I'll give you a hint … one I don't actually remember (so we'll just skip that one … I forgot it because it was a less-unusual-to-me topping), the second is orange and grows in patches and the third is green and grows in pods. Yep, that's right, pumpkin and peas … and … something … else. The cake was really light like an angel food cake, and on the top, baked into it a little bit, were a couple slices of pumpkin and some peas. After discovering this, Dianne mentioned that pumpkin is apparently a big food around here, and that wasn't really so surprising, but that peas really made me wonder. I've been a fan of peas for a long time … especially fresh ones that I'd sneak from Grandma and Grandpa Graves' garden when I was younger, and although they are often called, "sweet peas," I never would have thought to include them in a dessert. Look at this, my culinary preconceptions are being challenged left and right over here. Whew, what a great thing!
I'll think I'll write a little bit about schoolwork, and maybe I'll just send this out to you all tomorrow. Who knew that I could embrace this kind of brevity in writing? haha. On the student front, I met with Dianne again Friday night, and we studied, for the first real time, conversational things. Woo hoo! Now I know how to say, "Hello. My name is Ben." Which is, by the way, approximately, "annyeongha-seyo. j/cheonun Ben-imnida." Also, quick note about pronunciation: what I've quickly realized is that reading the Korean letters is so much better than trying to read the English versions of things. This especially applies to names for my students. For example, the vowel ㅕis pronounced as "yaw" … at least that's how I would write it. Often, when it appears in names, it's written with an "eo" like in this name: Seo Yeon. Maybe my mind's a little screwy (ok, actually that's a given), but when I first saw that, I pronounced it like "So Yahn." I obviously didn't pick up on the "awe" sound. Now that I know what the vowel sounds like, though, I'm able to do a better job. I write this now because I'm sure that I will continue to write Korean words in my messages, and I'll try to consistently use the English spelling that I regularly encounter here … even if it doesn't seem to fit as well with how I naturally would read it. Also, sometimes I will use a "/" in the pronunciation, which comes from how the words sound. I wrote about this at the beginning of last month (a month ago the day, actually) with one example … the "t/d" issue. The same happens for some other sounds as well: "g/k," "b/p," "l/r" and "j/ch." This has been one of the harder aspects of learning correct pronunciation for words because to my untrained ears, I don't hear the distinction as clearly as I should. Nearly every time I study with Dianne or try to have someone else say a word slowly so that I can write it down, I feel a flashback to phonetics class at Calvin during my junior year. In that class we extensively considered different sounds that appear in languages around the world, and we talked about how, essentially, the switch in one's brain to allow that person to fluently use different sounds is thrown pretty early in development, and ultimately for some people reproducing certain sounds -- or even being able to recognize those different sounds -- remains especially challenging or almost impossible … especially as they get older. And so there have been a few times when I'll say something, and Dianne, for example, will say "No" and pronounce it correctly. And I'll try again, but it still won't be right, and that'll go on a few times until it either sounds good enough … or we just move on. Again I find myself thinking and writing, this language learning business is going to be to a lot of work. But I think the payoff will be great.
On the teacher front, last week was my most stressful yet. I won't go into details here, but I'm realizing that teaching is more taxing that I'd hoped it would be, so especially by Friday, I was spent and ready to end for the weekend. Friday did still end on a fun note, though, when my last class changed English names. They'd been asking about it for a while now, and I had promised them that if they could go one week doing well and being good, we'd change. Granted, it probably helped that one of the more energetic students missed 2 of the 3 days last week, but ultimately we still did have a solid week, so we spent the first part of the class choosing the names. I gave each student a choice between 2 or among 3, and each got to pick the better/best name. Also, I used this opportunity to talk a little bit more about how naming and nicknames work back home. I intentionally chose name that were a little bit longer and could be shortened to a nickname, such that I'll be using both full and nicknames, and I plan to have the students only use nicknames when addressing one another. Additionally, I did gain 2 more students in that class on Monday, so now I have a class consisting of: Susan, Zachary, Katherine, Jessica, Hunter, Sophia, Hector, Sally and Samuel. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with these changes, and the students were especially amused by Hunter … as was I. The one student who was missing still will have the option to change his name tomorrow, so I have to make sure to give him some great options … we'll see how that goes. I've been toying with Ignatius (Iggy) and Constantine. Those are solid, great choices, right? Yep, exactly. haha. Maybe he'll get a more contemporary choice as well. We'll see how gracious I feel by the end of day tomorrow, for that will ultimately determine what I do.
Look at this. Maybe I'm just incapable of being brief. Because I did nearly forget one thing: a little bit about banking, although this should still be quick. As I mentioned before, I did start a bank account last week. Woo hoo! As I set up everything, there was one random interesting thing and another one that's more Korea-specific. The first one is this: in setting up my account/debit card, I had to create both a 4- and 6-digit password. Right now the ATMs use the 4-digit one, but apparently in the foreseeable future, that'll be switching over to a more secure system. I found that interesting, and I wonder if that's a bigger shift or something that only happens here. I don't really know. The next one is this: updating bank books here is amazingly simple. This is one of things I've encountered that makes me think America's way behind the times. At this bank I have a book that looks like one I've used for other accounts back home, but here there's a machine in the lobby where I can slide in my book, and it will print on my pages showing me all my bank transactions, thus I'm ultimately responsible for keeping my bank book and updating it, but by simply stopping by the bank lobby, I can get a complete and accurate record right there. Whew. So awesome. When the bank teller first gave me the bank book I still had the mindset that it was like mine back home that, let's be straight here, I used for about the first month and a half … when I was a 1st year student at Calvin, so I immediately was thinking about where to stow it away because I figured I wouldn't use it … again. But with this sweet new system … my book's gonna be so up to date. Just you wait. haha.
Alright. That's it for me. Who knows what the next topic will be or the when the next time will be that I write to you? I don't. So I guess you'll just hear from me again whenever you do. Keep it real, and remember to shoot me an update sometime so that I can hear about your life and (mis)adventures -- even if they seem mundane and potentially meaningless -- because I do like to get emails and read about you.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see the BBQ place, visit:
Oh, hello from Korea! Sorry, that's actually the punchline to my story … so here goes: just yesterday (Saturday) I decided to do make it a productive day and do run some errands -- I finished writing a letter, I got my hair cut (which was pretty sweet … and now I look ballin' … haha), I restocked on vegetables and I used up all the vegetables that I bought last time in a soup. I described how when I got the vegetables the vendor was really nice, and she gave me a bunch of extra things, and that included about 8 or 9 smaller green and red peppers. Because I'm not a spicy/hot food kind of guy, I just left them in the fridge up until earlier this week. On Tuesday or Wednesday I made some food, and I cautiously cut up, tested for spiciness and used 2 of the green peppers in one dish I made. That left me with 7 more peppers yesterday. This time around I tried the same approach … I cut up one of the red peppers and tried a piece or two, and at first it was fine, so I ended up dicing the remaining 6. I even thought to myself, "I think that the seeds are the worst part … so I better take them out." You see, I don't cook with such things, but I was pretty sure I remembered that from somewhere before. So before the dicing, I carefully sliced open each pepper and used my thumbs to push out all the seeds and the core from each pepper. During this part of the cooking, I had just been cutting up vegetables, and I realized that rather than a vegetable stir fry, I'd be better off trying a soup, so I put my cutting on pause and made a quick trip to the store to secure a chicken (yes, that's right, I used a whole chicken in my soup), but as I walked home with my grocery store trophies (I also bought some BBQ-esk sauce to try out and some milk), I noticed something peculiar … my lips were kind of on fire. "Huh," I thought to myself, "maybe those peppers are a little spicier than I thought." I arrived at home, put the chicken and some water and seasoning in the pot, and sat down at my desk to wait for the water to come to a boil. And that's when it hit me -- my hands were on fire. The pads of all my fingers and even the back sides of both of my thumbs felt like I had dipped them in oil and struck a match. It was ridiculous. And annoying. And painful. And every time I had to go back and stir the soup, the steam only served to aggravate the pain. Basically, each time I returned to kitchen, the heat from cooking was saying, "Hey Ben, here's some salt in your wound." haha. My only consolation came from going to the bathroom, filling up the sink and just letting my hands soak. It took about 2.5 hours for the burning to go away; lesson learned. And that's why you don't ever trust red peppers.
That was part of my excitement yesterday. Granted, the day began really well -- I had such motivation to be productive -- but that burning juice incident really put the kabosh on my desires to do anything. On the upside, the soup turned out pretty well, and that makes the 2nd successful batch to be frozen. Yes! Ok, I just remembered this: sorry for that uber-long message last time; I write my messages from Mac when I'm at home, and then I copy/paste the message into an email. Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, I made a mistake with the copy/pasting, and I didn't realize until after I clicked send. I'll do better henceforth.
Back on the topic of food: last Sunday I ended up going with a group of teachers and one teacher's two daughters to a great restaurant about 30 minutes north of here. We had a BBQ duck meal, which was very good. That was the first time I'd ever really eaten duck, and I was pleasantly surprised. I'm a pretty big fan of chicken, so I figured it's be alright, and the meat had been marinated and cooked very well, and after everything was set, we basically had platters of meat and a bunch of side things to eat with it. I would take a leaf, put on some duck, add a slice of fresh garlic, pour in a little sauce, wrap it all up and "mmmmm, delicious." You get the drift. Of all the things we could add to the meat, one "condiment" towered over the others in awesomeness -- some sort of fermented garlic sauce. Apparently the garlic sits for a year before it can be used, and with that result, I can understand why. A few people over the years have commented on how much garlic I use when cooking (usually because they think I use too much … what a silly assumption), so as you can imagine, that sauce was just delightful. I do regret now not asking if I could buy a bottle to take home because according to the Korean teachers there, that's not a usual thing to find -- it must have been some house specialty, but I do wish I could put it on most things that I eat. Mmm. Hopefully we go back there again soon. haha. We finished the meal with rice dish called "Jook," and the flavor was something that I couldn't really pin down. Dianne and Sunny described it with a Korean word that they said doesn't have an English equivalent. And I believe it. I don't remember the flavor right now, but it wasn't what I was hoping. At this point in the meal, something became more apparent than it has been before -- I do miss dessert after a good meal like that. Having a sweet dish after a meal apparently doesn't really happen here, thus in the case of jook, I had been hoping for a sweet rice dish to follow up the duck, so I was a little disappointed after that first bite of not-so-sweet food. Meh, that's how it goes.
Another food thing: pizza! This has been a very comfortable/pleasant aspect of living here, and I'm very glad for it. I just did a quick search of previous messages, and I didn't find anything … so hopefully this is new for most of you. Pizza here is really good by my standards. So far I've had it from two different shops with one being known for a higher quality product than the other, although it's from the lower quality (and cost) joint that I've had the most so far. For the past few weeks now I've been having "Pizza Sunday" (which happens just before Mondu Monday … which has been a great way to start each week), so after I finish all of my things, I'll go order a pizza from "Nan Ta 500" where the cheapest pizza is ₩5000 or about $5. I feel that it's pretty comparable to Papa John's pizza back home, and you know I'm a sucker for that stuff. This pizza, though, uses a different dough than what we have back home. I think it tastes a little sweeter, although I'm not exactly sure. So far, my pizza experience hasn't been too much different than back home, except for this: the use of sweet potato on/in the pizza. Sometimes, just inside the ring of the crust, one can find a smaller orange ring … which is sweet potato. And there's even another pizza that has sweet potato stuffed into the crust. Oooh … that one is good. I bought it expecting there to be cheese in the crust because that's what the picture looked like, but nope, it was definitely sweet potato. So … for those of you back home, mash up some sweet potato and add it to your pizza next time … you won't be disappointed … unless you don't prepare it well … but that's your own fault. haha. Speaking of this interesting topping on pizza reminded me of another interesting thing I ran across: at the grocery store one day, I got to sample a cake with some things on top. Can you guess what those things included? I'll give you a hint … one I don't actually remember (so we'll just skip that one … I forgot it because it was a less-unusual-to-me topping), the second is orange and grows in patches and the third is green and grows in pods. Yep, that's right, pumpkin and peas … and … something … else. The cake was really light like an angel food cake, and on the top, baked into it a little bit, were a couple slices of pumpkin and some peas. After discovering this, Dianne mentioned that pumpkin is apparently a big food around here, and that wasn't really so surprising, but that peas really made me wonder. I've been a fan of peas for a long time … especially fresh ones that I'd sneak from Grandma and Grandpa Graves' garden when I was younger, and although they are often called, "sweet peas," I never would have thought to include them in a dessert. Look at this, my culinary preconceptions are being challenged left and right over here. Whew, what a great thing!
I'll think I'll write a little bit about schoolwork, and maybe I'll just send this out to you all tomorrow. Who knew that I could embrace this kind of brevity in writing? haha. On the student front, I met with Dianne again Friday night, and we studied, for the first real time, conversational things. Woo hoo! Now I know how to say, "Hello. My name is Ben." Which is, by the way, approximately, "annyeongha-seyo. j/cheonun Ben-imnida." Also, quick note about pronunciation: what I've quickly realized is that reading the Korean letters is so much better than trying to read the English versions of things. This especially applies to names for my students. For example, the vowel ㅕis pronounced as "yaw" … at least that's how I would write it. Often, when it appears in names, it's written with an "eo" like in this name: Seo Yeon. Maybe my mind's a little screwy (ok, actually that's a given), but when I first saw that, I pronounced it like "So Yahn." I obviously didn't pick up on the "awe" sound. Now that I know what the vowel sounds like, though, I'm able to do a better job. I write this now because I'm sure that I will continue to write Korean words in my messages, and I'll try to consistently use the English spelling that I regularly encounter here … even if it doesn't seem to fit as well with how I naturally would read it. Also, sometimes I will use a "/" in the pronunciation, which comes from how the words sound. I wrote about this at the beginning of last month (a month ago the day, actually) with one example … the "t/d" issue. The same happens for some other sounds as well: "g/k," "b/p," "l/r" and "j/ch." This has been one of the harder aspects of learning correct pronunciation for words because to my untrained ears, I don't hear the distinction as clearly as I should. Nearly every time I study with Dianne or try to have someone else say a word slowly so that I can write it down, I feel a flashback to phonetics class at Calvin during my junior year. In that class we extensively considered different sounds that appear in languages around the world, and we talked about how, essentially, the switch in one's brain to allow that person to fluently use different sounds is thrown pretty early in development, and ultimately for some people reproducing certain sounds -- or even being able to recognize those different sounds -- remains especially challenging or almost impossible … especially as they get older. And so there have been a few times when I'll say something, and Dianne, for example, will say "No" and pronounce it correctly. And I'll try again, but it still won't be right, and that'll go on a few times until it either sounds good enough … or we just move on. Again I find myself thinking and writing, this language learning business is going to be to a lot of work. But I think the payoff will be great.
On the teacher front, last week was my most stressful yet. I won't go into details here, but I'm realizing that teaching is more taxing that I'd hoped it would be, so especially by Friday, I was spent and ready to end for the weekend. Friday did still end on a fun note, though, when my last class changed English names. They'd been asking about it for a while now, and I had promised them that if they could go one week doing well and being good, we'd change. Granted, it probably helped that one of the more energetic students missed 2 of the 3 days last week, but ultimately we still did have a solid week, so we spent the first part of the class choosing the names. I gave each student a choice between 2 or among 3, and each got to pick the better/best name. Also, I used this opportunity to talk a little bit more about how naming and nicknames work back home. I intentionally chose name that were a little bit longer and could be shortened to a nickname, such that I'll be using both full and nicknames, and I plan to have the students only use nicknames when addressing one another. Additionally, I did gain 2 more students in that class on Monday, so now I have a class consisting of: Susan, Zachary, Katherine, Jessica, Hunter, Sophia, Hector, Sally and Samuel. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with these changes, and the students were especially amused by Hunter … as was I. The one student who was missing still will have the option to change his name tomorrow, so I have to make sure to give him some great options … we'll see how that goes. I've been toying with Ignatius (Iggy) and Constantine. Those are solid, great choices, right? Yep, exactly. haha. Maybe he'll get a more contemporary choice as well. We'll see how gracious I feel by the end of day tomorrow, for that will ultimately determine what I do.
Look at this. Maybe I'm just incapable of being brief. Because I did nearly forget one thing: a little bit about banking, although this should still be quick. As I mentioned before, I did start a bank account last week. Woo hoo! As I set up everything, there was one random interesting thing and another one that's more Korea-specific. The first one is this: in setting up my account/debit card, I had to create both a 4- and 6-digit password. Right now the ATMs use the 4-digit one, but apparently in the foreseeable future, that'll be switching over to a more secure system. I found that interesting, and I wonder if that's a bigger shift or something that only happens here. I don't really know. The next one is this: updating bank books here is amazingly simple. This is one of things I've encountered that makes me think America's way behind the times. At this bank I have a book that looks like one I've used for other accounts back home, but here there's a machine in the lobby where I can slide in my book, and it will print on my pages showing me all my bank transactions, thus I'm ultimately responsible for keeping my bank book and updating it, but by simply stopping by the bank lobby, I can get a complete and accurate record right there. Whew. So awesome. When the bank teller first gave me the bank book I still had the mindset that it was like mine back home that, let's be straight here, I used for about the first month and a half … when I was a 1st year student at Calvin, so I immediately was thinking about where to stow it away because I figured I wouldn't use it … again. But with this sweet new system … my book's gonna be so up to date. Just you wait. haha.
Alright. That's it for me. Who knows what the next topic will be or the when the next time will be that I write to you? I don't. So I guess you'll just hear from me again whenever you do. Keep it real, and remember to shoot me an update sometime so that I can hear about your life and (mis)adventures -- even if they seem mundane and potentially meaningless -- because I do like to get emails and read about you.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see the BBQ place, visit:
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Ben's Korean Adventures, edition 9
Hello and good evening from Gwangju!
Having a bigger fridge has been great. At the end of last week I was able to make a batch of a good soup [with major props going out to Matt and Kristin for donating some bullion to me … without which the whole thing would have not come together], and due to this new space, I was able to freeze about 2/3rds of what I made because, as you could probably guess if you've ever been around when I've made soup before, even though I had intended just "to make a little bit," I ended up filling both of the larger pots I have in my apartment. haha. At least it turned out well this time. I'm hoping to continue doing this from time to time and freezing the results because not only does this give me a justifiable excuse to buy more food storage containers, but it will of course actually give me some more food for the coming months. That being said, if you have a simple soup recipe that you'd like to share, please send it along to me -- I do occasionally get bored with my own cooking.
Also, I'm an official Alien now! Yes! Just yesterday Don gave me my Alien Registration Card, which I had expected to be a larger slip of paper that would be inconvenient to carry around and get in the way and everything else, but it turned out to be an ID card the same size as any other I have in my wallet. Also, here's something I didn't mention at the time, when we went to apply for the alien residency we had to turn in an application and give another passport-size photo for this card. I still had one of those pictures from when I got some in the States, and it was a shot that I actually liked (not that I usually am very bothered by any picture of me, though … I'm kind of ego-centric like that). When I affixed the picture to the application and gave it to the man working the counter, he quickly return it because the backdrop in the photo was not bone white … it was eggshell white or had some other off white tint. CVS, I shake my fist at you from Korea! So I had to get a new headshot, and conveniently enough, there was one such machine out in the lobby of this building. All the other teachers had to take their pictures as well, so I wasn't singled out or anything, but still … I took the picture, and I think it's one of the most emotionless pictures I've ever seen of myself. I feel that this is a foreshadowing of what my shade will look like. I've put a picture of it online … make sure you check it out … especially if you plan to outlive me because that way you'll know if I'm the one coming back to haunt you.
Korean studies update - things are progressing along pretty nicely, I think. As with anything that I study, I need to keep putting in the time and effort to actually remember the things that I'm learning. So far I have a list of about 120 vocabulary words (not really the most extensive of vocabularies, I'll admit) that all employ rather basic consonant/vowel constructions, and when I look at the flashcards from the Korean side, I can recite most of them … coming from the English first, my success rate drops a little more … and when I try to write them out (not simply reproducing the pronunciation), I lose even a little more confidence. haha. At this point in the textbook, though, I just made my last batch of straight vocabulary flashcards; now the book switches gears a bit and starts to focus on conversations and building sentences. On a tangential note, last week I had one of my best study sessions: I went to a local bar called the Dark Horse where I had gone one night with Matt and Kristin. This bar is within a couple minutes' walk, and according to Matt and Kristin, it's usually pretty dead. When I went in on Friday or Saturday evening, I was pretty surprised to see 7 other customers already there -- pleasantly surprised, mind you. So then while I studied I snacked on some little treats that they brought out as well as some meat kabobs and some a pitcher of strawberry soju. Soju is a pretty popular alcoholic drink around here. Even before I left the States, I had one friend warn me about this beverage because the alcohol content is pretty high compared to any beer and even some bottom-shelf wines (and apparently the hangovers are pretty rough as well -- my plan is to steer clear of that one, though, and I'll just take others at their word). Soju on its own doesn't taste so appealing, and there are even different flavors; I've only tried a Maple flavor, although I've heard that Lemon's pretty decent also. Even with those, though, it's a rough drink for me to put down -- until you mix it with ice and fruit juice. A couple times now I've gone out and had fruit soju. The first time I went with some other teachers to a different bar/restaurant, and that batch was made with (or at least had some) real strawberries; at the Dark Horse, however, there is simply a strawberry flavoring that goes along with the ice and soju. All in all I've been very pleased with the fruit soju, so if any of you comes to visit, be ready for this new flavor explosion. Needless to say, I'll probably be going back to the Dark Horse for another study session in the very near future.
Turning attention to school: a while back someone had asked about grading and tests and whatnot for students. From my perspective thus far, there isn't much that we end up doing -- other than sending home report cards. At Oedae I'll end up sending reports every other month, while at Haba I have to send reports quarterly for my Speaking Class and semi-annually for the rest of my classes. At Oedae, with my older students, the reports have boxes for a letter grade in categories like "Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking, Work Habits" and "Achievements." Some of these categories are broken down a little more specifically, but this is what we generally grade on. In addition, there are boxes for teacher comments -- from both me and the Korean teacher. I don't know how this report card is used internally (I'll be writing my first wave during September), but it is sent home to parents. At Haba, I have only so far seen the reports for the Speaking Class, and they are very simple only having 2 boxes for comments on a student's performance and what we've covered in class. I just realized that I haven't given much information about Speaking Class yet (even if I've mentioned it before). After the 6-period school day at Haba, some students stay longer to participate in extra classes that focus on more specific topics -- like speaking. In this class, I have a mix of 5 and 6-year olds, and we cover a different book than what the students use in their other classes. The goal here is, of course, more speaking practice for the students, so even though I've only had my current group for a few weeks now, I've tried to give them extra opportunities for using their English. This class is smaller than my other classes, so it's a little bit easier to have them say things, although it's still a stretch sometimes. And actually, with the half-year mark happening right now, my speaking class will be changing on Friday (I have this class M, W, F each week), so today (Wednesday) is my last day with this specific group of kids. I've already seen the roster for my next group, and I am losing some of the better students, but meh, that's the way it goes -- I have to get used to it sooner or later. And beyond this class changing, I have gained a student in 3 of my other classes -- Angel, Rainbow and my 3rd graders' class. Now I'll have to learn more names! haha. Beyond the report cards, we do have a scheduled time to meet with parents twice a year at Haba, which just so happened to fall during last week. On both Wednesday and Thursday, I spent about 10 minutes sitting in on a meeting with the parents of my 5 year old classes and Mrs. Mo (the school owner/operator), another foreign teacher and Jackie, my Korean coteacher. During these meetings, I simply ended up saying little more than, "My name is Ben; I'm from America; I'm teaching your kids; they are fun." haha. The rest of the presentation came from Jackie. On Saturday I had the conference for Edison, my intensive class, and that involved a little bit more. This time we met in the Edison classroom, and I actually walked through each of our textbooks and explained very briefly what we did with each. How much of that the parents understood? I don't know. But that's how it goes. They now know who I am, and according to feedback from Dianne, my coteacher for this class, the parents like me well enough.
Last week not only had those parent-teacher conferences, but we also had a big event for Oedae -- the Golden Bell competition and Spelling Bee. At some point in time, the students are told about certain books to read for Golden Bell and given a list of words for the Spelling Bee, and on last Friday we held the actual competitions and some extra games. The Golden Bell books were two Boxcar Children books for the 1st-3rd graders, while the 4th+ had some other book(s). For this part of the competition all the participating students literally sat down on the floor of the Haba gymnasium, used a laminated sheet of paper as a whiteboard and a dry erase marker and wrote down their answers to continue participating. In both Golden Bell and the Spelling Bee it was immediate elimination for anyone who made a mistake. This competition was pretty rough because many of the questions had to have rather specific answers, and a number of students were knocked out because they didn't write the correct thing. I was pretty impressed, though, because the final 2 in the 1st-3rd category were both my students, thus the winner was one of mine. Granted, because this competition relies on what students do outside of class, I played no part in helping him to win, but I was still stoked that David secured the victory and that Kevin was close behind. As a final note here, the last question that David answered did just so happen to be about Clara Barton and her nickname, "Angel of the Battlefield," which, of course, I knew from my last job. What up, Red Cross! The Spelling Bee was handled in a very similar manner, although kids were just packed into the gym for this part. Again, they used the whiteboards and markers to write down their answers. Whereas in during Golden Bell all the questions were read by foreigners, during the Spelling Bee we alternated the readings between foreign and Korean teachers. When a foreigner gave a word in English, the students had to write not only the English word but also the Korean equivalent. And when the Korean teachers gave a word in Korean, only an English word had to be written. Throughout this competition my detail-oriented side was annoyed from time to time, but we'll see if I can help out at all for the next time we run this competition to help smooth over some of the rough areas I saw. On Friday we didn't just have both of these competitions, but we did get to play some games as well between the two. We ended up breaking up all the teachers in to teams and staffing stations with little games for the students. At some stations students simply performed some physical feat, like throwing balls through a hole in a box or knocking over jugs of juice with little bean bags, but at others students had to perform some linguistic feat. I, along with another teacher, ran a game called, "Can you hear me?" (or something close to that) in which students received a little slip of paper with a Korean word on it, and they had to explain it to me using only English. I think the real game is Taboo? Most students did pretty well, although I found it a little funny because when I started, I had no idea what words might come up, but by the end, after we had gone through the list a time or two, I knew what word the student was probably trying to describe. I'm not sure when it was harder for the students -- at the time I truly had no idea what they were describing or the times when I did know but didn't give in until they had said what I wanted them to say. Meh. Either way, they had to practice their speaking and use it a little more creatively than they would in the classroom, I think. All in all, I found this to be a very enjoyable day, and I look forward to the next one … maybe in the Spring.
Alright. One more topic for this email, and then I'll call it good and get it out to you all tomorrow: hiking. Last Saturday, after the conference with my intensive class' parents, I finally hiked up the small mountain near my apartment. I ended up going right in the afternoon around 2pm, and I wasn't sure how good of an idea it might end up being because Saturday was pretty warm. Very quickly, though, It turned into a fantastic trip. Had I not stopped for a couple minutes on the way up, it would have taken me about 30 minutes to crest the taller peak, so really, this mountain is very small compared to others in this area or in other parts of the world. As I climbed up, the first 5 minutes are pretty rough for one who hasn't been hiking very often. After that, the rest of the climb was very pleasant, and by the time I reached the summit, I realized that there was a great cool breeze passing over everything. I ended up just sitting up there for 20-25 minutes before coming down -- not because I needed a rest, but simply because it was so nice. I'm hoping that now I'll be motivated to climb it more regularly, especially during the early morning or later evening to catch a sunrise or sunset from the top. Also, not only can one go for a hike up the mountain here, but one can also work out on the various equipment that's always waiting. On this mountain, and in various other places, you can find outdoor workout equipment that's simply available for use. Matt mentioned this to me before I saw it for myself, and I thought, "Huh. That's kind of cool." And now that I've actually used some of it myself, I must improve that initial thought: "That's really cool." haha. Both down at the bottom and up near one of the lower peaks you can find equipment on this mountain, and there's an array of different things: a curved dome thing used for stretching out one's back, elliptical-ish machines, benches for sit up and push ups, bars for dips and pull ups, machines for twisting, sitting pull down weight machines and at least a few others (notice my use of technical terms all throughout this part -- yeah, as you can tell, I generally spend a lot of time in a gym). Of course after I had walked for a while I wanted to try out the equipment, so I spent a little time using things that I understood, but then I noticed a guy using one machine that pivots left and right while he stood on it. It reminds me of a pendulum in a clock tower, such that a person steps onto the pendulum mechanism, and then it swings side to side. From my first vantage point (away from the machine), I thought it was something for stretching out one's waist/lower back region, so I naturally went over to take my turn. After I stepped up on the pendulum, though, I quickly realized that it wasn't really meant to do what I expected. So I swung back and forth a bit, and during this time some onlookers chuckled a little, and right as I was giving up a slightly older guy who'd been watching from another machine started talking to me. Through a quick exchange he explained that I was doing it wrong (yep, my guess was proven true), and that it was used for stretching/strengthening ankles. That's right. It had nothing to do with any part of my midsection. This machine (as with a number of them) happened to have an active spot on both sides, so the guy climbed on the opposite side and showed me what to do. I had to watch him a couple times to get it, but I finally figured it out, and it was much better than it had been before. And as it turned out, this guy is actually a physical trainer in the area, so who would have guessed that the time I try something new, there just so happens to be an expert nearby who can correct my mistakes and set me back on the straight and narrow? I know I wouldn't have, but I'm so glad that did work out.
Ok. That's enough for this update, I think. More to come next time … get ready to hear about more food, banking in Korea and whatever else I feel like writing about. haha. And here's one important new thing: I have finally started a Picasa account for all the photos thus far (if you can't get to Facebook … or just don't want to go there). At this point I've just dropped the lot of them in a single folder, and I'll include the link at the bottom of this message. Hopefully, hopefully I'll get Internet access at home by this weekend, then I'll be able to change/update these things much easier … because at this very moment, I'm actually sitting outside my school grabbing the wireless so that I can send my post. It was a little funny -- one night Don was leaving school around 9:30pm or so and saw me sitting here, and he seemed really shocked, so I quickly said I was just using the wireless since I don't have access at home and that I was fine. And his retort was something like, Koreans don't do this, and it seems very strange. At this I could only chuckle a bit and keep doing what I've been doing. So … until I write again,
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see the Picasa photo album, visit:
https://picasaweb.google.com/115494611185738572069/KoreanExploits?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCP-zrq_Ypp-f3QE&feat=directlink
or
if you want to see shots of my hike, visit:
or
if you want to see parts of the Golden Bell or Spelling Bee, visit:
or
if you want to see proof that I'm an Alien, visit:
Having a bigger fridge has been great. At the end of last week I was able to make a batch of a good soup [with major props going out to Matt and Kristin for donating some bullion to me … without which the whole thing would have not come together], and due to this new space, I was able to freeze about 2/3rds of what I made because, as you could probably guess if you've ever been around when I've made soup before, even though I had intended just "to make a little bit," I ended up filling both of the larger pots I have in my apartment. haha. At least it turned out well this time. I'm hoping to continue doing this from time to time and freezing the results because not only does this give me a justifiable excuse to buy more food storage containers, but it will of course actually give me some more food for the coming months. That being said, if you have a simple soup recipe that you'd like to share, please send it along to me -- I do occasionally get bored with my own cooking.
Also, I'm an official Alien now! Yes! Just yesterday Don gave me my Alien Registration Card, which I had expected to be a larger slip of paper that would be inconvenient to carry around and get in the way and everything else, but it turned out to be an ID card the same size as any other I have in my wallet. Also, here's something I didn't mention at the time, when we went to apply for the alien residency we had to turn in an application and give another passport-size photo for this card. I still had one of those pictures from when I got some in the States, and it was a shot that I actually liked (not that I usually am very bothered by any picture of me, though … I'm kind of ego-centric like that). When I affixed the picture to the application and gave it to the man working the counter, he quickly return it because the backdrop in the photo was not bone white … it was eggshell white or had some other off white tint. CVS, I shake my fist at you from Korea! So I had to get a new headshot, and conveniently enough, there was one such machine out in the lobby of this building. All the other teachers had to take their pictures as well, so I wasn't singled out or anything, but still … I took the picture, and I think it's one of the most emotionless pictures I've ever seen of myself. I feel that this is a foreshadowing of what my shade will look like. I've put a picture of it online … make sure you check it out … especially if you plan to outlive me because that way you'll know if I'm the one coming back to haunt you.
Korean studies update - things are progressing along pretty nicely, I think. As with anything that I study, I need to keep putting in the time and effort to actually remember the things that I'm learning. So far I have a list of about 120 vocabulary words (not really the most extensive of vocabularies, I'll admit) that all employ rather basic consonant/vowel constructions, and when I look at the flashcards from the Korean side, I can recite most of them … coming from the English first, my success rate drops a little more … and when I try to write them out (not simply reproducing the pronunciation), I lose even a little more confidence. haha. At this point in the textbook, though, I just made my last batch of straight vocabulary flashcards; now the book switches gears a bit and starts to focus on conversations and building sentences. On a tangential note, last week I had one of my best study sessions: I went to a local bar called the Dark Horse where I had gone one night with Matt and Kristin. This bar is within a couple minutes' walk, and according to Matt and Kristin, it's usually pretty dead. When I went in on Friday or Saturday evening, I was pretty surprised to see 7 other customers already there -- pleasantly surprised, mind you. So then while I studied I snacked on some little treats that they brought out as well as some meat kabobs and some a pitcher of strawberry soju. Soju is a pretty popular alcoholic drink around here. Even before I left the States, I had one friend warn me about this beverage because the alcohol content is pretty high compared to any beer and even some bottom-shelf wines (and apparently the hangovers are pretty rough as well -- my plan is to steer clear of that one, though, and I'll just take others at their word). Soju on its own doesn't taste so appealing, and there are even different flavors; I've only tried a Maple flavor, although I've heard that Lemon's pretty decent also. Even with those, though, it's a rough drink for me to put down -- until you mix it with ice and fruit juice. A couple times now I've gone out and had fruit soju. The first time I went with some other teachers to a different bar/restaurant, and that batch was made with (or at least had some) real strawberries; at the Dark Horse, however, there is simply a strawberry flavoring that goes along with the ice and soju. All in all I've been very pleased with the fruit soju, so if any of you comes to visit, be ready for this new flavor explosion. Needless to say, I'll probably be going back to the Dark Horse for another study session in the very near future.
Turning attention to school: a while back someone had asked about grading and tests and whatnot for students. From my perspective thus far, there isn't much that we end up doing -- other than sending home report cards. At Oedae I'll end up sending reports every other month, while at Haba I have to send reports quarterly for my Speaking Class and semi-annually for the rest of my classes. At Oedae, with my older students, the reports have boxes for a letter grade in categories like "Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking, Work Habits" and "Achievements." Some of these categories are broken down a little more specifically, but this is what we generally grade on. In addition, there are boxes for teacher comments -- from both me and the Korean teacher. I don't know how this report card is used internally (I'll be writing my first wave during September), but it is sent home to parents. At Haba, I have only so far seen the reports for the Speaking Class, and they are very simple only having 2 boxes for comments on a student's performance and what we've covered in class. I just realized that I haven't given much information about Speaking Class yet (even if I've mentioned it before). After the 6-period school day at Haba, some students stay longer to participate in extra classes that focus on more specific topics -- like speaking. In this class, I have a mix of 5 and 6-year olds, and we cover a different book than what the students use in their other classes. The goal here is, of course, more speaking practice for the students, so even though I've only had my current group for a few weeks now, I've tried to give them extra opportunities for using their English. This class is smaller than my other classes, so it's a little bit easier to have them say things, although it's still a stretch sometimes. And actually, with the half-year mark happening right now, my speaking class will be changing on Friday (I have this class M, W, F each week), so today (Wednesday) is my last day with this specific group of kids. I've already seen the roster for my next group, and I am losing some of the better students, but meh, that's the way it goes -- I have to get used to it sooner or later. And beyond this class changing, I have gained a student in 3 of my other classes -- Angel, Rainbow and my 3rd graders' class. Now I'll have to learn more names! haha. Beyond the report cards, we do have a scheduled time to meet with parents twice a year at Haba, which just so happened to fall during last week. On both Wednesday and Thursday, I spent about 10 minutes sitting in on a meeting with the parents of my 5 year old classes and Mrs. Mo (the school owner/operator), another foreign teacher and Jackie, my Korean coteacher. During these meetings, I simply ended up saying little more than, "My name is Ben; I'm from America; I'm teaching your kids; they are fun." haha. The rest of the presentation came from Jackie. On Saturday I had the conference for Edison, my intensive class, and that involved a little bit more. This time we met in the Edison classroom, and I actually walked through each of our textbooks and explained very briefly what we did with each. How much of that the parents understood? I don't know. But that's how it goes. They now know who I am, and according to feedback from Dianne, my coteacher for this class, the parents like me well enough.
Last week not only had those parent-teacher conferences, but we also had a big event for Oedae -- the Golden Bell competition and Spelling Bee. At some point in time, the students are told about certain books to read for Golden Bell and given a list of words for the Spelling Bee, and on last Friday we held the actual competitions and some extra games. The Golden Bell books were two Boxcar Children books for the 1st-3rd graders, while the 4th+ had some other book(s). For this part of the competition all the participating students literally sat down on the floor of the Haba gymnasium, used a laminated sheet of paper as a whiteboard and a dry erase marker and wrote down their answers to continue participating. In both Golden Bell and the Spelling Bee it was immediate elimination for anyone who made a mistake. This competition was pretty rough because many of the questions had to have rather specific answers, and a number of students were knocked out because they didn't write the correct thing. I was pretty impressed, though, because the final 2 in the 1st-3rd category were both my students, thus the winner was one of mine. Granted, because this competition relies on what students do outside of class, I played no part in helping him to win, but I was still stoked that David secured the victory and that Kevin was close behind. As a final note here, the last question that David answered did just so happen to be about Clara Barton and her nickname, "Angel of the Battlefield," which, of course, I knew from my last job. What up, Red Cross! The Spelling Bee was handled in a very similar manner, although kids were just packed into the gym for this part. Again, they used the whiteboards and markers to write down their answers. Whereas in during Golden Bell all the questions were read by foreigners, during the Spelling Bee we alternated the readings between foreign and Korean teachers. When a foreigner gave a word in English, the students had to write not only the English word but also the Korean equivalent. And when the Korean teachers gave a word in Korean, only an English word had to be written. Throughout this competition my detail-oriented side was annoyed from time to time, but we'll see if I can help out at all for the next time we run this competition to help smooth over some of the rough areas I saw. On Friday we didn't just have both of these competitions, but we did get to play some games as well between the two. We ended up breaking up all the teachers in to teams and staffing stations with little games for the students. At some stations students simply performed some physical feat, like throwing balls through a hole in a box or knocking over jugs of juice with little bean bags, but at others students had to perform some linguistic feat. I, along with another teacher, ran a game called, "Can you hear me?" (or something close to that) in which students received a little slip of paper with a Korean word on it, and they had to explain it to me using only English. I think the real game is Taboo? Most students did pretty well, although I found it a little funny because when I started, I had no idea what words might come up, but by the end, after we had gone through the list a time or two, I knew what word the student was probably trying to describe. I'm not sure when it was harder for the students -- at the time I truly had no idea what they were describing or the times when I did know but didn't give in until they had said what I wanted them to say. Meh. Either way, they had to practice their speaking and use it a little more creatively than they would in the classroom, I think. All in all, I found this to be a very enjoyable day, and I look forward to the next one … maybe in the Spring.
Alright. One more topic for this email, and then I'll call it good and get it out to you all tomorrow: hiking. Last Saturday, after the conference with my intensive class' parents, I finally hiked up the small mountain near my apartment. I ended up going right in the afternoon around 2pm, and I wasn't sure how good of an idea it might end up being because Saturday was pretty warm. Very quickly, though, It turned into a fantastic trip. Had I not stopped for a couple minutes on the way up, it would have taken me about 30 minutes to crest the taller peak, so really, this mountain is very small compared to others in this area or in other parts of the world. As I climbed up, the first 5 minutes are pretty rough for one who hasn't been hiking very often. After that, the rest of the climb was very pleasant, and by the time I reached the summit, I realized that there was a great cool breeze passing over everything. I ended up just sitting up there for 20-25 minutes before coming down -- not because I needed a rest, but simply because it was so nice. I'm hoping that now I'll be motivated to climb it more regularly, especially during the early morning or later evening to catch a sunrise or sunset from the top. Also, not only can one go for a hike up the mountain here, but one can also work out on the various equipment that's always waiting. On this mountain, and in various other places, you can find outdoor workout equipment that's simply available for use. Matt mentioned this to me before I saw it for myself, and I thought, "Huh. That's kind of cool." And now that I've actually used some of it myself, I must improve that initial thought: "That's really cool." haha. Both down at the bottom and up near one of the lower peaks you can find equipment on this mountain, and there's an array of different things: a curved dome thing used for stretching out one's back, elliptical-ish machines, benches for sit up and push ups, bars for dips and pull ups, machines for twisting, sitting pull down weight machines and at least a few others (notice my use of technical terms all throughout this part -- yeah, as you can tell, I generally spend a lot of time in a gym). Of course after I had walked for a while I wanted to try out the equipment, so I spent a little time using things that I understood, but then I noticed a guy using one machine that pivots left and right while he stood on it. It reminds me of a pendulum in a clock tower, such that a person steps onto the pendulum mechanism, and then it swings side to side. From my first vantage point (away from the machine), I thought it was something for stretching out one's waist/lower back region, so I naturally went over to take my turn. After I stepped up on the pendulum, though, I quickly realized that it wasn't really meant to do what I expected. So I swung back and forth a bit, and during this time some onlookers chuckled a little, and right as I was giving up a slightly older guy who'd been watching from another machine started talking to me. Through a quick exchange he explained that I was doing it wrong (yep, my guess was proven true), and that it was used for stretching/strengthening ankles. That's right. It had nothing to do with any part of my midsection. This machine (as with a number of them) happened to have an active spot on both sides, so the guy climbed on the opposite side and showed me what to do. I had to watch him a couple times to get it, but I finally figured it out, and it was much better than it had been before. And as it turned out, this guy is actually a physical trainer in the area, so who would have guessed that the time I try something new, there just so happens to be an expert nearby who can correct my mistakes and set me back on the straight and narrow? I know I wouldn't have, but I'm so glad that did work out.
Ok. That's enough for this update, I think. More to come next time … get ready to hear about more food, banking in Korea and whatever else I feel like writing about. haha. And here's one important new thing: I have finally started a Picasa account for all the photos thus far (if you can't get to Facebook … or just don't want to go there). At this point I've just dropped the lot of them in a single folder, and I'll include the link at the bottom of this message. Hopefully, hopefully I'll get Internet access at home by this weekend, then I'll be able to change/update these things much easier … because at this very moment, I'm actually sitting outside my school grabbing the wireless so that I can send my post. It was a little funny -- one night Don was leaving school around 9:30pm or so and saw me sitting here, and he seemed really shocked, so I quickly said I was just using the wireless since I don't have access at home and that I was fine. And his retort was something like, Koreans don't do this, and it seems very strange. At this I could only chuckle a bit and keep doing what I've been doing. So … until I write again,
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see the Picasa photo album, visit:
https://picasaweb.google.com/115494611185738572069/KoreanExploits?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCP-zrq_Ypp-f3QE&feat=directlink
or
if you want to see shots of my hike, visit:
or
if you want to see parts of the Golden Bell or Spelling Bee, visit:
or
if you want to see proof that I'm an Alien, visit:
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