Asa!

Asa! I win at NaBloPoMo! 30 days, 30 posts, 11,827 words. I wrote one travelogue, started a second one and exhausted an entire month's supply of cute student stories (that's a lie, I have more). And then there's this bit of chat transcript from last week, which is probably the wrong reaction to a state of national emergency:

me: I am so ready for NaBlo to be over
Amber: orly?
me: I'm just getting tired of constantly having to think of something to write about. thank goodness NKorea attacked. That's going to be good for at least two entires
Amber: lol

I never got around to half the entries I was planning on writing, but for the most part I think managed to make somewhat substantive posts. That vast majority of this month's posts were written at school, which is why the weekend's posts were so phoned in. It also meant that I spent less of my free time in the afternoon bored. Reading over this month's posts, it feels like I spent the entire time giving tests, so I checked my scheduler and realized that's because I did spent the entire month giving tests. My students still think x is a legitimate letter.

I would say something about how I'm going to take a break from posting, but I have an honest-to-God list of posts I need to make in my scheduler, so I guess you're stuck with me and my thoughts and ~feelings.

Colorful Daegu, Day 1

A few weeks ago, I went to Daegu for the weekend with some friends. Daegu is the fourth largest city in Korea and the only major city in Korea I had yet to visit. It's only 130 miles away from Seongnam (on the map, I live at the blue check while Daegu is the orange check), which is just a few hours by bus. One of the best things about travel in Korea is a) this country is small, about the size of Kentucky and b) almost everywhere has an express bus linking it to Seoul in just a few hours.

The plan was for Margaret, Veronica and I to meet at the bus terminal in Seongnam after school on Friday and buy our tickets, but when we arrived at 6:15, we discovered that Daegu was popular destination that weekend and consequently, the next several buses were sold out. The first bus could tickets for didn't leave until 8:10, meaning we wouldn't arrive in Daegu until close to midnight. Since we were free spirited ladies and wandering around the Daegu bus terminal at midnight trying to find a hotel didn't much sound like fun, we decided to pick a new destination for the weekend. We wrote down the name of all the cities with an express bus leaving from the bus terminal (including Daegu, because an hour and a half wasn't that long to wait) on pieces of paper. There were four cities with buses still leaving and three of us, so we each picked a slip of paper and decided to go to wherever the last piece of paper told us to go. The last bit of paper was Busan, the southernmost city on the peninsula. The next bus left at 8:00, just ten minutes before the bus to Daegu, but it would take us an extra two hours to get there.

We ended up going to Daegu. Fate, I can take a hint.

We pulled up in Daegu around 11:30 and set out in search of a love motel, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like but, despite the seedy connotations, they are, hands down, the best deal when traveling. Love motels are everywhere - literally on every corner around bus and train stations - and while rooms can be rented in two hour blocks, they're also available for the night. Love motels are cheaper than hotels and even a basic love motel offers better accommodations than similarly priced hotel. Plus, you're almost guaranteed a fun and exciting light scheme. However, multiple beds are obviously not common and we had to visit four different motels before we found one with 방 하나, 침대 두개 (one room, two beds).


Missing from this picture are giant bathroom, creative lighting scheme and the tiny disco strobe lights. We looked at a few rooms that included a sauna, but went with the cheaper, sauna-less room.
Saturday morning we woke up, hit up a convenience store for breakfast and went to the Daegu Herbal Medicine Market. Before we reached the market, we stumbled upon Rice Cake Street. Seoul has these areas with a high concentration of shops all specializing in the same thing. There's no warming: one moment it's a perfectly normal street full of regular shops and then suddenly every shop in sight is selling shoe laces or socks or prosthetic limbs. Daegu is no different, it appears, and Rice Cake street, which dates back to the Korean War, has 37 different shops selling every possible variety of rice cakes. Rice cakes (떡, tteok) are "cakes" made from steamed glutinous rice flour. Because when I think of the word glutinous, I think delicious. There are tons of different types of rice cakes and they are part of many traditional Korean meals. Tteok has no actual relation to real cake, but I've been given many rice cakes in my time here because hey, it has cake in the name and foreigners like cake, right? I'm not a big fan, but it was neat to see the elaborate tteok creations the shops made.


Tteok
The Daegu Herbal Medicine Market, founded in 1658, is the oldest market in Korea. It's suppose to be one of the largest markets in Korea, but it was almost abandoned on Saturady morning. We only saw a couple of other people shopping and lots of the stores were closed. We did, however, see lots of ginseng and reindeer horns (good for stamina, heh heh heh) and bins full of what appeared to be bark (no doubt good for well-being, but please don't ask me how). We also stumbled upon the wholesale market, which was filled with sacks brimming with spices and herbs and bark and what I swear to God was twigs. Korea, I don't *understand* your mania about well-being. There were samgyetang (i.e. the soup with an entire damn chicken in the bowl) restaurants nestled between shops with antlers hanging in the windows. Veronica and I decided that breakfast samgyetang at 11:00 was an appropriate life choice, and while Margaret went to pick up her boyfriend Nick, we had an early lunch of chicken soup. 맛이 있어요!


Left: Jars of ginseng at Yangnyeongsi Herbal Medicine Market; Right: Bowl of samgyetang. Yes, that's a whole chicken in a bowl of soup for one person.
After lunch, we headed off to Palgongsan Provincial Park to hike to Gatbawi, a stone Buddha built in 638 AD. We were under the impression that it would be an easy hike. In Deagu, we were told it was an hour hike. Half an hour up and half and hour down, simple. When we got to Palgongsan, we were told it was an hour each way, not an hour total, but two hours is still a pretty basic hike. Over an hour later, when we finally reached Gwanamsa, a temple on the mountain, we were told that Gatbawi was at least another hour hiking up stone steps. All in all, it took us three hours to reach the summit and because the hill was so steep and steps were so uneven, it took us almost two hours to get to the base of the mountain. It was a pretty beautiful hike, though.



Top: Temple bell at Gwanamsa; Left: Main building at Gwanamsa; Right: Gatbawi. Gatbawi means Stone Hat Buddha because the 15cm thick flat stone atop the Buddha's head resembled a gat (갓), a traditional Korean hat.
When we finally made it back to Daegu, we were starving. The others wanted steak. I, while not begrudging their desire for steak, did not want steak. We all felt that, eh, you know, not sitting on the floor and eating with chopsticks might be groovy, and in downtown Daegu, the first combination of the three was an Outback Steakhouse. Again, 맛이 있어요 if, you know, a bit shameful.


The cheese fries are delicious, the onion rings are not and we were all a bit loopy by that point.
More photos are here.

A Korean Thanksgiving

My first Thanksgiving away from home, I spent the day blinking back tears and taught my classes through a tight throat before treking into Seoul for a turkey dinner with friends. This year, I figured the holiday would be easier if I just ignored it, and so I went to the dentist. I did call home the next morning (Korea is 14 hours ahead of the East Coast, so 8:00 my Friday morning was 6:00 Thursday evening back home), but I didn't even get dinner on Thanksgiving since my mouth was too numb from the dentist to chew.

I did, however, celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with my Stitch n' Bitch group. We ordered a traditional dinner from Dragon Hill Lodge on the base and people brought additional dishes. We had turkey and potatoes and green bean casserole and walnut pie, which isn't quite pecan pie, but was closer that I expecting to get here. We opted not to go around in a circle and list what we were thankful for, but I am thankful. I'm thankful to have a job I enjoy. I'm thankful that I get to live in another country and I'm thankful that that country is Korea. I'm thankful I have friends to spend Thanksgiving with. I'm thankful that I'm here and healthy and happy.


Our hostess Caroline carving her first turkey. She did an excellent job.




Our Thanksgiving feast.

Weekend Round-Up

So, glancing over this month's blog posts, it pretty quickly becomes apparent that I'm phoning it in on the weekends. Either the entries are just straight up written during the week, they're super short or consist mostly of pictures of the hilarious things one can buy here. And guess what? This weekend is no different!

I spent Saturday hanging out with Riah in Itaewon, the foreigner district. There are really only two things worth doing in Itaewon: eat foreign food and go to the English language bookstore, and we did both with great abandon. Lunch was Bulgarian food, followed by two hours perusing What the Book with our Kindles out, checking first to see if we could buy the books as e-books, followed by ice cream at Cold Stone. Mmmm, foreign things are delicious.

Today was Sunday, which means Stitch n' Bitch. We normally meet at cafes around the city, but today Caroline hosted a belated Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment, which was full of turkey and green bean casserole and walnut pie, which isn't quite pecan pie, but it's as close as we're going to get here.

All in all, a good weekend.

방구 금지

Today, Riah gave me what is possible the greatest thing I have ever and will ever have owned.

These are socks.

That's a dude farting.

A dude farting in the middle of a prohibition sign.

방구 금지 = fart ban

In case you find this relevant to your interest, that would be pronounced banggu geumji.

Both my brothers are getting a copy of this picture for Christmas. A framed copy. As for me, I might never take them off.

Open Wide

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I spent mine at the dentist's office because I FORGOT this Thursday was Thanksgiving when I made my appointment. *facepalm* I went to the dentist for the first time last Thursday for a cleaning/check-up/X-rays/other things I can't afford in the US and while I was there, she found two cavities. My follow-up appointment to have them filled was made for this Thursday and, several days later, when I realized that meant it was on Thanksgiving, I decided I didn't actually care and didn't reschedule the appointment.

Going to the dentist was something I put off my first year here because of language barrier and the added difficulty of doing things in another country and well, I'll be home in six months, might as well wait and do it then. Turns out, that was poor reasoning since not only is going to the dentist just as easy here, it's SO MUCH CHEAPER. (One of these days I'm going to make a post about my giant love for the Korean national health care system and how, seriously America, you NEED TO GET ON THAT.)

The first appointment, the check-up, was almost identical to the check ups I've had in the US, except that there was Kpop, not country, on the radio and during the cleaning, the hygienist draped a cloth over my face so I couldn't see anything. There was a hole in the cloth for my mouth and nose, but my eyes and the rest of my face were covered.

The second appointment was also similar to the US, in as much as I can remember the one time I had a cavity filled back home. It might have actually been better, since this time, the dentist didn't try to discuss Carolina basketball with me while there was a drill in my mouth. I mean, yes, I'm also hopeful for another title, but could you spend more time concentrating on the drill IN MY MOUTH and less time waxing about Hansbrough's average number of assists per game.

I showed up for my appointment after work and as I sat down in the chair, the dentist asked me what I thought about pain.

"Well," I told her, "I'm not a big fan of it."

"Okay," she responded, and whipped out a syringe bigger THAN MY FACE and stuck it in my mouth.

I might have groaned a little when she picked up a second syringe for the other side of my mouth. "It's just a little cavity," she told me. "Are you sure you want this?"

Which, lady, when it comes to choosing between giant needles in my mouth or a drill in my unnumbed mouth, I will go with the giant needles any day of the week.

The real fun came after the appointment. I took the subway home and stopped at the convenient store across the street from my apartment with my mouth still completely numb. When I attempted to thank the owner, my kamsamnida (thank you) came out some unintelligible mumble. The owner looked at me askance, and I attempted the smile (also difficult with a numbed mouth) reassuringly before hurrying home where I didn't have to inflect my terrible terrible Korean on anyone. Turns out, I really can't speak Korean when my mouth is numb from the dentist.

Korean dentists: I went to Tuft's Dental Clinic in Gangnam. I highly recommend her. She's trained at Tufts University in Boston, is licensed in three US states and she (and her staff) speaks excellent English.

Yeonpyeong-do, Spelling Tests & Training

[+] For anyone interested in a more in depth discussion of the Yeonpyeong-do shelling than "boom boom two people is die," the always excellent Ask a Korean has a thorough write-up of what happened and why it matters. I particularly agree with this bit:

South Koreans' apathy for North Korean provocations have become quite famous around the world, because it is so difficult to imagine what it is like to constantly live in a state where nuclear annihilation is a real possibility. But once you live in South Korea, there is not much you can do other than ignore the danger.

[+] I spent the afternoon grading the 4th graders test. The verdict: they did well well on the listening section almost across the board and wow, they can't spell for shit, and not even in an amusing way. Some of the lowlights: make: miwl; bank: orlk; school: sacdl; right: ridos. So yeah, that's something to work on.

[+] GEPIK teachers are suppose to go to a two day, overnight training session at the start of their contract, with additional one-day training sessions throughout the year. I went last year, so I wasn't invited to this year's training session when I started my new contract. There's a separate training session for teachers who renew their contracts, but because I switched to a new school within GEPIK instead of renewing at my old school, I'm not technically considered a returning teacher. I slipped through the training cracks and I was fine with that, thank you very much, and very pointedly didn't bring it to anyone's attention and skated by for nine months, but I've been found out now I get to spend December 7th and 8th at the Future Leadership Center in Yongin, South Korea being educated on how to do the job I've been doing for the last two years.

I actually wouldn't have minded going to the GEPIK training back in March. They all sound the same (yay, teaching in Korea! yay, bomb game! both sentiments I agree with, but I really only need to told once, and actually, since I'm in agreement, I don't need to be told at all), but it's part of the job and I get that. However, this particular session is at the beginning of December. The fall semester is over three weeks later, but thanks to the early exam date, the last three weeks of the semester are going to be a bit of a wash. Then it's two weeks of winter camp, which are completely different from the national curriculum covered in the training, three weeks of vacation, one final week of school (which will be a complete wash since, at that point, grades were completed two month before), two weeks of desk warming during what is called spring break, although February and spring are not same same Korea, and then I fly back to America, ostensible forever. This is a case of too little too late, and I do resent having my time wasted.

boom boom two people is die

Further update on the unfolding geo-political situation in the Korean peninsula:

Marie: "teacher, bukhan yesterday boom boom two people is die. very poor"
me: eleoquent
Marie: I thought so.
me: "teacher, kim jong il is bad man. very mean."
Marie: lol Clearly we need to post these eloquent explanations of yesterday's events.
me: I think so
Marie: Dear friends and family, in case you're wondering exactly what went on yesterday please read the following summary.
me: kids explaining complex political situations say the darndest things

Speaking of things kids say, here are the Konglish highlights from the test the 6th graders took today. The question was What do you want to do?. The answer was obviously I want to play the violin, but one girl mixed up her verbs and wrote I want to be a violin. The last question on the test was a picture of the lad on the right. The question was I'm sick. I _______________. The answer was (I) have a stomachache, but the kids struggled with it. A bunch of students answered I have a stomach which, while technically correct, isn't the answer I was looking for. Many of the kids who did answer stomachache misspelled it. Many of the students just didn't answer the question and a few went completely off the reservation for their answers. I have flowers and I high many homework, sorry were both answers.

And then that happened...

I went to school this morning, taught the 3rd graders, spent the afternoon editing photos in my office, stopped at Pizza School on my way home (too lazy to cook dinner: check) and came home to discover that while I was editing power lines out of the background of picture of a temple in Daegu, North Korea was firing a barrage of artillery shells at one of the inhabited South Korean islands off the west coast, only 80 miles from where I live. I might have bemoaned my dull afternoon, but it beats being evacuated due to attacking North Koreans.

My first thought was, "Well, that happened. Several thoughts later, the closest I've gotten to concern was contemplating the reaction if this had happened during the G20. (South Korea: North Korea, stop it! You're embarrassing me in front of the international community!) This is only meriting a blog post because it's NaBloPoMo and I'm desperate for topics.

When North Korea launched a missile into the Pacific last April, the first overt military action from North Korea since I had arrived on the peninsula, I spent the afternoon glued to the TV, obsessively refreshing new sites and generally freaking out over impending death and destruction by North Koreans. However, by the time all the drama happened late that May, I had adopted a more Korean attitude towards the Norks and spent a lot of time rolling my eyes over the frantic emails I got from friends back home asking if I was okay and when I was evacuating. Today, classes continued without interruption and there were no announcements or sirens. The TV in the pizza place was tuned to a rerun of Kdrama, not the news. If I hadn't checked the news when I got home, I would have no idea something had happened.  And that's life, or at least that's life here.

This is the second North Korean military attack this YEAR that has resulted in the loss of lives, the military is on the highest peacetime alert, this country is technically under attack right now, but outside of Yeonpueong, life is going on as normal in the Land of the Morning Calm.

SOSing

Monday's Frustrations:
The 5th graders started Lesson 14: Is Peter There? this week. It's all about phone numbers and phone conversations so, of course, I played "867-5309/Jenny" and told the kids to listen for the phone number and write it down. While the students enjoyed the song, the activity was a complete failure. I showed a live performance of the song from YouTube, and the sound quality was less than steller. Even I was having trouble making out the lyrics, and I already knew what they were. After the first two classes, I scrapped the idea and spent the last five minutes of class reviewing Step & Jump.

Monday's Konglish:
Cheating (or as it's called in Konglish, cunning) is rampant in Korean classrooms, far more than I remember from when I was in school, and it's not uncommon to see half the class blatantly cheating during textbook activities. During the "Let's Write" textbook activity today, I saw a boy leaning over for a look at his friend's textbook.

"No cunning," I told them.

"'Teacher," the first boy protested. "I'm no cunning. I'm ... SOSing."

It's a touch depressing that he couldn't think of help, which is basic vocabulary, but I am amused that he substitued it for the Morse code signal for help.

Life in Korea, a study in 7 words

My goal for NaBlo was to avoid posting for the sake of posting. I wanted to make each post substantive, or at least amusing, and I think I've done a pretty good job, but some days I get home for SnB at 9:00 and just want to curl up in bed with a book and preserve the last lingering moments of my weekend before going to bed, so I leave you with my deep, philosophical ramblings about life in Korea.


Things are cheaper, and have more pandas.

Freshly Cooked Salad

So, Margaret came over last night for a Firefly marathon and "health drink" drinking game. (One of the little known side effects of prolonged exposure to Korea is that you start saying things like "It's good for your well-being" or "increases stamina" and then you talk about the state of your condition. Our "health drinks" were actually pomegranate juice mixed with Cherry Coke and raspberry vodka, but the label of the pomegranate juice said it contained powerful antioxidants, so we're pretty sure it's good for our well-being.)

Our rules were:

• Take a sip every time Wash flips the three switches on the console.
  
• Take a sip every time Zoe calls Mal Sir or Captain.
  
• Take a sip every time Book hits at his shady past.
  
• Take a sip every time Inara is called by something other than her name.
  
• Take a sip every time River knows something or does something she should know or be able to do.
  
• Take a sip every time Jayne overtly caresses a weapon.
  
• Take a sip every time Mal says something self depreciating.
  
• Take a sip every time anyone says shiny, gorram or rutting.
  
• Make a toast for especially awesome lines not otherwise covered.
  
• Finish your drink when Serenity lights up like a firefly or someone mentions the compression coil.

In the first fifteen minutes of the pilot, Wash flipped the switches, there were various Sirs and Shinys and Gorrams, we had to toast for the "too pretty to die" line AND Wash playing with his dinosaurs and we finished our drink twice. It all went downhill from there, and by the time the second episode started, I was not longer coordinated enough to properly make finger hearts at the screen.

We made a Caesar salad for dinner, but since my kitchen has limited counter space and I don't own a salad bowl, I had to make the salad in my biggest pot, sitting on the stove. Margaret and I made cracks about cooking salad for the rest of the evening.


Nothing like a freshly cooking salad to whet the appetite.

I Have a Raining Nose

This week appears to be dedicated to talking about school, and who am I to buck the trend on Friday?

I finished giving the 6th graders their speaking test today. (I have two sixth grade classes on Wednesday and the other four on Friday.) The first class did brilliantly. Out of the super specific grading system (Δ = bad, O = OK, OO = great), only two students got Δs and half of them got OOs. During the class change, I commented to Michelle that the test seemed too easy. Then 6-4 (these guys) showed up and did terribly. Half the kids got Δs and only six students got OOs. Serves me right for being optimistic.

The best 6-4 student was a boy who happened to have a cold. He came into the back room, sat down next to me and sighed, "Teacher, I have a bad cold."

"That's too bad," I told him.

"Yes, Teacher. I have a sore throat and runny nose and cough."

"Oh no! You can go back to your desk and take a rest."

"But Teacher," he protested, "test."

Kid, that was the test.

The best Konglish moment came from a 6-1 girl who couldn't remember how to say runny nose and told me I have a raining nose. In Korean, runny nose is 콧물 (ko mul), which literally translates to nose water, so raining nose was both phonetically similar and made some logical sense.

I'll end with the conversation I had with the 4th graders who clean my classroom during lunch:

Me: Guys, smile for the camera.
Boys: *Asian pose*
Girl: Teacher, why picture?
Me: Because you are ADORABLE.

Step & Jump

I spent all day review Step & Jump with the 4th graders. Step & Jump is supplemental material for the national curriculum and provides an extra example of the key expressions from each chapter. The students are suppose to memorize all the dialogs and they're tested on the material twice a year. The fall semester Step & Jump test is next week, so I spent all morning reading the Step & Jump material out loud and having the students repeat after me.

A: May I read your book?
B: Sure, here you are.

A: Let's play soccer.
B: OK.
C: Sorry, I can't. I'm tired.
A: That's too bad.

A: What do you want?
B: That yellow bag, please. How much is it?
A: It's 500 won.

A: Julie, clean your room.
B: Yes, Mom. Zeeto, help me zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Sorry, I just feel asleep typing that. I kept drifting off in class too. The emphasis on repetition and route memorization is my least favorite part of teaching in Korea and I try and avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes I have to bow to the prevailing system and be an English teaching robot.

Teacher Has 신종인 플루

Wednesdays are my easy days. I only have two classes - 3rd and 4th period - so I'm not rushed in the morning AND I'm done by lunch. Today, the 6th graders had a speaking test, which is always a mixed bag. Speaking tests are the only one-on-one interaction I have with a lot of my students, and I never know what to expect. Sometimes kids who barely speak in class surprise me by being super competent. Sometimes it turns out the kids who barely speak in class are silent because they can't string a sentence together. Sometimes the kids who act out and make me want to throttle them instead of explaining for the tenth time that 두통 means headache IT'S NOT THAT HARD, SERIOUSLY show improvement, which is super gratifying. And then there are the silent kids.

The silent ones are depressing. There are a few in every class and they just. won't. talk. They spent the entire test looking at their feet and won't say a word (in English or Korean), no matter how much I cajole and prompt and finally just give them the answer in a desperate attempt to make them to say something FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JINHO, JUST TALK. The thing is, I've worked really hard at being someone who is approachable because I KNOW English is difficult to learn and I KNOW it's hard to summon up the courage to speak in another language when you know you're going to make mistakes, even though that's the only way to learn, and I want to be a safe person for the kids to try and talk to. For the most part, I think I've succeeded, and I certainly have plenty of students who love showing me pictures on their cell phones or pages from whatever cartoon they're reading and won't stop talking long enough for me to start class, but I also have the silent kids and I don't know how to motivate them.

The test itself was pretty simple. We just finished Lesson 13: That's Too Bad, which is all about illnesses and using them as an excuse to get out of doing things. I took the students into the back room, showed them a few pictures of people suffering various ailments and had them describe the pictures. He's sick, he has a cold. She's hurt, she had a bloody nose. I was sick over the weekend and I still have a deep hacking cough, so when the more confident students came for their test, I turned my head, coughed into my hand and asked, "What's wrong with Teacher?" It confused a few of the kids, but most of them thought it was funny and the answers ranged from Teacher has a cough to Teacher has a bad cold to Teacher has swine flu.

Can You Find Santa?

The 3rd graders started Lesson 13: Merry Christmas today. For Christ's sake, it's only mid-November! Granted, I'm a bit ahead of schedule since, for some reason, my school has scheduled final exams on December 8th, even though winter break doesn't begin until December 31st, and I'm trying to cover as much of the textbook as I can before the exam. Don't ask me why exams are so early OR what I'm going to be doing the few weeks of the semester. However, while we are ahead, we're ahead by like, a week, so in no way is it seasonally appropriate for Santa to appear on screen, granting Christmas wishes. It could be worse, though. The 4th graders studied their Christmas themed chapter (Chapter 11: How Much Is It?) at the beginning of October.

The lesson's key expressions are Can you find ______? and Yes, I can/No I can't find ______, but the kids were having trouble pronouncing the word find. Can you fly Santa? Can you like Santa? My favorite was Yes, I can fight Santa. Three classes in, I finally realized the problem was I have a cold and my nose is so stuffy, I wasn't pronouncing find clearly, so the kids were just substituting any word they already knew that sounded close in place of find.

I am made of win this week.

바보, Cait

Michelle and I gave the 5th graders a test today, mostly as punishment for making me want to defenestrate them last week. There were several sections, including three sentences written in Korean for the students to translated into English. I was looking over the test while the kids worked and Michelle asked if I could translate the Korean sentences. I started sounding out the words* and translating under my breath.

그녀는 무엇을 하고 있니? Well, it's a question, 무엇을 means what, 그녀는 means she and 있니 means is, which give me What is she something. The title of Chapter 11 (one of the chapters being tested) is What Is She Doing? and anyways, I'm pretty sure 하고 means do, so 그녀는 무엇을 하고 있니? must mean What is she doing?

그는 노래하고 있어. 그는 and 있어 are he and is and 노래 is the first part of the Korean word for karaoke room and hey, I think 노래하고 would literally translate to do song, which means singing. 그는 노래하고 있어 means He is singing.

나는 달리고 있어. Well, as per the last two sentences, 있어 still means is and 나는 means I. I am something. 달리고, where do I know that from? Oh right, that's what my co-teachers are always telling the students when them come tearing into the classroom at top speed. 나는 달리고 있어 means I am running.

I looked up from the paper, pleased with awesome Korean skillz, only to find the fifth graders in the front row hanging onto my every word and frantically scribbling down the answers I had just inadvertently given them.

One of the boys gave me a thumbs up and said, "Thanks, Teacher."

Michelle looked at me and said, "You can't say the sentences out loud."

"I didn't think I'd be able to translate them," I wailed softly.

바보, Cait.**

*While I've been able to read Korean for almost two years now, I still don't recognize many words that aren't place names, so I have to sound things out when I read and sometimes, they turn out to be words I know.

**바보 - dumb, stupid, foolish

G20 Seoul Summit 2010

The G20 summit was held in Seoul on Thursday and Friday. It was impossible to miss; people were already talking about the G20 summit when I moved here TWO years ago. This was the first G20 summit held in an Asian country, and Koreans were proud to be the hosting country. The past few weeks have practically been an onslaught of information about the G20. Every bus had an advertisement about the summit, every time I turned on the TV (which, admittedly wasn't often) the news was running a feature about the G20 and major Western news publications were talking about Korea, a rarity. My students were even interested, and amidst Thursday's chatter about Pepero, I heard more than one mention of Obama and the G20.

Despite large-scale protests before the summit and the US State Department issuing a traveling warning for Seoul, the G20 Seoul Summit was relatively peaceful. On Thursday night, I went to Iteawon, the major foreign district in Seoul, and while there were special G20 police in the subways and troops of police wearing riot armor patrolling the streets and guarding the subway exits, I had no problems and didn't see any protesters. I'm glad the G20 summit is over, that it went off smoothly and that Korea got some positive attention from the rest of the world.

3rd Graders, Part 37405

In what is probably the most adorable abduction ever, I was kidnapped by 3rd graders yesterday. Due to complicated and boring reasons, there was a scheduling mishap and two classes (3-3 and 6-4) were both scheduled to being in the English Zone during 5th period AND they both had to come early, when the 4th graders were cleaning, meaning everyone converged on my classroom at once. The 4th graders were frustrated, the 6th graders were confused and the 3rd graders were crazy, as they are usually are. I tried to herd the 3rd graders to the other English classroom, but it was also being cleaned by 4th graders, leaving me stuck in the hallway, the center of a wriggling pile of 3rd graders, like some an adorable Asian rat king. The kids, probably sensing weakness, begin to drag me down the hall, I think to their classroom where presumable I would have been kept as a human jungle gym, but I'm not really sure since my queries of "어디 가요?" only resulted in shocked gasps and shouts of, "Teacher, Korean speaking very good!" I like to think I could have broken away since my 3rd graders are mostly pint sized, but there was a dozen of them and only one of me, so I'm not sure.

I really love my 3rd graders.

Introducing 태세종

A few weeks ago, Yeong Eun, the former 6th grade co-teacher, had her baby, a little boy named Sejong, and on Wednesday, the 3rd grade teachers, Nicole and I went to visit her. (The different special area teachers are grouped with different grades for administrative purposes, so the English teachers are all considered 3rd grade teachers, even though only two of us actually teach 3rd grade.) We used our cultural activity day* to leave school early, and before going to Yeong Eun's house, we first had to stop by the Seongnam Art Center and take a group photo to document our "cultural activity."

Yeong Eun is observing samchilil (삼칠일), literally 21 Days, the traditional Korean postpartum rituals. Samchilil requires that mother and child stay warm and cloistered in the house for the first twenty-one days, and that the mother primarily eat seaweed soup (미역국) and avoid anything cold, spicy or hard. They also aren't allowed to bath for the three weeks following birth. All this is to ease the child's transition from the womb to real life, but apparently doesn't preclude visitors. Sejong (who was named after the most famous of the Korean monarchs) is an adorable baby. He slept most of the visit, but he was constantly making faces and rolling his eyes, which was hilarious. I got to hold him for a long while, which reduced to me cooing puddle of baby talk, which only my co-teachers noticed, since none of the third grade teachers could understand me to begin with.

*One day each semester, a grade's teachers can leave early for some sort of cultural activity. Last year, I went to the National Museum of Contemporary Art.


Welcome to the world, baby boy.