HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Here's wishing a happy Father's Day to the main dads in our lives:  Poppa Max, Al, Bruce, and Rob.

And, of course, Grandpa Swan and Grandpa Bob who are no longer with us, but always in our hearts.

For fun, here's some dad related humor from Engrish.com:

Same Same

"Same same" is Konglish for anything that is, for lack of a better term, the same.  Students use it for people who look alike, similar things and ideas and anything that matches.

In Korea, it's popular for couples to dress to match each other.  So popular, in fact, that stores sell pairs of entire outfits dedicated to the past time.  Lingerie shops sell his and her underwear and pajama sets.  We saw a lot of it on Jeju-do when we went with Mom.  A very large percentage of Korean newlyweds honeymoon on Jeju and the spirit of dressing to match was definitely in the air.

So, when the two boys in my last class today showed up in matching outfits, I had to take their picture.

They're brothers and their mom put them in matching outfits.  But, the boys (Mattew and Eric, respectively, and no, that's not a typo) seem to be in on the joke.  I said, "Your clothes!" to Mattew and he replied, "Yes, couple.  HA HA HA! It's funny!"  Indeed it was.

I really like these two boys.  There was a very strange little girl in the class named Cathy, but I think she switched to a different class, so it's just the three of us on Tuesday evenings.

I didn't see much of Julia today.  She had a meeting with Rahee last night and, since then, she's been gunning for her.  Julia is sitting in all of Rahee's classes and generally making her life terrible.  She told me that in the meeting Julia told Rahee that classes have been very bad, but she didn't bring her in for a meeting until now because it causes her (Julia) too much stress to deal with her.  Talking with Rahee reminds me that I'm very thankful that Julia and I are not fluent in the same language.  Rahee is trying to decide whether it's better to stick out her contract and fulfill her responsibility or to preserve her self worth and quit now.

Good night!

Throwback

Ian and I met up with Ben and Amy to see Prince of Persia today.  The movie was terrible.  No character development, no real conflict to be found anywhere in the plot.  The acting was stilted and contrived.  Even Jake Gyllenhaal, whom I usually find to be refreshingly honest in his acting, was terrible.  I'm of the opinion that Disney may want to lay of the live action films for awhile and focus on conquering the world with Pixar and have it's 2D department follow in it's footsteps.

After the movie we walked back to their apartment because we left our work bags there last night.  On our walk over, we encountered some very strange campaigning.

 These folks were marching down the street holding candles for their candidate.  In America, candlelight vigils are reserved for the deceased or those who are in a grave situation.  Obviously, that's not the case here.

We ended up sitting at Ben and Amy's for a couple of hours, watching funny videos online.  "Greg Rutter's Definitive List of the 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced on the Internet..." is a good source of entertainment.  It reminded me of college.  My room mates (and, later, housemates) and I would sit around for hours thinking of things to show each other on the internet.  It wasn't the best use of time, but it was a good bonding exercise.  Ben, Amy, Ian and I share a love of the SNL Digital Shorts, so we watched several of those.

We've got an early morning ahead of us, since we're off to meet the Veggie Club in Seoul for some Mexican food.  It should be a good time.

Good night!

A Plethora of Pizza

The word plethora is most commonly misused to mean "a huge amount of something" instead of "an excess of something above what is wanted or useful."  I know I'm guilty of weakly using it to mean the former.

But, in this case, I mean its true definition.  Just plain too much.  An excess to the point of comedy.

Ben, Amy, Ian and I met at Mr. Pizza for a late lunch.  We always order two pizzas because we are vegetarians and they are not.  So, Ian and I ordered out usual Korean pizza (potatoes, spicy chili and corn with cheese crust) and the salad bar.  The salad bar is my favorite.  It's not very good by American standards, but I like it better than the pizza, so it holds my focus.  After they take our order and Ian and I are munching on our iceberg mixed salads, the waitress comes over and explains that they've mixed up our order (when we have two pizzas, they always manage to mess it up somehow) and Ben and Amy's pizza ended up with the cheese crust.  Amy doesn't like the cheese crust and Ian's tired of our incorrect pizza orders, so he asked them to remake it.  We figured they'd toss (or let the staff eat) the backwards pizzas, so we would be waiting a little longer for new ones.  No problem.  But then, out come our pizzas, the cheese crust on Ben and Amy's and not on ours.  The waitress explains that new pizzas will come after we eat these ones.  We try to tell her that this is fine and we'll just deal with it.  After all, two more pizzas would mean one whole pie for each person.  But, she didn't understand us and about twenty minutes later, two more pies come, the crusts correct.

 Our table.  You can see that both of us still had two pieces left from the original pizzas.  So, that's thirty-two slices of pizza that were available to four people.  Ian and I put down one pizza.  For the record, I had one slice and Ian ate seven.  As I mentioned, I'm more a fan of offerings at the salad bar.  We sent the second pizza home with Ben, figuring his metabolism could handle it better.

That's a plethora.

Good night!

Straggler

Ian took a funny picture this morning of one of the P.E. classes at Sinback Elementary.  They were to run down the field, around the goal and back.

 

Little buddy needs to hustle.

Midweek Anecdotes

I've taken to writing on my hand a lot because I realize that I forget little things that happen during the day.

Last week, while I was sitting at the computer between classes, Leah and Iris (two of my favorite older students) came up to me.  Iris stood in front and translated for Leah, who is a good speaker, but very shy out of class.  She said that the moon is full and Leah would like me to go with her.  At first, I was a little confused, but then Iris clarified by saying that Leah wanted to show me the moon.  So, I followed them to the hallway and we peered out the tiny window at the yellowish full moon.  I told them that a large, yellow full moon is called a harvest moon in English.  Leah thanked me (when she was the one who wanted me to see the lovely moon) and the girls went on their way.  For all the difficult times and as much as we don't fit in to the business culture here, the students always have ways to make it worthwhile.  I never really planned to work with kids (and, to be honest, I don't plan to after this), but my students are one of the reasons I am happy I'm doing this (and will be happier still when it's over).

In my Essential 2 class (12-13 year olds) our current chapter in the book is called "Family Problems."  It's a terrible topic with few spin offs.  Mostly it makes for choreographed dialogue and awkward questions between my students.  One of the questions the books asks is, "What happens when someone in your family doesn't listen?"  It took me about two minutes to explain this question and then I just gave up and had them look up "punishment" in their electronic dictionaries.  All six students agreed that their parents hit them when they misbehave.  Unfortunately, their English skills aren't such that I could get any further detail about that.  One student, Logan, asked me what my parents did when I was a kid and I didn't listen.  I told him that they didn't hit me, but instead took away the t.v., phone and computer.  He was floored.  Twice he asked me to confirm that they didn't hit me.  The other students seemed equally impressed.  I knew that corporal punishment was acceptable in Korean classrooms (ruler to the knuckles being the most common), but I hadn't thought about it outside that realm.  Koreans are so subdued in public (no one argues or even gets excited, save the ladies in the locker room at the gym), it's difficult to imagine them punishing their kids physically.

I had another humorous mispronunciation in one of my Beginner 2 (8-10 year olds) classes today.  The students were working with food and asking each other "Do you like ___?" and throwing the ball.  It's always the same foods in these books: spaghetti, sandwiches, pizza, milk, cake, and cheese.  So, I have the students think of more foods and write them on the board.  While 'bulgogi' and 'kimbap' may not help them with their English, it at least makes the subject more tangible for them.  The comical mispronunciation came from the youngest student in the class, Cameron.  He is bullied, so I brought as little attention to it as possible.

Cameron:  Do you like ass?
(silence)
Cameron: Do you like ass?
Me:  Do you mean eggs?
Cameron:  Yes!  Ass!



Good night!

Ian's Fall from Grace

Today was the kind of day that prompts me to write Palin-esque notes for the blog.

When Ian got to school today everything seemed normal.  Then Gene came into his classroom to let him know that he would soon be emailing him the material for next week.  He sat down and a serious look came across his face.  First he asked Ian why he left school at 8:15 yesterday when he wasn't supposed to leave until 8:40.  Ian corrected him, saying that he had left school at 8:25; then he went on to explain that the 8 o'clock class wasn't even on his schedule, his students just showed up and sat down.  Ian hadn't been prepared for them and he said that he had "something he had to do."  The last part isn't actually true, but Ian was angry and it just came out with the rest of it.  Gene explained away Yoon's lack of professionalism by saying that, in Korea, one's job is very important and one must complete everything that is set before them, no matter what.  Ian felt that the subtext of Gene's speech was something akin to "In America, workers must be spoon fed their responsibilites and walked through their day to day lives, so I understand how you got mixed up."  Gene implored Ian to say nothing other than that he was sorry because instead of speaking directly to Ian, Julia and David (and the Goam staff) use Gene as a whipping boy and yell at him.  Ian agreed and said it would never happen again (because after no fewer than twelve revisions, Ian's schedule is finally concrete).

Ian's day got better, though.  Spending time with his spastic students brightened things up for him.

My day was pretty good.  I'm completely in love with my 6:30 Essential 2 class (the kids are 12 and 13).  The kids are Ashley (she spells it Asuley), Peggy, Kelly, Oliver and Gavin.  They are hilarious.  Today's class provided me with these laughs:

Gavin:  Where's Kelly?

Ashley: She threw the bus.

Gavin: What?

Ashley: She didn't know the bus time.  She threw the bus.

Me: Oh!  You mean she missed the bus.

Ashley: Yeah!

(All the kids started miming Kelly throwing a bus.)

I wrote some simple questions (with some "fill in the blanks" so that they could make their own question) on the board for a warm up (the kids throw a ball back and forth and ask each other).

Gavin: Who is your favorite human?

Ashley: I like everyone.

Me: Okay.

Ashley: Wait! I don't like... (stands up and starts miming a trenchcoat flasher) crazy man!

 (I start laughing from shock and embarassment)

Ashley: Understand?

Me:  I do understand, I just wish I didn't.

Later, the kids are still asking questions.

Ashley: Do you like pants?

My last class (Essential 1) isn't quite as fun, but there was one awkwardly funny moment.  The kids were taking turns asking each other "Where is...?" questions and practicing using prepositions.  I apologize for the transcribed crudeness.

Arthur:  Where is labia?

(silence)

Arthur: Where is labia?  (He gets up and walks to the map).

Me: Saudi Arabia? 

Arthur: No.  (Under his breath, scanning the map) Labia, labia, labia... (He comes to Africa and stops).

Me: Libya?

Arthur: Yeah!


Good night!