I went out with a girl

I went out for dinner and a few drinks with a Korean girl on Sunday. It was pretty fun - she's an English teacher, spent time in Vancouver so her English was pretty good. We spent a lot of the time at the bar talking about hip-hop music, which she liked but didn't understand any lyrics of. So I took it upon myself to explain some of the juicier double entendres of rap music. My personal favorite was when she told me she likes the group 'Swollen Members'. We'll see if I ever see her again.

Per the hip hop theme, I present to you 'Crunky' chocolate:

Friday

My last two classes on Friday night are with one student. She is not a good student, either. I had her in another class with other students before we were put into Friday night perdition together and she was bad. She does not want to be there. She is a 'scarf talker' - girls who have a massive scarf wrapped around their neck and mouth and mumble inaudibly into the scarf when called upon. This girl is one of the scarf talkers.

So it's just her and I from 6:30 to 8:30 on Friday night. The class I have before that has two kids in it, and one asked me about her. 'You have class with one after this?' she asked me. The girl that asked me is a good student (for me, I've heard from other teachers that she's bad with them). 'Yeah, I have Jaime, just her for the last two classes.' The girl started giggling, 'She only speak Korean, no English.'

It's incredibly quiet, boring and tiresome. She sits struggling through material that is way past her level, me trying to get her through it. Both of us trying to not become totally frustrated and enraged. I want to tell her that this sucks for me too, but she doesn't understand me when I ask her to 'Read please'. So I sit and think - at least I'll be home and having a drink soon.

This is makgeolli - milky Korean rice wine - it's sweet and tasty with about 7% alcohol - very enjoyable:

Mexicans/Fog walk

There is a unit from one of the textbooks about Mexico that I did yesterday. It was a dialogue of two people talking about the country. One asks what Mexico is like. The other replies, "They speak Spanish, eat tacos and wear sombreros." Hilarious.

It was really foggy yesterday, but very warm and pleasant so I took a walk. Here are a couple images from my walk:

Some Photos from Itaewon

Russian expats club:



Creepy mask store:



Side street in Itaewon:

Itaewon

I went to Itaewon on Saturday to check that out. First I took the bus to Ilsan. The bus driver looked like Yoko Ono and was wearing a huge pair of fake Dolce & Gabana sunglasses. The subway took some time but it's always good people watching. These Korean folk come into the cars with loudspeakers and hawk stuff like knit caps, or hose, or gloves. I saw a seemingly respectable business looking fellow drop a flask of booze out of his suit, too. He seemed nonplussed, picked it up and continued reading his newspaper.

Itaewon is wild - it's like little America. People speak English everywhere. My friend Carrie told me about an English language used bookstore, so that was my first stop. I spent about $70 on books and magazines. There is a main drag on the street where vendors set up on the sidewalk hawking counterfeit goods, so I walked up and down the street a few times and got some gloves, a fake New Era Cubs hat, and a knockoff Burberry wallet. There are dudes on the street everywhere trying to get you to buy a custom suit, so maybe I'll go back and do that next weekend. I'm tempted.

The side streets are real hilly and neat there, so I hiked around the back streets for awhile, and finally decided to head to a bar and have a couple beers while I read my New Yorker Magazine I bought. They had Guinness at the bar, which was good, and I stayed for a couple beers and headed back on the Metro back to my part of town again.

Here's the bookstore, 'What the Book?':



Here's a side street in Itaewon:



More pictures to come later this week.

Classroom tales

I have a class on Wednesday night that is a bit difficult. They're 13-14 year olds and salty and disruptive, like they can be, and the class is all boys which is additionally challenging. I've been bringing them around though, as much as I can. They love just guessing the answers to the book questions and shouting 'FINISHED TEACHER' and trying to get me to spoon feed them all the answers. So one kid who especially loves doing this told me part of the work was too hard, and I was like 'Dan it is EASY. You just need to use your brain and your eyes.'

The kid looks back at me blankly. I draw a huge head in profile on the board with brain and eyes visible like a medication commercial for headaches. 'Use your brain (gesturing to brain) and your eyes!' I said to him. The other kids started laughing. 'Brain too big! His brain peanut!' So I laughed and erased the brain size brain and drew a little peanut. We all laughed and the mood of the classroom was considerably lightened and more fun. Dan laughed too and didn't seem to care.

So as the class went on, when Dan did well I'd increase his brain from peanut, to orange, to potato, to mouse on wheel, to B-2 brain model, to finally A-1 brain when he did a really good job figuring out a question in English. I'm pretty sure this would have been considered picking on the kid in America, but here in Korea it was just good fun.

Oh, here is my snail gumbo with green peppers and onions I had for dinner. Not bad!

Classroom tales

Today in class we were discussing what season we liked the best. A surprising number of the kids love the winter, which I don't get. One part of the book asked that you draw a picture of your favorite seasons, and the kids all hated that, so to placate them I drew a picture of my favorite season, the summer, on the chalkboard. I drew myself lying on the beach under an umbrella with a drink and a book at my side.

While grading the books at the end of class one of the kids drew in a 6-pack on chalkboard me. I laughed, and one of the kids was like, 'Teacher, you have chocolate?' In Korea, Chocolate means '6-pack', so called because your stomach kind of looks like a bar of Hershey chocolate, how it's divided into segments. I laughed and said, 'No, teacher wishes he had chocolate. Maybe chocolate ice cream,' and I mimed a big bulbous scoop coming off my midsection. That got a laugh - I'm really getting my comedy act together here.

Here's a can of sea snails I bought. I've been googling recipes since I got home trying to figure out how to eat them: