The village finished putting in a new side street last week. It runs alongside the back of the elementary school and connects our "shortcut" walking path with the main street into town. There had been no road there before. The side street allows teachers easier access to the school because they can now take two ways in instead of one. They also have more parking spaces.
There's one thing about the road though: "Road" is misspelled as "Rod." Hence, the new name of our neighborhood: Rod End.
I laughed the first time I saw it, but I also had an idea about why "Road" was misspelled. It's simple: when Korean characters (Hangeul, or 한글) get transliterated to English, the letter O signifies the "Oh" sound of John Doe. So, "Road" would sound like "Rod" to a Korean ear because of the silent A, but English speakers pronounce "Rod" and "Road" quite differently.
The Korean on the sign, 도로 끝, is pronounced "Do-ro ggeut" and it translates to "End of the Road." "Ggeut" can mean "end" or "finish." Here's another instance of something getting lost in translation.
On another note, the new week brought a new hurricane with it. Nothing but rain happened here, but the southern parts of the country (and Jeju) got hit hard again. Let's have a moment for those who didn't fare so well.
That line comes from the Neil Young song "Country Home." It plays in the background every time I go walking through town here, so it's been on my mind for quite some time now. Wasu's Neil Young country: endless mountains, wide open fields, low population density, and a slower pace of life. It mirrors his loping, rounded-off, lazily grooving songs well. If you know him and Crazy Horse, then you have an idea of what life feels like here.
Bonus track: his cover of Woody Guthrie's immortal "This Land Is Your Land," which should be the USA's national anthem. Enjoy.
Taken on an overcast Tuesday this week by an excellent pork galbi restaurant that overlooks the canyon. Pretty, isn't it?
We had a teachers dinner there for the 4th time this year earlier this week. It seems to have become a favorite place with our principal as of late because we would usually eat in Wasu or Gimhwa restaurants, but now we go this place in nearby Goseokjung. The restaurant even has a shuttle service that comes to our school to pick up all the teachers who don't drive or don't have cars. The exact name of the restaurant eludes me now. It'll get posted later. Suffice to say, it's quite good eating.
This past dinner ranks among the best--and drunkest-- of the teachers dinners in Korea. I've written previously about the customary pre-dinner shot of soju, but this particular evening featured the soju plus somaek (soju and beer together) and boilermakers because some kind soul brought a bottle of Scotch with him. You know it's going to be a good night when a half and half boilermaker arrives in front of you before you start eating. My principal's a generous man. Cheers!
Years ago, a slightly silly idea came to mind about how soda makers should call their "diet" sodas "light" because it sounded cooler. Maybe it was because beer companies would make "light" versions of their beers and call them "x light." Perhaps this idea occurred to the Korean arm of Coca-Cola, because here's Coke Light.
Teaching tip: Use your classroom as a resource. The kids can teach you any number of interesting things.
Also: Use materials the students can relate to.
I used part of this lesson from Breaking News English recently and it went down fairly well. My co-teacher had been teaching lessons from a chapter in the class textbook about cultural differences and body language, so this lesson seemed a good fit. As you can see though, the Breaking News lessons are probably written for college ESL students and as you can see, they’ve enough material for more than two classes. I simplified the lesson and only did the true/false quiz, the gap fill in the reading, and the vocabulary activities with the students. The news story had some challenging vocabulary in it but the students got the gist of it.
I introduced the material by asking the students to write down different emoticons they knew. They wrote some on the board and we talked about them. Though I’d seen a couple of Asian emoticons, the students proceeded to show many more that I didn’t know. You can see the below because you might want to see them.
Note the big difference between Asian and Western emoticons: the Asian ones emphasize the eyes and the Western ones focus on the whole face. They also differ in their orientations: Western emoticons go sideways and Asian ones don’t. The Breaking News reading talked about how different cultures look at facial expressions, especially between Asia and the West, so the students instantly related to the reading. They liked learning about new Western emoticons too. Again, the reading may have been a bit too complicated, but the kids accomplished the objective and learned something new.
The train tickets from Seoul to Busan got booked today. It looks like my first Korean train ride will be on a midnight train because that was the only one available. I got on the KORAIL website as soon as I could (2pm today) but it it was still almost too late: all but two trains were sold out. Granted, this is during the Chuseok weekend, but we're taking the slower Mugunghwa train instead of the fast KTX, but it didn't matter as that many people will ride the rails over the holidays here. I can only imagine what the highways will look like.
Matt in Dong Song had given us some this bit of info: Train tickets go on sale on KORAIL's English website after they go on sale on the Korean website. Rochelle and I probably snagged two of the last seats on the train. Let that stand as a lesson learned: Have a Korean friend or associate help you book train tickets on the Korean KORAIL site because you'll have a better chance of getting the train you want. Frankly, I'm not thrilled that we're leaving at 9pm and arriving at 2:15am, but that's how it goes. It isn't for lack of trying.
Getting the tickets for the late train also prompted this problem: whether or not the our hotel would let us check in at such an hour. Generally, check-in times for Korean hotels last from 2pm to midnight, so I had to make sure we wouldn't get called no-shows. Mrs. Jeong the co-teacher provided valuable help here because she got on the phone with the motel (he didn't spoke much English) and asked him if he could hold the room for us. He could indeed do it. Problem solved. We have hotel and the train tickets now, so we're set. I'd hope to see the countryside on the way there, but it looks like that will happen on the return trip instead. Either way sounds fine.
Here's a quick hit about some stuff I heard earlier today:
Two good quotes from a 3rd grade middle school class. The students were completing the expression "I am ~ enough to ~." Here are three of the responses:
1. I am old enough to love. 2. I am cute enough to attract boys. 3. I am tall enough to do the dishes.
Hehehe, yes indeed. While #1 says something self-aware, #2 will have no shortage of boys who like her, #3, takes the humor prize, for doing the dishes does require some vertical stature. Good for her.
And on a similar note...something I misheard became an even better line (and just as plausible) version of what was actually said. It happened earlier when I saw Jelina, one of my former 3rd grade students in the hallway.
Me: Hi there, how are you?
J: Sad.
Me: Why?
J: Universe.
Me: Universe?
J: No, university.
At first I thought she was playing on the traditional teenage melodrama of "everything sucks," but she was actually lamenting how much work she had to do to get into college, and she's far from alone. A Korean student's 3rd year of high school is a grueling marathon of studying in the school and the hagwon. They live at school and feast on their textbooks. For all the emphasis we have on the ACT in the States, the Korean college exam carries much more importance. The kids study day and night for this thing. Here's an illustration from the first day of the new semester in March: I'd begun a section of a 3rd grade class and had asked, "Are you ready for a new year?" to hear a chorus of "No"s. I asked why and they said "college entrance." There they were, a full 8 months before the November exam and they were shaking as though they had it the next day. I'd been excited to teach them in their final year of high school because their English levels had risen and the class was full of interesting kids. 3rd grade seemed like the time to bridge that gap between ESL and the traditional English stuff I'd been doing before Korea--the students were about to leave school, their participation had increased, and they understood 95% of what I said. Surely now we could blend English conversation with literature and really up their levels. Not so. Not at all.
The semester's classes were inconsistent at best. The stress of the upcoming exam and school life had the kids either half-asleep or slap-happy. They seemed like the walking dead; the same kids who'd never hesitate to talk stopped saying anything beyond the bare minimum. Answering "How are you?" took visible effort, as if they had to stumble through an unlit labyrinthine network of tunnels to find the correct response in "I'm fine, thanks"--an expression that they'd known since elementary school. Getting any participation grew difficult. The kids were just too burned out to want to pay attention. The once-engaged 2nd graders had morphed into burned out 3rd graders. Sure, some students did still talk, but it wasn't on the same level as last year. This grew wearying. Was it the lessons? Was it school life? Was it general apathy? I still had some good classes, for sometimes the students' slap-happy attitude brought out some great jokes. The best class of the semester came when we discussed bullying, swearing, and insults with a clip from the Korean film Sunny. You can watch it with the YouTube link below. Skip to 32:24 and turn on the subtitles by clicking the icon next to the gear at the bottom of the player. The kids enjoyed that one because they got a chance to learn about bullying and the context of swear words. I thought long and hard about using the clip in class because of the profanities, but went ahead anyway. The kids deserved to know more about English swear words because most, if not all of the students had already heard them before. I made sure to explain that profanities were not to be used outside of class as well. They understood. The resulting discussion yielded some thoughtful discussion about why bullying exists, too. My co-teacher said he enjoyed it and added that the kids needed to know about bullying. [Side note: swearing is an integral part of American/English speaking culture. The students may as well know why people say hell and damn in the States. Also: I've yet to hear any of those same 3rd graders swear.]
At any rate, the 3rd graders enjoyed the class and seemed to enjoy the semester when I asked them about it, so that's good. I'm not teaching them any more because they need more time to prepare for college. This is probably for the best. I wish them well. 100% of the graduating class got into college last year. Let's hope it happens again.
