tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707785988455281262024-03-13T19:20:16.880-07:00Ben Teaches EnglishThoughts on teaching, in both Korea and Vietnam.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-33956563814187761662013-09-14T08:31:00.001-07:002013-09-15T05:43:43.042-07:00Some First Impressions<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I made the mistake of not articulating
many of my early impressions about South Korea. This time I want to
make it right. If I wait too long these strange quirks begin to fade
into normalcy. In no particular order, here are some observations I
have made upon arriving in Vietnam. I am sure I will have more.</div>
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<ul>
<li>There are cards in the street. Most
often, I'll see a joker card just lying in the street all alone. I
think once I saw an ace of spades as well. That card, you might know,
has some history in Vietnam. The U.S. Army used to drop the ace of
spades from planes as part of a psi-ops campaign to demoralize the
Vietnamese. They believed the Vietnamese thought they were bad luck,
but there isn't much evidence to support that. Regardless, it was
good for American morale. It's more likely that American troops saw
the cards on the ground and thought they were discarded for being bad
luck when instead they were thrown out because they were unnecessary
in the games they were playing. Such is the case with the cards
littering the ground today.</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpDnILhPGHj9eRD6C3f2M4aXNcLaHjzx6hfiIhlZZCfpgEkpWPeP0fvmsrOwdastDd0_kRte5yrSVQ9IRfLgzBr9MZQzYtgwM-PzLZgdGw_8fLvqwju6Bk4l9W4osxh06LlsnepvwSjA/s1600/2013-09-02+22.13.26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpDnILhPGHj9eRD6C3f2M4aXNcLaHjzx6hfiIhlZZCfpgEkpWPeP0fvmsrOwdastDd0_kRte5yrSVQ9IRfLgzBr9MZQzYtgwM-PzLZgdGw_8fLvqwju6Bk4l9W4osxh06LlsnepvwSjA/s320/2013-09-02+22.13.26.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<ul>
<li>Koreans are beautiful. This is my
fourth Asian nation and Koreans beat them all so far. Part of the
reason is that people try really hard in Korea. For better or worse,
in Seoul there is a high standard for beauty.</li>
</ul>
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<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9o9tOVVl_4ZWv-bBOybe7V8wzaQl7Hq9S5zi_70YyHxBEx-tLnbO6XL0PnzEZNHu4iInST5A0uA4vdHk1GA7hzNfLYyHgmIkGTOz8fX4nYSWb80s_nCkvRr7twhU522NRLi7is5I6UT4/s1600/2013-09-02+14.51.19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9o9tOVVl_4ZWv-bBOybe7V8wzaQl7Hq9S5zi_70YyHxBEx-tLnbO6XL0PnzEZNHu4iInST5A0uA4vdHk1GA7hzNfLYyHgmIkGTOz8fX4nYSWb80s_nCkvRr7twhU522NRLi7is5I6UT4/s320/2013-09-02+14.51.19.jpg" width="240" /></a>
<li>There is a smaller replica of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm not sure why, but then again, there is a replica of the <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g55229-d106498-Reviews-The_Parthenon-Nashville_Tennessee.html">Parthenon</a> in Nashville. </li>
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<ul>
<li>Crossing the street is insane at first
glance. Traffic almost never stops. You have to just go for it. Take
a step into the road and stare down the oncoming traffic. They will
go around you as long as you move at a slow but steady pace. Don't
try to pass in front of buses or taxis as they do not slow down.</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBHdVlylLinru0jLQznDiSQ6WRIheJl7vxvL09eDq_HD5BVdgfctXZhtAyiMMprIxXOTlRJ1YMpaiQ9HfN4WMsPWRn4KiikTsBqu41f1b0icA2R2J3FeUyEyMdBdgMFM8IbjWcgvLy3u4/s1600/2013-09-05+17.38.30.mp4" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBHdVlylLinru0jLQznDiSQ6WRIheJl7vxvL09eDq_HD5BVdgfctXZhtAyiMMprIxXOTlRJ1YMpaiQ9HfN4WMsPWRn4KiikTsBqu41f1b0icA2R2J3FeUyEyMdBdgMFM8IbjWcgvLy3u4/s320/2013-09-05+17.38.30.mp4" width="320" /></a></div>
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<ul>
<li>Work and play are mixed here. This was
the case in Korea as well, but here it is to a much greater extent.
Most people live in their places of business, or they work from home
depending on how you choose to look at it. The line is blurry.
Business hours are hazy. Shop owners will sleep on the job until
their dog barks to wake them up. Families will sit down for dinner at
their own restaurant which is just in front of their beds. An
apartment will double as an elastic band wholesale dealer. People
work long hours with breaks interspersed throughout the day. The
afternoon siesta is still practiced here. It's my feeling that this
lifestyle is more traditional and perhaps a bit healthier in some
ways. Families are together more hours of the day. Work seems less
like work.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Food is cheap and delicious. In my old
alleyway I could find a meal for under a dollar and this is not all
that uncommon. Still, I usually spring for something nicer and pay a
little under two dollars. Food is delicious. Unlike Korea where
everything is spicy, here all the spices are on the side and I can
add them to my liking. Food seems to be greener and hopefully
healthier too. I haven't gotten sick yet, but I know that's coming.
There's a lot of strange food here and I've only really scratched the
surface. Many times I only have a vague idea as to what I might be
eating. I'm told some food can be dangerous too. Others have told me
antifreeze might be mixed in some cocktails and the iced coffee isn't
always exactly iced coffee.</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxl5GNvX5NutTWZH4cTWsvtQZH-JE7pHAJeVEWbVBwmEB4NuiX65M_OmmJJZTgCPvZDAblSWaQApb521K3Mnbrqtim4nZELQAqkOhzzHS2zw88UPO0CWGm2LRS9WlD9sHUicNP7cI9tY/s1600/2013-09-05+13.44.08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxl5GNvX5NutTWZH4cTWsvtQZH-JE7pHAJeVEWbVBwmEB4NuiX65M_OmmJJZTgCPvZDAblSWaQApb521K3Mnbrqtim4nZELQAqkOhzzHS2zw88UPO0CWGm2LRS9WlD9sHUicNP7cI9tY/s320/2013-09-05+13.44.08.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cơm tấm, or broken rice. Often comes with pork. Delicious.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrfYiXbPIc1LHoZ9WfII5cNMWMjEN2mD6JKo_llUfvpBn09NfuBacNVvurG5b_f9AJG8QYg3GLJt1Yor3imXn9bO7co52jGQIfzyt390ooyR-u6w_kHSVeCrohujkgSvWLWuEFPmP06hU/s1600/2013-09-04+17.49.48.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrfYiXbPIc1LHoZ9WfII5cNMWMjEN2mD6JKo_llUfvpBn09NfuBacNVvurG5b_f9AJG8QYg3GLJt1Yor3imXn9bO7co52jGQIfzyt390ooyR-u6w_kHSVeCrohujkgSvWLWuEFPmP06hU/s320/2013-09-04+17.49.48.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The staff had a heyday. This guy was about to be food.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<ul>
<li>People love America here. The American
flag is a fashion symbol. I see it on face masks, throw pillows,
blankets, t-shirts, etc. A security guard proudly told me about his
friend who served in the war on the American side. In Saigon, by and
large there does not seem to be much of a grudge. I'm told this is not the case in Hanoi and that airport security is a huge hassle should I choose to fly there.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>I do get a lot of looks. In Korea, I
did not get too many people staring at me. Here, I get stares all the
time. Kids always want to say “Hello” and little girls giggle.
Today I ate down an alleyway and I could tell I was the talk of the
street.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Sometimes people aren't so nice. I feel
like sometimes there are people that try to make fun of me for being
an American. A group of guys at a coffee shop called me over and
started joking about “America”, “apple pie”, and so on. It
could be chalked up to poor language skills, but I feel like if I
started shouting random stereotypes at a Frenchmen people would think
I was being rude. It's hard sometimes to tell who is laughing with you and who is laughing at you.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Those conical Vietnames<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">e
hats (</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conical_Asian_hat#N.C3.B3n_l.C3.A1_.28Vietnamese_style.29">nón lá</a></i></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">) ar</span>e worn without any irony. Unlike the Korean <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbok">hanbok</a>,
</i>they are not something
worn traditionally or to be patriotic or only at festivals. They are
just worn. It is as if the Dutch all still wore wooden shoes. Still,
with the high heat and frequent and intermittent rain, it makes good
sense to wear one.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Communist symbolism is all over the
place. Ho Chi Minh's picture is everywhere. There is a common one of
him reading a book that I rather like.</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Yw3WJ3oNW5dFcsunxb0V1iLHPWSkxmbyPGFpaKMCMqH9vhY3ViTiIhi-STc7Os73b5yqHwyeF7p7O35Wvz1Ae09cc2vwtgCp9iVmPQy3xA6lLPqEQg5eEB9JZZlrJMokxP28QSDl7_s/s1600/2013-09-01+21.56.06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Yw3WJ3oNW5dFcsunxb0V1iLHPWSkxmbyPGFpaKMCMqH9vhY3ViTiIhi-STc7Os73b5yqHwyeF7p7O35Wvz1Ae09cc2vwtgCp9iVmPQy3xA6lLPqEQg5eEB9JZZlrJMokxP28QSDl7_s/s320/2013-09-01+21.56.06.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQJD6x8-H86YUeeGeoliAs_ZRQGGwjemtVSSxBkdjNRkzVcaUoF7nsjMuLvJgnkV-eSkNXX2CSoiD0LAFOCL-WAIyayJ9CVz8jU7SSTbI0TqsF0H5NL_QiImt8pKnsyAjM0x_G7H9op0/s1600/2013-09-01+18.57.50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQJD6x8-H86YUeeGeoliAs_ZRQGGwjemtVSSxBkdjNRkzVcaUoF7nsjMuLvJgnkV-eSkNXX2CSoiD0LAFOCL-WAIyayJ9CVz8jU7SSTbI0TqsF0H5NL_QiImt8pKnsyAjM0x_G7H9op0/s320/2013-09-01+18.57.50.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Street where I did some apartment hunting. One of the guys living <br />
there said they should probably get a flag so they match the neighbors.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div>
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<ul>
<li>Rock, Paper, Scissors is not such a big
deal here. It was huge in Korea, but here it seems so far to be at
the same level of interest that it is in America.</li>
</ul>
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<ul><div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<li>The language is really difficult. There
are six tones. People that have been here for years still struggle
immensely. At least it uses the alphabet and not characters like
Chinese. We had a series of interviews last Saturday to find Vietnamese tutors. At least I have some contact info for when I am ready to get a tutor. If interested, apply <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1yyh9y6nak75nxkIhyVGQXymJAmkMI2PVT-GIjwhun2Y/viewform">here</a>.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>I walk a lot more here. Every day,
whether or not it is my intention, I get lost. I walk block after
block and try to find patterns and places to revisit. Today I found a
copy shop that will be useful for school. Copyright doesn't really
exist here, nor do English book stores.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>It rains almost every day. It is just
like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ihL_FrFPs">Forrest Gump</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0uJjPT76a0">CCR</a>. I was surprised by how cool the air usually
is, but it is expected to get very hot and dry in a few months. If it's
anything like Cambodia, I'm not exactly looking forward to it.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Koreans made you pay for almost any bags you used at the grocery store. Vietnam is more in line with America and gives them away for free. I still cringe when the clerk gives me a bag I really don't need.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Apple logos are everywhere here, even more so than in Korea and China. I'm not sure what the deal is. I see old men wearing Apple logos on baseball caps that I doubt ever touched an Apple product. I still see Detroit Tigers hats as well. Same phenomenon, really.</li>
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<ul>
<li>This country likes Oreos. I bought a two pack and got a free Oreo pencil. I think I will do just fine here.</li>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-5742927550683661822013-09-14T05:34:00.001-07:002013-10-15T08:32:28.606-07:00International Transient<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My flight had been delayed on the
runway in Beijing. The couple sitting next to me told me that happens a
lot in China. Lisa and Finton, from America and Ireland respectively,
lived and worked in Beijing but were on their way to Vietnam for a
much needed vacation. They too had been EFL teachers, but now they
work in media and journalism. It is good to see expats are able to
carve a life out in Southeast Asia without teaching.
</div>
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My friend Gra (The First King of Muii-do) picked me up at the airport
in Ho Chi Minh at around 12:30am. He had brought along another friend
who was there to ride with my things by taxi while I was introduced
to Saigon the proper way: by motorbike. I hopped on the back of his
Yamaha Nuovo III and we flew off. It had been years since I had been
on a motorbike and I had never gotten used to it. Now I was in a
strange land on a strange bike riding down streets that were dark and
mostly empty. Everything was a dirty gray-blue. On the bike ride to
where I was staying I was told the plan had fallen through; at the
last minute I was given a place to stay with another set of friends.
It would only be temporary. On the 10th I would have to sign a lease
or find a new place.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We arrived at an alleyway that in the
darkness looked like every other scummy alleyway next to closed-up
shops. We unpacked my things and walked down to the apartment.
Outside the door we talked about the situation for a while, about how
this was a last minute switch and how before I know it I will be out
and on my own but for the moment I can stay here. I'm not sure what
else was said really, I was distracted by the rat the size of a Pringles can openly wandering around just behind my friends. They
told me another one was behind me as well. As I have learned since,
the rats of Saigon own the night.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We stepped inside. A cockroach scurried
away. I kept my shoes on. I was given the last empty room. It had no
AC and the fan was broken, but I wasn't bothered. I was also
introduced to the rooftop of our apartment, which overlooked the
street below and the surrounding poverty. I began to wonder if this
was a mistake.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS9PUg2TcCO5D3yNeNqH-nKb8f-SSIj_MW_cvsVIRllhJc6Vw07XdZltIfuKJk7Jcy96_Up19wKpSpSLLPF1z_D0JLTwDMGVefLGMAkCZleEwy63E35L3z6iGzIdpwHIBqCjfL1usyVC0/s1600/2000-01-01+07.03.25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS9PUg2TcCO5D3yNeNqH-nKb8f-SSIj_MW_cvsVIRllhJc6Vw07XdZltIfuKJk7Jcy96_Up19wKpSpSLLPF1z_D0JLTwDMGVefLGMAkCZleEwy63E35L3z6iGzIdpwHIBqCjfL1usyVC0/s320/2000-01-01+07.03.25.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view at night.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My first few days were just for getting
used to Vietnam. My Scottish friend showed me around our
neighborhood, bought me some ice coffee, and got me a copy of my door
keys. I was also able to get my laundry done at the photocopy/laundry
shop just down from our alleyway.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRefDlIH37gqBaBlGmH3IyfRWsOVsANlNTdGGD2VM2F0vyKHFVA9LaK2LqrgpKlEE6N-upsjz4aAPzcrGH2aZ0okrKwJUYpggqj1C1bOv-7z6fKSs-ivsJe-FI6Q-bkNhZ97SHk8xz-xA/s1600/2013-08-29+14.01.04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRefDlIH37gqBaBlGmH3IyfRWsOVsANlNTdGGD2VM2F0vyKHFVA9LaK2LqrgpKlEE6N-upsjz4aAPzcrGH2aZ0okrKwJUYpggqj1C1bOv-7z6fKSs-ivsJe-FI6Q-bkNhZ97SHk8xz-xA/s400/2013-08-29+14.01.04.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgusuZzkZ2rUDqxAQaTnpSi3xG3eLWgSAy-Dd83JS3j1gOqqWFCDkVG2CHJVQfCayzl2HMjuoZGANtAXRVOHM8GxUYXpGSyKa5iOqtDyY_O9fxfBIJJhD2MTrhe7jti_um6rQh-jDlbam8/s1600/2013-08-29+10.52.24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgusuZzkZ2rUDqxAQaTnpSi3xG3eLWgSAy-Dd83JS3j1gOqqWFCDkVG2CHJVQfCayzl2HMjuoZGANtAXRVOHM8GxUYXpGSyKa5iOqtDyY_O9fxfBIJJhD2MTrhe7jti_um6rQh-jDlbam8/s400/2013-08-29+10.52.24.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view during the day.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Our alleyway I found to be really warm.
Families open up little food carts and sell meals to each other. I've
yet to pay more than a dollar for anything in that alleyway and it's
all been delicious. Of course, as the only foreigners in the area we
do not go unnoticed. My first time visiting the apartment after my
friends had moved out I didn't know exactly which door was mine yet,
but luckily the neighborhood women knew exactly which door it was and
pointed me in the right direction. A day or two later we had a meal
together outside my place. I went to sit down on a tiny plastic stool
only to have it snap below me. The entire street was watching. We all
laughed. After that I refused to sit in another one and another food
table let me borrow their metal stools.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuQQqDu4UHjsiUVVRoV4Y1wqC2iTdt6T5KUP3tx7Rb2W5B11sy0vSBZJIfkqlqURK_DV5nkbFIXoK3O_bBA2mBAhjCaIY5f1i6mNl7uAQuyh0WZGgblhoD_czqPdXARXAHdJ5RntpQMs/s1600/2013-08-30+09.58.16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuQQqDu4UHjsiUVVRoV4Y1wqC2iTdt6T5KUP3tx7Rb2W5B11sy0vSBZJIfkqlqURK_DV5nkbFIXoK3O_bBA2mBAhjCaIY5f1i6mNl7uAQuyh0WZGgblhoD_czqPdXARXAHdJ5RntpQMs/s400/2013-08-30+09.58.16.jpg" width="400" /></a>My first weekend in Vietnam turned out
to be a holiday. Gra, who had just secured a job as a
financial adviser, had Friday off and drove me out to his place in
the suburbs, District 7. It was nice to get out of the city. He feels
if he didn't live outside of the city he would never leave the city,
and living out here forces him to take time to relax. Together with other
foreigners he rents a large house, almost a miniature mansion in some
regards. There's a large spiked gate, a big-screen TV in the living
room, a dining room, a spiral staircase, several large bedrooms, and
a splendid rooftop balcony area. On the balcony is a pool table and a
fish pond. But all that glitters is not gold: I'm told the landlord
is kind of awful, there's a bat that lives above the pool table, the
TV doesn't work, and overall it is not in the best shape considering
the house is maybe only five years old. Still, what a relaxing and
long weekend it was sitting upstairs, listening to music, playing
pool, getting rained in, and having no commitments and nowhere to be.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But we did leave sometimes. I traveled
to the expat area of District 7, Phu My Hung, which oddly enough is
mostly Korean. Weekends in Vietnam seem to pass over drinks. It
usually starts with jasmine tea. Almost every restaurant offers
jasmine tea (<i>trà nhài</i>) complimentary and many obsessively refill it
regardless of how long it's been since you've bought anything. I
suppose when it's as hot as it is here one can never be too careful. Next
we might move on to a fruit smoothie or more likely some iced coffee.
Vietnamese like it with condensed milk, which makes it extra sugary.
Most expats seem to like it black, but I'm more of a milk guy anyway
so I like the sugary stuff. And of course, the day ends with beers.
Beer can be had almost anywhere for the equivalent of about fifty
cents, but at bars and restaurants they often charge a whole dollar.
Of course, on the expat street of Bui Vien things tend to cost
slightly more and as an added bonus you constantly get asked to buy
hand-made bracelets and photocopied novels. And so the weekend went:
sitting, drinking, discussing, staying out of the sun or rain, and
wondering what I was doing.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I arrived back in the city, I set
to work on getting my resume updated and ready to send out to the
schools. I was given a few job leads from friends. Everyone told me
with my teaching certificate and English Major I was set for
anything. I decided to be picky. I wanted to teach high school. I
wanted to teach Science or English. Sure, I had a few interviews with
primary school jobs, but pay doesn't matter if you don't really want
to do it. One was with interactive white boards. Steven, the
Englishman who interviewed me, was forthright enough to acknowledge
that I was way overqualified and instead we talked about life in
Vietnam and the quirks of the language. Turns out he used to live
just down the road from my place. And in Vietnamese, it is better to
learn to say phrases than words. It's a tonal language and words can
easily be mispronounced. For instance, if you ask for “sugar” in
just the wrong tone, you will ask for “penis” instead. I just may
be in over my head here.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But I was also interviewed by a couple
“International schools,” one for primary and one for secondary.
Steven had told me there are true international schools like British
International School and Australia International School, and then
there are a hive of copycats with slightly altered names. A good sign
you are at a real international school are international students.
Many of them only have international teachers. And then there are
institutes, not schools, that have international in the title. These
are mostly after-school supplemental learning places, once again,
without a single foreign student. The first school I was interviewed
by was a primary school. The principal was American and seemed on the
level. He wanted an English teacher to teach EFL Science and English.
Would have been a good fit, beautiful schoolgrounds, but it was
outside the city, didn't pay well and wasn't at the secondary level.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was recommended another school as
well, one that
taught using an American curriculum on top of the required Vietnamese
curriculum. Looking at their website, most of their teachers either
have a Masters or P.h.D. Many of their students reportedly go
abroad to America to study after high school. Their application was
nine pages long, so they didn't get a lot of applicants. It was quite
impressive and covered everything. By the time I attached my resume I
felt it was almost completely redundant. Within fifteen minutes of
sending the application I got a response asking for an interview. I
was stunned, and a little disappointed. Did they even read my nine
page masterpiece?
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Even so, I went in for the interview.
The school was not located in an expat area, which means it probably
didn't have foreign students, but that was okay with me. After all, I
liked living in areas that weren't so used to foreigners. The
interviewer was friendly and eager. I think within ten minutes I was
offered a job as a Language Arts teacher, not EFL. No questions were
asked about teaching practices or philosophy (these things were
covered on the application). The pay he offered was much lower than
expected, but he did offer free housing. I saw the housing. It was
okay, more spacious than Korea but definitely not as posh. I left
thinking I would take the job, but disappointed that it was not
everything I had hoped for. The interview was a little insulting in
that it made me wonder how much he cared about my credentials. He
didn't seem to know much about the academic side of things, so he
wasn't helpful in answering my questions about the curriculum or any
other teaching questions. The pay wasn't even as good as the primary
school job, and far lower than most expats with only a TEFL degree can
make in this country.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I wandered the community after the
interview, mulling over my thoughts and texting people for advice. I
was quickly talked out of my excitement and started second guessing
whether or not I would accept. There were some nasty things written
about the school on the internet. I had lunch, and then texted the
interviewer saying I would like to speak with some teachers at the
school. He agreed and I returned to the school, this time not
well-dressed but instead in shorts and my “Reservoir Dogs”
t-shirt. The teachers were friendly, smart, and motivated. One was a
young Sri Lankan-Canadian economics major or something who had been
there more than a year now. The other was an older Social Studies
teacher from North Carolina who had started over the summer. Both
seemed really content. I asked them about their challenges. They said
most of the struggles came from bureaucracy. Students were wonderful.
I asked them about the high turnover rate. They said some people just
want other things. I asked them about the pay. They were unaware you
could make more. I think they were recruited from abroad and had
never bothered looking elsewhere for work. Is that a good sign? The
North Carolinan had been in Kuwait the previous year and hated it,
even if he was being paid more than double what he is now. That made
me feel better. Him and I, we could relate. Quality of life is far
more important than money.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Next, to my surprise I was ushered into
the principal's office. He introduced himself as John and we
proceeded to just shoot the shit. We didn't talk about my role at the school at all, just life in Vietnam and the corrupt government.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I sat on the decision a while and then
late Friday night I emailed my interviewer telling him what I felt: I
liked the school, I wanted to teach Language Arts, but that I was
unsatisfied with the pay. I said that I could get much more at many
other schools. I stared at the message for a long time. Never had I
ever complained to the person I wanted to hire me about how much I
was being paid. It seemed like a risk, but it felt like a necessary
one. I would hate working there from the beginning if I was being
insulted monthly by my paycheck. I hit send.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another weekend passed at the miniature
mansion. Pool. Beer. Music. Rainstorms. Sleeping on the couch. An
engagement party. Jasmine tea. Iced coffee. Iced coffee again. Beer.
I spoke to my friends about the pace of life in Vietnam. Everything
seemed slower and more casual. Just sitting and drinking something,
either keeping out of the sun or the rain. They told me that I was
just jobless.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Monday I went to an interview in the
morning. A primary school job, another waste of time. I looked at my
phone. The zoo was on the way to my 4 o'clock appointment. I had a
motorbike driver, or <i>xe om</i> (Steven told me it literally
translates to “moto-hug”), drive me there instead.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7FtaaSKIVzxNWQjTC_Pl2Rye31aub7rPPQ90C606FXIVe0ABO8TOe_Chn-47ayugnbdjtHS5IOdlbS7Wo7uZazI5-QwumMvFqESB9Ly-4ftBVIU1NIgCvtu4KCVZJ4R2AVpQxPI-aQ2w/s1600/2013-09-09+13.03.00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7FtaaSKIVzxNWQjTC_Pl2Rye31aub7rPPQ90C606FXIVe0ABO8TOe_Chn-47ayugnbdjtHS5IOdlbS7Wo7uZazI5-QwumMvFqESB9Ly-4ftBVIU1NIgCvtu4KCVZJ4R2AVpQxPI-aQ2w/s320/2013-09-09+13.03.00.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two moon bears</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I wandered the small zoo, seeing what I
could. I learned quickly there are an inordinate number of pheasants
and/or pheasant-like birds in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Now that I
think of it, the pheasants in America actually come from China. I
got to see the moon bears and the lonely sun bear. Both are strange.
You probably know the sun bear from a <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/confession-bear">meme</a>. The moon
bear is important in Chinese medicine for its stomach bile. They are
farmed in cruel ways. I won't go into detail.
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course, it rained hard. Some
Vietnamese high school kids were playing a group song game under the
pavilion. They sang and laughed and made their own fun. I was jealous
of their ability to do that. I believe it a lost art in America to
make your own fun with songs and games. From what I have seen of the
Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese so far, they are all capable. Why
not us? And why weren't these kids in school? There is so much I have
yet to learn about this place.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I went to my last interview and it was
the most thorough. I liked him. I felt almost unprepared for
questions I received, but it went well. Part-time with students of
all ages, night time and secondary are possibilities. I told him I
could do a few hours at night.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I got home and received an email from
the high school. They were willing to negotiate on my wages. I didn't
get what I asked, but they met me in the middle. I told him I'd take
it but I needed to read the contract first. Tomorrow is my last day
in the temporary apartment. Tomorrow I leave for the high school's accommodations. Hopefully things work out and I don't have to turn
down the contract. I'm excited to start at a teaching job that will
utilize the skills I trained to use. It may even count towards
further certification, but I haven't looked into it yet.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LuaBVF1qk8Zo57dTRnUYHpQy2C6LcE4OldrK5oyfbQFsbIIba37QNR1R55aF3GRbG04u-DUJR4jbi8TkReWpz_nsuckKktlKYW2aV4ZcQ5H2wpjXqeG_KdUriTk9IZASUFXMQKCGIOg/s1600/2013-09-09+19.23.42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LuaBVF1qk8Zo57dTRnUYHpQy2C6LcE4OldrK5oyfbQFsbIIba37QNR1R55aF3GRbG04u-DUJR4jbi8TkReWpz_nsuckKktlKYW2aV4ZcQ5H2wpjXqeG_KdUriTk9IZASUFXMQKCGIOg/s400/2013-09-09+19.23.42.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The beef-wrapped cheese was delicious as well (left)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Tonight I'm celebrating by spending my
last night at the microbrewery near my place. Yep, there's a Belgian microbrewery near my slummy apartment. They sell 1-liter mugs of black
lager or Hefeweizen for about three dollars each. I've been sitting
here tonight writing and enjoying the last time I'll be able to walk
home from this. Almost done with two at this point. If my international transience has to end, it should end the way it was spent: with a good drink.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
POST-SCRIPT – On the way back to my
apartment, I met a group of Vietnamese men on the side of the road
drinking and eating at a series of tables. I gave them high-fives and
they offered me a Tiger beer and a seat. I told them I was from
America. Someone said “I love America!” I said I love Vietnam.
They taught me how to toast in Vietnamese and began offering me food,
starting with chicken feet. I had seen these on the street but had
not yet gathered the courage to try them. The skin is rubbery and most
of the meat or whatever it is I was eating was on the sole.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Next they held up a bowl of dark brown
meat. “Dog meat!” they shouted. Now, I'm not so opposed to eating
dog, in theory. Different strokes for different folks, you know? But
I am against the treatment of the dogs before they are killed. Once
again, it has to do with Chinese medicine. Dogs are traditionally a
summer food because they are considered “hot”, a great
coincidence considering we refer to the hottest months as the “Dog
Days.” Anyway, dog helps you beat the heat among other things. It
is also believed that the meat tastes better if it is full of
adrenaline. How do you fill it with adrenaline? Easy, just kill the
dogs in the most horrific and brutal ways you can think of and let if
suffer immensely before it dies. Boiling alive, for one. Now, this
doesn't happen to all dogs but I've heard it's pretty common in the
more old school places. So anyway, in principle I'm against dog meat.
That night, in practice, not so much. They gave me the same line as
usual that these are food dogs not pet dogs and that there's a
difference. I had had a few, so I hammed up my disgust and we had
good fun making light of the cultural gap here. And, after a lot of
drama, I took a bite. They cheered. I ate a few pieces of dog. It had
a smell that reminded me of homemade chicken somehow, but I can't
really place it. The taste was bland, kind of dry and chewy. Not bad,
not good either. I think there is far better meat to be had without
the ethical crisis.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The beers kept coming and so did the
food. Next I tried a piece of lower chicken leg. Like the foot, not
really worth it, just rubber. After that, they passed me a bowl and
said “Have you ever had this?!” I told them yes, that I had eaten
oysters before. But there was one more food challenge they told me I
had to try that night. Duck egg. Just as they described it, it so
happened the lady on our street that sells them wheeled her cart by.
We each were given one. Some only opened the top of the egg and
scooped out the inside with their chop sticks. I was given a peeled
one. Essentially, this hard-boiled egg was half-formed, with what
looked to be the dark innards of a fetus offset by the gooey yoke. I
was drunk and it was dark, so I knew I could do it. Still, I made a
dramatic show of it, acting really distressed and disgusted. The egg
white near the tip was chewy and crunchy, like eating an eraser with
tiny nuts stuck inside. That was actually the worst part. The yoke
was softer than usual, and actually not too bad. The fetus, despite
looking like something coughed up during an exorcism, was actually
similar in taste to the yoke. It was surprisingly soft, went down
smoothly, and wasn't terrible. For the experience, I actually
recommend trying this sort of duck egg, but maybe do it in the dark.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's a shame that I only met those men
as I was leaving the neighborhood, because we got to be friends. A
few added me on Facebook that night. Thuan who sat next to me was a
construction worker with fine English. He spoke to me the most. Vo
had to head home early because his wife would get upset. An sat
across from me and told me he was “<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxIDPed5uSl8nSZ4UIjaUcCAHyobBJyduwoheyDz0tEdZep8DmxEa1-lDhysFkY61BAf18d8qXS4jF6tWNHZMXCiX0pFW9lGLdhXyf09yV_EFKQtf3H9qIn973eHgu8r0oG4tw8rXZakVj/s1600/ForeverAlone.png">Forever Alone</a>.” I laughed
pretty hard. I love when I see memes in other countries. An kept
challenging me to drink, and like a true <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Trolling%20IRL">IRL troll</a>, he would then
take his time with his glass.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Towards the end of the night we started
singing songs to each other. Someone started on “Hotel California”
which made me flash back to <a href="http://benteachesenglish.blogspot.com/2013/08/my-trip-to-china.html">China</a>. Was drinking with a bunch of
strangers on the street really such a good idea? Bear in mind I had
my laptop with me in my backpack the whole time. I decided this case
was different but it gave me pause. We continued to sing. I did
“Yellow Submarine” as always. They sang some
Vietnamese songs that I liked. One was a war song I think. It made
them all laugh but it was about tanks shooting I guess. They sang
their national anthem. It had a beautiful sound. I tried to sing
mine. I usually pride myself on my ability to remember all the words,
but that night my memory failed me. The “Star Spangled Banner” is
a song I love, but it's not much of a Song of the People. Few can
remember all the words and far fewer can actually sing it well. An
anthem should be less elitist.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I went home happy at my new friends. I
may have fallen asleep on the toilet.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-13052315026613158062013-08-28T23:09:00.001-07:002013-08-28T23:12:01.404-07:00My Trip to China<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The last thing I ate in Korea was a ham
sandwich. I made one more call to my parents, and then I was off.
Leaving Korea has been much like coming to Korea. I have often felt
too rushed to understand the full meaning of my departure. There are
too many people to see, too many to miss. I find myself wanting to
encapsulate a country in a few words, to list off some lessons I can
bring with me to Beijing, but I know those lessons will only reveal
themselves further down the road. Finding significance is best left
to those with time.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Beijing from the sky was much more
sprawling than I imagined. Not tight like Seoul. This I would find
out later was part of a pattern. I look at China as the counterpoint
to the United States. Both countries are large and powerful with lots
of cultural and geographical diversity. Both countries are larger
than life. But China is old, the United States is new, and their
interests and political systems couldn't be more different.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After I landed I met Sean from
Switzerland on the subway, a nanotechnology student who had spent 6
months previously in Beijing. He helped with my bags. They were
massive since I would be moving to Vietnam from Korea. I asked him
for any tips on traveling the Beijing area. He told me to make sure I
go to the Great Wall on a clear day. I thanked him and we parted.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLjIx-rhmA7IZWhEE9vU56CdD2qRd21zdnJyP7nYoTdn4H4621tyiPxN6pgDmTPBs_JK4HxGgMl9-hRnJaAtoZCzWcY3t7v4MwUJj7vTjwgaoyVsZMt8pVw0yX3ws2SkwvuTdMgeOASCg/s1600/2013-08-26+15.13.20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLjIx-rhmA7IZWhEE9vU56CdD2qRd21zdnJyP7nYoTdn4H4621tyiPxN6pgDmTPBs_JK4HxGgMl9-hRnJaAtoZCzWcY3t7v4MwUJj7vTjwgaoyVsZMt8pVw0yX3ws2SkwvuTdMgeOASCg/s320/2013-08-26+15.13.20.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="240" /></a>I arrived at Tienanmen East station
exhausted from lugging my bags by myself through the busy subways.
The subways seemed about two or three times busier than the ones in
Seoul, and that's saying something. On the way out some ladies asked
me where I was from and if I wanted to join them for coffee. I
politely refused saying I had to make it to my hotel. After all, my
Chinese teacher friend had warned me against people in Beijing trying
to scam me. The stairs out of the subway were a nightmare, but a few
older women helped me with my bags and soon I saw the clear blue sky
in front of the Forbidden City. I snapped a picture of the fountain
in front of the palace, and turned to get to my hotel where I could
get some rest.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I stopped to wipe off my sweat in front
of a bus stop and was approached by two more Chinese people. They
asked where I was from, and they told me they were brother and sister
visiting from Shanghai. They had just seen the Forbidden City and
were going to stop for a beer on their way back and I could call them
Colin and Julia. Colin worked in IT. Maybe it was because they helped
with my bags, maybe it was because they were tourists too, or maybe
it was because they offered beer, but they seemed on the level. I
agreed and we turned the corner towards my hotel and entered a small
Chinese-style quiet bar.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We had a few pitchers of some Chinese
knock-off of Heineken and some green tea. Julia told me China is
famous for its knock-offs and that she just bought a knock-off iPhone
but that it was no good. Colin asked me about Korea and I had to
correct myself and start using the past tense when I discussed my
life there. That stung. I <i>was</i>
working at a foreign language school. I <i>was</i>
teaching brilliant high school students.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfxKz0S207oYCSbvsn35V4DI-LXOUbqhkfNjgBNRivUEobbBP332G8KjjqHxw7IQjKMyXNV3HgKfk4AErpC6nq46-8fuf_Vax1YrSD3qqWFicESSsJOC3n4vgjLXPmnIrKk4yxVXmf0g/s1600/2013-08-26+16.15.06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfxKz0S207oYCSbvsn35V4DI-LXOUbqhkfNjgBNRivUEobbBP332G8KjjqHxw7IQjKMyXNV3HgKfk4AErpC6nq46-8fuf_Vax1YrSD3qqWFicESSsJOC3n4vgjLXPmnIrKk4yxVXmf0g/s320/2013-08-26+16.15.06.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
After some more
drinks Julia mentioned karaoke. We talked about how it is different
in America than in Asia, but yes I would sing the Eagles with her. So
we switched rooms, put some songs in and began to sing. Colin, who
told me his Chinese name was “Baa-Baa” offered red wine or
whiskey. Feeling adventurous, I chose whiskey. We sang “Hotel
California”, “My Heart Will Go On”, “Barbie Girl”, “Beat
It”, and other Asian karaoke staples. Julia was mostly tone-deaf,
but I didn't mind and a few songs she really knew well. Shot after
shot of whiskey I matched Baa-Baa, but I could tell this smallish
Chinese man was definitely doing better than me. I complimented his
tolerance and took another drink. Gambai! Scorchio! Cheers! Soon it
was time to leave. With some help I paid half the bill and we walked
out with my bags.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My memory is hazy
here, but I recall walking down the road towards the hotel. It was an
ordeal. I was hot, sweaty, exhausted, and incredibly drunk. At some
point, I am going to guess about halfway to the hotel, I collapsed
and could not get up. I was either too tired or lacking in balance or
both. I remember Baa-Baa yelling “Ben, brother! Get up! Brother!
Get up!” I threw up on myself.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I woke up in a
hotel room from a dream about my high school teacher that ran the
International Travel Club. I had no idea what had happened or even
what country I was in. My memories soon came back and I panicked. I
checked. Everything was there. All of my bags, my wallet, my credit
cards, my passport, everything. I was still in my stained shirt, but
my shorts were off. I looked at the time. It was 6. I was proud of
myself. I had only slept an hour or two and my headache was mostly
gone. I looked again. It was 6 am. I had slept through my entire
first evening in Beijing up until the next morning. Despondent, I
realized I had not booked my trip to the Great Wall. That was the one
thing I absolutely had to do before I went to bed the day before. I
thought that maybe if I got showered and dressed right away I could
still go outside and find a company to book a tour with for that
morning.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I got out of the
shower, put some clothes on and began reassembling what I needed for
the day. At 7 the phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello Benjamin. I am
calling to inform you that your tour bus for the Great Wall will pick
you up at the corner in front of your hotel at 7:15. I will give you
my number so reception can help you find your way.” I put down the
phone to grab a pen and screamed and laughed in delight.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I walked out of the
hotel for what seemed like the first time, trying to piece together
any memories at all of the night before. Nothing. I did, however,
find I had a receipt for the tour in my pocket with my name neatly
signed and printed at the bottom. I also found I had way more money
in my wallet than I recalled.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the bus I met
Vlad and Roxanna from Romania. I told them my story in wide-eyed
astonishment. I asked the tour guide if we had spoken and it sounded
like we hadn't, but someone had alerted her to the fact that I was
quite tipsy and that she should give me a wake up call. We picked up
a woman from Germany with a slight Australian accent who had been
living in Singapore, and set off on our way.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqF3fLcwSIXyS3EInompnc0sBdL58qpHtzrx2Y5kUG40POad_A4eIugJ9l5nH3tVTPsOW0P1Xnal0CS6Q50UiywM5b9NqtvqlTXbQvBn_kJffMDKwBGj8uS-PbqAyLnqx0fNm5ks5lCo/s1600/2013-08-27+10.55.04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqF3fLcwSIXyS3EInompnc0sBdL58qpHtzrx2Y5kUG40POad_A4eIugJ9l5nH3tVTPsOW0P1Xnal0CS6Q50UiywM5b9NqtvqlTXbQvBn_kJffMDKwBGj8uS-PbqAyLnqx0fNm5ks5lCo/s320/2013-08-27+10.55.04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wow! It seems like it goes on forever in either direction!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Great Wall was
foggy. It was the old part of Badalang I was told, so there were very
few people there. We couldn't see anything. I thought of Sean from
Switzerland. Everyone complained and made sarcastic comments about
the amazing view. I was still reeling at the fact that somehow
Blackout Ben had gifted Hungover Ben with a second chance. I was just
happy to be there. The wet, cool air was wonderful for my condition.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We went to a jade
shop. We went to the Ming tombs. We went to a pearl farm shop. I went
back to the hotel. I asked the manager what happened last night. He
told me my friends, a man and a woman, had brought me in two taxis (I
assume tuk-tuks) because of my bags. The man had helped me into the
room and into bed. I asked about the Great Wall tour but he denied
selling me any ticket to the Great Wall.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That night I
wandered the streets of Beijing, seeing the parks and looking for
something to do. I went to a traditional market meant for tourists
really that reminded me of Insadong in Korea. There I bought an
Oba-Mao shirt, with Obama cloaked in communist regalia. I'm not sure
who the joke is on with that shirt, but I liked it. I wandered around
the business district of Wangfujing and another night market where I
almost bought myself some cicadas or scorpions on a stick. I decided
I had nothing to prove, and headed home, got lost, found my way, had
a PBR with some other foreigners outside the hotel, and went to bed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcsAa6My2_KvvfSUuzPdTLxelUS439ola3JzMbwDhV9XyMrPDIIKK82m7NDP8tmRjs4XLUhSh-07w6vzL5ftXjdoVix9o2IoJyRRuufeOZsyLw0fos98M50h9cueG_qcbR04O32xJbifk/s1600/2013-08-28+11.15.15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcsAa6My2_KvvfSUuzPdTLxelUS439ola3JzMbwDhV9XyMrPDIIKK82m7NDP8tmRjs4XLUhSh-07w6vzL5ftXjdoVix9o2IoJyRRuufeOZsyLw0fos98M50h9cueG_qcbR04O32xJbifk/s320/2013-08-28+11.15.15.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Only part of the line to see Mao.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The next morning I
repacked my bags and headed for Tienanmen Square. After a long
security checkpoint, I was admitted. The Square is huge, the largest
in the world. I wanted to kick myself for not knowing where the “Tank
Man” photo was taken before going there. Seems like that would be
almost like Abbey Road for foreigners visiting China. I took a photo
of the line to Mao Zedong's tomb. I wasn't going to waste my last few
hours in Beijing honoring a man like that, so I did a lap around the
square, and got lost in the beautiful and peaceful garden next to the
Forbidden City before eventually making my way inside through the
west gate. I wandered around the outer part of the city looking for
the Starbucks my father told me should be there. Instead I found a
place that served Peking duck. Figuring this was my last chance to
get it, I sat down and had a massive dinner all to myself. Delicious.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On my way back
towards the City a small Chinese woman stopped me to ask if I wanted
a tour. Now, this wasn't the first time someone had asked me if I
wanted a tour. In fact, it had been happening all day. It could have
been that I was well-fed, that she didn't seem desperate, or that I
was on a strict schedule, but I said yes. She asked for 60 yuan and
walked off with my money to get me a ticket. Before long, she came
back with my ticket and introduced herself as Maja. Maja gave an
excellent tour. She told me all about the extravagance of the palace.
One emperor had 27 beds so he could sleep in a different one each
night in case someone tried to assassinate him in his sleep. There is
house built specifically for the emperor's honeymoon bed and is only
used once by each emperor. There was a lot of information about
concubines and eunuchs. Concubines could give birth to the next
emperor. And a eunuch would burn incense to limit the time each
concubine had with the emperor at night. If a concubine bribed the
eunuch she could have more time. Eunuchs became very wealthy. The
Forbidden City for me was a great example of how absolute power and
centralized wealth could really go too far.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNC9KnD0BXiFSQDZFzniMd24XphitTfbEQs20923_oxkrwyjqjbueUlOSAh64Hkn7cdsLcSOBhgmXCh5XEVeF_t_DM5V4wFvRJK160w9oGkL3dtiInJrL6EAPKtEfuaMpTnsbirClv3DY/s1600/2013-08-28+13.31.13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNC9KnD0BXiFSQDZFzniMd24XphitTfbEQs20923_oxkrwyjqjbueUlOSAh64Hkn7cdsLcSOBhgmXCh5XEVeF_t_DM5V4wFvRJK160w9oGkL3dtiInJrL6EAPKtEfuaMpTnsbirClv3DY/s320/2013-08-28+13.31.13.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I talked with Maja
for a bit at the end of tour about life in China and family stuff. I
paid her, we parted, and I walked back to my hotel to pick up my bags
and take a taxi to the airport. Overall, China has been a nice little
stopover. I wanted to see a lot more of it, but at least now I can
say I have been there. China puts Korea in perspective. China is
Korea if it let itself go. Korea is very neat and new and fashion
conscious. China doesn't care what it looks like. Most of the men
keep their bellies out to keep cool. China has nothing to prove. They
have dominated that part of the world for centuries. Sure, hard times
have hit, but no one can deny their staying power.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One last note on
traveling. With the internet connection being spotty and my laptop
packed deep in my bag, I was unable to check my bank account until I
got to Vietnam. Colin and Julia debited my card for five transactions
of 467,087 won, or about $2100 total. I was also charged about $500
dollars to my credit card, but I am fairly certain all of that was in
my wallet minus what I spent on the trip to the Great Wall. That was
really dumb. I'll use more caution in Vietnam.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-21861511237429195652013-08-01T04:59:00.001-07:002013-08-01T04:59:31.723-07:00Feeling SmallYesterday I filmed my bike ride home from school. I thought people might like to see what my neighborhood looks like and how I get to and from work every day. It's a nice ride. I hope it's not too long or dull. If it is click on settings and you can actually increase the playback speed.<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dw-vMIEm1Wk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On the bike ride home tonight I saw a little toddler running being chased in a crowd by his grandpa. He was giggling and running between the legs of all the people waiting at the crosswalk. It made me miss being that small. But why do I miss being small? It's so easy to get lost when you are small. I remember finding the feeling of being lost and away from everyone exhilarating. It was a horribly bad habit of mine to wander away at the store almost every time I went. It's easier to hide too. And when you're that small, the world looks bigger. Everything towers over you. I remember being bathed on the kitchen counter and looking out the window. I remember having to use a stool to wash my hands in the bathroom. And when you're small, the world is still new. Everything is exciting and you are learning everything for the first time. You cannot help but have a wide-eyed fascination with all that surrounds you.<br />
<br />
I wonder if traveling has something to do with being small. When I am truly lost and alone in Korea, it is exhilarating (luckily people tend not to kidnap 6-foot tall dudes). It's harder to hide today than it ever has been, but switching countries is a start. Living away gives me perspective. It lets me begin to see the world as a larger place again. I can begin to imagine all the houses and rivers and oceans and forests and people that are between me and those that I know and care about across the world. The world is a bigger place. And, the world is still new. In Korea, I am still learning many things for the first time and this will continue in Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Traveling has made me small again.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-41169826235438183762013-07-31T07:56:00.002-07:002013-08-01T05:28:15.190-07:00One month to go<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I've been holding off on writing for a
while, mostly because I have been thinking a lot about what I want to
do next. And, to make it brief and for reasons I don't really feel
like getting into on the internet, I am leaving for Vietnam at the
end of August. The plan is to have a detour in Beijing for a few days
before heading to Saigon to look for a job. I have friends there and
the opportunity sounds quite grand. I'm sure I will have more to say
when I get there, so I don't want to say too much as of now.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And seeing as I'm still in Korea,
however, I'll talk about that for a few minutes before heading to
bed. The last few months have been a whirlwind of teaching and travel. This year we have completely revamped the first grade class. Instead of boring TEPS listening comprehension practice, we have been doing a three-pronged approach of reading articles, watching videos, and presenting speeches on topics usually relevant and newsworthy.<br />
<br />
I may be missing a few, but here are most of the topics we have studied this year:<br />
<br />
1. Dennis Rodman visits North Korea<br />
2. A man that sells parcels of land on the moon<br />
3. "Sugar Man" Rodriguez, the unknown musician from Detroit that impacted a generation in South Africa<br />
4. Anonymous Hacks North Korea<br />
5. "Three Questions" by Leo Tolstoy<br />
6. 3-D printed gun invented and tested<br />
7. Excerpts from "Sum" by David Eagleman about the afterlife<br />
8. Women now allowed in combat in the U.S.<br />
9. Malala Youfsufzai fights for education for girls in Afghanistan<br />
10. Scientists create a bionic eye that allows blind to "see"<br />
<br />
The majority of these lessons began by watching a video one or two times and answering questions. After that, we typically read articles and<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-79833866101840526562013-05-31T07:19:00.001-07:002013-05-31T07:19:10.166-07:00Over a year. And Namdong Tower.I have been in Korea for a year and ten days. This last month I have been thinking a lot about my last year. I don't have any wise things to say in my reflection, only that I have been here a year.<br />
<br />
Besides this, one of my good friends is leaving within the next month. I have been told that you eventually meet enough people in a place like this that leaving parties are a regular thing. I still haven't gotten there yet.<br />
<br />
These event have gotten me thinking a lot too about my next step. Where from here? Korea isn't my plan forever, but I don't have anything firm yet afterwards. Thailand to get a CELTA certification for more opportunities? I know some people that plan to do that, travel some, and then work in the Middle East, living on a complext and get paid well. Vietnam is another option. I've been told you can live like a king there for cheap, but the profit isn't as large as in Korea. I could try my hand at a international school, but those are extremely competitive from what I understand. I could head to California and travel up the coast, maybe get a teaching job somewhere out west. Or, of course, I could go home.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz0AtFczy-aP167iSevOsB_DO3wgW82kOR_pV9UdyxTZYOwsLj1YA1-qhVnTIPZCscj_44_LiR2jTnP4O_ABDB3pvlRo6LU4CMhMMfl7J4vl82Dsm7xhHBYEtiy9cb0TWBWIWriqBjAOc/s1600/2013-05-31+19.51.21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz0AtFczy-aP167iSevOsB_DO3wgW82kOR_pV9UdyxTZYOwsLj1YA1-qhVnTIPZCscj_44_LiR2jTnP4O_ABDB3pvlRo6LU4CMhMMfl7J4vl82Dsm7xhHBYEtiy9cb0TWBWIWriqBjAOc/s400/2013-05-31+19.51.21.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view from the wildlife bridge.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I have been here a year. I'm signed up until at least August, and perhaps I will be here another year after that. I'm not sure. My friend is leaving. I biked home as usual today, but seeing as I had no plans, I decided to take a different route. Instead of heading between the church and library as usual, I took a left towards the wildlife bridge and climbed up and over the highway. I started taking turns here and there, meandering in the general direction of my apartment but always somewhat off the mark. I rode through the industrial sector, passing scrap yards and auto shops. I even passed a Salvation Army and an international market that most catered to Bangladeshi food.<br />
<br />
After getting myself adequately mixed up, I started heading towards Namdong Tower. I never knew what to make of it, but I knew I always meant to go there. My community is by no means an exciting place, and I always thought it was odd that we would have a sightseeing tower smack-dab in the middle of an industrial park, but, there it is.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3cOHhjBtCUZeRCle7YgX308GA7xzZo1DbP5xQnh7CqMZ0pE9uwF0jn-lJvyzGTOI5oxsn1IrxO9q3lmYdti8AGIgyP5jaj1tkcP-1iLzUxFgz_9G9d1_4HIXg50uZzSaRWZNGt156Frs/s1600/2013-05-31+20.03.24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3cOHhjBtCUZeRCle7YgX308GA7xzZo1DbP5xQnh7CqMZ0pE9uwF0jn-lJvyzGTOI5oxsn1IrxO9q3lmYdti8AGIgyP5jaj1tkcP-1iLzUxFgz_9G9d1_4HIXg50uZzSaRWZNGt156Frs/s400/2013-05-31+20.03.24.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Namdong Tower</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Underneath the tower I discovered an indoor pool with cheap daily rates. It is connected to the tower by a hallway that appears to showcase all the different products that have been manufactured in Namdong throughout the years. At the end of the hallway sat an empty ticket desk. I took the elevator up. It's about 100m to the top I believe. A fancy restaurant is on the highest floor. The floor below it is an observation deck with labels showing what direction and how far you have to go in order to get to various cities around the world. I meandered around the observation deck until I noticed three or four tables pushed together having dinner.<br />
<br />
I decided I better wander back home. Like so many other things in the Incheon area, I believe Namdong Tower, with its empty ticket desk and observation deck being used as restaurant spillover (for a restaurant that was hardly full), must have begun as some sort of graft project or political promise. Incheon is bankrupt, and the lonely Namdong Tower stands as a testament to that.<br />
<br />
On my way home I met someone who has been living here for six months. We had never seen each other before. Occasionally it pays to occasionally take the long way home.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-31880991836101760782013-03-22T06:21:00.002-07:002013-03-22T06:33:18.181-07:00Eye Surgery and All About Life With and Without Glasses<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It has been almost four weeks since I
had surgery on my eyes. My vision isn't what it was with glasses, but
now it has to be either close to or at 20/20. I am happy, but my eyes
are still sensitive. I have red lines running out from the edges. I
am not used to this. I think they showed up when I caught the cold
and I imagine they will go away once I get better. My recovery from
here on out should be slow. I still am not allowed to itch my eyes. I
have another appointment in a couple weeks to check up on my
progress. I cannot drink until then. I don't want to chance an
infection, or worse.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I also have to wear sunglasses for
another two or three months. The sunglasses are not a bother, really.
In fact, I was excited to wear them. For years sunglasses have been
barred from my face with the exception of transition lenses and those
weird clip on ones. For the first time in years, I can wear real
sunglasses, the type people wear simply to look cool or because it is
sunny out.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I bought aviators. I wear them at all
times in natural light, even at dusk. People must think I look
pretentious but I guess I don't care really. I have a reason to wear
them and even if I didn't I still want to make up for a lot of lost
time.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I have had glasses since I was in
first grade. Mrs. Kelly, my computer teacher, noticed me squinting at
the white board in the back row. Back then, this was the only white
board in the entire school. She told me I needed glasses and moved me
to the front of the room until I got them. I was surprised at the
time. To me, I suppose the change was so slow that I did not notice
the difference. When I did get glasses, the change was so dramatic I
am struggling to come up with a way to describe it that isn't cliché.
It was like night and day. It really was like seeing the world again
for the first time. (See, please tell if you can think of a better
description.)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There are a lot of things I liked
about glasses. For one, my brothers all had glasses for a time (only
one has them now). I could be just like them. Glasses identified me
as a nerd, which I always liked because it was true. People look
smarter in glasses and I liked looking smart and I liked looking
geeky. I liked my eye doctor. He was fun to talk to and glasses meant
seeing him a bit more often. I liked that my eyes were always
protected against those just-in-case moments when you don't think to
have safety goggles but end up needing them. I liked how my
transition lenses changed in the sunlight. I liked how I looked with
glasses because I felt that I looked older without them, that I had
bags under my eyes that were semi-concealed by my frames.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I didn't like how glasses felt on my
nose. They always left those little red marks. I didn't like that I
had to put them on every morning, clean them, and take them off every
night. I hated when I would sleep in them and lose them in the
morning. If they were knocked off I would have to reshape them so
they were not crooked. Glasses almost ruin Halloween. Not only do
they cut down on the number of characters you can realistically be,
but almost no one looks scary or heroic in glasses. I guess I could
be Egon from Ghostbusters or Waldo. Last Halloween, I had considered
going as Weird Al but Korea got in the way.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of my brothers got eye surgery and
he loves it. One of my first concerns was a sort of identity crisis.
I had worn glasses so long that they were a part of my identity.
People back home and even in Korea had called me Professor. Call me
egotistical, but I kind of liked the image. I liked being a nerd and
I liked advertising that too. Without glasses, people might have to
talk to me to decide who I am. It made me a little uneasy. My brother
told me to hell with that, that glasses aren't you. I took his word
for it and plunged in.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I originally planned to do LASIK just
like he did because of the quick recovery time and the more advanced
procedure. My teacher friend Helen told me to go to Hangil Hospital.
They are the top eye hospital in the country. I took her word for it
too. LASIK would cost 1.9 million won, or about $1,750.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Helen was a wonderful help. She
brought me in for my initial screening as well as for my surgery. She
helped translate for the hospital too. I was incredibly nervous,
especially after watching one of the operations on the TV screen.
However, after watching a few more I did not worry.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA1Uoh8V_Beh7WPeYtbLOgPW-2w4Fn7lfrWwr6N_Rc0dMhky4M2dYWjFHOn7foN-okAfOuBo0436-BGKKxFTRzvH6YQuYnZ05ps3HZa6kk-QfeVWbyC9s5zhTQOdFLeow0xj81l5Jg1mU/s1600/2013-03-17+17.18.24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA1Uoh8V_Beh7WPeYtbLOgPW-2w4Fn7lfrWwr6N_Rc0dMhky4M2dYWjFHOn7foN-okAfOuBo0436-BGKKxFTRzvH6YQuYnZ05ps3HZa6kk-QfeVWbyC9s5zhTQOdFLeow0xj81l5Jg1mU/s400/2013-03-17+17.18.24.jpg" width="397" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My last photo wearing glasses.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After a couple rounds of eye drops I
pulled over a hospital gown and was ushered into the surgery room.
The doctor had me lay down on the LASIK machine. Some hooks were put
into my eyelids to hold my eyes open (I still flinch writing this
part). A conical suction device was slowly lowered onto my right eye.
As it lowered, the machine said “Down” in English. This was
confusing because I wasn't sure if it was instructing me or just
describing its own motion. After moving the device around my eye for
several minutes they turned on the suction and my eye was sucked into
position, and with a wince of pain shortly released. They tried
again. I heard murmuring in Korean. Then I heard Helen speak. Soon
the doctor was pressing his finger to my nose. My nose! My nose was
hitting the wide base of the cone-shaped suction machine! The doctor
held my nose hard to the left while the machine came down on my right
eye. It was no use. The machine said “Up.” There was some more
talking. Then I was asked to get up. I already knew what they were
going to tell me: I would be the first person in history to be denied
eye surgery because my nose was too big. Their version was less blunt
and perhaps a bit defensive: my nose was too high on my face, which
is strange because it is a German machine, but it might have such a
wide base because the technology is state-of-the-art and not yet
miniaturized. So state-of-the-art, they said, that this is the only
one in Korea and America only has two. Still, the awesomeness of
their machine didn't matter if I couldn't use it.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Instead they had me lay down on the
LASEK machine. It fit me fine so I was led back out into the lobby
and given another packet of information to read and sign. I was told
I could get LASEK today instead. Having already done the research, I
agreed. LASEK was supposed to mean more pain and irritation, but in
the long run most likely more resilient eyes. It was also 600,000 won
cheaper, so in the end the entire procedure only cost 1.3 million won
or about $1,200.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After signing the papers I was given
another dose of eye drops and sent back in. Fortunately, this machine
didn't require little metal hooks on my eye lids or a suction cup.
I'm not sure what it required but it didn't seem as bad. Looking
back, I still hated the operation, but at the time I kept telling
myself I just extremely disliked it. Fingers and pointed sticks and
needly things kept flashing in front of my eyes while they were
doused with various fluids. A dish of cold alcohol was used to
dissolve the outer layer of cornea. The whole thing made me nervous.
I tried to focus on not twitching my toes, breathing regularly, and
always staring at the green light as the doctor said. This was
especially important when the laser came on. Actually, the laser was
the most pleasant part of the experience. When the laser was on,
nobody was poking around. It was just a bright, warm light for a
second or two. In my first eye I did smell a slight singe, but the
brochure says the laser doesn't burn so something doesn't add up.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The whole operation took under fifteen
minutes I would imagine. Sure, I extremely disliked it, but it was
not unbearable and keep in mind I am a wimp when it comes to the
thought of anything being done to my eyes. I got up and immediately I
could see an improvement. My vision wasn't great, but it was
improved. The doctor did a quick check and said I would be just fine.
As I started to put on my shoes he commented on my Obama socks. Maybe
I wore them because I needed to do laundry or maybe I thought wearing
strange socks would bring me good luck, but he told me that in Korean
culture wearing a man's face on your socks is disrespectful to the
man.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I ended up getting the subway back and
hanging out with a coworker while he arranged his new apartment. It
helped me keep my mind off my eyes. They weren't in serious pain,
just slightly irritated. More than anything I was on edge from the
surgery. It took me a long time to unwind and relax.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That night and for the next week I had
to wear protective covers over my eyes. The next morning I was told
it was very important to open my eyes slowly so that I wouldn't
damage them. I still have no idea how to arrange it in my head so
that I remember to do that upon waking up. Do I fall asleep imagining
myself opening my eyes slowly?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The second day wasn't bad, only minor
irritation, but the third day was, and I think it was all because I
opened them quickly. They were red, they stung, and my vision would
double then get blurry and, especially at night, starry. Fortunately
it was mostly uphill from there. Some days were better than others,
but the doctor told me healing would be gradual and uneven. After
maybe a week and a half I finally felt satisfied with where my eyes
were.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It has been a little surreal without
glasses. Since the new school year was beginning the following week,
I decided for maximum effect I should shave my beard as well. The
reactions from students were incredible. I think every day for the
first week I would walk into the lunch room and a new group of girls
would scream in surprise. I have never garnered that kind of reaction
from anybody before. For at least ten seconds a day I felt a little
bit like Paul McCartney. One student told a teacher that she could
hardly bear to look at me because I had become so handsome. This kind
of freaked me out, but then I remembered how fond Koreans are of
superlatives and exaggerated reactions. When I first came to the
school almost everything I said garnered a gasp of awe. Not so much
anymore. This too shall pass.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVunWtbWTUos8kJtiQkwlvlJ9Bk_Si3FRR_E6MfXzpYm5hQLdREYYb0F0Acq4DevhGbAJs4pJeLSmA3oRltujYsjzIJ58AjP0QDpZXoWi2dhSgk_7_i_x7s5HeK4HLckEQd3n4kbALhLs/s1600/2013-02-27+18.31.20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVunWtbWTUos8kJtiQkwlvlJ9Bk_Si3FRR_E6MfXzpYm5hQLdREYYb0F0Acq4DevhGbAJs4pJeLSmA3oRltujYsjzIJ58AjP0QDpZXoWi2dhSgk_7_i_x7s5HeK4HLckEQd3n4kbALhLs/s400/2013-02-27+18.31.20.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With a little help, it shall pass sooner rather than later.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am still not entirely used to life
without glasses. Often before going to bed I still wonder where my
glasses are so that I can put them on to take them off before going
to bed. I still wear sunglasses at all times in daylight so when I
leave the house at night I feel especially naked without glasses of
any kind. I subconsciously want to grab for my glasses at times when
my vision isn't so great. For a while I was even wearing some
lens-less toy glasses to trick my mind into focusing at work. But,
most times, I am able to forget I ever had them. I can try to live
life normally, but in a new way. If I need glasses again someday, so
be it, but for right now I want to experience the kind of vision many
take for granted.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-72317981680057360952013-02-22T23:03:00.001-08:002013-02-22T23:03:28.843-08:00The Adventures of Sam in KoreaThe following story was inspired by the Skype conversation below. Happy Birthday Sam!<br />
<br />
[ 11:06:46] Sam: i like your last two posts <br />
<br />
[ 11:06:58] Sam: there reall intertaining <br />
<br />
[ 11:09:51] Sam: i like it cause its gonzo esque <br />
<br />
[ 11:09:56] Sam: right? <br />
<br />
[ 11:10:01] Ben: you think? <br />
<br />
[ 11:10:13] Sam: u report through your story <br />
<br />
[ 11:10:18] Ben: maybe <br />
<br />
[ 11:10:35] Sam: i leanred what the term meant <br />
<br />
[ 11:10:54] Ben: great <br />
<br />
[ 11:11:50] Sam: also i like when you report about me <br />
<br />
[ 11:12:07] Ben: i report about you when? <br />
<br />
[ 11:12:21] Sam: thats right , you dont! <br />
<br />
[ 11:12:25] Ben: LOLOL <br />
<br />
[ 11:12:38] Sam: i=people like me <br />
<br />
[ 11:12:46] Sam: they want to hear about me <br />
<br />
[ 11:13:00] Ben: ok. so start your own blog <br />
<br />
[ 11:13:27] Sam: no <br />
<br />
[ 11:13:52] Sam: you can just have side adventures of me <br />
<br />
[ 11:14:01] Sam: u can create the story <br />
<br />
[ 11:14:10] Sam: people like to hear about me <br />
<br />
[ 11:14:14] Ben: ok. possibly <br />
<br />
[ 11:14:22] Ben: i mean, it makes sense <br />
<br />
[ 11:14:45] Sam: but when u right about me, make sure i am wearing my black and honolulu blue lions cap <br />
<br />
[ 11:14:56] Sam: it gives me charter <br />
<br />
[ 11:15:01] Sam: carachter <br />
<br />
[ 11:15:10] Sam: i cant spell that word <br />
<br />
[ 11:16:59] Sam: at least i like to hear about me <br />
<br />
[11:17:16] Sam: and it will give your blog more of that word i cant spell<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“You don't like flying, do you?”
Here Sam was, landing in Korea, and the man next to him was finally
attempting to start a conversation.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“No, no, where'd you get that idea?
I'm in the Air Force actually,” said Sam, letting the man believe
he was a pilot and not a burnt out desk jockey.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Ya wanna know the secret of
successful air travel? After you get where you're going, ya take off
your shoes and socks. Then ya walk around on the rug barefoot and
make fists with your toes.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Fists with your toes?” This is
getting weird, Sam thought. He grabbed his carry-on and joined the
line toward the exit.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the Incheon Airport, it started to
settle in. He was in Korea now. Nearly everyone around him was
Korean. No longer would he have to suffer the English, or England.
Sam smiled, grabbed some Dunkin' Donuts, and handed the cab driver
the address to the <span style="font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">나카토미
</span>Guesthouse in Nonhyeon. This was the neighborhood where Sam's
brother, Ben, lived.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The cab driver made the usual small
talk, asking him where he was from, his age, if he had a girlfriend.
This all seemed a little personal, but company was company. “Why
did you come to Korea?” the driver then asked.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“It's a birthday surprise,” Sam
said, leaving out the fact that the birthday was his own. Ben had no
idea Sam was coming. It would come as a total surprise, especially
since he was supposed to be at work today in England. He would spend
the day in a guesthouse, then surprise him the following morning. It
was a risky maneuver, but traveling Europe had made Sam confident in
his abilities.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The taxi stopped in front of the <span style="font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">나카토미
</span>Guesthouse. Sam paid and headed for the door. To his surprise,
a friendly German man was running the counter. The German showed him
to his room and for the first time since leaving the plane he was
able to relax. Sam threw off his black and Honolulu blue Detroit
Lions cap, slipped off his shoes and socks and laid in bed. Then he
remembered what the man on the plane had said. Fists with your toes.
He started to curl his toes only to realize there was no carpet.
Idiot. He fell back down on the bed and slept.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When he awoke it was the early evening
but jet-lag had erased all notion of time. Only food mattered. His
stomach rumbled and Sam started out the door. The hallway was cold on
his bare feet. Startled, he went back inside and put on his shoes,
laughing to himself. What if he stepped on some glass? Someone might
get hurt!</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the sidewalk Sam breathed in Korea.
The exhaust. The Seoul sewer system. The beef and rice. Strolling
down the street he was about to turn into the first restaurant he saw
when he heard someone call from behind him, “Sam! Sam!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He turned around to find a smooth
skinned old man with a ponytail smiling up at him. “Hagwon?” he
said. Sam had seen men like this before in the movies. It was always
some wise Asian man that teaches the hero before they go on an
adventure. How did he know my name, Sam thought. Perhaps there is
more to this man than meets the eye. At the very least, a hagwon
sounds like a delicious type of fish.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He followed the old man up the
staircase and into what looked like an office. Seeing it wasn't food
or a martial arts dojo, Sam turned around to leave. “Sam!” the
old man shouted. Sam turned around and saw that the man was offering
him a seat.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“How do you know my name?” Sam
said. Before the man could answer, an old lady walked into the room.
She yelled at him. It sounded like they were fighting. Back and forth
it went until finally the man got up from the desk. She calmly sat
down and began to speak.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I sorry. My husband, he is no good
at English. He is trying to find special teacher. He saw you were
Western and thought you would be perfect. I keep telling him to leave
<i>waygookin</i> alone, but he is
sure you are the one. I am sorry. He very strange. You can go home
now. We won't bother you.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“What
do you mean? Why am I the one? One for what? What am I doing here?
Where is the hagwon fish? How did he know my name!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
woman paused, then turned to her husband. More shouting. They both
turned to Sam. “My husband says he needs you.
He says you are not a normal <i>waygookin</i>,
you are very special. He cannot believe his luck. He wants you to
start right away as our new basketball coach!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Basketball
coach? A sudden realization dawned on Sam. He had posted a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpJzb2aGtxs">video</a>
years before showcasing his mad basketball skills. Had they seen the
video? Was that how they knew his name? “Listen, if you don't
either get me some fish or tell me how you know who I am, then I am
out of here. Your choice.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“But
Sam, we don't know your name,” said the old woman.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“But
you just said it! My name is Sam!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
She
started to laugh, “Oh your name is Sam!” Words were exchanged in
Korean. “My husband says now you surely must stay. In Korean<i>,
ssaem</i>
is our nickname for teacher. It was meant to be. He will show you the
students. Here is our contract.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sam
looked down at the contract. What was he doing here? He was supposed
to be on base at this very moment! If he went back, who knows what
type of trouble he would be in! Sam always dreamed of a career in
athletics. This could be his one and only shot. He looked down. He
picked up the pen, and signed. “Now, when can we eat?”<br />
<br />
<i>To be continued...</i></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-15445573578184987572013-02-20T03:29:00.000-08:002013-02-20T03:29:10.447-08:00Coins<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A couple days ago I traded coins with
one of the chinese teachers. They are leaving for home in a couple
weeks and we both needed a good memento I suppose. She gave me 1 Yuan
and in exchange I gave her a dime and a penny. With current exchange
rates, this made for a five cent profit! Now I am completely out of
American money in Korea.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It wasn't until coming to Korea that I
realized just how useless pennies are. I have a coin dish on my
cabinet that for many months had four 10 won coins in it. They sat
and sat there because it is extremely rare that anything in Korea can
be bought with them. Very recently I received another 10 won coin
from a friend and was secretly excited to have enough to equal 50
won. Why, now if I only get a 50 won coin then that will equal 100
won, and finally my money will become remotely useful again.
Generally I save up my 100 won coins and when I get ten of them I
trade them in for a roll of kimbap.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The annoyance with small change in
Korea has lead me to create a new rule that I follow: only pay in
cash when guaranteed to not get change smaller than 100 won coins
back. This is fairly easy to follow in Korea, but it does result in
me using debit on small items from time to time. Of course, this rule
only works because tax is already added into the value of the
purchase. I know exactly how much something will cost me before I go
to the register.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In America, I always had a fondness for
the penny, but my experience in Korea further cements what anybody
that has studied the subject knows: pennies need to go. They cost far
more money than they are worth and are a huge hassle. I have no
emotional attachment to 10 won so, being almost equivalent to the
penny, I can finally see the uselessness of the coin for what it is.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-84031268953050062013-02-04T05:53:00.000-08:002013-02-04T06:12:15.422-08:00A Brief Post about StoplightsThis morning I rode the bus into work and it let me off across the road from the school. My coworker and I saw that no one was coming and so I walked across. She told me I shouldn't do that in front of students or Koreans. I guess I was being a bad role model. And it is true: Koreans rarely jaywalk. I should have waited for the little green man to light up. I dismissed the whole thing quickly, saying it's "a cultural thing and they will understand."<br />
<br />
After school that night I was talking to one of my friends, a head teacher who was also there late. Somehow we went from pronunciation of the word "yield" to talking about driving. She started laughing about how Americans always wait for the stoplight to turn green before going, even when there is no one coming. I told her about the fear of cops and the subject soon changed to my experiences being pulled over and her one experience with a breathalyzer. As it does with English teachers, this lead to a discussion of how the word is a portmanteau of "breath" and "analyzer", just like "chocoholic" is from "chocolate" and "alcoholic." She told me they have portmanteaus in Korean as well and the world once again seemed a smaller and friendlier place for me.<br />
<br />
It wasn't until I was at the corner across from my apartment that stoplights once again crossed my mind. There I was, the red hand glowing across the street, doing my routine check to see if it was safe. It was. I jogged along and suddenly everything came into focus. Once again, the opposite side of the world sometimes requires opposite thinking.<br />
<br />
American cars respect the red light. Korean pedestrians respect the red hand. Meanwhile, Cambodia has neither.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-72866920970163231482013-01-31T08:36:00.002-08:002013-01-31T08:36:31.859-08:00American FootballI realize I haven't written in over a month and January is just about over. I guess I've been busy and quite a bit has happened. In short, I taught the students about the history of Santa Claus and we had a Christmas party at school one night. I left for Cambodia shortly after for winter vacation. One of my coworkers left. I came back and we have been running a winter writing course which has been going tremendously well (hopefully more on that later). I have started taking weekend Korean lessons. My free time the last week or two has been spent making reading comprehension study guides for kid's books for the middle school students. But, for the moment, things have slowed down a little, so I will try to catch up as best as I can.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Despite all the stories above that I could tell instead, I feel at the moment compelled to talk about the lesson I have been teaching all week. Because these current weeks are between vacation time and the end of the school year, the pace is more relaxed and we are able to teach on any variety of topics that we please. Since it just so happened that Superbowl Sunday was right around the corner, my coworker suggested we teach about football and the Superbowl.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now, I admit, I am not a fan of football, and I can't say I deeply understand the game. However, I do watch the Superbowl and I know what it means to most Americans. My personal opinion of the game is irrelevant; football is a big deal and it deserves some attention, so I planned it out over the weekend. I would teach about football basics the first week and learn about the Superbowl while watching some highlights the following week as review.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One of the things you learn to do as a teacher is work quickly and take what you can use. I found a football cheat sheet on Dummies.com helpful as a starting point. I asked my younger brother his thoughts on what vocab was most important and with his help was able to whittle the sheet down to the essentials. I made a few slides for football history and tacked on an excellent slideshow I found called the "<a href="http://ieslasagra.wikispaces.com/file/view/Football.ppt">Basics of American Football</a>." Rarely do you find a slideshow that is exactly what you need it to be, but this one fit the bill and even was geared towards ESL students.</div>
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One thing that I missed out on in student teaching was that I never had a repeated class, so I was never able to improve on a single lesson. Every class was completely untested material. In Korea, I am getting more chances to hone my lessons, and by the end of this week I had a whole routine worked out with jokes, slapstick, and question and answer callbacks.</div>
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My first lesson I had time to spare at the end and so we reviewed the terms by watching an excellent <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwbE3bPvzr4">Goofy cartoon</a> about football. I stopped and quizzed them as different players and actions popped up on screen. The cartoon was funny and it worked okay, but TV is boring.</div>
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The next class I borrowed a ball from one of the Chinese teachers and I had a few volunteers act out the terms with me so the class could call out what we were doing. The class became infinitely more interesting. The Goofy cartoon was there now only if we had extra time at the end for a second round of review.</div>
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Ultimately, my routine ended up something like this:</div>
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"Hello Everybody!"</div>
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"Hello Mr. Patton!" (I stole this from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqImkDgDwHU">Dr. Nick</a> on "The Simpsons")</div>
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"So, does anybody know what is going to happen next week?"</div>
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I get lots of answers: graduation, break time, New Years. All of these are true.</div>
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"Okay, but what will happen in the United States?"</div>
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Now they start to figure it out. Eventually somebody gets football and then somebody else figures out the Superbowl. I tell them we will learn about football because it's a big deal in America and maybe if you ever see it on TV you will enjoy it a little more with some education.</div>
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I ask them to tell me what they know about football. Usually they at least know touchdown and quarterback, but the question is more to get them in the right mindset than anything else. I point to the football on the screen and ask if they know it's nickname. No one ever does. I tell them it's called a pigskin and see if they can guess why. Some classes do, others don't.</div>
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We move onto the history of football. I start by saying football comes from the same family of sports as soccer and rugby. All of them involve running, grass, opposing goals. balls etc. I then go back to the legend of the first game of soccer. Back in the Medieval times, on a certain day the men were cleaning up the dead bodies after a particularly gruesome battle. One weary soldier found a severed head on the ground and kicked it to his friend rather than pick it up. His fellow soldier kicked it right back. Soon the whole band of them was in and soccer was more or less born. Eventually they decided balls would roll a bit smoother and be a bit less messy than heads so they altered the gameplay. Years later some weary soccer player, fed up with kicking the ball around picked up the ball and started to run it to the goal. The rest of the players were furious and told him he couldn't do it. He said "Watch me!" Of course, the other team wouldn't let this stand and promptly tackled him. Rugby was born. Years later, some weary rugby player decided that all this tackling was getting a bit too painful, so he came to the Rugby game one day with full armor and a helmet. Soon everyone was doing it. For a while, the game seemed safer until everyone realized that adding padding meant they could just be even more violent and so with a few rule changes here and there football was born. I ask them if they believe my stories, but it really doesn't matter. We talk briefly about the Superbowl before heading into game basics.</div>
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I ask them how long a football field is and they can read right on the screen that the field is 100 yards. I ask them how long a yard is and they are baffled. I tell them it is three feet and that doesn't help either. I ask them how long a foot is. A few guesses, someone says 30 cm, which is technically right. I lift my leg up and point to my shoe and say a foot is about this long. And then for three feet I put my heels together and point my toes away from each other. I move one foot out so there is a foot gap between. I wobble around a bit as I demonstrate how long a yard is with my two feet trying to maintain balance. And by the way, a yard is about 91.4 cm. </div>
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We move onto the line of scrimmage. Borrowing the line my brother gave me, I tell them to think of it as the DMZ. They roar with laughter every time. I learn over the course of the week not to extend the metaphor because the laughter drops when you starting talking about invasion forces and enemy armies. </div>
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We talk about downs and how even though ten yards isn't far it might take you four tries to get there too if you had 11 giants trying to knock you down.</div>
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We talk about the players, how the quarterback is like the general and the coach the president. I ask them obvious questions like why the linemen are called linemen. I ask them what the kicker does for a living. I tell them he is really good at it too and rarely misses, unlike my high school football team. They marvel at the sneakiness of the fullback position. We laugh at the dance the wide receiver does when he makes a touchdown. </div>
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After going through all of the terms, I get three volunteers to come up. Usually in Korea I get one real volunteer and the others are nominated by the class, usually to their chagrin. The review is where the magic really happens. We review all the terms by acting them out. I get the kids to growl and make angry faces like the linemen. We fake tackle each other. I have the class decide what the quarterback should do with the ball and we act it out, naming the players and objects on the field along the way. The wide receiver does his touchdown dance and I ask how many points it was worth. A surprise fourth volunteer is sent up by the mob to be the kicker. She kicks the ball and we pretend it goes through my arms and makes the goal and we once again review the score. The kicker sits down. She's a specialist and she does her job well. </div>
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If there is time we watch a few minutes of the Goofy cartoon and review again. I pause at the wide shot of the stadium and ask them if they think they know why the Superbowl is called the Superbowl. They figure it out every time.</div>
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I have to say, despite not liking football, which I even admitted to in several of the classes, this was one of my favorite lessons. I think not being an expert on the topic helped me to just focus on what is important. Too often I get bogged down in minutiae and in this case I think my ignorance was beneficial because I could relate to my students. I also feel I have a better appreciation for the sport. Several times during various classes it dawned on me just how much strategy and cleverness it must require to be good at this sport. I think Monday morning I will be watching the Superbowl with fresh eyes.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-31472957164188620592012-12-19T09:16:00.000-08:002012-12-19T09:16:51.200-08:00Follow-up on the ElectionThe polls in Korea are now closed. I had the day off today so employees could go and vote. I think for me today is a good day to revisit the <a href="http://benteachesenglish.blogspot.kr/2012/11/the-election-in-classroom.html">post</a> I made in early November about teaching about the election in the classroom.<br />
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A lot has changed since then. For one, the U.S. election is over and for those not paying attention Obama won. Software mogul Ahn Cheul-Soo dropped out of the race so that Moon Jae-In could take Park Geun-Hye head on. The election was very close, but Park Geun-Hye has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20780282">won</a>, becoming the first female president of South Korea.<br />
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And, just like in the American election, who was favorite to win depended entirely on who you talked to and what media outlets they were following. According to my language exchange partner, young people get their information from Facebook and other social media and were convinced Moon would win. The older generation were told by the television that Park would likely win. The mock election surveys my students completed at the end also show this trend, but before I get to those I should tell what has happened in class since my last post.<br />
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Each of the students filled out questionaires to try to find out whether they would be considered liberal or conservative in America. As I said last time the classes were overwhelmingly liberal, so instead I divided them by what issues they thought to be most important. This way, each political party would have a unique mission to complete. I made sure each class had a group devoted to women's rights, national defense, the environment, the economy, education, and welfare. They could mix other ideas into their party platforms but overall this gave them some focus and originality.<br />
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Over the next few class periods they were to outline their party views and then create a speech together. They needed to choose a leader to represent their views and give a speech. Party names ranged from creative and serious to just downright silly. The Green Growth Party focused on economic and environmental concerns. Meanwhile, the Iron Man Party was more militaristic in perspective. The Yuh-dang-dang Party (translated roughly to Women's Power Party) focused on women's rights. Two classes came up with the WEE Party which was an acronym for Welfare, Environment, and Education. I was worried students wouldn't take this project seriously, and indeed, some didn't. But enough students did to keep the project moving and make it worthwhile. Even parties with joke names tried to put some real thought into their speeches. Some candidates really practiced their rhetoric too. When the speech day came, I gave them a little bit of time to practice and create campaign signs.<br />
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The last time I had them do a speaking project was for Animal Farm. We had a farm-wide election with each group representing a different animal on the farm. Overall, the election kind of flopped because classes would just vote along party lines. This time I filmed the speeches and showed them to other classes. This cut down on bias. I also had them vote on more than one category. They voted not just on who they think should be in charge, but also who had the best speech. I was hoping this would separate ideas from rhetoric and it seemed to work. For instance, Iron Man Party only had one vote for leadership but many voted for their group for having a great speech.<br />
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Purely for curiosity's sake, I also had them choose a candidate for the real-life election. I think this made some students nervous. A few asked why I was asking this question. I told them they didn't have to answer if they didn't want to and a few were left blank. I had one student write a little paragraph on why she was voting for Park Geun-Hye, despite the votes being anonymous. With politics you have to tread softly, and I have to wonder if something I said earlier in the month marginalized those that were of the minority opinion.<br />
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After looking over the results of the surveys I gave my students, the results collected from the three classes were as follows:<br />
Ahn: 28<br />
Moon: 18<br />
Park: 6<br />
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They were well-convinced that Ahn should win which reflects what everyone told me about young people. Of course, the news that he would leave the race came just before I announced the election results so their informal poll was mostly worthless. Still, it is telling that Park hardly had a following.<br />
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I gave the students a final class evaluation on what they liked and disliked about the class. It was quite informative, but two comments about this election stuck out for me. One student wrote:<br />
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"The political issues are very sensitive part in schools. Expressing my political inclination should be kept in secret if I want to, such as who I support, so I think talking about political issues in class should be considered carefully."<br />
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To the contrary, another student wrote:<br />
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"I'm glad that we made the class discussing political affairs. In Korea, teachers couldn't deal with political issues with students. Thank you. I learned a lot. I learned many political systems. You greatly enlightened me."<br />
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The exams were administered a couple weeks ago and last class period we reviewed the answers. A lot of the information from the first lesson on liberal vs. conservative and the electoral college didn't stick with them, but truthfully we didn't use that information much. We focused more on speaking and writing ability than the content.<br />
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One final semi-related note: After reviewing liberal and conservative values I asked them if they had any questions. A student asked me why the U.S. allowed guns. I had mentioned as an example that gun ownership is a liberal vs. conservative issue in America whereas in Korea it is not an issue at all. The student was familiar with the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary and I had mentioned it in passing as I was going over the exam. I have to admit, a lump grew in my throat. I explained as best that I could the historical tradition of the 2nd Amendment and the importance of keeping the government from getting too strong, but I couldn't help but feel foolish. I didn't get into it with them. I only told the facts as I knew them, but when faced with something like what happened last week, it is hard to justify the amount of deadly weapons our country contains. These are difficult times and I hope our nation does what is right. My condolences go out to the Newtown community.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-5000625862024476472012-12-12T08:35:00.003-08:002012-12-12T08:47:13.703-08:00A lot of little things (and Pepero Day)<div style="text-align: justify;">
This last month or so I have been thinking about a lot of little things, none of which felt substantial enough to write a post about, and so now I am going to try to tie a few of these little things together and make a longer article.</div>
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For one, a few days back a student told me that I looked "really American." I was wearing my green plaid long-sleeve shirt and jeans. My beard has been getting longer for the winter. This is not the first time a student has said this to me and I can only speculate on what it means. I guess there is a stereotype that Americans look somewhat like Paul Bunyan or George Lucas?</div>
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I learned one of my head teachers has a nickname for me. I am "Call Van." A call van is a service you call to pick you up and drive you someplace, sort of like a taxi. Since his English isn't great and "van" and "Ben" sound virtually identical in Korean, the joke is a lot funnier for him I think.</div>
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In other naming news, I was given a Korean name. I did not ask for one, instead a Korean teacher just gave it to me. She held her hands above my head in a mock ceremonial pose and pronounced me "Park Yong-chul" (박용철). She gave me Park because it approximates the first letter of my first and last name. Yong-chul translates to "Iron Dragon." It is a strange name for a modern Korean I am told. A lot of the students liked it, but one told me I should change it because it is a "country person name." I've got a Korean hillbilly name! I suppose it might be like Virgil or Jebidiah in English, still used but considered anachronistic by most. Personally, I am happy to have a Korean name. It is like I am a made man in the mafia now. I am also happy to have a country name. I might as well since I am from the country.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Does your name conjure this image?</span></td></tr>
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I asked my new language learning partner about the name. My suspicions were confirmed. My new name is quite analogous to Jed Clampett. Through videos of Jeff Foxworthy and the Beverly Hillbillies I taught her words like "hillbilly", "redneck", and "hick" and after some pressing I was able to get her to confess that, yes, Koreans have words for these people too. She taught me a few but told me I shouldn't repeat them.</div>
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We then continued to discuss swear words. I taught her the big bad ones and some of the minor swears too. I learned just a few Korean bad words. I have been told before that those are some of the first words you should learn but I haven't bothered with them until now and I am not sure why. We talked about how a lot of these words have levels of severity in English. For instance, I would rank the following words from harmless to severe in this order: dung, feces, poop, turd, sh!#. There are certainly more but I'm sure you get the idea. She tried to tell me at first that swears in Korean were all really bad and there were no differences in severity. An intriguing concept, but I suspected it wasn't true. As the night wore on and I introduced her to some nasty words for women she finally admitted that yes there were differences in severity. That being said she simply doesn't swear much at all, but she does make a common offensive sound that sounds something like "ieessh." Like "doh", albeit more offensive, it has no meaning other than something you say out of frustration. Part of me wonders why I waited so long to learn this stuff, but at the same time it is fun to learn from someone who barely swears at all.<br />
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And finally, I will mention something I meant to commemorate over a month ago on 11/11, but seeing as it is 12/12/12 today I am cashing in my wish and turning the clock back a month. Every year on 11/11 in Korea is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepero">Pepero</a> Day. Pepero (빼빼로) is a kind of chocolate stick candy that is sold all over Korea. It is super cheap and is more or less the Korean version of the older and perhaps more familiar Japanese candy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky">Pocky</a>. However, Pepero Day is no copycat but a genius marketing holiday developed by Koreans. 11/11 was chosen as the date for the resemblance of the ones and the slash mark to sticks in a box of Pepero. It has blossomed into a holiday for everyone, but mostly couples. Students give Pepero to teachers. Adults give Pepero to kids. Romantic fools buy large gift wraps of Pepero boxes for their lovers. There is no price drop, except for a savings of a few won if you buy in bulk.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My favorite grocery store became Pepero central for the day.</span></span></td></tr>
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I read that most of the money Pepero makes now is made in November. I am a sucker for holidays and commercialism too, so I bought a large box and gave them out to my classes on that day. My favorite Pepero is almond, but there are also plain, peanut, strawberry, and nude (chocolate on the inside of cookie stick). Pocky Day is now celebrated in Japan but I read it is not as successful.<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
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On a side note, the Chinese teachers told me 11/11 is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singles_Day">Singles Day</a> in China, which started as a college holiday for young single men (most of China, really) to celebrate their bachelorhood. This holiday instead uses the shape of the date to symbolize not Pepero but four singles. What started as a fun joke holiday between four college friends has boomed into a huge commercial holiday. This year it was <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/11/singles-day-2012-china_n_2111898.html">reported</a> that Singles Day may be the largest online shopping day ever.</div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-65906584767471063322012-11-01T05:37:00.000-07:002012-11-01T05:37:31.004-07:00The Election in the ClassroomI often come up with ideas for lessons from conversations with other teachers. Of course, the election has been on the forefront of many American minds. A few of us in the office have even been keeping up on the debates by watching online. This has sparked a lot of discussion and one teacher recommended that I talk about the election in the classroom. I wasn't so sure, since I felt American politics isn't as relevant here as Korean politics. That is when she told me about the Korean election. Once again, I was oblivious. I really try to keep up on the news, too. I skim the world news headlines daily and usually pick up anything about Korea, but somehow I missed out. Fortunately, she was quickly able to fill me in on the situation.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Lee_Myung-bak_cropped_Sebasti%C3%A1n_Pi%C3%B1era_-_Lee_Myung-bak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Lee_Myung-bak_cropped_Sebasti%C3%A1n_Pi%C3%B1era_-_Lee_Myung-bak.jpg" width="164" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lee Myung-bak</td></tr>
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Right now in Korea, the president is Lee Myung-bak of the conservative Grand National Party (which recently changed its name to the Saeunuri, or New Frontier Party). He was elected for a term of five years and is not allowed to run again. Right now, there are three candidates. My friend was excited because she felt there were two excellent choices and one bad choice. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moon Jae-in</td></tr>
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The opposing liberal Democratic United Party is running <a href="http://www.busanhaps.com/article/inside-look-who-running-president-part-two-moon-jae">Moon Jae-in</a> as their candidate, who first gained prominence as a law student by protesting the military dictator-president <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung-hee">Park Chung-hee</a>. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ahn Chul-soo</td></tr>
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The other liberal candidate, <a href="http://busanhaps.com/article/inside-look-who-running-president-part-one-ahn-cheol-soo">Ahn Chul-soo</a>, is running as an independent. He is a millionaire who made his money in the software industry. He is a philanthropist as well and gave everyone in Korea a free version of his Ahn Lab Antivirus software. It is no coincidence that this came pre-installed on my Samsung phone. Since he is new to politics, there is virtually no dirt associated with him. However, it is also difficult to know where he stands on issues or what his policies will look like since he has no political record. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Park Geun-hye</td></tr>
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The candidate she didn't like was <a href="http://busanhaps.com/article/inside-look-who-running-president-part-three-park-geun-hye">Park Geun-hye</a>, the daughter of Park Chung-hee. She is popular among older conservative Koreans who remember her father's presidency as a time of great prosperity. Indeed, Korea did grow tremendously during his reign, even if it was a time of limited speech and torturing of opponents. In 1999, <i><a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054597,00.html">Time</a> </i>named him as one of the top ten "Asians of the century." Right now, these three candidates are more or less tied so unless one of them drops out it will likely be too close to call right up until the election in December.</div>
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It turns out that this election has a special connection for both the United States and Korea. Since presidential elections in the United States are every four years and in Korea every five years, this type of coincidence only happens every twenty years. What a great opportunity to learn about both systems! I took my friend's advice, and now I am in the midst of a unit plan on the election.<br />
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The first week we began with a survey to determine whether my students were conservative or liberal. Since I didn't know a lot about Korean politics, I stuck with issues that would be divisive in America. These were issues like abortion, the death penalty, environmentalism, global warming, free speech, gay marriage, national security, taxes, business regulations, welfare, and so on.<br />
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However, as I suspected the students didn't find every issue divisive. Gun control was almost a non-issue. I only ever got one or two students in every class to agree that Koreans should be able to own guns for personal defense. Indeed, fellow teachers are a little disturbed when they see pictures of me holding a gun. It's just not something that is done in Korea.<br />
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Overall students are overwhelmingly liberal. I think I only had two conservatives in three classes and they were just one point over the edge and did not consider themselves conservative. My students (and I think everyone else) here really dig Obama. Actually, according to this <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20008687">poll</a>, the majority of the world wants Obama to win the election. This isn't really surprising. The rest of the world is far more liberal than we are on most things so they would prefer any liberal. Not only that, but Obama has built-in name recognition and happens to have made history with his election into office. </div>
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One of the other "agree" or "disagree" statements I wrote was "Takeshima should be given back to Japan." Takeshima is the Japanese name for Dokdo, a group of rocky islands off the coast of Korea. Korea has been occupying them for years despite Japan claiming ownership. Dokdo is a huge source of nationalism for Korea. People have t-shirts printed up saying "Dokdo is ours." In case you don't know, Japan and Korea have a lot of bad blood between them, mostly because of the atrocities committed by Japan upon Korea during World War II and several previous wars. Koreans think of Dokdo as a slap in the face after their bad history and a lack of apology from the Japanese government. Of course, with all things political, it has to do with money too. There is a huge deposit of natural gas under those rocks.<br />
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Now, getting back to the statement on the survey. The first class just quietly disagreed with it. No one got really upset. We talked a little bit about how some issues like these are not liberal or conservative but vary greatly by geography instead. Americans wouldn't really care, but Koreans and Japanese would have solid, opposing answers. The next class had to clarify first to make sure I was serious. They wanted to make sure I knew that no Korean would EVER agree to this. I told them it was a joke, meant to show bias. They laughed it off, disagreed, and moved on. In the third class, one of the brighter, quicker students asked right away where I got this survey and if it was from Japan. There was an outcry from the class. Many students refused to even answer the question because of its blatant bias. One student whited out Takeshima and wrote Dokdo in Korean over the top and then put a huge circle around "Disagree." I had to spend a few minutes settling everyone down, but I think it was a worthwhile experiment. Now I know a little bit more about the boundaries with this political issue.<br />
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This week I took the information from their surveys and formed them into politcal parties. Each class will have six candidates for president. They will have real political issues to debate and topics to choose as their primary focus. This is definitely an experiment for me. Next week we will be writing speeches for the debate. I can already tell we are off to a good start. It will be great to see what they come up with for the finished product.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-2798758183881916372012-10-22T09:14:00.003-07:002012-10-22T09:14:28.325-07:00Chuseok and China: Part 2So as I said entirely too long ago, I ended up going to Chuseok dinner with the Chinese teachers. The Chinese teachers I work with are part of a large education program sponsored by the Chinese government. This means that unlike the English teachers, the Chinese teachers are not paid by Korea. China pays them and other than giving them a place to stay, Korea pays nothing.<br />
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This system didn't make any sense the first time it was explained to me, but there are two reasons for China to sponsor such a program. Firstly, it is part of their teacher education program. Our teachers are undergoing their practicum. In fact, currently they are quite stressed out about writing their final papers. I tell them I would offer to help if I knew Chinese but I think that joke is getting stale. The other reason the Chinese government pays them is to spread culture. China has been around a long time and understands the multiple powers of cultural spread. It helps with understanding, trade and peace talks. It also helps with the long game. If you can get another people to think like you or speak your language, it becomes easier to influence them. It may not be surprising then that this program has been met with <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/confucius-says-schools-in-but-dont-mention-democracy-20110219-1b09x.html">suspicion</a> by various governments, including the United States.<br />
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Now, I can't speak for the program as a whole and I don't know what happens in their classrooms at our school, but I highly doubt our Chinese teachers are involved in any conspiratorial plot to whitewash Tienanmen Square or anything else like that. The two Chinese girls are super friendly and cute, and with the exception of this recent crunch time, constantly laughing. One is a Party member, but I get the idea it is kind of like joining a frat or a lodge in the States. It is something you do to make connections. That being said, I typically avoid politics with them, mostly because we would be on unequal ground since I don't know more than a word or two in Chinese and they know just enough English. It wouldn't be fair or productive. Nonetheless we have talked history before. Genghis Khan (whom they have a different name for) is a hero.<br />
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China has been enormously influential on Korean culture. It's all about the long game. I don't know much of the history, but from what I understand Japan has been brutal to Korea and other nations during every invasion. Each time they invaded Korea, their culture never stuck. Koreans consciously rebelled against their oppressors. Meanwhile, China has also invaded before. Their culture has stuck because they used a softer touch. Now, to get back to Chuseok in a roundabout sort of way, it just so happens to fall on the same day China celebrates their similar Thanksgiving feast. I doubt this is any sort of coincidence.<br />
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We met the Chinese teachers at the Confucius Institute on the Incheon University campus. The rest of their classmates are teaching and living at the university. Everyone was very friendly. Almost immediately they got to work. I think this was around 1 pm. Since we didn't have a whole lot to do being ignorant guests, we strolled around campus for a while. There was a building with a built-in rock climbing wall. I also got my picture on top of a lion.<br />
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After we got back we found some things to do. Mostly, we learned to make dumplings. I was awful at it, but I made a few. Cooking is truly an art and I was surrounded by artists.<br />
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Just look at what they produced! I had never seen a Thanksgiving dinner like this before.<br />
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I think it was almost 6pm by the time that we actually started eating. It had been a long day of preparation. The food was delicious and there was entirely too much of it, just like any great Thanksgiving. The company was great as well, even if I didn't know most of what was being said.<br />
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At some point after dinner, the singing began. One of the girls was nominated to sing. She sang a few verses, and then it was my turn. I sang some "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show and the they clapped along and soon it was someone else's turn. Each person at the table had to take a turn. Most were really beautiful in one way or another. Some seemed to sing newer hits and some more traditional, older songs. Others, nursery rhymes. We had "Puff, the Magic Dragon" and a South African song as well from the non-Chinese crew. One gentleman did this great spoken word song/poem, but perhaps I liked it so much because he was raising his glass so I knew it was a drinking toast.<br />
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Afterwards we played a couple games. We played a Chinese version of <a href="http://peterinsouthkorea.blogspot.kr/2010/07/korean-drinking-games.html">Sam-Yook-Ku</a> (3-6-9). This was a number game that I had only recently learned in English and involved counting and clapping on numbers that end in 3, 6, or 9. Simple, but easy to mess up. The penalty for screwing up was that you had to eat a piece of the ice cream cake in the table center. Most often the penalty is getting flicked in the ear or finger slapped on the wrist or some other token physical harm so this was a welcome change of pace. We also played a game in Chinese that translated in English essentially to "Double-O Seven Bang!" We are in a circle. One player says "0" and chooses another player. Then that player says "0" and chooses someone else. The third person says "7" and picks someone. The next points his finger at someone in the circle and says "Bang!" The person he shot has to say "Ahh!" but not move. The players adjacent to him raise their hands up in the air like they were shot and falling over. Whoever screws up loses. It then repeats. It's just a silly game that gets people laughing.<br />
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After the games, we started cleanup. It didn't take long with everybody helping, especially since this was an area where I knew what I was doing. We all thanked them for their tremendous hospitality, said our goodbyes, and took the bus ride home. And full of food, I slept like a rock that night.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-10797912548721790612012-10-04T00:00:00.000-07:002012-10-06T08:40:35.811-07:00American Food and Chuseok: Part 1For some sort of project, I was asked by a teacher a few days ago to identify America's "traditional" food. For instance, China, despite being a nation with many regional differences, has Peking duck as their official food. I had no idea what to say. My first thought was hamburgers and pizza, both of which are not really American but in my opinion "perfected" by America. Nachos came to mind. I thought they were invented in a Texas bar, but according to Wikipedia it was a restaurant just across the border in Mexico. Apple pie seems like an obvious choice but it turns out the phrase "American as apple pie" really started as an <a href="http://mainstreetzoo.com/2011/06/29/the-un-american-origin-of-apple-pie/">ad campaign</a>. Apple pie has been around for ages and we don't even produce the most apples, China does. One website that listed American foods listed the American style chinese food. Innovative, but too culturally specific, and nothing to be proud of either. Philly cheese steak, pasties, gumbo? All too regional. I was at a loss.<br />
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Then it occurred to me: Chuseo<span style="font-family: inherit;">k, or Korean Thanksgiving, was this weekend. Thanksgiving! That's it! American Thanksgiving is celebrated almost exclusively by eating turkey, an exclusively American bird on an exclusively American holiday. </span>By the way, a teacher told me that in Korean, the turkey is called <i>chilmyeonjo </i>(칠면조 ), which translates literally as "seven-faced bird". Wikipedia says "This is said to reflect the ability of the bird, particularly the male, to change the form of its face depending on its mood." I seem to remember the teacher giving me another explanation, but I cannot remember what it was.<br />
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Researching food in the office lead me to show one of the Chinese teachers what American Chinese food is like. She was horrified. I showed her a video of a large Chinese buffet on YouTube. I told her this was one of the better buffets. Also, I love how every Chinese buffet has awful looking pizza that is apparently there only to punish picky eaters. I had some difficulty describing fortune cookies as well.<br />
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As I said, Chuseok was this weekend. Since I didn't have any plans, the Chinese teachers invited us to their Thanksgiving dinner to have authentic homemade Chinese food. It turns out China and Korea celebrate on the same day. However, I'm going to save the dinner for a different post. Right now I would like to focus again just on the Chuseok holiday.<br />
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Chuseok is a pretty big deal in Korea. We get Saturday through Wednesday off from work, with the actual dinner held on Sunday. Chuseok I was told is a celebration of the full moon being its largest, but I am not sure that is entirely true. Either way, it is the beginning of Fall and a harvest feast. I was not told of any legend or story about the founding of their holiday like we have, but there are plenty of ancient traditions. Generally families go back to their parents' house to eat and often spend the night. Many families will pray to their ancestors to show respect and give thanks on this day. Christian Koreans do not typically do this. A Korean teacher friend offered to serve us <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songpyeon">songpyeon</a>, the traditional holiday rice cake as well, but unfortunately she did not have time. For further information, check out this <a href="http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_6.jsp?cid=811650">website</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFYXEtuGZDlY3ca4z2loncjuXWya10U58BF5DnusL5pevpCdO926GoZM8VI5fDP9Y4Pt-B7P-bY4X5_TfZ7Pj5PtDsExHkfSnFcRFzjqMvHLd7ZfuzaADYAaMiml9JdFl8pBCbTvGekaM/s1600/2012-09-27+21.56.46.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFYXEtuGZDlY3ca4z2loncjuXWya10U58BF5DnusL5pevpCdO926GoZM8VI5fDP9Y4Pt-B7P-bY4X5_TfZ7Pj5PtDsExHkfSnFcRFzjqMvHLd7ZfuzaADYAaMiml9JdFl8pBCbTvGekaM/s320/2012-09-27+21.56.46.jpg" width="320" /></a>We recently talked in class about the word "oblivious." As an example, I told the students that I was rather oblivious to Chuseok for a while. One day, I walked into HomePlus to find that the grocery aisle was filled with gift boxes of various kinds. There were shampoos, mixed nuts, fruits, wines, and Spam to name a few examples. These boxes were all rather pricey. I learned that this all had to do with Chuseok tradition. For the most part, these boxes were given by employers to their employees. However, children give their parents these as well. One teacher told me it is common to just re-gift the box that your employer gave you to your parents.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxsWWCV1GTHyx3-PD9EeRPKtOc3dUMKt0ujjN7FGEG29GfgT2yhpncxgQl5TuwagkUZG-17oSTU2qgl7iGA-0f4L_udrWWHQOuQGC797HUJo4RkTKzAz5ZgGPeSYW4spqi5cv-HixAPC8/s1600/2012-09-27+22.04.21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxsWWCV1GTHyx3-PD9EeRPKtOc3dUMKt0ujjN7FGEG29GfgT2yhpncxgQl5TuwagkUZG-17oSTU2qgl7iGA-0f4L_udrWWHQOuQGC797HUJo4RkTKzAz5ZgGPeSYW4spqi5cv-HixAPC8/s320/2012-09-27+22.04.21.jpg" width="320" /></a>Of all the gift boxes, Spam seemed to be the most common. I asked the students about these. Most of them loved Spam and laughed when I brought up the amount of Spam in the store for the holiday. In one class it occurred to me that they didn't know Spam was American! Spam was such a staple in Korea and so associated with Chuseok that this was quite surprising to them. To be fair, I told them I didn't know Samsung was Korean until I got here.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEQ8_VgGH2uwLKPJiA-6GttfWf-QviUzPy4k2qHx786D_c2B8R_PTeBJq9ncekCP9TEq1NNtu1m9CSrfVMo86bMRreL98_3caxSgky1Cq9XV02uRehcW4k7Sd5dW4cMcWGdCgTFQS3osw/s1600/2012-09-27+22.04.09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEQ8_VgGH2uwLKPJiA-6GttfWf-QviUzPy4k2qHx786D_c2B8R_PTeBJq9ncekCP9TEq1NNtu1m9CSrfVMo86bMRreL98_3caxSgky1Cq9XV02uRehcW4k7Sd5dW4cMcWGdCgTFQS3osw/s320/2012-09-27+22.04.09.jpg" width="320" /></a>This lead to an interesting discussion. We talked about how Spam is American but Americans by and large don't like Spam. Most of us, myself an exception, find it disgusting and either hate the taste or refuse to even try it. They found this pretty funny. I told them about the <a href="http://www.spam.com/spam-101/the-spam-museum">Spam Museum</a> in Minnesota, how there is a lady that walks around giving out free samples.<br />
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I am guessing Spam's success in Asia has a lot to do with the American military presence after World War II. For instance, Korea has a food called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budae_jjigae">Army soup</a> that includes Spam and a lot of cheap, delicious ingredients that were available during the Korean War. It is still popular today, but I have not had the chance to try it yet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB9aIKz58_Bvv9y_K2b1zxUUIZSAGoB5bcMhiUfbjNMoeV1qPwWZR6LCkwMLWjXFFjIIXSVu_UOUpmn9ig8qOEHkLqQMMAVi-s3EJ7_8Lo2VnO7oIW7dRsujuflcmX1BKnBi8HDyFgZJQ/s1600/2012-09-28+13.51.06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB9aIKz58_Bvv9y_K2b1zxUUIZSAGoB5bcMhiUfbjNMoeV1qPwWZR6LCkwMLWjXFFjIIXSVu_UOUpmn9ig8qOEHkLqQMMAVi-s3EJ7_8Lo2VnO7oIW7dRsujuflcmX1BKnBi8HDyFgZJQ/s320/2012-09-28+13.51.06.jpg" width="320" /></a>One last thing for now about American food. My mom sent me cookies and root beer a while ago. She sent root beer because for some reason root beer is not popular in many places around the world, including Korea. After having so many cultural experiences here, I felt obligated to give back and expose my co-workers to root beer. I decided to buy some ice cream and make root beer floats the Friday before Chuseok. The reactions to root beer were interesting. Many were initially nervous because of the word "beer" and wondered why I brought alcohol to school. One thought it tasted kind of like Dr. Pepper. My head teacher was disappointed no one introduced root beer to her when she was in the United States for college. Some felt it tasted an awful lot like a Chinese traditional cold medicine, which is interesting considering root beer's history as a medicine. Most of them really enjoyed it I think, but one of the Chinese teachers did describe it as "not so bad." I'm guessing she really associated it strongly with medicine flavor. Either way, it was a great time. The principal and vice principal even came up to give it a try.<br />
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THANKS MOM!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-29596860415070809932012-10-02T09:34:00.001-07:002012-10-03T09:16:22.542-07:00Learning the LanguageI have not posted in a while and it is actually only recently that several different small topics for writing have emerged. For this first short post, I would like to focus on learning the language.<br />
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For the past several months I have not read much at all in Korean. I was not taking language learning seriously. Once I learned the absolute, most basic phrases and numbers I mostly stopped. Only recently have I started to make an effort outside of picking up words here and there. I think I started again because it sank in that I am going to be here for a while. </div>
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Not knowing how to read takes me way back to when I was young. I have that same lost feeling I had as a child, guessing at what things could mean, making up my own sort of folk language and names for things because I didn't know how to read. For example, when I was young I remember seeing an advertisement for Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I knew what 2 meant, but could read nothing else. I remembered the first game only had one "kitty" on it, but now the second game had two "kitties" on it, and I recall thinking that must be why the 2 was in the title. My first few weeks here I did something similar; I started renaming local streets after landmarks so that I could memorize directions better. I hate feeling so lost, especially when I can do something about it.</div>
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I joined a language exchange in Bupyeong called "Culcom." Foreigners can join for free and pair with a Korean, typically a college student. It has been a great way to meet cool Koreans and I have been to the baseball game and the city park so far with friends I have made from this organization. Partners meet twice a week for two hours each time. One hour is for learning English and the other for Korean. I recently had to switch partners because she got busy with a graphic design project, but I was supposed to teach her verb phrases and idioms, while she started teaching me the basics of reading and vocabulary. I now know most of the alphabet. It takes me a long time to read Korean, but I can do it. Each Korean character still feels like three characters to me. I will show a picture from Homeplus grocery store to explain. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5rq_vfky3bsJk2G9gB-EhZ-kjGU7QqVQkdLn9I6LrbIrk-Hzj7GbA7BFgSzEShM-wOOz42wPuDnUFAMx_gi_-LcSWtOpC5-22TsNKraHetsfHyoAFBcIR0ZBc-e7Q5nW4RgnP9U6xHB8/s1600/2012-09-27+21.59.05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5rq_vfky3bsJk2G9gB-EhZ-kjGU7QqVQkdLn9I6LrbIrk-Hzj7GbA7BFgSzEShM-wOOz42wPuDnUFAMx_gi_-LcSWtOpC5-22TsNKraHetsfHyoAFBcIR0ZBc-e7Q5nW4RgnP9U6xHB8/s640/2012-09-27+21.59.05.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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You can see above how each character of hangul is three pieces. The Lotte off-brand, it turns out, spells "luncheon meat." Each character reads from left to right and then top to bottom. This is a fairly basic example. I'm really just starting, but it's interesting how many things, especially American products, are actually in English. By the way, Spam is fairly expensive in Korea, over 4,000 won ($4) a can. (More on Spam later)</div>
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I think you can see how this language can be slow for reading until you start internalizing each character combination. However, I was looking for a restaurant with a friend from the U.K. the other night who has been here a few years and he noticed the hangul restaurant sign before the English!</div>
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I have also had some difficulty with pronunciation. I have lot of trouble with the "s" sounding character. There are actually different "s" sounds. One is supposed to be soft and the other hard. I can't articulate the difference yet. My last couple meetings I probably spent about fifteen minutes with my partner literally like this:</div>
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Me: Sa</div>
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Her: No, sa.</div>
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Me: Sa.</div>
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Her: Sa.</div>
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Me: Saa?</div>
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Her: Saa.</div>
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Me: Sa.</div>
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Her: No, sa.</div>
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Me: Sa.</div>
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Her: Yes, that's right. Sa.</div>
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Me: Sa.</div>
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Her: No, sa. Say it like you said it last time.</div>
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The same happened for the "ga" and "ka" sound. There is actually a consonant in Korean that seems to exist somewhere between the two and I haven't quite got the hang of that yet.</div>
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One of the greatest boons so far to learning hangul has been my ability to read the class roster. I know, it's ridiculous and sad, but I do not know all of my students' names. I am embarrassed. It's great to finally be able to work at memorizing names. I have an app now to help me do that. It has been good practice for reading and for learning names. And the students really do appreciate it, even though I know they find it frustrating. For instance, one class, after I struggled with a few names, suggested that I give up and use their English names instead. I refused. They cheered! I really think knowing names is crucial in so many ways, I just wish my actions better reflected my beliefs. That being said, I have made a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks. I have told my students to harass me about it. Ask me what their name is outside of class. Get a little impatient. This has helped so far. Last time a student asked me their name I said, "Let me guess, it has two syllables right?"</div>
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This whole experience has given me quite a bit of humility. I understand from experience things like when they pronounce a word like "zoo" as "joo." Some have difficulty telling the difference between "r" and "l" because often there is no difference in Korean. Learning hangul has given me a little bit more insight into their pronunciations issues as well as my own.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-14358534801099120832012-09-14T00:00:00.000-07:002012-10-07T08:02:21.436-07:00The Most Beautiful Words in EnglishSaturday for the gifted program we taught "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by E.E. Cummings. The focus for the day was more on sound than sense. My hope was to show how sometimes the sound of poetry can be enough on its own. The poem, despite being composed of simple words, is hard to understand. I picked it with the hope that we could focus more on sound than meaning. It didn't work out that way exactly, but we still had a good time and I think the class was less focused on learning one interpretation and was more open for the possibility of multiple responses.<br />
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Anyway, the opening activity was to write your favorite sounding English word on the board. Once everyone had their words up, I had them choose two words and write a two line nonsense rhyme, just focusing on sound and not meaning. They struggle with rhyming, and making a nonsense rhyme was harder than I expected for them. However, I thought I would share the incredible list of words generated. Each class added their words to the board, so the last class had more words to choose from. Below is a picture of the blackboard after the last class.<br />
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<b>Our List of Beautiful Words in English</b></div>
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Able<o:p></o:p></div>
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Appreciate<o:p></o:p></div>
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Brilliant<o:p></o:p></div>
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Castor<o:p></o:p></div>
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Chandelier<o:p></o:p></div>
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Chocolate<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cool<o:p></o:p></div>
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Creative<o:p></o:p></div>
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Criteria<o:p></o:p></div>
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Destiny<o:p></o:p></div>
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Direction<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dream<o:p></o:p></div>
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Enthusiastic<o:p></o:p></div>
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Expectation<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fantastic<o:p></o:p></div>
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Favorite<o:p></o:p></div>
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Food <o:p></o:p></div>
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Fortune<o:p></o:p></div>
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Korea<o:p></o:p></div>
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Phone<o:p></o:p></div>
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Pizza<o:p></o:p></div>
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Salary<o:p></o:p></div>
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Secret<o:p></o:p></div>
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Shangri-La<o:p></o:p></div>
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Shawty <o:p></o:p></div>
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Silhouette<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sleep<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sunshine<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sunshower <o:p></o:p></div>
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Television<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is clear to me that the students also chose based on beauty of meaning since most of these words are positive. One student at first chose "cigarette" but then changed her mind. I encouraged her to stick with it; even if they aren't pretty, the word has a great sound. If you can look at the board you will see a few words, like chocolate, were chose more than once. I love the word sunshower, partly for sound, but also because of the imagery. The students were startled that I didn't know "shawty." They told me it was used in rap to mean "cute." The <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shawty">definition</a> I found was a little bit different. It's slang for "shorty" and according to what I <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2007-08-05-shawty_N.htm">read</a> it originated in Atlanta and has been common in rap for some time now. Hey, I never claimed to know everything about English, let alone rap. I am not sure how serious some of my students were in their choices, but overall it was an interesting experiment. My co-teacher felt his class did not take the warm-up as seriously. According to one student, the most beautiful word in the English language is "chicken-man."</div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-14385932654329752742012-09-10T02:34:00.001-07:002012-09-10T04:55:52.564-07:00Gangnam StyleFrom what I understand, most Americans and every Korean now knows of Gangnam Style. If you do not, stop reading and please watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0">this</a>:<br />
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I realize most everything that needs to be said about this song was said in the last several weeks and that I am already behind the trend in my comments, but I thought I would at least share with everybody my experiences. My first exposure to this song came from our "school DJ." One of the Korea teachers sends out .mp3 files or videos through the in-school messenger to all of the faculty maybe once or twice a week. Sometimes, it's some slow, Korean crooner. Other times it's straight K-pop, and from time to time he will play American music too. For instance, I told some teachers about the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue" and they told me to put in a request. About a week later he sent around a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcQKtl3MGCE">video</a> of Cash playing live at San Quentin prison.<br />
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About a month ago I received the video of Gangnam Style by Psy. He also sent a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcLNteez3c4&feature=relmfu">cover</a> by another artist named Hyuna. I watched Hyuna's version first and just about dismissed it as another piece of boring K-Pop, but then I switched over to the original. I was hooked from the start. It's clear to me Psy is a really funny, talented guy. It almost reminds me of an Eminem video. It wasn't until a few days later that I found out this song was huge not only in Korea but also had made its way to the States. I find it interesting that Americans can appreciate the song on its own merit and not just because it is hyped right now. I can honestly say it is the first piece of Korean music that I have truly enjoyed.<br />
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There has been a lot of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/gangnam-style-dissected-the-subversive-message-within-south-koreas-music-video-sensation/261462/">talk</a> about the subversive nature of the video. I don't know anything about that, and I don't think that has much to do with its success. The video is funny on its own and Psy carries himself with the kind of confidence fans love from their musicians. The song is catchy, and the dance is funny. From what I have <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/08/28/gangnam-style-viral-popularity-in-u-s-has-koreans-puzzled-gratified/">read</a>, Koreans are a bit surprised by his success and aren't quite sure why he is getting attention now. His act isn't new. For me, what stands out about Psy is that he seems original. Without knowing the lyrics, he seems like he is doing what he wants and is not being pushed by some executive. A friend told me a little about his life. Psy grew up rich as the heir to a huge Korean business. He told his father he was going to study Economics in America. As soon as he got there he changed his major to music.<br />
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I watched a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_GkHMlbYVs&feature=g-all-u">video</a> from one of my favorite Korea video bloggers today about his thoughts on Psy's recent success. He is just as surprised as the rest of the Korea, but he is also quick to point out that this may be a turning point for Korean music. We could either get more acts that try to emulate Psy's style in order to make it big, or we could get acts that follow in his footsteps by being original, and by being themselves.<br />
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There have been many subsequent parodies and copycats of Gangnam Style. I wish I could show you the one some our students did, but it was made as a birthday present and I was not allowed to make a copy. However, there are plenty of them on YouTube. My favorite is probably <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDpgzn7KuzE">this one</a> simply because of its strangeness:<br />
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There is also an incredible mashup <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqHIkPzl0I0&feature=player_embedded">video</a> that came out a few days ago, which combines it with Party Rock Anthem among others.<br />
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Lastly, on an unrelated note, the weather has been fantastic here. As soon as September hit, the temperature dropped to a perfect degree. It will not last long. Every day I feel like shouting from the rooftops to everyone how wonderful the weather is. I am like a doomsday prophet. I want to shake people in the street and tell them to seize their chance now. It has just begun, but I feel the end is nigh.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-18189900628959459732012-09-02T06:17:00.001-07:002012-09-02T06:33:51.299-07:00Neil Armstrong (Top Ten Ways to Travel to the Moon)Tonight I am in a similar situation as I was last Sunday night, working on planning a lesson for my 2nd grade speaking and listening classes. These were the same classes that read "Animal Farm" last semester. This semester I am sort of making it up as I go a little bit because the textbook seems far too easy. Last week I was planning to introduce some DNA science before doing the strawberry DNA experiment again from summer camp, but instead I found myself distracted by the news from back home.<br />
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Last weekend I was compelled to read everything I could about the late Neil Armstrong. His recent death had an impact on me and I was surprised by just how much I took it to heart. Neil Armstrong was sort of a hero of mine. He was someone that I wanted to be when I grew up, but who wouldn't? My pet angel fish was named Neil Armstrong. I am not sure why, but I guess it was the first thing I ever had a say in naming and that is what I went with. When I think of Neil Armstrong, I think not just of the moon but of achieving the impossible and of togetherness. The more you research the more you find out just how much could have gone wrong but didn't. They were lucky as well as extremely talented. Something grand was touched the day his foot landed on the moon, something previously impossible. The plaque they planted on the moon read "<i>HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.</i>" I imagine the entire world up in the lunar sky, just a marble, silent to the astronauts. Meanwhile, one fifth of the world watched or listened to their story unfold hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. The world was together in that moment and I like to think that maybe while Neil was looking back at the Earth and could not distinguish the borders of nations, those on the ground felt the borders lift away too. I realize I get rather nostalgic for a time that was not my own and even a bit saccharine considering the geo-political motivation behind the space race, but I do think there is a powerful lesson to be learned from the moon landing.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.818181037902832px;">The moon landing became my new lesson for the week. I started by showing the students a picture of Neil Armstrong in civilian clothing and asking who he was. To my surprise, at least one student in every single class was able to guess it was him, likely because of the news coverage. One student in my last class claimed it was a picture of me when I was young. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">We went over the infamous missing "a" in Armstrong's "One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." I thought this was relevant considering how difficult it is in English to know when to say <i>a</i>, <i>the</i>, or nothing at all.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.818181037902832px;">We talked about the significance of the moon landing. One class definitely felt it was more of an American thing and not something for the whole world, and they have a right to their opinion. Thankfully I only received one question on whether or not the moon landing was faked. I told her it wasn't, encouraged her to do her own research and make up her mind, and then gave two or three reasons it was not faked. I have to admit, with lessons like these I find myself getting a little starry eyed and I worry I might come off as propagandizing, especially when I get resistance to my own thoughts.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.818181037902832px;">The activity for the day was to form a group and create a presentation on how they would get to the moon. I showed some examples including a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unparalleled_Adventure_of_One_Hans_Pfaall">balloon flight</a> written by Edgar Allen Poe, the famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon">bullet ship</a> from Jules Verne, and a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Moone">strange story</a> from 1638 in which a man tethers himself to a flock of magic geese that fly him to the moon. I told them they could make their idea serious or outlandish. Most of them went for outlandish. I had planned to end the day with a quick video of how they actually went to the moon, but the presentations always ran until the end. So, without further words, let me present the top ten ways of traveling to the moon.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.818181037902832px;">10. </span><span style="line-height: 15.78787899017334px;">We get a really big trampoline. I wear a jet-pack and jump on the trampoline. I bounce off the trampoline and then use the jet-pack to fly the rest of the way.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.818181037902832px;">9. One of us is Hulk. He throws the one of us that is Iron Man into the sky. Then, Thor strikes us with lightning and we use our jet boosters from the Iron Man suit to take us the rest of the way.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.818181037902832px;">8. There is a long tunnel built from the moon to the Earth. Couples travel through this tunnel in pods built for two, being pulled by suction from a vacuum that is placed on the moon. The journey takes sixty years so the two people better love each other very much.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.818181037902832px;">7. Everyone knows that cancer grows without stopping, so we take a man with cancer and... (the audience gasps in horror) ... I mean we take a flask of cancerous cells and grow them. It will take a very long time but eventually we will have a ladder to the moon we can climb.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">6. We use a shrinking ray like the one from Willy Wonka and shrink ourselves to the size of radio waves and then we ride the waves to the moon.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">5. Remember when we read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other_Stories">Yertle the Turtle</a>? (the audience sees where this is going and bursts into laughter) The average human is about 20 cm tall lying down so by our calculations it will only take 1/5 of the world population to make it to the moon. This means we will have plenty of people so no need to employ pregnant women. There will be a long tube feeding oxygen to each human in the stack.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">4. We jump from cloud to cloud and upon entering space walk upon the backs of birds (This is a reference to <a href="http://everything.explained.at/Chilseok/">some Korean folk tale</a> about forbidden love).</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">3. </span><span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">We eat a lot of sweet potatoes. Then we go out into the middle of Typhoon Bolaven and wait for the wind to pick us up. Once we are blown to the top of the storm, we release our gas and fart our way through the upper atmosphere and over to the moon.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">2. There is a massive cannon like the Jules Verne story. Out of it shoots a tank. We ride inside the tank and continue to rain down shells upon the surface of the Earth in order to propel ourselves further and adjust for direction on our journey to the moon.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 15.803030014038086px;">1. Two girls pray to Mother Mary, "Mother Mary, please allow us to go to the moon." Mother Mary has a conversation with Jesus. "Jesus, you are my son and since I am your mother you should do what I say. Could you please help these girls get to the moon?" Jesus replies, "Sure, I will play a game." He then takes a cosmic pool stick, lines up his shot and smashes the Earth into the moon. The two bodies connect and the two girls are able to walk over to the lunar surface.</span></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-32501784754815497872012-09-01T11:55:00.001-07:002012-09-01T11:55:38.686-07:00From Lunch to BaseballLast night was my first "Burning Friday" in a while. I am not sure how you say the expression in Korean, but "Burning Friday" is an expression similar to TGIF. It just means tonight we are going to be partying out late to celebrate the weekend. When I first heard it I thought it was some special holiday event, or I imagined my students out on the beach burning some sort of wicker man. I played ping-pong and went to a noraebong with friends from work and a few others. Korea has ping-pong rooms you can go to and rent a table to play. Some of the players there were intense. The noraebong, for those who don't know, is like karaoke, except instead of a whole bar full of strangers each group of friends occupies a small room with their own TV and music machine. We paid for an hour of music, but since the place was nearly empty we were upgraded to a larger room and got an extra hour for free, or "service" as the Koreans say. It was nice to go with a group that wasn't too shy about singing, and could actually sing pretty well too. I also learned that singing "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyhrYis509A">Barbie Girl</a>" by Aqua as a duet can be kind of uncomfortable and awkward given the innuendo.<div>
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This morning I woke up late and headed over to Han's Deli for lunch. Immediately some students were giving me some looks which made me wonder if they knew me or if they were just curious as usual. About the time I got my spaghetti and my bulgogi/bread/cheese dish, an older gentleman approached me to say hello. He told me that he just got back from the United States with the three boys that were sitting in the booth in front of me. They had gone on a three week tour up and down the east coast seeing Washington DC, Boston, Niagara, and New York among other places. They wanted to talk to me but were too shy. He stood there for a while and talked to me while I smiled and answered his questions a little nervously. I met the kids and shook their hands. They sat down with me at my booth while I finished my spaghetti and questioned the kids about Washington DC. Turns out the gentleman was a Methodist pastor from America, and had started a new church in NonHyeon just this year. He asked me if I liked baseball. I told him I did. After a short conversation in Korean with the boys he invited me to the Wyvern game today. The SK Wyverns I am told are one of nine teams in Korea. SK is the phone company that owns them, they are actually situated in Incheon. Today they were playing against the Doosan Bears of Seoul (formerly OB Bears), one of their big rivals. Having no plans for the day, I eagerly accepted the offer.</div>
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Pastor David told me a bit of his life story. He was born and raised in Incheon but finished his last year of high school in New Jersey. After trying out college and failing because of his English skill he joined the Army and became a chaplain. He retired from the military and recently decided to leave for Korea. His daughter, who had taught in Korea, told him to make friends with as many foreigners as he could because so often she was alone on the weekends with little do. For this reason, he had decided on a whim to ask me to the game today. It turns out his church is full of connections. The father of one of the boys he was with works the ticket booth at the stadium so we were able to get behind home plate tickets for free.</div>
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The stadium was not huge, but the enthusiasm of the crowd was. Each team had a robust cheering section. The Wyvern fans waved inflatable red sticks and the Bears had sticks of white on the opposite side. As David put it, in America, sure, everyone cheers. But in Korea, everyone cheers together. There is nothing like seeing an entire half of a stadium chanting the same song and waving their inflatables in sync with the music and each other. Most of the chants were new for me, but they had quite a few of our classics. "Charge!" was simply changed to "Go!" for instance. One glaring omission, sadly, was "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." I thought for sure every baseball nation on the planet had that one translated. Both teams have a group of female cheerleaders who are lead by one male in a team uniform. Each side only chants when they are at bat. They take turns, but at this game the Wyvern fans did "she" ("shh" in English) the other fans and boo only once.</div>
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The game was solid. We missed the first few innings and by the time we arrived the Wyverns were down 1 to 3. We had a long dry stretch with no runs on either side, but David made it interesting with his commentary. He told me one of the players, Dave Bush, was traded from Milwaukee to the Wyverns. The Bears had an American too. The highlight was probably the pitcher for the Wyverns. He was part of the Olympic team and I was told he was a real star. </div>
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At the fifth inning stretch I wandered around the stadium and grabbed a beer. Beer was reasonably priced, and so were snacks. This was probably because they allow people to bring snacks from outside and need to remain competitive. I couldn't help but notice there were by and large no vendors hawking hot dogs or beer up and down the steps. Perhaps it has to do with the expense. Items in the team store still had a huge markup (26,000 won for a ballcap? I don't think so).</div>
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In the bottom of the eighth things really picked up. The Wyverns gained the lead with three runs. Unfortunately, a single home run in the ninth inning was enough from the Bears to tie the game and have it continue into overtime. They ended up going up through twelve innings before finally calling it a tie.</div>
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We stayed for the fireworks after the game to avoid the crowd and I am glad we did because they opened with Star Wars. But right as the fireworks went up, rain started to pour down. We were drenched by the time we got back to the car. David drove us to get a quick little dinner and I sampled some food he thought I should try. He again invited me to come to his church the next day, not as a Christian, but as a human who needs to meet more people in Korea. He felt that I needed to meet Koreans outside of the school to see how "real" Koreans live. I wondered how my Korean teacher friends would feel about that characterization, but I do understand what he meant. To understand Korea, I need to break away from that bubble and meet people from all walks of life. I accepted the offer.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-58003634201059777332012-08-29T09:56:00.003-07:002012-08-29T09:56:37.943-07:00Model U.N.Well, it has been over a month since I have posted, partly out of laziness, partly out of not being inspired to write. Sure, I have had many adventures to write about, but most of them would have ended up in a dispassionate format like "I did this, and then I did this, and then I went here and did this, oh but before that I did this too..." so I have abstained from writing. I suppose I might jump back to them later. For the record, after summer camp I had a week of summer break spent searching for good micro-brews, randomly traveling the subways, and sleeping. The highlight was probably visiting the Coex mall, specifically the Coex Aquarium. I highly recommend it. Besides that, I had two weeks of summer classes and then a few days off here and there to travel to Jeju with my girlfriend. Jeju was excellent, but almost anything I could say about it is likely to have been said somewhere else on the internet. We also visited the DMZ and Seoul. Now she is gone, and I have been at work for nearly two weeks since. We had Typhoon Bolaven, but North Korea got the brunt of it from what I understand. We had some rain and very heavy wind, but I didn't have to change clothes like I was told I would.<div>
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I have just walked home from Model United Nations tonight. A walk home listening to music generally leaves me sweaty but energized, so I will explain some of my experiences with Model U.N. so far. When I was first asked to work with the Model U.N., I thought I was going to be coaching. I was very nervous, until I found out I was only to be a helper. The topic this year is biodiversity, and since one of my majors is Biology, my head teacher wanted me as an advisor. The students went to a Model U.N. summit at a college while I was coming home from Jeju, so I missed their explanation of the topic.</div>
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Regardless, last week I attended my first meeting. I was to judge the opening statements of each country and rank the top three. The head teacher told me to be critical and ask them tough questions to find out who is the most prepared because she suspected that most of the students would have similar, generic speeches. She was mostly right, and so I was mostly critical. I found myself scowling unconsciously throughout the whole meeting, probing them to find the breadth of their knowledge. I asked one speaker from a poorer nation what her nation had to offer in exchange for U.N. funding for conservation efforts. No response. I asked the delegate from Japan, who said she was committed to preserving the environment and biodiversity, how Japan's whaling industry fit into their plan for protecting the environment. She suddenly transformed into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww">Miss South Carolina</a>. I felt a bit like Simon Cowell and I wasn't sure how to feel about that. The head teacher was even more critical, however. The point of this meeting was in a large part to prove to them that they need to do their homework before the meeting. They need to know their stuff. At the end, I was asked to give comments and suggestions on how they could all improve.</div>
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Afterwards, the head teacher told the audience that I would now field any questions about biology or biodiversity they may have. I was taken off guard. I had completely forgotten I was supposed to answer questions. The shoe was on the other foot. Fortunately, it turns out my college education had served me well. I was able to answer all types of questions off the cuff about GMOs, biotechnology, artificial selection, and invasive species. I was on fire. However, they kept referring to something called "genetic resources" and asking how a nation can protect against theft of their unique organisms or leverage them to their benefit.</div>
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I was immediately hostile to this concept. The idea of a nation or business owning rights to a plant or animal species is kind of asinine in my opinion. Life is constantly evolving, so at what point does your ownership become void? Apples originated in Kazakhstan, does that mean all apple eating nations owe the Kazakhs some sort of royalty? Life doesn't see the borders we do and would not abide by them. Just because a nation claims a resource as their own does not mean an organism cannot wander across a border. Does this mean if an animal naturally spreads its range into another nation that the nation has free legal right to the use of their newly acquired so-called "genetic resource"? How do you even prove it was a natural migration and they were not illegally seeded? There are far too many gray areas in my opinion for this concept to be viable. I reiterated several times that this was only my opinion, but I felt regulation of this type was impossible.</div>
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It was then that one of the smartest students I have had the pleasure to work with, Hye-Eun, pointed out to me that this was indeed the actual U.N.'s intention to regulate genetic resources and it was a central topic for this year's Model U.N. She filled me in as the egg dripped down my face. Part of me still wanted to tell everyone, "Well then class, the U.N. is full of shit," but I held it in. Instead I told them that I understood that in reality, we sometimes have to make judgments that are only necessary because we live in a world of nations and politics. Nations are forced to make distinctions where there should be none.</div>
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I thought about my words later and realized just how hopeless I made their situation sound. Great, first meeting of the year and I have effectively told the students they have no chance of coming to a proper solution. Way to drive up membership, Ben. I kept telling them it was impossible, but as I thought about it later, the United Nations tries to do a lot of impossible things. One of their major goals is world peace. Will it ever happen? Probably not, but perhaps it is worthwhile having someone out there trying for the impossible.</div>
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At the meeting tonight we listened to each country's proposal for Article 1 on sustaining biodiversity. I also learned that along with genetic resources, countries are claiming ownership of traditional knowledge from resident tribes, especially that knowledge which could lead to medical breakthroughs. As we did this, I couldn't help but continue to snicker at how ridiculous the whole concept is, but this time I had to keep it to myself.</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-91050983872398298792012-07-26T21:46:00.003-07:002012-07-26T21:46:12.318-07:00Gifted Program and Summer Camp<br />
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I suppose I should give a description of my weekend job. You see, during the week I teach high school English, but once a month on the weekends the English teachers teach a middle school gifted program. This program is full of very bright students. Many of these students may even be on par or above the level of student I am used to teaching. Before last week I had taught two of these special weekend sessions. The class that I teach is called “Literature and Social Issues.” Since another teacher does the same class, we usually share ideas and plan together. My first lesson was titled “Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance.” We focused on the poem “<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175884">Harlem</a>” also known as “A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes. It is a powerful poem with a strong message expressed in fairly simple language, a perfect poem for my first class. Of course, in order to teach the “social issues” part of the course, I felt it necessary to give a brief overview of the entire history of slavery and civil rights in the United States. Imagine cramming that heavy of a topic into under 30 minutes. I moved fast, but I got mad too. It's hard not to get passionate when you loaded up a presentation full of heartbreaking pictures of inequality. Overall, good lesson, but not enough interactivity.</div>
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The second lesson focused on “<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19977">Nothing Gold Can Stay</a>” by Robert Frost. This one was meant as a review of some of the basic poetic devices and how to interpret a poem. Much more active and interesting for the students. However, at the same time, the poem is depressing. Beauty fades. Everything dies. Be happy in the moment because youth is fleeting. I mean, I am the kind of guy that usually digs this type of writing, but teaching it three times in a row begins to wear on your zeal.</div>
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Now, all of these lessons for the middle school gifted program have been building up to a four day summer camp. For the summer camp, I was told to do more content based lessons. This means instead of teaching straight English, we should teach a subject we know and incorporate English learning into the classes. Since I have a Biology degree too, I decided I would focus on that. Immediately an excellent lesson came to mind from the NSTA conference: Strawberry DNA extraction. It was a fun, easy, and fascinating experiment that you could adapt to any skill level or age group. After some suggestions from other teachers, I settled on a nature scavenger hunt lesson and a lesson on camp sing-along songs.</div>
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As English teachers, we were required to stay on campus during the four days. Truthfully, we never had time to leave, so it was not such a bad thing. The camp actually turned out to be quite a bit of fun, but a lot of work. My first lessons were in DNA Extraction. I used a .ppt that I found online and only slightly modified to reflect the Korean use of the metric system. For instance, do you know we eat an estimated 150,000 km of DNA in one meal? I borrowed a lot of lab equipment like graduated cylinders, test tubes, and stirring rods. Unfortunately, the students that were prepared to volunteer in my classroom did not show up, or when they did, were only there for ten minutes. Most sessions I was all alone to set the whole class up with materials as well as teach the content behind the experiment. It was intense. However, each class was an improvement. Every class tried extracting DNA from strawberries, but depending on availability we also did peaches, watermelon, cherries, plums, and tomatoes. Each class was different, but I improved in my delivery over six periods. By the time I hit the last session, all of my corny jokes were fully formed and times out (What would I look like if I had strawberry DNA instead of human DNA? A strawberry!) The kids loved it. One student told me the only time she had ever used lab equipment was for examinations. She had never done anything fun with it before. My favorite class asked me if they could play with their DNA after they were done. They started mixing their concoctions together and creating a rainbow of DNA mixtures floating one on top of another. This was a highlight for me because it meant they were curious about what would happen if you mixed them together. Playing is one of the best ways to learn.</div>
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The next class, the scavenger hunt, was almost canceled due to Korea's rainy weather. I was quite worried because I had put a lot of thought into this lesson and built it completely from scratch and tailored it exactly to what the school had. The idea to have a scavenger hunt sprang from my belief that at a summer camp you should be allowed to go outside. I am not an athlete and I don't relish sports, but I see the need to and appreciate the power of keeping active. I felt it was my obligation to give these kids some sort of physical outlet. In America, all the glory goes to the athletes. In Korea, it is reversed. I guess wherever I go I am a contrarian, so I felt the need for these kids to have their time to shine too. We went outside to the only “nature” available, the pond behind the school. It is a nice man-made construction with fences, flowers, and trees planted. The beginning of the scavenger hunt began with a race around the pond. Most students participated but it was not required. Instead they could get a head start on earning other points for things like writing or drawing. I tried to include many different learning styles so everyone could have the chance to excel at something. They could even earn points for picking up trash or skipping stones. The best artwork or writing got more points at the end. Some of the classes were really close in competition. The stories written about the pond were usually fairly creative too. A lot of kids complained about the heat or being exhausted from running around the pond, but overall the feedback was positive. One boy said this was the best class because “he got to use his body.” I don't think that is commonplace in the Korean classroom.</div>
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The last class also sprang from my obligation to hold a proper camp. In order to have a real camp, you need campfire songs. Partly because I was running out of planning time, I designed a very basic lesson where we learn some standard camp songs and sing them together. My first draft was sent back because it wasn't academic enough, so I altered the content to reflect some more cultural and historical heritage by using old American songs like “Yankee Doodle”, “Oh Susanna!”, “Home on the Range”, and so on. Then I used these as a vehicle to introduce a little bit of history. We also sang “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FM5sIPqnhg">Down by the Bay</a>”, a classic by Raffi. I chose this song because you can make up your own verse at the end. This would give them some writing and rhyming practice. Students struggle to rhyme in a foreign language, especially English, because the sound isn't reflected on paper. I had a few practice runs with the high school kids the week previous and they were far too shy and it was too difficult to make up a verse on their own. For the middle school kids, I made five teams and each team was able to make a verse. I don't think this class was as well received, but I also think they were tired since it was the last day.</div>
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In addition to classes, at night the students worked on their performances. They had all read a novel and were required to adapt it to the stage using their own script and interpretation. The ninth graders read “Matilda” and the eighth graders read “<a href="http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dolphins/">Island of the Blue Dolphins</a>.” Lucky for me, I had read “Island of the Blue Dolphins” and could assist my eighth grade home room. That being said, I did not do a lot. Generally, I was tired and either relaxed or prepared for the next day during this time. Occasionally my guilt would get the best of me and I would go check on their progress. I would give them my thoughts on how things were going, throw out a few suggestions here and there, but I largely left it up to them. I did not expect us to have much of a chance at winning the prize for best performance. My co-teacher, Ms. Kwon, was concerned that the students were deviating too much from the novel. What had started as a survival novel akin to “Hatchet” had morphed into a romantic parody. The protagonist's little brother was now her love interest who she tragically loses to a wild dog that shoots him out of jealousy instead of mauling him out of hunger as the book goes. I tried to tell them this was going too far, but I wasn't sure it was. I found they were largely ignoring my concerns anyway. I backed off. One suggestion they did honor was to make it obvious. Make it obvious who each character is so the audience can focus on the story they wanted to tell. They made large signs with names for each of the characters; not exactly subtle, but it got the job done.</div>
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When it came time for the performances, it turned out my group was the last. I watched three Matilda plays, some telling the back stories of characters in the book, others deviating very little. The other “Blue Dolphin” groups deviated only slightly from the book in order to inject joke here or there. Every play was well done and seemed so much more polished than what I had seen from my group. By the time my group was ready to perform, the audience knew the story of the novel. They were primed and ready for something different, and fortunately my home room was able to deliver. Everyone was in stitches. Somehow, the dog shooting the little-brother-turned-love-interest worked marvelously. Later, the flashback to them meeting on the beach with the Titanic music in the background was cheesy enough to work. The protagonist's turbulent love life played perfectly because our belief was already suspended. They were dramatic and they were overly dramatic, never betraying a smile like I had seen in rehearsal. They laid it on so thick. The judges loved it. There was no dispute. Class 8-3 had stolen the show.</div>
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One of the other teachers told me he was sure I was going to get the Distinguished Teacher Award. I asked what he meant. He said, “Didn't you know? The teacher in charge of the winning team gets the Distinguished Teacher Award. Looks like your guys nailed it.” My heart raced. I didn't deserve an award. I did close to nothing. They did all the work. If they had taken my suggestions, it would not have been nearly as funny! What if I had to make a speech? Sure enough, my class did win, and luckily I did not have to confess the truth to the audience. We went back to the home room and the eighth graders opened their prize box: notebooks, notebooks for all! Plenty to go around! They appeared excited, but maybe it was more about what the notebooks represented. Meanwhile, I couldn't help but think there had to be a less arbitrary way to pick the best teacher for the summer camp. I said my thank yous and goodbyes to the students, and headed off.</div>
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That night, we went out for Italian food. Teacher Helen ordered us each an entree and then three pizzas for us to share. One had black crust made from squid ink. It was nice to be out of the school building and celebrating the beginning of my summer vacation.</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-61096241794797128732012-07-12T01:04:00.002-07:002012-07-12T15:33:23.340-07:00My Thoughts on "10 Things Most Americans Don't Know About America"<br />
I was told by my friend to respond with my thoughts on this blogpost titled "<a href="http://postmasculine.com/america">10 Things Most Americans Don't Know About America</a>." Instead of just a short response I ended up writing a blogpost. The post I am responding to is well-thought out and the author seems to have a lot of experience all around the world. In contrast, these are just my thoughts so far as an ignorant foreigner in a new country.<br />
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So..<br />
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1.Few People Are Impressed by Us<br />
Sure, but a lot of Korean students seem to be. One told me that there is a belief that Americans do everything right. I guess I see it like looking up to your big brother that you find out later isn't so great.<br />
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2. Few People hate us<br />
I agree. We do have people in Korea that hate Americans and want westerners in general gone, but I can't imagine people spending that much thought on it.<br />
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3. We Know Nothing about the Rest of the World<br />
True, but to me it is more that the rest of the world seems to know everything about us. Part of me says Americans shouldn't have to care about the history of other nations, yet most people from other countries seem to know something about Washington, Lincoln, MLK, the Civil War and so on. They know our culture. We don't know theirs. I kind of feel sorry for people here sometimes when I find out how much they know about America because they really don't need to know a lot of it.<br />
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4. We are poor at expressing gratitude and affection<br />
I just read a great <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/feb/10/comedy.television">article </a>by Simon Pegg on this issue. He thinks Americans are more affectionate and more honest with their feelings than the British. So, at least we have someone beat. I have been told that Korea isn't very open about these types of things either, but I seem to be doing okay so far.<br />
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5. Quality of Life for the average American is Not that Great<br />
I love the American sense of exceptionalism and continue to be a product of it. I am self-deluded and loving it. That being said, he is right. The quote by Steinbeck is spot on. It is like the poor are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.<br />
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6. The Rest Of The World Is Not A Slum-Ridden Shithole Compared To Us<br />
I agree. The rest of the world is catching up and hopefully that will lead to more peace and equality than the world has ever seen.<br />
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7. We're Paranoid<br />
This is true. Strangers in Korea have been extremely friendly. I have yet to feel in danger at all. When I got to the airport the guy sitting next to me on the plane helped me all the way to the desk to get to my hotel. He even offered me a ride to the hotel himself but I thought it was best to take the free ride from the hotel. But, Koreans can be paranoid too. Just today I found out that many believe in something called "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death">fan death</a>." You should never ever leave your fan on while you sleep at night for fear that it will kill you. The way it was explained to me, fans blow the oxygen away so that you aphyxiate. It is taken seriously and even the government has issued warnings about fans.<br />
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8. We’re Status-Obsessed And Seek Attention<br />
This is true, especially for me. Koreans don't like attention.<br />
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9. We Are Very Unhealthy<br />
True. In America, we eat because it tastes good, so we eat a lot, and a lot of it is bad for you. In Korea, it seems like everything is done for your health. You can't just go to the spa because it is relaxing but because it does something physically for your skin or relieves some illness. Every food has some special purpose. Dog is eaten during hot weather and is considered a health food. I admire how health-conscious they are, but for me it is like turning an every day activity into a doctor's appointment. It kind of ruins the fun. <br />
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10. We Mistake Comfort For Happiness<br />
Definitely true. But I think that it is sadly becoming more true around the world as more cultures begin to adopt our way of life. I also think this blogger is talking more about the difference between people who stay home and those who leave. Just about everyone in America is going to look complacent and docile next to someone who has traveled the world. You can find docile and complacent people everywhere you go. I am not sure how much worse we really have it than others. I suppose when I look at Korean students versus American students, the holds up. Koreans are willing to sacrifice and work hard all day long for what they want. Americans expect the teacher to do all the work and expect something for nothing. I do suspect Americans have more fun than Koreans do, but I could be wrong.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270778598845528126.post-40772283786495501792012-06-29T01:30:00.000-07:002012-07-12T01:16:18.987-07:00Why did the chicken cross the road?The last few days I have asked students upon entering the class to tell me something funny, a story, or give me something to brighten the day. Yesterday I had a girl, after much cheering and encouragement from her peers, stand up and sing into a plastic banana. She was very good. She got up, giggled, and covered her mouth while she sang. When she got especially shy she turned around and sang to the door. Towards the end of the song she was facing forward with her mouth uncovered. The girls in the back of the room sang back up and clapped their hands. It was beautiful. I am blessed to be surrounded by such a supportive group.<br />
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Today I asked one of my classes for a joke. One girl only knew half a joke so she wouldn't tell it. I decided to give an example. I remembered telling "Why did the chicken cross the road?" to a teacher who did not understand it. I decided to try that one again, just to see if the reaction was the same. I wrote the question on the board. No one understood. I wrote the answer on the board. Still, nothing. I tried the variation about the duck crossing the road because it was the chicken's day off. Still, no response.</div>
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Of course, too, this was after a great amount anticipation and build up. I explained to them that this is an essential joke in English, that you would be hard pressed to find a single native speaker that does not know this joke. It is so ubiquitous in English speaking, especially American, culture that there is an entire genre of joke that depends purely on the assumption that everyone knows the original chicken joke. It is taken as a given that you know this joke. I don't even remember learning it. </div>
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Part of me wanted to defend the joke, to stand there and lecture out an explanation for why it was funny, but I knew that would be pointless. Instead, I began to second guess myself. Maybe the chicken joke isn't actually funny. I do laugh occasionally at it, but I also laugh at a lot of stupid things. Still, after thinking about it, I suppose the reason this joke is supposed to be funny is that it preys on our tendency as humans to make things more complicated than they actually are. The chicken joke is a joke that has instead been subjected to Occam's razor: the simplest, least phenomenal answer is probably the closest to the correct one. We are given no evidence about the chicken, and so we can only give a limited answer. There, my explanation makes it funny, right? Haha!</div>
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I told the joke later to a group of teachers while we ate ice cream. Most thought it was funny, one openly laughed.<br />
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I told a few other classes. They didn't get it.</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15371509157684149465noreply@blogger.com0