What has been happening? Has 2012 brought anything new to anyone else? A little bit of this and a little bit of that, and a good amount of work in between. Since my last blog I finally received my Alien Registration Card (aka Green Card) after 3 weeks of waiting. Normal processing time was told to the branch manager and me to be 3 weeks, but then again reflecting upon it nothing about trying to get over here and also with the whole working in Korea process has taken the “normal processing time”.
I’ve continued my explorations with noodle soups. Most recently I’ve been playing around with different methods of cooking the tofu. It has turned out quite delicious as “Santa” brought me a cool Tupperware type container with a built in strainer that holds the tofu and allows it to marinate in the fridge. I cooked a massive amount of soup the other night and this was the perfect application for the broth as the tofu really soaked up a great deal of the flavor. With that and fine cubing it before throwing it in a pan with some oil I’ve managed to get a crust that forms on it before tossing it in soy and garlic. Right here I should mention that Koreans eat a lot of garlic. I thought Italians loved garlic, but they just love it to season tomatoes and other things. Koreans will grill garlic and eat it cloves at a time. I really enjoy this because the garlic loses a great deal of its abrasive qualities and becomes quite savory. To explain further how much Koreans enjoy their garlic, there is a special Garlic Whopper from Burger King available over here that is the only thing advertised on TV. Haha. Back to the soup when the garlic get’s tossed in a hot pan with just a light soy sauce it almost gives the garlic this roasted quality that begins to remind me of the roasted garlic goodies that Macaroni grill puts in the saucers for bread dipping.
The problem I’ve faced however is I’ve had so much broth though that I needed to figure out a type of noodle that I liked that I could just buy the noodles and then add it to the broth. I knew that I liked udon noodles, but udon noodles lend themselves to a one serving function and aren’t like what I was thinking of such as spaghetti back home where you buy a big bag of it and it lasts you for a month or so. Then I saw at the store that their wheat noodles for a good size bag were on for buy one get one free and this made me pleasantly happy and I think the girl at the register knew it too. That coupled with the 3 boxes of Danish butter cookies (think the ones in the blue tins at Walgreens) which were buy 2 for 90 cents a piece and get one free, and the Sprite that I got for a class reward I think the total was 6 dollars approximately. I couldn’t understand what the checkout lady said, but the way she was smiling I could tell that she was duly impressed with the savings
We went bowling the other night from work and what an interesting excursion it was. First of all we arrive at the bowling alley which was in the basement of a building so it looked like you’d expect a bowling alley to look, which made me happy. However, they didn’t call themselves a bowling alley, although that’s all they offered, rather they were a health club and they were none too pleased about the backpacks full of beer that we had brought in and the Korean lady that appeared to own or manage the lanes proceeded to voice her displeasure to one of the guys I work with. He didn’t communicate exactly what she said, but we did get the impression she wasn’t nice about it. The balls were definitely not nice. This bowling alley is where bowling balls go to die. There were chips, scrapes and gashes out of these balls and all the holes were odd sizes. I never claimed to have big hands, but I would suspect in a country where I’m pretty averaged sized that things like bowling balls would fit me, however these balls were drilled from Sasquatch to bowl with. We played three games, but my hand was pretty torn up after the first one so the scores continued to steadily decline, therefore our first game of great success that looked like our team would easily win two out of three led to our team paying for the bowling outing, which for eight people and three games a piece came out to what 4 people at 2 games a piece would be back in the states so not a catastrophic deal. We however didn’t let the lady completely ruin our fun as there were long breaks in between frames where we went out to the garage to drink beer. Dinner afterwards was delicious as well. I think dinners where we go and it is more a communal family style dinner are always more fun. This one was a soup in a cast iron pot on the burner at our table and it is always fun to have the people fry rice after you’re done eating the soup in the same pot to soak up the last remnants of flavor and the little burnt specks are like little pockets of flavor heaven
My classes have been evolving nicely as I’ve grown to expect more from the students, and they’ve responded appropriately. I finally had students in my younger classes that got 100’s on their review quizzes from the previous class and rightfully so I had a stamp with an owl on it that says “Who is #1?” that they received. Their responses to my stamps have provided great entertainment for me. I use different one everyday in their writing journals and they’ve caught on to that and try to guess which one will be used for the day and also they’ve begun to notice that a smiley face on a quiz means you took it and didn’t do that great and awesome performances (above a 70) are rewarded with worded stamps such as “good work”, “super” and “nice job”. I’ve reserved my “great progress” stamp for their writing books because they are in fact making progress. I’ve stressed not using the same words, such as like or good, over and over again and a few of the students are dabbling in word and sentence play that is showing great results. I’m grading their revisions currently, but there have been a couple that I think I’m going to establish a writing success wall and post some of their works that should be commended as I think this will lead to a more concentrated effort by the other students
Last, but certainly not least, my older students. They don’t get the stamps because they’re too cool for stamps. Not that I blame them, but I’m glad it works for my younger students. With my older students I’ve enjoyed the conversations that we’ve had within the structure of the classes based on the given topics. With one level the topic last week was allergies and different theories to explain the rise in allergies. There wasn’t a great deal of detail given to the treatment of allergies, but the specific explanations of why people are sick more of the time and why they are more people and children with allergies in today’s world than those generations of the past was something interesting to discuss. This week’s topic with this class in particular is the connection between religion and environmentalism and I’m particularly excited to see how this has developed as the final project wasn’t something that I particularly thought assessed their understanding of the topic and what it meant and I changed it up a little. The other older group had an equally interesting topic their last class as it involved Native Americans (the book stated Native Indians but I had to clear it up that it meant Native Americans as here in Korean when Indians are mentioned the thought goes to the actual country instead of primitive Americans). I was super excited as the topic mainly focused on the Black Hills conflict and two of my favorite Native Americans, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. The final project at the end of class also got me to thinking. It was about teams and team mascots and the Native American debate. Now before I begin the prelude to the final project was a small listening lecture that brought up some excellent thinking points I’ll mention, but it did also mention that a survey of Native Americans showed that over 70% aren’t offended by the teams in question. It did however get the students along with me thinking with “Why are these acceptable?” One example it gave is would a basketball team named the New York Jews be culturally accepted or would people be outraged? What about the Atlanta Blackmen? If these names cause such outrage then why don’t the Redskins or the Indians? Reflecting on their project however they were charged with picking any sport and picking a mascot for a team of a city of their choosing (making a new mascot) and explain why this particular mascot is a good choice, what does it embody, and what does it represent. I did think about the debates recently concerning the license plates and Buffalo Soldiers and also the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy and how ridiculously butt hurt people get about flags and meanings. First of all the flag that everyone get’s uptight about isn’t even the flag that was of the Confederacy. We’ve bastardized history to the point where we think Custer was a hero and that the “rebel” flag that individuals wave and sport on their trucks represents a country that supported slavery. In fact it is a specific unit’s battle flag that was a significant force during the civil war. The actual “star and bars” that represents the Confederate States of America is actually quite reminiscent of the original Betsy Ross flag of the US with only 3 bars instead of the thirteen originals. That’s why there isn’t a Johnny Rebel flag hanging outside the Texas Capital. Maybe if the logos of the particular organization mentioned before would change it’s flag to one that is more historically correct and appropriate, people wouldn’t be so sore over it because they in turn wouldn’t even know what it is.
***Random Thoughts***
After getting my green card I went to the bank yesterday and opened an account. It was pretty painless. However it was nice because she was able to correctly pronounce Byron and needed no assistance (so why is it so hard for Americans?). She kept asking me because of the way that names are on forms and cards if my first name was Byron or Roscoe. I explained to her that Byron was my first name and she goes “Oh so your last name is Roscoe Davis?” I don’t know if I was fully successful at explaining to her that Roscoe was a middle name, but we both got a smile and a chuckle out of when she was processing my forms and she says “you know you look like that guy. Ummm the one from TV. Steve Jobs.” Haha. I don’t know exactly what it is, but the kids seem to consistently say the same thing so maybe to Koreans I do look like him
Watched the Fiesta Bowl and couldn’t be happier. When that field goal was missed in the final seconds of regulation by Stanford I knew that Weeden could wrap it up for the Pokes.
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