Hodge Podge of Postings

This post is a little bit of everything.

First, Korea has gotten some things right as far as a developed society is concerned. It thinks about the youth that are an integral part of the society. In the US we judge and chastise our youth for not doing things productive and instead congregate at Whataburger, Wal-Mart or in random parking lots. You've got the occasional movie theater or bowling alley, but as far as other establishments there's not a lot for high-schoolers to do when the clock hits ten. Here in Korea, there's karaoke clubs, WII clubs, DVD clubs, PC rooms, billiards halls, and Screen golf rooms. They're open late, cheap and are readily available even in tiny towns to keep people out of trouble. Just a thought: if you have a problem created by people not having things to do, give them something to do.

One of the things to do that my boss introduced me to is the PC room. For basically a buck an hour you get access to a pc, 20” monitor and about 150 games. There's tons of Koreans that flock and fill the PC rooms whenever a new game demos. Back in May, he wanted to go for the Diablo III release. Since then ever couple of weeks he'll want to go for a couple hours of cheap fun. There are however the pcer's that overdo it. Some of them stay in there for days and eat nothing but cup of noodles. I usually get dirty looks whenever I walk in there to play with a six pack of brew. I can only imagine that the looks that I'm getting showing up to play a game with a six pack is the look that I deliver to people that are smoking at the beginning of a marathon. Really? That's going to help ya?

Second, lately I've been listening to my iPod on full shuffle. It's been very interesting to hear the randomness of 8000 songs. I wrote down some of the artist play order from last night. George Strait-Aerosmith- Beastie Boys- Willie Nelson- Amy Winehouse- Elton John- ZZ Top- Vanessa Carlton- Eagles of Death Metal- Kris Kristofferson- Maroon 5- the Beatles- Bleu Edmondson- The Killers- Fat Joe- Brad Paisley. Definitely interesting and entertaining. Only on song 1217. Definitely many more hours of random music to come.

Next, Korean women really like the color light tan or a really light brown, almost a fleshy color. When worn as a dress I honestly think it makes women look like a giant Band-Aid. Just my two cents.

I got a good laugh this morning when watching Franklin and Bash and writing this blog when the head lawyer guy through out Korean food reference when he said that they should all go for Kimbap. It made me smile. Also it gave me idea of what I'll probably have for lunch. :-)

I've been having a blast teaching these last two weeks. I think it might also have something to do with the fact that I've been watching Paulie Shore movies while I've been grading beforehand. I started with my all-time favorite Son-in-Law. Then I ventured to Encino Man and finally I just wrapped up my second favorite Bio-Dome.

I've been making monster batches of green tea that I've been taking to work. My students think its pretty comical almost how much green tea I drink a day. This morning I'm making a batch of peach green tea, super excited with getting to enjoy that next week.

Rainy season is over and I survived and it never really dampened my spirits. That also means thankfully they've picked up the pace on building the apartment behind our school. A few more weeks and it'll be moving day probably. :-)

When we were out at dinner the other night our boss was complaining about the English teacher at his daughter's high school. I basically stopped listening about the complaints whenever I heard the words “she” and “Ireland”. :-) I keep pressing Emma (his daughter) for more info, which she thinks is hilarious.

On a final note I'm super excited for the Olympics to be started and all my kids know it. I usually have nothing noted on my calendar except St. Patty's day, but opening day certainly got noted. :-)

Pics of Nights out and Fun (IE These are People and Not Food for Grandma :-))

Work party at Chicken and Beer.  I think we must've used 85% of their beer glasses just at our table.  They just changed over to the pilsner style of glass and away for the heavier mugs that they used to have.  Good times had by all.

A boys night of fun at our darts bar.

The owner of the bar loves us.  He always drops whatever he's doing to come throw a couple of rounds with us whenever we come in.

At the bowling alley.

Walter's Birthday Party

Kate and Rachel have some good "old-fashioned" fun acting like socialites during the Golden Age.

Knee Markings

So I now have these four burn marks on my knee from my treatment that I've been getting.  The last time I was there the lady and I were talking and she typed whatever the Korean word was for the treatment into her translator on her phone and she said that there wasn't an English translation.  That's when you know you're getting close to the heart of holistic Asian medicine.  I was watching her set it up and it almost looks like dryer lint that she rolls between her fingers into a wick before attaching it to my knee.

Here Come the Beatles (My Young Class's Posters)

I had my kids study several of the Beatles #1 albums and write me a couple sentences about them.  It was awesome to hear them read them and see what songs off of the albums that they chose.

IMAX, Doing the Admiral and Pronunciation

So after work on Thursday we drove out to Gwanju a bigger city that's about 45 minutes away, an hour during rainy season, in order to see the newest Batman. I say “we drove” but really our new grammar teacher and front desk manager drove four of us. It was a cozy fit, but still exponentially more comfortable than the snowboarding trip. Was Batman playing in Suncheon? Yes, but we thought that the movie mandated a viewing on an IMAX screen. We were right. The funny thing is the boss man brought his whole family, mother included, to a 12:45am showing. Fun times. Reminded me of mom and dad going with me to the midnight showing of Iron Man II. Gwanju has lots of cuties. Just an observation. The movie theater is also home to a lot of little shops, which were closed by the time we got there, but we became super excited to see that the Burger King light was still on. WRONG. It was 12:07 and they stopped serving at 12. I'm sorry, but if you're a burger shop operating right across the walkway from a theater in a country where you can bring your own food and beer into the theater wouldn't you think that you'd want to stay open til at least the last show starts. That being said, 7 minutes? We even offered to buy the easiest things. No such luck. Then we went the opposite direction and offered to buy $25 worth a food a piece. I was a little upset, but then I thought back to my Quiznos days and when people would come in at 8:55 and order like 12 subs. Was I happy, absolutely because I liked making food, but was I in a pleasant mood when they ate one of them there. Not so much. So we hit up a gas station for a gas station burger, so ramyen, a good variety of chips and enough beer to feel dandy.

My youngest kids just wrapped up a Beatles project which was the highlight of my month. I think I could win the lottery, but seeing the kids having fun listening to the fab four and reading song titles was too awesome. We started the week with writing a paragraph about the Beatles. I had them choose what to call them [rock band, musical group, band, etc] and gave them liberty over where to say they were from [Liverpool, the UK, the United Kingdom, England, Britain, etc] and then I had them pick 5 songs out of a large list that I typed up for them. I was pleasantly surprised that not all the students picked the shortest song titles. Some of them recognized that there were longer titles that they knew all the words in it and it would be easy to read. Then on the last day of the project I had them walking around the room looking for information on discography posters that I had scattered around the room. They then created their own #1 album plaques. Those will definitely stay in my classroom on the wall for quite some time.

Speaking of my classroom, I finally got my projector back. My youngest class can now be back in there, which is good because the other classroom that we had been using is a little darker and so one of the students has a hard time staying awake during class. In my room with the ample amount of sunlight, it isn't as easy to catch a nap.

With one of my older classes last night (Friday) we laughed for probably 20 minutes straight about Koreans and their pronunciations of their language. I'm trying to speak the language and use it whenever I can and not be one of those honkeys (as Heana says he friends call “us”) that just gets by on charades and pointing. Anyways, on a couple of occasions I'll give directions to the taxi driver and he'll just have this blank look on his face, and then a Korean will help out and ask me where I want to go and I tell him again (in Korean) and he turns to the taxi driver and says the EXACT same words but with the ever slightest of inflections. It's not even the difference between Mexia and Mex-ia. This is the difference of Jory and Joreeeee or so it sounds like to me. Maybe there's a secret wink or foot tap that I'm supposed to throw in too. But, my students do it to. My students will ask about my family and I'll tell them I've got family up in Pyeongtaek. I'll get the most puzzled look, and then I'll be like here's Seoul and here's Daejeon and then Cheonan and then bam Pyeongtaek. And then they all go OH Pyeongtaaaek or something like that and I'm like oh my gosh yes. And so this went on with goofy silliness for 20 minutes and a couple of the girls found it so funny that they were crying.

One of the crying girls showed me a disgusted look later. I brought back one of my favorite projects that I've been doing since I was a student teacher:Trading Cards. The topic was Columbus and whether or not he deserved a day memorializing him. So I premade the titles on a few cards to fan the fire and hopefully get some creative juices flowing from the students. I did the usual ones you'd expect like King Sejong and Admiral Yi Sun-Sin or something like that. I then Googled searched for key historical Koreans. I should've specified South because one of the ones that I ended up making was actually a Northerner (ok so Byron got docked a couple of cool points for that one, but that didn't even warrant the disgusted look). Then I also included cards for Park Tae Hwan (the Korean swimmer) and then my girlfriend Kim Yu Na (my mom probably thinks of her as an ice skater, but too me she's the Hite Beer Girl). My girls in my classes always talk about their favorite K-Pop boy bands so I thought that would get some of the quieter girls involved if I threw out some names onto cards of the lead boy singers. Evidently that's where I went wrong, not putting a North Korean, but picking ugly boys to give holidays or trading cards. I got a good laugh out of it.

The students also got a laugh because every single time I said the name Admiral Yi Sun-Sin I felt it was absolutely necessary to strike the Admiral Yi Sun-Sin pose. I think I could really start something here kind of like “everyone's got a little Captain in them” or planking. Maybe I'll start a photo album of spontaneous Admiral poses in public. :-)

On Saturday I headed up to Pyeongtaaaaaek (as my students would pronounce it) to see Scott and Heana. I barely missed the 7:00 train due to difficulty getting a cab and just lights not going my way (I know leave earlier) and so I waited at the train station for the 9:00 train. When I arrived I was going to get a locker and leave my bag in it while we ate lunch at this megacenter that was a shopping center/food court/train station. I couldn't get the locker machine to work (instructions written in English too for honkeys like me). I became frustrated and was like whatever and so I was listening to music while I was waiting and noticed that four sets of Koreans couldn't get the lockers to work either. Yay, it wasn't a language barrier issue. Either we're all incompetent or it's broken.

I've been killing it Italiano style lately (maybe a future teaching destination?). I made some amazing meatballs, which should come as no surprise to mom and grandma because I still get grief for the only adjective that could come to mind after visiting Europe was “amazing”. I also made these pan-seared mushrooms like were crusted in garlic and herbs. When I took them out, there was a lot of garlic, herbs and oil left in the pan and it would've been such a waste so I was contemplating what to do with it. I decided on a risotto and it was a fantastic choice.

Hot 5 Seconds, Highlights, and Rainy Season

So last Tuesday I was working on a blog entry before work whenever I got my prep work done.  I didn’t have it ready to publish and I had it in an open Word document that was minimalized on my computer.  After the first break it was I came back and it was deleted.  Really?

Anyways.  Back to the update.  My knee has been bothering me as of lately.  I’ve taking a little time off of running while it starts to feel a little bit better.  It’s that dull stabbing pain that I’ve had before.  Now I’ve got the acupuncture doctor working his magic on it.  His bony fingers can definitely grind out the pain in my tendons like nothing else I’ve felt working my knee.  He then put some extra pins into my knee and then he put four ink dots on my knee.  Then he told the assistant something.  After the typical pin session the assistant then rubbed some sort of balm onto my knee and then put three incense pellets onto the dots and then informed me that it would be very hot for 5 seconds.  Ok.  OMG.  When she lit those on fire it felt like someone was lighting a firecracker on my knee. 

When I went again on Thursday it was the same treatment and another added step involving double sided tape and more some more smoking stuff.  That stuff wasn’t nearly as bad, but now I’ve got five brown dots on my knee that don’t wash off. 

Work has been going good.  We’re giving the students extra work to do outside of class so that they can work on and refine their listening and reading comprehension skills.  Most of the stories that my middle level students read are adapted versions of Highlights stories, so it was great to visit the Highlights website and see that they’ve got plenty of other stories on there that I can give them reading comprehension questions to. For listening the next couple of classes they’ll be listening to the Caldecott winning book The Man that Walked Between the Towers.  It’s a great book and there’s a version on Youtube that my kids can listen to and take notes on.  If the comments on Youtube are correct and it’s a toss-up if they are, but allegedly it’s Jake Gyllenhahl that reads the story.  Much better than Tim Tebow’s version of Green Eggs and Ham (someone needed to practice a little more on that one). 

I picked up a new class and got a lot of my older kids back.  This is an issue debate class.  I find it super interesting because of the topics we’ve gotten to discuss just in the two weeks I’ve had it.  The first week was whether or not there should be a such thing as a parenting license.  What I found interesting is the pros for such a creation are all logical and factual, but the cons against such a license are all based on emotion which makes for an interesting debate.  Last night’s topic was the state of welfare and whether or not all welfare should be ceased.  This one was an interesting debate topic because of the extreme of it.  All welfare to go away?  That seems a little insane, then again every student agreed that there definitely needs to be more restrictions put on welfare.

In other news, we went out for one of my buddy’s birthdays after work on Saturday.  It was just another fun night at our chicken and beer joint.  It was also the heaviest rainfall that I’ve seen so far.  I’m still enjoying rainy season, which a lot of my coworkers think is insane, but before I left we just weren’t getting any amount worth counting in Texas.  Although, from friends and family I’ve heard that situation has changed this summer back home.  Yay for lake fun again everyone back home.  No more islands and tree stumps creating boating hazards.

Hamburgers, Pizza and Fried Chicken

My youngest class today was awesome.  We were learning about sound and how sound starts out as a vibration and ends up as an electronic signal to our brain.  I push these students to be writing more and so I was prompting them to be thinking about the process of smell now that they had learned about the process of sound.  So I asked them what sorts of things smell good expecting roses, flowers, perfume etc.  The answers I got were awesome.  Hamburger, pizza and fried chicken.  I had to agree with them on every single one of those.  Which made me think:  If there’s an anniversary for silver, tin, gold, and paper, why couldn’t there be one for fried foods or baked goods?  Who’s to say a fried catfish, hushpuppies and wedge fries is any less romantic than a dozen roses?  Who’s the governing body that decides that perfumes and flowers have a more romantic fragrance than fresh banana or orange muffins?  Just thinking outside the box with my kiddos here.  Also I was a little hungry (go figure). 

Wrong City

Haha the title's got your interest right?  First of all let me say July is looking a lot better for Byron being a blogger than June did.  We're not even in the double digit days yet and I'm close to a handful of posts.

Today's adventure apart from the missing race was the busride.  Typical busride.  The bus station that I left out of was a little confusing but I did in fact get on the right bus.  The bus ride was a little different on the way back as I didn't have a meal packed for the trip, but I did buy some BBQ Pringles and a Coke so that was something to keep my stomach occupied.  I finished the last two episodes of Franklin and Bash that I had on a flashdrive so I am now caught up with this season so far (side note: got a lot of questions on both bus rides as to what I was watching that was so funny).  The other thing that was different on this ride was we stopped at a rest stop like I have on trips before but didn't on yesterday's trip for some reason.  I remembered the license plate because after a good pee all these buses look the same.  Got me a milkshake and got back on and dozed a little.  We stopped in Gwangyang are a bus station and then I dozed off again knowing that Suncheon wouldn't be too far.  This is what got me in trouble though.  Apparently Gwangyang has two bus stations and I didn't doze for as long as I thought I had and so when the bus stopped I looked outside and saw "SUN" written on the wall of the bus station.  SCORE!  Or not.  It was SUNSHINING GWANGYANG their slogan.  Luckily though it was only a 2 dollar ticket and a 15 minute wait to fix the problem.  Plus the short bus trip was next to a real cutie.  And I learned how to say "can I take your picture for my grandmother?" in Korean but it hasn't worked yet so I apologize grandma but it looks like the food to women picture ratio in my blog is still going to be a little skewed.

Frustrated

So I get off the bus and get a motel within walking distance of where I thought the starting line was for today's race.  There were several reasons that I thought this was the starting line.  It was the only point on the course map that was doubled back and when I asked some of the other foreigners that were running this race they agreed that this was the starting line.  Last time I'll make that mistake. Next time I'll definitely be getting my boss to call someone if I don't receive a race packet in the mail.  On the race website there were five different maps in different locations so that wasn't any help.  Anyways, there was probably a race today, but I wasn't in it which was incredibly frustrating because the past two weeks of training have been really strong for me and I was certainly interested in how my time was going to look compared to my training.  So this morning I knew that the race started at 8 for the full marathon and that you could pick up packets starting at 7.  So I woke up at 5 and got a strong warm up after eating a bagel.  Then I walked to where the starting line was supposed to be and walked around searching for this and asking people for the next hour and a half.  I was so frustrated at the thought of wasting a good warm up or being up that early that I went for an hour and a half run to sweat out my cares and worries.  It helped to.  I went to a museum and then just wandered around and now heading back home. :-)

A Charlie Joke in Korean

So I was on the bus getting ready to head out to 10K tomorrow when this older guy gets on the bus and sits next to me.  I noticed that he had a couple bags and then this skinny box.  When he turned the box I saw that it was just a basic office clock.  I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for a Charlie joke in Korean.  So I told him hi and then I asked him if he had the time.  His face was priceless.  It looked like he was going to kick my ass.  Long story short he went and talked with the driver and got a new seat and I got a trip with my bag on the seat next to me instead of a humorless man and i got a hilarious story out of it.  From my point of view it's a win - win.

Finally an Update

So June was the month of me being a horrible blogger.

July will absolutely be different.

I've been bowling a lot lately. Faithful readers might remember the cruddy experience that we had at a bowling alley earlier this year. Well the owners of that alley bought a new facility and it is LEGIT! Black lights, nice new balls, quality lanes, and they don't whine and moan when we bring cases of beer in. Actually the owner approached us the first night and told us how happy he was to see us and please to tell more people and bring more beer.

I'm not bowling consistently like I was numerous summers ago, but I'm doing pretty decent. I think that my scores are mildly affected by the fact that the last time I was bowling on a regular basis I hadn't discovered the pleasure of drinking beer and bowling.

In other news, we've found a nice darts bar. Only downside is their darts are complete crap. It's right across the street from our school so we put together a small collection to get some decent darts to keep under the bar for when we come to visit. The owner is awesome. He speaks a little English and loves it when we come to visit.

I went fishing with the boss a few weekends ago. I had a blast. Going out on a boat into the bay and fishing. It was a last minute trip so their wasn't a lot of time to prepare which I will definitely have to do next time as I was hungry a lot of the weekend.

I have a race this weekend. Another 10K. :-)

It's humid and hot here now. It makes me think of Robin Williams' joke about enjoying a waterfall running down the crack of his ***. Edited for Grandma Shannon. Love you :-)

I don't have an automatic ice machine in my freezer, but I have been making tiny ice cubes and storing them for when I want them. Mmmm ICE TEA!

Acupuncture has been going great. I feel the tendons in my knees are less swollen after a good session. I've had to alter my going time because of my new schedule, but I still go every week at least once. This week I'll definitely be going at least twice with a race this weekend.

I like my new classes. Well they're not exactly new as I'm now in week 6, but since I've been absent from the blog, then they're new to readers. The students are lower levels, but they are super fun to work with as most of them are working hard through the struggles to get to a new level of mastery. This is definitely a different approach to teaching the English language than my upper level students I've had in terms past, where the approach was to think critically in the English language, not basic understanding. The stories aren't bad either