Bright and Early Monday Morning, A Perfect Time for a Midterm.

Today is midterms for our new students.  With more of a literature focus in my reading classes, my tests look very different so far from last session.  I'm excited to see how the students respond to the exams though because skillwise, these students are ahead of where previous students were, so I've been pushing them harder and the test really shows that. 

Bud Hunters

What a great name for a bar that serves -2°c Bud on draft.  Mmmm delicious.

What makes it better? 

I'm glad you asked!  It has a dart board, and the owner loves me!

Weird Music Fix Lately and White People Games

I've been listening to a lot of Al Green lately on my walks.  Weird.

Other things going on:

Hope all is well.  Midterms on Monday.

Been playing a lot of darts lately.  Taught my coworker how to play it.  When I hit four bulls in two turns he quotes "white people games".  I laughed and asked him to clarify that statement.  He goes "you know the drinking top three.  Darts, pool and bowling."  I threw horrible the next three turns because I was laughing too darn hard.

Whitewater

One of my Korean friends invited me to go whitewater rafting with her last weekend.  It was fun from the start as on the bus everyone introduced themselves.  There were people from 8 different countries on the bus.  The river itself wasn't especially challenging, but with the jokes coming continuously from everyone else in the boat, the crisp water and the fun atmosphere, the trip was an epic amount of fun.

All of the people on our raft except for Lewis the cameraman and me.  Danny was our guide in the middle.

Me in my position in the front left of the boat.

Me standing up and messing around in a still part of the river.

Splash battle with another raft.

Taking a break to water slide on the rafts.

Whitewater Rafting this Weekend

A more in depth post will come later, but I just wanted to post some pics of the whitewater river trip from Sunday.

Talked with James

Yes I was at a bar with ice cold draft Budweiser.

Yes I was kicking ass at darts.

But the highlight of my night?  Texting with James.  That put me in an unbelievably great mood and now I'm on top of the world.  :-)

Feet Pizza

I was eating a gorgonzola pizza at my new bar last night and was chatting up the owner.  He told me the cheese taste good but smelled like feet.  I told him my aunt Ann Falloure would beg to differ.  He didn't get it, but I was laughing hard.  Who knew smelly feet could be the punchline of a joke?

Penguins and Emotion

The other teachers had one question for me today during the staff meeting.

"What in the hell were you doing today?"

Apparently, the quiet grandson (as Grandma Shannon so lovingly refers to me) was heard in all of my classes.

So I was explaining to them that in one class we were discussing Tuesdays with Morrie.  In the section that they read for homework, Morrie presents the idea of being "fully human".  So one student says that this means that we should be differentiated from animals.  I then asked how.  Then another student presented the idea of heart.

So then we discussed how with the three concepts of physical, mental and emotional well being, all living things can have physical well being including plants and animals and humans can have mental well being, but it is humans that really have the power to develop emotional well being.  One of my girls presented the argument that animals can feel emotion.  So I countered with "why do two penguins get together?  Is it because one penguin waddled up and was like 'Hey chicka let's go get some anchovies and snowcones tonight.'"  The entire time I'm saying this I'm waddling and and putting a little penguin swagger into it.  This impression of penguins went on for probably only a minute or two, but my students were literally bent over laughing.

The best part was the teachers were laughing heartily as well during the recounting.  At the end of which they both replied that they were definitely glad that they asked.

Charlie was definitely helping me out in class today and he stole the show.  

Today's Lunch

Today's lunch was grilled sausage with spicy mustard, a rice omelet and sesame coleslaw.  It was delicious.

Hot Times in the City

It has been considerably humid in Seoul lately.  Granted, it is nothing like Houston, but its definitely not the most enjoyable time.

New Westerns

Since I have the books and reading guides finished for the books that I will be teaching in class, I was in the market for some new books that I wanted to read. On my way home from work today I stopped by the used bookstore by my apartment. I found these two gems and was pleasantly surprised to see if they had never been read ants that the clerk was only going to charge me $1 per book. It definitely looks like I have some good dreams for train rides, relaxing times in the park, and any other time I find the occasion to flip a few pages.

Morning Subway Stares

I think on the morning subways I'm going to have to go back to reading comics on my tablet or watching a more serious drama.  Lately I've been watching comedies on my morning commute and something I've figured out about Koreans so far is that they are not morning people.  After my morning run, I'm in the mood and ready to start the day.  What better way to start the day than with a laugh?  It's pretty funny the looks on the morning subway ride that I get whenever I'm snickering and trying to hold in a hearty laugh after a good one-liner.

SLANG 101

The Listening and Speaking instructor at our program has been giving the students a term of the day and a phrases of the day as per our boss's instructions to give our students a wider social vocabulary to work with when they go over to the states.

On Friday I was quite hoarse, and I made a comment that without being able to change the pitch and tone of my voice, I was basically teaching in a straight jacket.  I said that my voice was directly connected to my teaching mojo.

Fast forward through the weekend to Monday.  His word of the day was "mojo", and apparently he used me as an example.

When I came into class, one of the students asked me if my throat was feeling better.  I replied that it was.  Then she goes "so you've got your mojo back today?"  I couldn't stop laughing for about a minute or so.

the U.D.O. The Unidentified Driving Object

This weekend when I was on a walk I saw a Dodge 2500 (and it was a Hemi).  It was hilarious to see so many Koreans walking around and staring at it like this was some alien vehicle, some foreign object.