Live, from the 5 car, it's Tuesday morning!

In the red corner standing at 6-foot even, coming out of the Seocho station, working stiff number one.

And... in the blue corner, standing in at 5-foot ten-inches, transferring in at Seoul University station, the umbrella carrying working man number 2.

You're  referee for this event will be a tiny grandmother measuring in at 5'4".

"Gentleman you're dressed for work so let's make this a clean fight.  Now, let's GET IT ON!"

If you haven't guessed it from my tongue in cheek introduction, there was a gentleman's brawl this morning on the metro.  I was on the other side of the car, and the two gentlemen were speaking in Korean, so I don't know all of the particulars.  I was reading my book, so I didn't notice the incident right away, but when between stops people were readjusting (something unusual), I began to take notice.  

There were two gentlemen speaking rather tersely to each other by the door and the rest of the spectators were giving them a wide berth.  This went on for about ten seconds when one man slapped the other.  The slapped man responded by pushing the first man back against the door.  This instigated a response of the first man pushing the second back into the crowded subway car (This really confused me because the crowded car just acted as cushioning for him).  The last, but certainly not least move, was an epic response as the guy rebounds off the crowd, grabs the first guys tie, and slam checks him into the subway car door.  At this point, there was a huge suck of breath from everyone in the car and this little old lady comes in between these two guys and pushes them away and points her finger in both of their faces and starts yelling at both of them.

I don't know what the disagreement was about, and I don't care because it definitely brought an element of excitement to my morning commute.

Early Beginning of Rainy Season

My students informed me that rainy season was started a little earlier this year.  They said today is the start.  I however didn't bring an umbrella to work today, however luckily the clouds stayed closed for business.  :-)

They keep telling me that last year's rainy season was mild compared to seasons in the past, either way it is different for somebody that is used to a 2-4 month drought in Texas during the summer.

UPDATE :  I actually made it home, to the grocery store and back without a drop of rain touching me.  It wasn't until I was working on dinner and grading papers in my apartment that the skies opened up and released the cats and dogs on us.  

Relax, Don't Stress

Korean students stress.  Korean students stress a lot.  It's the pressure from their parents, the pressure from their society and the pressure from themselves.  There was a student who missed the review for our midterm due to being in the hospital for a brief stay.  She came for the midterm and took it and scored the lowest score in the class, but  even that wasn't anything remarkably bad.  So today when I passed out the midterms right before lunch, I stepped back into the classroom during lunch and called her to the teacher's area and I was like "don't stress, don't worry.  Relax.  You're still going to finish with an A with all of your other grades."  Her reaction was "how did you know I was worried?"  I told her I knew that Korean mentality, and I figured that she'd be worried.  It's just a different world when students wear that much stress in themselves after they get an 85.

New Geico Commercials

While I always enjoyed the Geico gecko commercials I'm glad they've moved on to explore different advertising alternatives that don't include cavemen.

The two comedian set up with the one guy on the mandolin and the other on the guitar is nice and has a different folk feel to it.

I like the one-liners that come from it:

"Happier than a Slinkie on an escalator"  Awesome.

UD's Core

So yesterday me and the other guy I work with were talking about books for the next session and I was telling him about what books I was probably going to introduce and do units with the students.  Then we were talking about loves of reading.  He was saying that he didn't really enjoy reading until later.  I admitted that I didn't really start loving reading again until recently.   He asked what turned me off of reading.  And I was telling him that I never stopped reading, I just was no longer reading at my level.  Reading illustrated classics and comic books would fill my literacy time. 

We then got talking about college texts and I was telling him that either the Odyssey or Beowulf were my favorite books from my freshman semester.  He was intrigued and so I showed him the reading list for literary traditions fall semester or freshman year and his reaction was "well that's one way to welcome students to college." 

I had to laugh thinking about the Iliad and the pages that had these "highlighter tails" as I would later name them from drifting off mid sentence highlighter still pressed to the paper. 

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS, HELP!!!

I need the help of other brilliant minds.  I'm looking for a challenging book for my upper level students to add to the curriculum for next term.  I want to move the current level 5 book to level 6, but the problem is one of the students that is in level 5 will be returning for level 6.  There lies the problem.  I love my current level 6 book, but I think with just a fraction of adjustment in the amount of depth that we dive into it, it could easily be done at a level 4 or 5 which is my plan.  

What I'm looking for is a decent book of about 200 to 300 pages.   I'm thinking of a biography or an autobiography for a change in genre if that helps anyone.  I would love to do one of my favorite books, In Dubious Battle, with the students, however I don't think migrant workers in southern California during the Great Depression is an easy setting for them to connect with on a personal level.

That being said, I just finished another good read and god the plan done for that book, and I found a Louis L'Amour book for 50 cents that will be my next book.  The hilarious thing about this book is it doesn't even have a barcode, which I'm going to take into class and show the students because they've been using their Galaxies and iPhones to scan the barcodes of books, and it instantly  gives them the proper citation for that book.  I think modern technology is awesome, but I've been stressing and testing them about learning how to do it by hand, so if they aren't near a computer, the computer does it wrong, or like in this case the book doesn't have a barcode, they're not stranding on a creek without a paddle.

Tonight's large batch of sauce

So last week it was a cajun cream sauce that I've got two yummy containers full of in the fridge for future weeks.  This week I made a roasted bell pepper sauce that's quite yummy! It's got red and orange bell peppers in it which explains the almost yellow color.

All the peppers used for this one were street peppers again bought from a different farmer, but this one was nice with brightly colored vegetables with beautiful smells to them.

Flower Garden

When I was at the Dongdaemun gate, there was a city flower garden nearby that I enjoyed finishing another book in, as well as looking at the flowers.  There wasn't a huge diversity in coloras, a lot of typical yellows and simple whites.  However, there were several of these very bright lillies or irises.  There colors definitely made up for the lack elsewhere, at least as far as creating a pleasant reading environment was concerned.

Thursday off of Work

Thursday was Memorial Day here in Korea, which means I got a day off.  I have say that having a holiday on a Thursday and having to work on Friday sucks.  But, I did make the best of it and toured several of the gates of ancient Seoul.  There used to be 4 large gates and 4 minor gates.  Now there are only three of each.  On Thursday I visited two of them, plus the main gate of the largest palace in Seoul.

The first gate just had reconstruction finished last month after a disgruntled government employee set fire to it several years ago.  They did the complete reconstruction only using tools that would have been available during the time period it was originally built.

The second gate is the main gate of the palace I was talking about.

The final gate is in the eastern part of Seoul. And is known as Dongdaemun (the great east gate).  It is closed and when I did some googling I found out that the roof had been structurally damaged due to rain and hail.

Finally there is a picture of a statue of this famous admiral from the Korean navy who designed this great boat and killed a large part of the Japanese during their battles.  The statue is cool because it is also surrounded by dancing water fountains that had tons of kids playing it them on the warm summer holiday.

Cool Pic of the Yeouido Skyline

On my walk today this jumped out at me and I thought it made an awesome picture,  especially in black&white.  This is the skyline of the island inside Seoul metropolitan area on the Han River.   The tall building on the lefthand side is known as the 63 Building.  The other cool thing that I like about this skyline is if you look at the buildings in the middle,  there's one that looks as if it has an odd awning on top.  It's actually several large trees on the roof of the building.  I think that's awesome.

I also included the original and the cropped.

The past couple of walks have got me thinking of going on a mission around Seoul and taking pictures of the beautiful architecture around the city.

I've seen a couple specific ones that I want to take pictures of in the future.