Diary: "a little dog is delicious"

If you've read Holly's blog at all you know that our students are required to write weekly diary entries that often provide us with a hilarious glimpse into their daily lives. I thought I would share one particularly funny one I received from a 6th grade student last week. I couldn't help but laugh as I was once again reminded of the many differences between our cultures.

Today is my father's birthday.
My family went to the Jaechun.
Jaechun is my father's hometown.
We bought a cake. We did birthday party at noon.
My relatives and my father's friends celebrated
my father (of course me and my family, too).
My father looks very very happy and fun.
At evening, (a little horrible) we ate dog.
My father says, "I ate dog in China, but it was not good."
I don't hate eat dog, but I looked dog's ribs...I feel awful and I didn't eat dog.
My uncle says, "Big dog tastes is not good. A little dog is delicious."
I heard that, I felt not good. I never eat dog forever. Never!
-by Jason, 6th grade

Fall Flashback: Thanksgiving

Since I was so lazy about keeping up with this blog last fall, I'm going to do a series of "Fall Flashback" posts so I have a record of all the fun happenings that I'm likely to forget.

One of the most memorable times we had was celebrating Thanksgiving with our coworkers and various other English teachers living in Ansan. We had to work on the actual day of Thanksgiving, so decided to prepare dinner on Saturday evening the 29th, two days later. I was skeptical that we'd be able to pull it off, but everyone really came through. The biggest piece of the puzzle, a turkey, was supplied by a friend of our friends Derrick and Lavon who is in the U.S. military. He was able to purchase a pre-cooked frozen turkey on the base. Holly and I supplied corn, stuffing and beverages, three things that are pretty hard to mess up. Thanks to my mom for sending over the instant stuffing!

This is the tiny little oven was used to warm up the slices of turkey before diner. It worked great, but was not the most time effective way of doing things. Unfortunately, most Korean kitchens are not equipped with an oven as we are accustomed to. Our apartment only has 2 gas burners and a microwave.

Here are the results of everyone's hard work. The dinner was hosted by Derrick and Lavon at their apartment. They had to borrow a couple extra dining tables and chairs to make room for everyone.

My plate of delicious Thanksgiving goodness. We had broccoli with cheese sauce, mashed potatoes, rolls with butter and of course the turkey and stuffing.

Here's a group shot of all the dinner guests. After dinner we enjoyed some apple pie (from Costco) and ice cream while watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. All in all, it was a great evening and helped us all feel a little closer to home during the holidays.

Klimt in Korea

With the weather starting to warm up a tiny bit, we decided to venture out this past weekend and check one the many museums in Seoul off our "to do" list. We read online about an exhibit of works by Gustav Klimt at the Seoul Arts Center that sounded exciting and expertly followed the directions for getting there using the subway. It was 2 transfers away but definitely worth it. Seoul Arts Center is a large complex of buildings including 3 museums, an opera hall and a large music hall for theater performances. We may have to visit again sometime soon to take in an opera, ballet or Broadway musical.

Here's a view of the main entrance. It looked very promising and didn't disappoint. It was quite modern looking inside and the large open spaces reminded me of museums in the U.S. Typically everything in Korea is small and crowded.

Here is an outside view of the Hangaram Art Museum taken from the courtyard above the main entrance.

A view of the whole complex from across the busy street. On the left is the Art Museum and on the right is the Design Museum. The courtyard and giant opera house are in between the two.

The Design Museum had a small exhibition of furniture by Charles and Ray Eames, which made us feel like we were back in design school. Unfortunately, they left Ray's name out of all the signage. It was nice to walk through the room and realize that, for once, we knew so much more about what we were looking at than the Koreans who were there with us. The familiarity of it all was really comforting.

They had a few vintage pieces like these...

...and a lot not so vintage pieces like this lounge chair with the Herman Miller tag still hanging off the back of it. It was very sad looking, pushed up against the wall all by itself. Some other pieces also appeared as if they were just unloaded off a Design Within Reach truck.

As for the Gustav Klimt exhibit...it was a little underwhelming. Many of the works displayed were drawings and his poster designs. We had hoped to see more paintings since they are the most interesting of all his work. We did see the painting above of Judith and it was beautiful.

We both love Klimt's painting of "The Kiss", but unfortunately it did not make the trip to Korea from it's home in Vienna.

The rest of Valentine's Day was spent exploring a new area of Seoul, sitting at Starbucks (no trip to Seoul is complete without it) and at the end of the day we saw "He's Just Not That Into You" at the small theater by our school in Ansan called the Meganex.

Happy (Lunar) New Year

Welcome to the year of the Ox! January 26th marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year. Also known as Chinese New Year, this is the most anticipated holiday in Korea. The ox is thought to be the sign of prosperity achieved through hard work, something that sounds appealing in these tough economic times. The students look forward to this time of year even more than Christmas. Many people travel to their hometowns to visit family and eat traditional food. Children perform ceremonial bows to their older relatives and in return are given gifts of money. We were mostly excited about the extra 2 days of vacation from work and used them to catch up on lost sleep and other exciting stuff like watching movies and grocery shopping. Seoul is mostly deserted and many stores and attractions are closed for the weekend, but we did manage to make a trip to the electronics market and spent an afternoon eating Indian food and relaxing at Starbucks.

Intensively Awful

In Korea, most students have a month long vacation during January. However, for us it was the exact opposite. Since kids have an abundance of free time parents often like to fill it with extra lessons at their various private academies. At ECC that comes in the form of morning "intensive" classes. For 4 weeks we were required to arrive at school by 9am everyday to teach these intensive classes. Afterwards, we had a lunch break before starting in on all of our normally scheduled classes. The days were really long and tiring, but thankfully our afternoon classes started 2 hours earlier so we were able to finish a little sooner every night. That was a major plus, but in no way made up for the early mornings. I'll take a late night over getting up at 8am any day...4 months of sleeping in has really spoiled me!

The intensive classes weren't really all that bad and the overtime was a welcome addition to this month's paycheck. My assignment was a group of 5th grade girls who I normally teach in the evenings. Their English is quite good and we were able to read the book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in the month's time. Many had read the Korean translation of the book and all had seen the movie, so they were already familiar with the story. They were a lot of fun and I enjoyed the extra time to get to know them.

February is the month in which students promote to a new grade, so our teaching schedules have changed to reflect that. Many classes we have at different times and some not at all. Thankfully, there are no more intensive classes until July (another vacation month for the kids).

Now- a few funny photos taken during the last week of January.

A student from my youngest class of 1st graders. Most kids are very camera shy but there are a rare few that really get into it. This little guy, Donovan, insisted I take about 5 pictures of him making slightly different versions of this face.

One of my 3rd/4th grade classes. Due to the February promotion, the class was split into 2 groups that now come at different times of the day. They were one of my favorite groups so I wanted a picture of them all together. It took me at least 5 minutes to get them all to line up and let me take this. They boys and girls are still very afraid to sit or stand next to each other at their age!