The first match of the 2010 World Cup not to end in a draw goes to Korea. We had a lot of fun watching on a giant portable TV from the entrance of a Korean bar, surrounded by a lot of hollering Koreans with drums and trumpets, who kept buying us beer and cheese sticks.
To me the most interesting aspect of this video is how critical the Korean government seems to be of its own education system--Obama's compliments notwithstanding. Thanks to Marisa's dad for passing this on.
I was reading some Parker Palmer today, and something he said reminded me of Annie Dillard's weasel essay, found in Teaching a Stone to Talk. I read the essay again, and seeing as it is the inspiration for our blog's byline, I thought I would go ahead and post it here. It is one of my all-time favorite essays.
Click on the "continue reading" link to see the whole thing.
ANNIE DILLARD
LIVING LIKE WEASELS
A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label.
And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton--once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?
I have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.
We hear the Korean version of this song almost every day here. It is much loved by our middle school girls. Now it is apparently much loved by American middle school girls as well. Notice how the beginning of this music video is obviously just a dubbed version of the Korean video--and yet the thing still managed to do well on MTV...
Today is my last day of teaching English to Korean middle schoolers. At least for the foreseeable future. To be honest, it has been a bit anticlimactic, considering that I ever only teach one class on Fridays, which just so happens to be the most subdued (read "asleep") of all my classes. I wasn't really feeling up to pumping them with energy today, and as they have already finished their textbook for the semester I gave in to their request to be allowed to finish Disney Channel's High School Musical 2, before the chance escaped them forever. So I took a few last pictures, and mainly sat and watched them, as they sat and watched a depiction of the glories that await them in high school. I sat looking into my past, and they into their futures (or at least, into the futures of upper class American middle schoolers who become teen sensations).
The last few weeks have been busy ones for me. On the one hand I have been preparing to leave my schools, saying goodbyes to students and teachers (my co-teachers took Marisa and I out to a nice restaurant for dinner on Wednesday), principals and vice principals, throwing pizza parties for the worthy--and on the other hand I've been attempting to ease into what will be my focus in the coming months: the study and creation of video games. I've also been spending a decent amount of time with my new physical therapist friend at Gunsan hospital, attempting to recover from a golf-related shoulder injury, a sleeping-related back injury, and a history of chronic back pain (which I'm convinced dates back to my years of washing dishes over a too-short counter: for the record, I will only ever make my short children wash the dishes).
The Nam Cup
To understand what I've been up to with my students of late, you will have to get your mind around the intricacies and inner workings of The Nam Cup, which I don't think I've yet mentioned in more than passing on this site. Basically, a couple of months into my teaching career, faced with four hundred students divided between twelve classes at two schools, some rowdy, some lackadaisical in the extreme, none of them relying on me for their grades, I determined that I had to do something: to come up with some sort of system that would give me power and control--ultimate power would be best, but I would settle for, say, a little tiny bit of power.
The wheels in my head spun and chugged, and out came the inspiration for The Nam Cup. Basically, I divided all of my classes into six groups of approximately six students each, and made a giant list of 9 classes and 54 "teams" of six (this is at Nam, where I had 9 of my 11 classes), which I kept track of permanently on one of my four whiteboards. This dividing was made incredibly easy thanks to my ginormous "English Zone" classroom and puzzle-piece tables which I was easily able to arrange as desired. Students had to pick teams and stay with them for the rest of the year.
Then came the fun part, handing out and taking away points. It turns out that middle schoolers (at least the ones I've had the pleasure to teach) are incredibly competitive. Not only this, but the idea of a "point," to my Korean students, seems to signify something enormously important. Even before I declared what the end-of-year prizes would be, my students exuded a kind of religious zeal for earning points, and expressed a deep, deep sadness when they were taken away. Students would come into class before it started to examine the whiteboard, take notes, and whisper sub rosa to each other. Then they would come back up at the end of class to get another look, apparently unsatisfied by the more distant view they got during class, though the whiteboard remained visible the whole time. "Teacher," they would say, "you are so handsome," "Teacher, we love you"--but their intentions were clear.
In any case, I did eventually announce the prizes, to more excitement than I could take without putting a finger in each ear. There would be two prizes at the end of the year: one for the class with the most points accumulated, six teams together, 36 persons--and another for the individual team of six individuals (out of the 54 teams) with the best score. The top class would get a pizza party at the English Zone, and the top team a chance to party at Sweet Home (that's mine and Marisa's house). I though the idea of inviting middle schoolers over unaccompanied to an adult's home might be a bit weird, but my co-teachers assured me that it was a wonderful idea, and the students seemed unable to imagine anything better.
And so the students strove all year for points, and last week I formally announced the winners, after holding a final round of jeopardy for the top five teams. There were a lot of crying sounds to be heard from those who didn't triumph (not real tears, mind you, just crying sounds), and had I to do it over again I would probably give out a prize every quarter, rather than once a year... but the winners were ecstatic, and the parties a good time. (Even if there was a bit of miscommunication regarding the pizza: I had thought that the school was going to pay for it, but it ended up coming out of pocket. Not a big deal. The funny part was that one of my co-teachers, when she realized we had miscommunicated, said that maybe I should cancel the pizza party: after the students had been looking forward to it for a year!) A girl in the pizza party class gave a little speech about how they would "always remember this time" (it wasn't clear if they were speaking mainly about me, or the pizza), and the five students who came over to our house were incredibly cute and polite and happy to be there. We ordered pizza for them as well ("our parents do not like pizza" said one of the girls in a woebegone voice), and they spent most of the afternoon petting Farah and playing Wii.
Physical Therapy Friend
I've been having back trouble for a long time (upper, lower, muscular, and skeletal, related to scoliosis), as I mentioned above, and after having a lot of pain at golf for several weeks running, and then pulling the muscles in my back one morning so that I couldn't get out of bed, I decided to take action. By asking Marisa to take action . The thing is, her co-teachers are better English speakers, so we thought they might be able to better understand the problem, and explain where to go. Well, it turns out that one of Marisa's co-teachers knows a young teacher at the school that has a boyfriend who "does something" that might help me. What exactly he does wasn't clear, but I figured I'd go see him anyway, and see where things went.
It turns out that Marisa's co-teacher's co-teacher's boyfriend is a physical therapist in charge of the physical therapy department at a local clinic, and does both chiropractic and deep tissue therapy. Wow. So I have a session with him and get the full treatment: chiropractic, ultrasound, infrared light, massage, and interferential current therapy (the later four treatments being standard issue for deep tissue pain). It feels great, but how much will it cost? I figure health care tends to be pretty cheap here, and I do have an insurance card, so I should be okay for at least one treatment, and hopefully more.
"No pay" says the girlfriend.
"What?" I ask.
"No pay, no pay," repeats the therapist.
"I don't understand."
"NO PAY! And come back tomorrow."
Okay then. We decided to ask Marisa's co-teacher about it, since we have a better time communicating with her. Clearly there must be some kind of misunderstanding here. Well, Marisa's co-teacher tells me that, if I really, really want to pay, I can take the guy out for dinner. Which isn't exactly the clear and transparent explanation of the financial situation that I was hoping for, but what can you do?
So I go back the next day, and the next, and the next. "Come until better," my therapist friend tells me: "maybe many weeks."
As if this wasn't enough, the guy insisted on driving me home Friday night. I tried futilely to resist, to say that I always take the bus, but in vain. Then I discovered that he was apparently going on a date with his girlfriend that night. And his car is a two-seater. And his girlfriend is already at the clinic. And his girlfriend insisted on riding in the back, without a seat. So there I am in the passenger seat of my physical therapist's car, with his girlfriend in the back, singing along to K-pop, being driven to my house as a pre-Friday-night-date favor, trying desperately to tell myself this is normal.
Etc.
I mentioned my interest in video games at the start of this post, and I'll expand on that in the future. Essentially, for those of you who don't yet know, I'm interested in the potential of the interactive medium to create art (I've started a website where I review games for meaning and significance at www.necessarygames.com). I don't have time to go into this now, because it's just about time to go home. Another couple of minutes to feed on nostalgia, then off to Slovenia tomorrow morning to visit Marisa's parents for two weeks. Oh--it looks like it's time for me to give a speech and receive a parting gift...
Most of you guessed 2nd, which would have been extremely surprising given that Korea's economy is only ranks 11th in the world, but still, you weren't far off (and the Koreans often do extremely surprising things).
Obi met luke. Obi is friend of Luke's father and he was warrier. R2-D2 showed Leia's message to him. Then he has to go Altaran. He suggest Luke to go with him. At first Luke regjected. They went back home. But empire's army ruined Luke's home. And Luke's uncle and aunt were dead. So Luke determined to go with Obi. So they went to city to find pilot.
Take 2:
Luke's uncle and aunt dead because bad people fire Luke house so, Luke want to be like his father, so he went to pilot in the bar he learn art.
Take 3:
Ruke get lightsword and he's uncle and aunt died. He went somewhere because he need a pilot and he get a pilot.
Take 4:
Um... robot cut leg (because sand jock) once day. Obi and Luke father Jack. Obi is Luke.
Take 5:
He is go learn force he mother father uncle die he is angry. He want to go learn to force in Jedie.
Korea is fairly new to the world hip hop scene. But when Koreans started b-boying they did it in typical Korean fashion: without reserve, determined to become the best. And now they are. The best. "Battle of the Year," a tournament often called the World Cup of break dancing, takes place annually in Germany. Out of the past seven years Korea has won four times. The other three years they were runner up. America, the mother of hip hop, has by contrast won the tournament twice in nineteen years.
This is all a lead in to say that while we were in Busan this last week we stumbled upon an international hip hop competition taken place on the beach. At one point it was raining pretty hard, so it was like seeing Step Up 2 live; the Koreans were ready with ponchos for everyone, so the show went on unfazed. One thing that surprised me about the competition was the number of girls involved, including an all-female Korean crew, which I thought was great (hopefully their parents think the same). Here's a little highlights video:
Does anyone know where Croacia is? For the life of me I couldn't find it on the map...
For more about break dancing, hip-hop, and Korea's dominance, I would highly recommend the film Planet B-Boy.
Yep, Korea beats out Italy and every country in North Africa and the Middle East to be the world's largest consumer of garlic. They eat it by the chunks here (generally they cut each clove in half--once), and they eat lots of chunks.
So here's a little quiz: if Carmen Sandiego were to hide out by world's longest man-made dike, where would you find her? I'll give you a hint: she wouldn't be in the IJsselmeer, the Netherlands. Because the dike located there, the Afsluitdijk, is 500 meters short of the title.
The answer of course, is that Carmen would be sipping ice-cold Nesquik at our apartment in Gunsan. The Saemangeum Seawall, located just south of the city, was opened in 2006 and measures 33 kilometers in length. It's still under heavy construction at the moment, part of a government project to increase the arable land around Gunsan that is costing Korea nearly 7 trillion won (or $5.5 billion USD).
Anyway, Matthew came down for a visit this last weekend, and we determined that it was time to visit the landmark. You can see the pictures here.
This last week we went up to the far north-eastern province of Gangwon-do to take party in the largest and longest-held Korean cultural festival, Danoje. We spent the night and were taken on tour as part of the special week-long foreigner program (the festival itself is a month-long afair).
Here's a little video of the experience (pictures will be up shortly):
Friday was Teacher's Day here in Korea, so to celebrate we went camping with our friends--Matt and Mihye (England, Korea), Jim and Carol (New Zealand), Edwin and Laura (Canada), and Vicky (England). Actually, to say "camping" is probably a bit of a stretch, since we slept in cabins complete with toilets, showers, TV's and, um, our Wii, and had an ice cream (and beer) man located conveniently down the road; but hey, let's not split semantics ;). We had two cabins, with guys in one and girls in the other, and spent two nights.
Anyway, the weekend was a lot of fun. It rained the whole time, but that didn't stop us (slash Edwin) from playing around with making fires and roasting hot dogs under the nearby gazebo, or playing scrabble and bickering over the validity of "ick," or being slaughtered by the girls in Pictionary, or learning how to really play Charades from masters Matt and Marisa, or trading every bit of trivia (slash "what do you call a man with X on his head" jokes) we knew as we fell asleep in the Manly cabin.
Marisa, our grill, and our cabins:
At Edwin's campfire. Left to right: Me, Marisa, Carol (being blocked by Marisa), Mihye, Matt, Vicky, Laura, and Edwin (the next couple of photos are courtesy of Jim):
Learning the intricacies of "water, log, fire" from Matt. He doesn't realize that his log's about to be washed away by my double river action:
Getting demolished in a girls-vs-guys game of pictionary. Our mistake started at "how about best 2 out of 3" and ended with "best 5 out of 9?"
While we were up in Seoul last weekend to get our certificates of residency from the American embassy, we decided to stop in for a service at Yoido Full Gospel Church. Yoido has the largest congregation of any church in the world, with over 850,000 members--it will probably be the first true "Gigachurch." They have around eight services on Sunday (we went to the 3pm one), and have live translation into 8 languages via headsets. For those of you who are interested, here's a look inside the church:
Ahem. So Marisa's birthday is coming up (as she likes to say, this is her "birthday month"), and it turns out that what she would really like is ice cream from Baskin Robbins. So I'm trying to raise 24 scoops for her. If you would like to contribute one scoop towards that twenty four, please use the "chip in" widget to the right to donate $2.50 (the cost of one scoop -- yeah, let's not comment on that).
And remember, this is top secret (which is why I'm posting under my code name, "Jourdanais")
So Gunsan is a nice place to live if you like seafood, like Marisa does. Yesterday Matt and Mihye took us to a sweet shellfish restaurant where we grilled our own food (one of the shellfish was as big as my head). Check out more pictures here.
An activity that I sometimes do with my students involves showing them a cartoonish picture of someone sobbing or smiling or looking angry, and asking them what emotion is being portrayed. I then ask them to complete the sentence "I am [feeling emotion x] because..." on a piece of paper, along with a drawing to help me understand what they are trying to express. A few of the more interesting and/or unexpected answers:
"I am sad because my lover left me." Oh the heart wrenching drama.
"I am happy because my poop came out." There was no doubt about this one, thanks to the detailed drawing accompanying it -- this was a girl by the way. Only in middle school, or only in Korea? Or both?
"I am upset because my mother catch me on 19 website." Actually, all the boys at a certain table had some variation of this one. Remember that everyone is a year older in Korea, so a "19 website" is... well, I think you can figure it out. I can't say I was surprised by the actual occurrence--it was just the level of candidness that threw me; I wanted to tell them "I'm just your teacher! Don't tell me this stuff!"
And one that needed a bit of correction: "I am in love with my sister because she is cute."
. The thing is, her co-teachers are better English speakers, so we thought they might be able to better understand the problem, and explain where to go. Well, it turns out that one of Marisa's co-teachers knows a young teacher at the school that has a boyfriend who "does something" that might help me. What exactly he does wasn't clear, but I figured I'd go see him anyway, and see where things went. 
