Hey (from Wadi Natrun, in the Egyptian desert between Cairo & Alex),
I write and comment, too! I must write the most next to Matthew... And I will keep writing, and I will post over 100 times (maybe 1000), so I hope you will keep talking to me in the future... :-)
You, Marisa, will probably become a star foreign teacher who gets to go all over Korea doing your Halloween class. In fact, they may in the future make all English classes in Korea watch your Halloween class every Halloween. You may become a Korean cultural icon.
So, what did Jordan videotape? Something interesting, I hope.
In Chungju it was below freezing yesterday, but today was fairly warm. I knew that this was so the minute I looked out my window in the morning because there was nothing there. The fog was so thick that I had difficulty crossing streets because I couldn't see the walk light; when I arrived at work, the blankness beyond the windows suggested that Chungju Middle School had been transported to an empty dimension and that I and the other teachers were the only humans left in the universe.
And then at around 9:00 the sun made it up over the mountains and all the fog vanished in less than ten minutes.
(The locals tell me that it was never foggy here before the dam created Chungju Lake, so strangely enough the phenomenon I witnessed was man-made.)
I am glad that someone can find amusement in my difficulties. Actually, the class turned out to be not that bad as I did end up filming in a different class then in the morning. Of course, this was the wild class and I was a little worried we were going to have to film again because Ms Park had to give them a lecture halfway through, but apparently everything is ok. Likely she will be editing that part out.
Ahhh, my students must think they are in Korea as I assign homework and they don't do it. Thus, they must think that either the homework or I am fictional.
I laughed and laughed while I read this post. Thanks for the GREAT belly laugh!
It's only you. You are living in a multi-ethnic culinary paradise compared to Gunsan. There are some normal pizzas on the Domino's menu, but even these are slightly warped. Last week at a game night we ordered some pizza; the "pepperoni" included chunks of potato and corn, while the "cheese"... also featured potatoes and corn! Each pizza also comes with a number of little cups containing sweet pickles, kimchi, garlic cloves, and two kinds of dipping sauce: "tex-mex" and chocolate.
Of course, this is just what happens when you attempt to utilize a foreign cuisine you do not understand. I'm sure that Americans do the same thing in their "Chinese" restaurants, and that actual Chinese people would be just as bewildered as we are by Korean pizza.
Oh, and that university slogan is classic. I wonder what kinds of visions God has... I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with a God who has "visions." It does not, however, beat the Korean Mr. Pizza slogan: "Made for Women." If you go to their website (which of course needs IE) you will see that they are NOT joking. I wonder how pizza fits in to "culture for women?"
I think it should be noted that within a few blocks of our house we have about 10 normal places to eat pizza. Including the best stuffed crust pizza I've ever had.
Just because everyone else is lame and doesn't comment, doesn't mean you should join them. Who knows, we may only talk to people in the future who have commented at least 100 times on our blog. You never know, we have crazy tendencies. So to be safe, I would keep up the comments, the longer the better.
Besides, we like to feel loved, and commenting is a good way of showing that you care.
So the thing with the homework is that I'm not allowed to assign homework, but the rules for the contest said I should, so I assigned fictional homework that the students won't do and that they know they won't do when I assign it.
Yeah, the Korean school schedule is a bit strange---that week you're working is actually graduation week for the seniors, but the other grades have normal classes. The idea is that if they have the big graduation festivities right at the end of the semester the seniors will skip out on classes, or the younger students won't pay attention, or something. (I can't pretend to fully understand it either.)
I'm really impressed that you assign homework---my schools don't let me! You'll teach several of those "demonstration classes" over the course of the year; don't be surprised when you co-teacher tells you that tomorrow you'll be doing it as some totally different school way out in the countryside. (This can actually be really fun, as long as you remember that This Is Korea and literally anything can happen at any time with no warning whatsoever.) Oh, and no matter who wins the contest, they will send you to the awards ceremony (which will change times and locations at the last minute and without your knowledge) to listen to an hour of speeches in Korean and watch the winners do their thing. But it's a day off of school and a chance to visit a new place, so it's not that bad...
But... but you're south of me! And I haven't seen a single flake! This can't be happening!
So are you enjoying your ondol [heated floor]? I used mine for the first time today and I must say that my feet are toasty warm and the general effect is very pleasant (and a bit soporific). The Koreans are indeed onto something good here, it's as nice as central heating (and I suspect more energy-efficient) and a heck of a lot better than the space heaters you see in Europe... or in my middle school.
The blog just ate my extremely interesting comment about how the only cereal you can find in Chungju is either Corn Flakes- or chocolate-based. (I hate "chocolate" cereal...)
I haven't looked for All Bran, perhaps it's there, they have a small selection of cereal, although we haven't bought any.
My favorite food in the cafeteria was definetly the time we were served donuts.
I have been making tasty juice. Koreans as a rule don't import anything. All the cars are Korean, all the electronics are Korean and all the food is Korean. You can find peanut butter if you look really hard, but that's about it. Sometimes we buy vegetables from a stand right next to the farm. You can watch them pull up the carrots. We have started using local vegetables that I can't really tell you about because I don't know what they are. We tried to buy this one, but the lady we buy our vegetables from said we couldn't. I guess it wasn't a tasty one. Carrots are strangely expensize but huge, spinach is cheap and the cucumbers have spikes.
Can you get All Bran in your town? Do they have Western (or Korean) breakfast cereals available (e.g., a kimchee variety)?
What is your favorite cafeteria food there?
What kind of juice(s) have you been making? What kind of fruits & veggies are available in the market? And are they mostly locally grown, or do they import a lot?
You do have some incredibly well-behaved students from the accounts I've read. I have some good classes at one of my schools (almost or as good as yours), but at Chungju Middle School it's all but impossible to even differentiate individuals. I look out at the class and it's a solid, teeming mass of yelling and hitting and biting and games of keep-away and snoring and table-breaking and roughhousing and jumping and texting and reading and crotch-grabbing and kicking and general chaos. My new co-teacher there uses a whistle (one of those deafeningly loud metal gymn whistles) to get their attention, which causes about three to four seconds of ear-clutching silence before the students resume their usual activities. The last class I had with her was fifteen minutes of teaching and thirty of whistle-blowing and stern lecturing about the kids' behavior (they talked during the lecture). She'll give up soon enough.
So I played this game again, with a different class as my other school (that knew nothing about my other class or what they picked), and the final came down to Rowboat vs. Airplane. And the winner, of course, was rowboat. I'm just stumped.
Okay, you keep reaching new heights of enticement in your Korean adventure. not only interesting (very interesting) food (I love seafood), but people sharing an all-you-can-eat or drink order?! No way! You're right we'd order 1 for 6! We'd push their sharing values to the limit (probably make them end up making rules about the sharing, special for us :-).
It's probably relevant to point out that near Andong there's a "Foreigner Shooting Range." And one of my schools' bears the slogan, "2008---Happy Dream!" My co-teacher even found a way to include this phrase in an English test. I just didn't have the heart to tell her...
On a different note: free drink refills?! You are in a veritable Korean Paradise.
Go Marisa! I am both envious and proud of you, being everyone's friend like that. I like these Korean outings - lots to eat and drink, and they even send you home with beer for your husband! I hope Jordan enjoyed it. Everything sounds great - the eel, plus everything else. I may have a change of calling any day now, and end up with you in Korea.
P.S. You're looking almost Korean already - I don't know if I'll even be able to pick you out of the crowd if we visit. :-)
(I still haven't had eel, I'm sort of envious of you... of course, I think that being in the middle of the country I get far, far fewer meals involving seafood than you do.)
I have little to add except that this is the Classic Korean Experience. You were lucky that you had a few hours' notice---most of my meals out involve my getting up to leave at the end of the day and Mrs. Kim saying, "Oh, we eat dinner with other teachers tonight." Remember: if you go anywhere or do anything with your co-worders outside of school, there will always be food involved. This is not hyperbole, it's just plain fact.
(You can be their friend without drinking the alcohol, just be sure that the coke/cider bottle never gets too far from you and hand it to them when they come around with the soju. The other teachers will act disappointed, but really it will go down in their books as another lovable foreigner eccentricity.)
I say again, you guys are pretty darn lucky in having so many interesting places to eat near your house. Bungeo-ppang, as any anime fan would know, is actually a direct Korean infringement upon the intellectual rights of Japanese taiyaki. I've never seen it in Chungju so I'm quite envious of you.
Thank you for giving your audience a musical taste of what we endure every time we go to Lotte Mart or E-Mart!
(Also, be careful near the cars! Half of them have absurdly touchy alarms... all of the experienced foreigners in Chungju have stories to tell about getting in trouble for setting off a car alarm.)
Hey (from Wadi Natrun, in the Egyptian desert between Cairo & Alex),
I write and comment, too! I must write the most next to Matthew... And I will keep writing, and I will post over 100 times (maybe 1000), so I hope you will keep talking to me in the future... :-)
You, Marisa, will probably become a star foreign teacher who gets to go all over Korea doing your Halloween class. In fact, they may in the future make all English classes in Korea watch your Halloween class every Halloween. You may become a Korean cultural icon.
So, what did Jordan videotape? Something interesting, I hope.
In Chungju it was below freezing yesterday, but today was fairly warm. I knew that this was so the minute I looked out my window in the morning because there was nothing there. The fog was so thick that I had difficulty crossing streets because I couldn't see the walk light; when I arrived at work, the blankness beyond the windows suggested that Chungju Middle School had been transported to an empty dimension and that I and the other teachers were the only humans left in the universe.
And then at around 9:00 the sun made it up over the mountains and all the fog vanished in less than ten minutes.
(The locals tell me that it was never foggy here before the dam created Chungju Lake, so strangely enough the phenomenon I witnessed was man-made.)
I am glad that someone can find amusement in my difficulties. Actually, the class turned out to be not that bad as I did end up filming in a different class then in the morning. Of course, this was the wild class and I was a little worried we were going to have to film again because Ms Park had to give them a lecture halfway through, but apparently everything is ok. Likely she will be editing that part out.
Ahhh, my students must think they are in Korea as I assign homework and they don't do it. Thus, they must think that either the homework or I am fictional.
I laughed and laughed while I read this post. Thanks for the GREAT belly laugh!
It's only you. You are living in a multi-ethnic culinary paradise compared to Gunsan. There are some normal pizzas on the Domino's menu, but even these are slightly warped. Last week at a game night we ordered some pizza; the "pepperoni" included chunks of potato and corn, while the "cheese"... also featured potatoes and corn! Each pizza also comes with a number of little cups containing sweet pickles, kimchi, garlic cloves, and two kinds of dipping sauce: "tex-mex" and chocolate.
Of course, this is just what happens when you attempt to utilize a foreign cuisine you do not understand. I'm sure that Americans do the same thing in their "Chinese" restaurants, and that actual Chinese people would be just as bewildered as we are by Korean pizza.
Oh, and that university slogan is classic. I wonder what kinds of visions God has... I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with a God who has "visions." It does not, however, beat the Korean Mr. Pizza slogan: "Made for Women." If you go to their website (which of course needs IE) you will see that they are NOT joking. I wonder how pizza fits in to "culture for women?"
I think it should be noted that within a few blocks of our house we have about 10 normal places to eat pizza. Including the best stuffed crust pizza I've ever had.
Just because everyone else is lame and doesn't comment, doesn't mean you should join them. Who knows, we may only talk to people in the future who have commented at least 100 times on our blog. You never know, we have crazy tendencies. So to be safe, I would keep up the comments, the longer the better.
Besides, we like to feel loved, and commenting is a good way of showing that you care.
So the thing with the homework is that I'm not allowed to assign homework, but the rules for the contest said I should, so I assigned fictional homework that the students won't do and that they know they won't do when I assign it.
Someone needs to post comments on this blog besides me. My comments are absurdly long and uninteresting.
Yeah, the Korean school schedule is a bit strange---that week you're working is actually graduation week for the seniors, but the other grades have normal classes. The idea is that if they have the big graduation festivities right at the end of the semester the seniors will skip out on classes, or the younger students won't pay attention, or something. (I can't pretend to fully understand it either.)
I'm really impressed that you assign homework---my schools don't let me! You'll teach several of those "demonstration classes" over the course of the year; don't be surprised when you co-teacher tells you that tomorrow you'll be doing it as some totally different school way out in the countryside. (This can actually be really fun, as long as you remember that This Is Korea and literally anything can happen at any time with no warning whatsoever.) Oh, and no matter who wins the contest, they will send you to the awards ceremony (which will change times and locations at the last minute and without your knowledge) to listen to an hour of speeches in Korean and watch the winners do their thing. But it's a day off of school and a chance to visit a new place, so it's not that bad...
But... but you're south of me! And I haven't seen a single flake! This can't be happening!
So are you enjoying your ondol [heated floor]? I used mine for the first time today and I must say that my feet are toasty warm and the general effect is very pleasant (and a bit soporific). The Koreans are indeed onto something good here, it's as nice as central heating (and I suspect more energy-efficient) and a heck of a lot better than the space heaters you see in Europe... or in my middle school.
I would have to agree that chocolate cereal is no good. Unless it's Reese's Puffs.
The blog just ate my extremely interesting comment about how the only cereal you can find in Chungju is either Corn Flakes- or chocolate-based. (I hate "chocolate" cereal...)
I haven't looked for All Bran, perhaps it's there, they have a small selection of cereal, although we haven't bought any.
My favorite food in the cafeteria was definetly the time we were served donuts.
I have been making tasty juice. Koreans as a rule don't import anything. All the cars are Korean, all the electronics are Korean and all the food is Korean. You can find peanut butter if you look really hard, but that's about it. Sometimes we buy vegetables from a stand right next to the farm. You can watch them pull up the carrots. We have started using local vegetables that I can't really tell you about because I don't know what they are. We tried to buy this one, but the lady we buy our vegetables from said we couldn't. I guess it wasn't a tasty one. Carrots are strangely expensize but huge, spinach is cheap and the cucumbers have spikes.
Marisa,
Can you get All Bran in your town? Do they have Western (or Korean) breakfast cereals available (e.g., a kimchee variety)?
What is your favorite cafeteria food there?
What kind of juice(s) have you been making? What kind of fruits & veggies are available in the market? And are they mostly locally grown, or do they import a lot?
Thanks for all the news,
-Doug
You do have some incredibly well-behaved students from the accounts I've read. I have some good classes at one of my schools (almost or as good as yours), but at Chungju Middle School it's all but impossible to even differentiate individuals. I look out at the class and it's a solid, teeming mass of yelling and hitting and biting and games of keep-away and snoring and table-breaking and roughhousing and jumping and texting and reading and crotch-grabbing and kicking and general chaos. My new co-teacher there uses a whistle (one of those deafeningly loud metal gymn whistles) to get their attention, which causes about three to four seconds of ear-clutching silence before the students resume their usual activities. The last class I had with her was fifteen minutes of teaching and thirty of whistle-blowing and stern lecturing about the kids' behavior (they talked during the lecture). She'll give up soon enough.
Also: snow! We haven't seen any up here yet...
So I played this game again, with a different class as my other school (that knew nothing about my other class or what they picked), and the final came down to Rowboat vs. Airplane. And the winner, of course, was rowboat. I'm just stumped.
Okay, you keep reaching new heights of enticement in your Korean adventure. not only interesting (very interesting) food (I love seafood), but people sharing an all-you-can-eat or drink order?! No way! You're right we'd order 1 for 6! We'd push their sharing values to the limit (probably make them end up making rules about the sharing, special for us :-).
It's probably relevant to point out that near Andong there's a "Foreigner Shooting Range." And one of my schools' bears the slogan, "2008---Happy Dream!" My co-teacher even found a way to include this phrase in an English test. I just didn't have the heart to tell her...
On a different note: free drink refills?! You are in a veritable Korean Paradise.
Go Marisa! I am both envious and proud of you, being everyone's friend like that. I like these Korean outings - lots to eat and drink, and they even send you home with beer for your husband! I hope Jordan enjoyed it. Everything sounds great - the eel, plus everything else. I may have a change of calling any day now, and end up with you in Korea.
P.S. You're looking almost Korean already - I don't know if I'll even be able to pick you out of the crowd if we visit. :-)
Clearly the canoe wins because it is pink!
Next time it'll be octopus, or maybe cuttlefish.
(I still haven't had eel, I'm sort of envious of you... of course, I think that being in the middle of the country I get far, far fewer meals involving seafood than you do.)
Well hopefully if/when we go out again I won't have to eat eel.
I have little to add except that this is the Classic Korean Experience. You were lucky that you had a few hours' notice---most of my meals out involve my getting up to leave at the end of the day and Mrs. Kim saying, "Oh, we eat dinner with other teachers tonight." Remember: if you go anywhere or do anything with your co-worders outside of school, there will always be food involved. This is not hyperbole, it's just plain fact.
(You can be their friend without drinking the alcohol, just be sure that the coke/cider bottle never gets too far from you and hand it to them when they come around with the soju. The other teachers will act disappointed, but really it will go down in their books as another lovable foreigner eccentricity.)
I say again, you guys are pretty darn lucky in having so many interesting places to eat near your house. Bungeo-ppang, as any anime fan would know, is actually a direct Korean infringement upon the intellectual rights of Japanese taiyaki. I've never seen it in Chungju so I'm quite envious of you.
Thank you for giving your audience a musical taste of what we endure every time we go to Lotte Mart or E-Mart!
(Also, be careful near the cars! Half of them have absurdly touchy alarms... all of the experienced foreigners in Chungju have stories to tell about getting in trouble for setting off a car alarm.)