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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).

Source: Michael Breen's The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies.

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Take 1:

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.

Take 6:

 

Hip Hop Nation

09 Aug 2009
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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.

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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. 

Sources:

http://facts.trendstoday.info/food-and-drink/garlic

http://www.squidoo.com/seoul-korea-information-and-travel-guide

http://www.trifood.com/intro.html

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/south-korean-culture.html

Saemangeum

19 Jun 2009
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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.

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Danoje Festival

31 May 2009
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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):

Camping in the Rain

18 May 2009
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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?"

 

The setting, half an hour outside of Gunsan:

 

More pictures here.

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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:

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24 Scoops for Marisa

08 May 2009
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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")

Shellfish Heaven

26 Apr 2009
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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.

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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."

Why you want a bunny

30 Mar 2009
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Did I mention that she's house trained? And only sheds once a year?

.

Donguri Revealed

26 Mar 2009
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Donguri is, as most of you correctly guessed or discovered, a flying squirrel named after an acorn (donguri means acorn in Japanese), who appears in a single episode of the extremely wonderful, 2004 Japanese animated series, Windy Tales. That is all I am actually going to tell you, because further exposition would do little to clarify our motivation for naming our site after him. If you simply wanted to know where the name comes from, now you do.

If you want to try to understand something of our motivation, you will have to watch Windy Tales. The show has not yet been officially released in the United States, which means that the only way to get it with English subtitles is to download it. The easiest (and I think only) way to do that is via torrent files. If you don't know about torrents, don't panic, just read this tutorial.

Once you have read that tutorial and have installed one of the recommended torrent programs, you can download the entire 13-episode season of Windy Tales by clicking and opening this torrent. Each episode is only 20 minutes long; Donguri appears in episode 4.

donguri_and_boy

Tough Love

23 Mar 2009
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So last Friday one of my classes was not wanting to participate: my thoughtful and creative attempts at discussion and activity were being met with nothing but yawns by the energetic students, and snores by the less motivated.

The lesson was on health and fitness (From the textbook: ... Mike: "It really shows. You look so healthy." / Mina: "How about you? You look like you gained some weight over the vacation." ...). Anyway, I will often search YouTube for an entertaining video touching on our topic just to get the kids laughing or what have you; on Friday I found one that was somewhat disturbing (okay, very disturbing, but that's what middle schoolers love) to go along with our fitness theme. I had not shown it to the students yet, and suddenly I was struck by a brilliant idea.

"Everyone up. Out of your seats. Yes, you too. Stand up."

Gradually everyone wakes up and stands, most of them looking somewhat confused and disoriented.

I then started the video:

They start laughing. I tell them that this is serious business.

"We are now going to exercise with the video."

The students look at each other in disbelief. I can't be serious.

I glare.

Some of the students start to move their arms and legs feebly.

"Pump your arms now! Let's go!"

More feeble movements.

I let them continue in this fashion until the video finishes. Everyone sighs with relief and begins to take their seats.

"No. Keep standing."

Confusion and suspicion radiate from the lethargic mob.

I then proceeded to give an impassioned speech on class participation, lethargy, and education in general: "... and if you are not going to interact with my lesson, then we are going to exercise with the poodles. And if you do not exercise with the poodles--energetically--you will leave the classroom. The poodles, you see, are a metaphor for life: just as you must exercise energetically with them, so you must participate energetically in class..."

It was clear by the horrified looks I was receiving that the students understood my message. And so I started the video again, from the beginning, and this time everyone pumped their arms.

The end result of all this is that when we returned to our lesson, and  I repeated the question to which I had previously gotten no response, multiple hands went into the air. The students had decided that this was better than the poodle video. And I had decided that the poodle video was better than anything. It now resides permanently on my jump drive, in my pocket.

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My new semester started out similarly to Marisa's, in that on the first day of school I was picked up by my co-teacher as usual, and was naive enough to think that the day would be without "incident." A few minutes into the drive, however, Mr. Song says, "oh, do you know about new workplace?"

Me: "No." (do I have a new office? I wonder to myself).

Mr. Song: "You are teaching at new school."

Me: "Oh."

Mr. Song then proceeds to explain to me that he had been notified of this school change just a couple hours earlier. "We will see," he says. That day I sit around at Jayang doing nothing, because my co-teacher at my new school (where I am supposed to be Monday through Wednesday now) is too busy to come pick me up. Things get somewhat sorted out by Tuesday though, and I make my way to the new school, a downtown juggernaut of 1000 students, not unlike Marisa's Seoheung... my days of teaching 6 students per class at Napo are gone forever.

My schedule at the new school is haphazard and full to overflowing... they tell me that this schedule is "temporary" though (no surprise there), and that I will be getting my "real" schedule in two weeks... we shall see. In the meantime I've been introducing myself like a broken record to class after class of hollering 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders (that is 7th, 8th, and 9th graders).

I've been around to some of the classes twice now, but wasn't much prepared for the second encounters, since my "temporary" schedule is actually not a schedule at all, and the classes I end up teaching are rarely the ones shown there; this together with the fact that I have not been given a textbook or any materials, leads to what we in Korea call "flying by the seat of one's pants" (i.e. living). The classes themselves do have textbooks though, and sometimes I improvise from there. In one class the lesson centered around a nature photographer, with the topic being protecting nature. This particular class was what I sometimes call a "dud." Meaning that the students look at you sometimes, but rarely do anything else.

"What is this lesson about?" Nothing.

"Protecting Nature, right?" One student nods.

"Do you like nature?" Nothing.

"Do you want to protect nature?" Nothing.

"Just raise your hand if you like nature/want to protect nature." Nothing.

At this point I go a bit off the deep end, and start wildly drawing a grim Armageddon on the chalkboard: giraffes being blown up with bazookas, bulldozers flattening snowy mountains, and people with flamethrowers torching down forests. This gets the students chuckling. Pretty soon the chalkboard is nothing but smoke and flames, and a bunch of X-ed out giraffes. "Is this what you want to happen to the world?" Nothing.

Which brings me to my haircut: for $10 in Korea you don't get Great Clips--you get fanciness. I get my hair cut at Lotte Mart, because there is no reason to do anything outside of Lotte Mart--actually, it is my theory that nothing exists outside of Lotte Mart. So anyway, when you go in a woman takes your coat; next you get a glass of orange juice, which you can sip as you surf the web with one of the provided computers as you wait. When your wait is up a man with a towering hairdo of craziness invites you to sit down and be "prepared" with multiple aprons and perhaps some spray. A lady brings you The Book so you can pick out a do if you want something fancy. I just point to a man with a buzz. "Short Cut?" they ask. "Yea, short cut." This is not enough confirmation, though, so they (lady and crazy hairdo man together) flip the book and find two or three more men with "short cuts," and verify the idea with me each time. Finally we are ready to begin. I figure that the man will take the clippers, run them over my scalp, and be done with it... this is always how I've gotten buzz cuts before. But no. Instead, Hairdo starts to meticulously cut and trim. Cut and trim. A little bit of clippers now. Now back to the scissors. Now a new pair of scissors. Now cut cut. Now trim trim. And so after 20 minutes I emerge with my finely sculptured buzz. Of course then I get the hair wash and scalp massage treatment that is just part of the regular haircut here. Great Clips is kind of lame.

Which brings me back to my school: Nam Middle School, like almost every other school in Korea, as far as we can tell, has been outfitted over the winter break with a shnazzy new English room; "Welcome to Global Zone" is printed over the door in large letters. The room is large and very well outfitted, with a ginormous touch screen television, large sliding whiteboards, new computers, and clusters of tables arranged in a "we're here to be casual and have fun but also to learn about Global Zone" sort of way. Light is good, and posters around the perimeter sport catchy slogans and photos of English-speaking places, like Australia, Britain... and France. My office is actually in this room, where I sit alone and ponder my life. The provided computer, unlike my 10-year-old one at Jayang, is new and fast, and sports a 22-inch LCD monitor. So while the move from Napo is painful for the most part, my new school is not entirely without its upside.

Which brings me to the conversation class I had with the English teachers (5 of them here, all women) yesterday. We started out by discussing London's Tower Bridge (pictured on one of the posters), and I tried to explain how it was not London bridge, and how London bridge is quite drab looking, and how the previous London Bridge is currently in Arizona. Then they naturally wanted to know why "London Bridge is falling down." I had a quick pop into Wikipedia to verify what I thought I knew... anyway, things progress like this, and eventually we are onto America. Then eating. Then beef, which is thought to be to Americans what Kimchi is to Koreans.

"American's eat hamburgers every day?" asks one of the ladies.

"Not really. And no, not generally for breakfast."

They then go on to explain to me how American beef is diseased. All of it. This is why Korean beef is expensive and American beef is cheap. Koreans tried to get the government to stop importing it a while back with massive protests, but to no avail. Luckily, the Korean people know enough to stay away.

"Hm..." I said. "I don't think all American beef is diseased, actually."

"But you will get sick if you eat it," they insist.

"Hm..."

Eventually I figured out that this "disease" they were talking about was Mad Cow. My thought was that perhaps not all American beef was infected, as that would mean most if not all of the US population would have already been eradicated, but this theory did not fly with the Koreans. In all fairness I do remember when nobody in Minnesota would touch beef due to the Mad Cow scare, even though to date only 3 BSE cases have ever been identified in the United States (as opposed to say 183,841 in the UK).

That about sums up my week.

Istanbul Mini Update

17 Feb 2009
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Just a mini update to say that Istanbul is indeed a cool city, and we are having a lot of fun here. A few of the highlights so far:

  • Eating $1.30 doner kebap on the street (the best shawarma I have ever had) while sipping fresh-squeezed orange-apple-carrot juice.
  • Sampling a mixed kebap platter at a nearby cafe, with live Turkish zither music playing in the background.
  • Following up the kebap with a game of backgammon, as the locals start singing along to the music.
  • Eating all the Turkish Delight we can stomach while watching late-night (9pm) Star Trek.
  • Walking the streets in the rain (not like there's another option: it's been raining every day).
  • Heading into the grand bazaar with no map and no plan, not caring if we ever make it out or not.
  • Being rinsed and scrubbed and massaged with scalding water in a 500 year old Byzantine bath.
  • Drinking Turkish Apple Tea while discussing travel and teaching with a recent Teach for America volunteer who's traveling around the world before starting grad school in Michigan.
  • Eating our hostel-provided Turkish-style breakfast every day: fresh baguette, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheeses, meats, and olives, with jams and nuttella also available.
  • Trying out a few of the famous Turkish Mezes (appetizers) at a famous restaurant in the new downtown.
  • Talking with our hostel room-mate, a Malaysian doctor, about his multinational Chinese-Malay heritage.
That's not a comprehensive list by any means, but rather a few of the things that come to mind. Our style is to explore and site-see in a laid-back fashion, interspersing tea time as we desire it.

P.S. Our internet connection is not the fastest here, so we've been having some technical difficulties uploading our photos... if they appear lopsided, or incomplete, or ugly, or they're not there, that's why.

Istanbul Pictures

15 Feb 2009
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Blue Mosque

Our photos are up. Click here to view the complete (and expanding) collection.

A glance of Istanbul

14 Feb 2009
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"If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul."

So said Alphonse de Lamartine, French poet and politician, of the city which was then the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Napolean Bonaparte, who had similarly strong feelings about the city, supposedly said that "if the earth were a single state, Istanbul would be its capitol." This from the man who tried to conquer the world for France? (who was, by the way, average height for his day.)

Istanbul is one of those cities that makes you catch your breath before you even arrive there--at least if you're a student of history. The depth and breadth of this city's experience is second to none: at the intersection of two continents and two seas, two hemispheres, and two of the world's great religions, Istanbul is a microcosm of the world itself.

Today was but a glance of the city, but it was a glance that left an impression. In general, most cities that I have ever visited fall into one of three categories: those that one can grow to love, those that will mostly be forgotten, and thost that impress me instantly as being, for lack of a more comprehensive and ellegant word, "cool" Cool. Cairo fits into the first category, most cities into the second, and a handfull of cities--Vienna, Quebec, perhaps Istanbul--fall into the third.

We visited Sultanahmet (the Blue Mosque) and Ayasofya today, and took some really cool pictures (to overuse the word). They're still uploading, so you'll have to wait 'till tomorrow to see what we saw.

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We were invited Saturday, along with others from the Haven (our church), to a party at the Air Base, which turned out to be a day full of fun. We got a bit of a tour to start off, and learned some fun facts: the airbase is approximately 2000 acres in size, is home to around 2500 air force personnel (approx. one tenth of those being pilots), and maintains two squadrons of F-16 fighter jets (do the math and you discover that it takes approximately 40-50 people to support one fighter). The base was originally built in 1938 by the occupying Japanese forces; it was used by the United States from 1945 onwards.

The various amenities available on the base include a very large gym facility, a golf course, various fast-food restaurants (including Taco Bell and Burger King, which don't exist anywhere else in Gunsan), and the expected commissary, etc. The base is not considered to be "full fledged" because it lacks things like its own hospital, schools, etc. and so families are not allowed to accompany personell asigned here; consequently most (all, as far as I can tell) people are in and out in a year.

Gunsan Air Base

Anyway, after the tour we had lunch in the "Chief's Den" and played some Pit (with a WOW music video playing the background). Marisa and I were also tied together with rope and made to figure out how to untangle ourselves... we were uncessuful, but managed to amuse everyone nontheless (or perhaps consequently).

After our lunch settled we headed over to the very nice gym, and played wallyball (essentially volleyball in a squash court where you're allowed to hit the ball off the walls). We had enough people for four three-on-three teams, and had a real blast playing (it felt great to be physically exhausted for perhaps the first time since coming to Korea). One guy on my team named Tony (a police officer in Miami who chose to take a year off duty to teach in Korea) had been a volleyball setter for several years in college and grad school.

After everyone was spent we got to go up in the air base control tower before heading home on the 6:20 bus (which stops directly outside of the air base). We're hoping to have more wallyball action soon.

Wallyball action

More air base photos.