Main Entry:
tau·tol·o·gy Listen to the pronunciation of tautology
Pronunciation:
\tȯ-ˈtä-lə-jē\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural tau·tol·o·gies
Etymology:
Late Latin tautologia, from Greek, from tautologos
Date:
1574
1 a: needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word b: an instance of tautology2: a tautologous statement
I did show the movies in English with no subtitles. I had to pass it off as an English class after all. All my classes, aside from the one that watched Frosty, stared quietly at the screen and watched the movie. I thought at first it was because Miss Doo has good control of her classes, but it turned out to be true even in the more rowdy classes. I guess The Grinch is just magic.
PS: Will they still let me teach English if I don't know what a tautology is?
Hi Jordan & Marisa. Yes, the title is what we're doing the next three days. We're starting the festivities with French toast, which I am in the process of making as I type (well, it's cooking on the stove a few feet away).
We'll have 25 people for Dickens this year, which I think is a few too many... but we'll have our party hats and will have lots of fun.
1. You are much better and more efficient at planning things than I.
2. It is a tautology to say that How the Grinch Stole Christmas is better than Frosty the Snowman. Were you showing your videos with Korean subtitles? I'd be pretty astonished if the kids watched through the whole thing without them.
Marisa, Is this your dining/living room? Such stylish decor! :O) And cute fishies!! And great crafts taking over the table! Yay! You should see my room...
Today I "lunched" with my coworkers and students at Chuck E. Cheese. It was fine American dining, trust me! My toothless first graders won many tickets playing games; but unfortunately only got a plastic frog, a bendy straw and a squishy ball!
Thanks for sharing your fun adventures! And have a great Saturday!
I'm so excited to see you actually did it! :) It took me until now to catch up though. Why exactly did we come up with that again?? And I have to say, I'm pretty excited that I made it onto the blog too. How special.
Jed, you were with us more than once for Dickens, weren't you? I know you listened to hundreds of hours of read alouds with our family, over the years! :-) And in any case, it only takes one time to be a part of our tradition. Though the true traditionals are those who carry it on on their own, when they go their disparate ways (we hear that Karise's family now reads Dickens aloud). So, when are you reading Dickens this year (and don't forget the fancy hats)?
Jed, you are correct. Unfortunately we had no cool hats to wear. Quite unfortunate, really, because we came this close (here I am holding up my fingers very close together) to winning a really wonderful and outlandish hat from the local Lotteria (McDonald's like place), but alas...
P.S. You really are part of the tradition now too, you know: I vaguely remember something about Matt Neufeld and a diverse plethora of hats and you wearing one.
Marisa, you don't enumerate for us all the impressive things Jordan does - we want to be able to oooh and aaah like your Korean lady friends.
And perhaps the principal is reading your blog, and feels that all of Korea will think he is lax if he doesn't give you vacation school... Maybe you should start talking about what a tough work load you have, how many hours you spend prepping every night at home, etc... give him honor as the toughest principal in Korea. :-) In fact, your dad now may be wondering whether he's giving the teachers working under him enough work...
After reading Jordan's post about eating octopus I'm sure tofu sounds great - even in a pancake. :) Remember the noodle dish in HK that had baby octopi in it! And they weren't even moving but I could hardly wait to get rid of that plate. And then the pickled chicken feet . . . being a vegetarian certainly has its advantages.
Jordan, you reminded me why I'm vegetarian! I do wish you all the best in eating fish, eel, octopus and all other walking, creeping, swimming things. You've given me an idea for a new eating rule: if it moves or ever moved I don't eat it. Thanks!
So, Marisa, here's a question for you - how quickly do the Korean women you know have (or want to have) children after getting married? Is it like in the Middle East, where they want immediate pregnancy (to have a baby within the first year married), partly to "prove" fertility, etc.? (We had a hard time in Tunisia, arriving with no children at 4 years married. Once Jordan was born at the point of our having been married 5.5 years, people were more at ease with us!)
And on the restaurant front, what was "western" (or "a little western") about the other restaurant, other than using forks?
I should add that I have been told by several co-teachers that the Korean restaurant tradition is descended from the "Royal Court Cuisine" of the Joseon Dynasty, not in terms of the dishes served, but in terms of the basic philosophy of the food: excess. To create an atmosphere of prosperity and good cheer, there must be more food than the group could conceivably consume; thus it's not exactly "all-you-can-eat." It feels more like you're walking into a place with an infinite quantity (and variety) of vittles and simply eating until you are stuffed. At some restaurants the meal ends with a sort of desserty thing consisting of the burned rice at the bottom of the pot put in a tea of honey and spices; I'm sure you'll see it soon, Jordan. (Despite the "burned rice" description, it's really quite good.)
My experience differs from Jordan's slightly insofar as I've never seen people drinking anything but water during a meal; the soju and cider only come out after the diners have started using toothpicks and drinking their burned-rice-honey tea. But of course culinary traditions vary strongly from region to region in Korea; Jordan's area was historically part of the Baekje Kingdom, while Chungju was successively controlled by all of the Three Kingdoms (Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla) and thus has a somewhat atypical and multifaceted local culture (especially when it comes to food: I have been served dishes people tell me come from all over Korea).
It's still a mystery about who pays. I think the school covers it somehow.
Yes, the fancy meals like this are always all you can eat. If you finish anything, they just bring out more. I'm not sure exactly what's "expected" of me as a foreign teacher... if I refused something and explained that it was too foreign to me they would probably accept that, but they probably wouldn't think I was as cool. Most of the Koreans seem to eat more or less everything... occasionally someone will pass up a dish, but it doesn't seem all that common.
At school lunches we never drink during the meal... you get a glass of warm, barley-stewed water after the meal; this is of course the healthiest way to eat/drink, as it forces you to eat more slowly/chew more, and the warm water draws blood to your stomach: both good for digestion. When we go out for hosik things change a bit: there's lots of Soju during the meal, and if you're a real man, that's all you drink. Water is generally available though, and women are allowed to stop drinking alcohol after a polite half-glass, and usually turn to soda or water.
They don't really have dessert. At the fancy meals there is some course-style eating (the soup usually comes out at a certain point, for example), but again, nothing we would call dessert. Ocassionally at school lunches you'll get something like a tangerine, or a yogurt, or a red-bean doughnut to finish off your meal, but that isn't the norm.
And yes, since I am 95% of the way there I don't think I could let myself decline dog or live octopus.
Some random questions about your raw fish adventure:
1. Who paid (or is that still a mystery)?
2. Is is basically "all you can eat"? Do people expect to try everything? Did your Korean friends only eat certain things, or try it all?
3. Is the drink with this the (ever-present?) Soju? Do they drink other things, like tea, soft drinks?
4. Do they have "desert" with meals like this (or was the young octopus, desert)?
Since you seem to be about 95% of the way there, in terms of trying Korean food (unless there are still undiscovered territories out there), you might as well do dog and live Octopus. It'd be a shame to be so close, and not complete the adventure. :-)
And make sure to include illustrations of this experience in your (you & Marisa's) children's books. :-)
Well, I already like octopus sashimi, so I guess that there's not really any difference with the live octopus apart from the fact that it's moving. Like I said, I would feel bad for the animal, but that's going to be its fate whether I'm the one eating it or not... so I would do it.
Maybe the hard thing in the jellyfish was some half-digested little fish that it had caught just before you ate it? Remember, "jellyfish have an incomplete digestive system, meaning that the same orifice is used for both food intake and waste expulsion." Perhaps you were eating some part of the jellyfish near the, uh, orifice.
@Matthew: I did indeed eat jellyfish, and it appeared to be fully intact... I tried to get a stinger-less piece, however, and I seem to have been successful, as there wasn't any real pain as the jelly slid down... there was however a strange hard bit in the middle of the jelly bit that I couldn't quite account for...
@Jed: Yeah... I was awfully tempted to give up on my "rule"... and if I meet the live Octopus that Matthew speaks of I am going to be really, really hard-pressed to keep it.
You've got some nice pictures there... next time you're in Chungju, I need to take you to the mountain pass by the dam, which I visited for the first time on Saturday with a Korean teacher. As you crest the ridge you hit a landscape that is now a top contender for my personal Most Beautiful Place On Earth. My jaw dropped, but my camera cannot do it justice. I need your skills!
I think the only weird Korean thing left for you to try (apart from dog, of course) is live octopus. This dish is really quite easy to prepare: you take an octopus out of its tank and cut it up with a sharp knife. The pieces go straight from the knife into your mouth, so they're still moving (I have been told that tentacle bits will attempt to grab your lips so that they can't be eaten). Actually, this food makes me feel sorry for the octopus---they are very intelligent creatures, yet here we are dismembering and consuming them while they live!
PS: Hang on, so did you actually eat jellyfish? Did they remove the tentacles for you?
Yes, this is the sport they call "extreme cultural adaptation" - I am amazed at the totally of your application of the "eat what the locals eat" principle. I admire your adaptation, and am quite impressed by the wide range of unusual (to me) things you've been eating. I would be pressed to keep up with you (though I would try; but I'm not sure I really want to try the young octopus, after your description). You may come out of Korea with some strange (to others) eating habits! :-) And definitely, with some excellent stories for entertaining friends by the fireside.
tautology
One entry found.
Main Entry:
tau·tol·o·gy Listen to the pronunciation of tautology
Pronunciation:
\tȯ-ˈtä-lə-jē\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural tau·tol·o·gies
Etymology:
Late Latin tautologia, from Greek, from tautologos
Date:
1574
1 a: needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word b: an instance of tautology2: a tautologous statement
I did show the movies in English with no subtitles. I had to pass it off as an English class after all. All my classes, aside from the one that watched Frosty, stared quietly at the screen and watched the movie. I thought at first it was because Miss Doo has good control of her classes, but it turned out to be true even in the more rowdy classes. I guess The Grinch is just magic.
PS: Will they still let me teach English if I don't know what a tautology is?
Hi Jordan & Marisa. Yes, the title is what we're doing the next three days. We're starting the festivities with French toast, which I am in the process of making as I type (well, it's cooking on the stove a few feet away).
We'll have 25 people for Dickens this year, which I think is a few too many... but we'll have our party hats and will have lots of fun.
Have you tried making eggnog yet? It's good! :-)
1. You are much better and more efficient at planning things than I.
2. It is a tautology to say that How the Grinch Stole Christmas is better than Frosty the Snowman. Were you showing your videos with Korean subtitles? I'd be pretty astonished if the kids watched through the whole thing without them.
Marisa, Is this your dining/living room? Such stylish decor! :O) And cute fishies!! And great crafts taking over the table! Yay! You should see my room...
Lunching with the ladies sounds wonderful! :o)
Today I "lunched" with my coworkers and students at Chuck E. Cheese. It was fine American dining, trust me! My toothless first graders won many tickets playing games; but unfortunately only got a plastic frog, a bendy straw and a squishy ball!
Thanks for sharing your fun adventures! And have a great Saturday!
Your snowy weather sounds very nice! It has been below zero here...thankfully there has been pretty snow too! But no melting snow, yet!
I'm so excited to see you actually did it! :) It took me until now to catch up though. Why exactly did we come up with that again?? And I have to say, I'm pretty excited that I made it onto the blog too. How special.
Jed, you were with us more than once for Dickens, weren't you? I know you listened to hundreds of hours of read alouds with our family, over the years! :-) And in any case, it only takes one time to be a part of our tradition. Though the true traditionals are those who carry it on on their own, when they go their disparate ways (we hear that Karise's family now reads Dickens aloud). So, when are you reading Dickens this year (and don't forget the fancy hats)?
Jed, you are correct. Unfortunately we had no cool hats to wear. Quite unfortunate, really, because we came this close (here I am holding up my fingers very close together) to winning a really wonderful and outlandish hat from the local Lotteria (McDonald's like place), but alas...
P.S. You really are part of the tradition now too, you know: I vaguely remember something about Matt Neufeld and a diverse plethora of hats and you wearing one.
But did you wear cool hats? Isn't that part of it? I vaguely remember something about Matt Neufeld and a diverse plethora of hats.
Thanks for posting the video. Looks like a fun time. Glad Matthew could be part of it. We haven't done Dickens yet - probably will on Sunday the 21st.
Are you going to make lefse? (That's a project for a long day when you don't have anything else to do.)
Marisa, you don't enumerate for us all the impressive things Jordan does - we want to be able to oooh and aaah like your Korean lady friends.
And perhaps the principal is reading your blog, and feels that all of Korea will think he is lax if he doesn't give you vacation school... Maybe you should start talking about what a tough work load you have, how many hours you spend prepping every night at home, etc... give him honor as the toughest principal in Korea. :-) In fact, your dad now may be wondering whether he's giving the teachers working under him enough work...
Hahaha
-Bethany
ps
Yes I do read this blog! I hope that's ok....*glances around nervously*
After reading Jordan's post about eating octopus I'm sure tofu sounds great - even in a pancake. :) Remember the noodle dish in HK that had baby octopi in it! And they weren't even moving but I could hardly wait to get rid of that plate. And then the pickled chicken feet . . . being a vegetarian certainly has its advantages.
Jordan, you reminded me why I'm vegetarian! I do wish you all the best in eating fish, eel, octopus and all other walking, creeping, swimming things. You've given me an idea for a new eating rule: if it moves or ever moved I don't eat it. Thanks!
So, Marisa, here's a question for you - how quickly do the Korean women you know have (or want to have) children after getting married? Is it like in the Middle East, where they want immediate pregnancy (to have a baby within the first year married), partly to "prove" fertility, etc.? (We had a hard time in Tunisia, arriving with no children at 4 years married. Once Jordan was born at the point of our having been married 5.5 years, people were more at ease with us!)
And on the restaurant front, what was "western" (or "a little western") about the other restaurant, other than using forks?
That weather sounds wonderful! I'm so green with envy, someone's going to twist me in a circle and hang me on the front door.
I should add that I have been told by several co-teachers that the Korean restaurant tradition is descended from the "Royal Court Cuisine" of the Joseon Dynasty, not in terms of the dishes served, but in terms of the basic philosophy of the food: excess. To create an atmosphere of prosperity and good cheer, there must be more food than the group could conceivably consume; thus it's not exactly "all-you-can-eat." It feels more like you're walking into a place with an infinite quantity (and variety) of vittles and simply eating until you are stuffed. At some restaurants the meal ends with a sort of desserty thing consisting of the burned rice at the bottom of the pot put in a tea of honey and spices; I'm sure you'll see it soon, Jordan. (Despite the "burned rice" description, it's really quite good.)
My experience differs from Jordan's slightly insofar as I've never seen people drinking anything but water during a meal; the soju and cider only come out after the diners have started using toothpicks and drinking their burned-rice-honey tea. But of course culinary traditions vary strongly from region to region in Korea; Jordan's area was historically part of the Baekje Kingdom, while Chungju was successively controlled by all of the Three Kingdoms (Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla) and thus has a somewhat atypical and multifaceted local culture (especially when it comes to food: I have been served dishes people tell me come from all over Korea).
And yes, since I am 95% of the way there I don't think I could let myself decline dog or live octopus.
Some random questions about your raw fish adventure:
1. Who paid (or is that still a mystery)?
2. Is is basically "all you can eat"? Do people expect to try everything? Did your Korean friends only eat certain things, or try it all?
3. Is the drink with this the (ever-present?) Soju? Do they drink other things, like tea, soft drinks?
4. Do they have "desert" with meals like this (or was the young octopus, desert)?
Since you seem to be about 95% of the way there, in terms of trying Korean food (unless there are still undiscovered territories out there), you might as well do dog and live Octopus. It'd be a shame to be so close, and not complete the adventure. :-)
And make sure to include illustrations of this experience in your (you & Marisa's) children's books. :-)
Well, I already like octopus sashimi, so I guess that there's not really any difference with the live octopus apart from the fact that it's moving. Like I said, I would feel bad for the animal, but that's going to be its fate whether I'm the one eating it or not... so I would do it.
Maybe the hard thing in the jellyfish was some half-digested little fish that it had caught just before you ate it? Remember, "jellyfish have an incomplete digestive system, meaning that the same orifice is used for both food intake and waste expulsion." Perhaps you were eating some part of the jellyfish near the, uh, orifice.
@Matthew: I did indeed eat jellyfish, and it appeared to be fully intact... I tried to get a stinger-less piece, however, and I seem to have been successful, as there wasn't any real pain as the jelly slid down... there was however a strange hard bit in the middle of the jelly bit that I couldn't quite account for...
@Jed: Yeah... I was awfully tempted to give up on my "rule"... and if I meet the live Octopus that Matthew speaks of I am going to be really, really hard-pressed to keep it.
You've got some nice pictures there... next time you're in Chungju, I need to take you to the mountain pass by the dam, which I visited for the first time on Saturday with a Korean teacher. As you crest the ridge you hit a landscape that is now a top contender for my personal Most Beautiful Place On Earth. My jaw dropped, but my camera cannot do it justice. I need your skills!
I think the only weird Korean thing left for you to try (apart from dog, of course) is live octopus. This dish is really quite easy to prepare: you take an octopus out of its tank and cut it up with a sharp knife. The pieces go straight from the knife into your mouth, so they're still moving (I have been told that tentacle bits will attempt to grab your lips so that they can't be eaten). Actually, this food makes me feel sorry for the octopus---they are very intelligent creatures, yet here we are dismembering and consuming them while they live!
PS: Hang on, so did you actually eat jellyfish? Did they remove the tentacles for you?
Yes, this is the sport they call "extreme cultural adaptation" - I am amazed at the totally of your application of the "eat what the locals eat" principle. I admire your adaptation, and am quite impressed by the wide range of unusual (to me) things you've been eating. I would be pressed to keep up with you (though I would try; but I'm not sure I really want to try the young octopus, after your description). You may come out of Korea with some strange (to others) eating habits! :-) And definitely, with some excellent stories for entertaining friends by the fireside.