dae han min guk!

The Korea v. Greece match was super fun!

This is one of our coworkers, Ryan. Huge soccer fan.

And this is Jesse and Emily, being very Korean.

We spend a lot of time with this couple. They've been in Korea for a few years, and have graciously helped us figure out how to teach and live in Korea. Excellent people.

Anyway, 2-0 victory! Yayyy!

After the game we ran around in the street high-fiving everyone we met, clapping and chanting, "dae han min guk" which means "Republic of Korea." We were kind of a spectacle, and the fact that I brought my beer glass into the street with me didn't make us look any more respectable. However, I'll add, this was a completely legal act. No open container law in Korea.

I love this country.

First grade reflections on Stars and Talking Toys

I have the great privilege of teaching the first grade genius class in our afternoon program. I want to share a couple of their recent writing assignments.

The first one is written by a little girl named Sunny, who is extremely bright, and more dramatic than anyone I met in my time at junior high and high school. Even though English is her second language, she knows exactly what syllables to emphasize when she's angry. She's also very affectionate. I have to pry her off of my arm almost daily.

Anyway, the topic: "What if your toys could talk?"

If my toyes could talk, my toyes will ask me "Why do you want to be very smart? We are lonely while you are studying." So, I answered them "Because all of my classmates are good at studying!" The next day my toyes said "How old are you? We forget what age are you." So I said "You silly toyes! I am eight you know! Now no more question to me!" And they stoped.

Martin often comes to school in his Taekwondo uniform, and he smiles a lot, exposing one of his half-grown front teeth. (I love how children are unfazed, proud, even, of their missing or incomplete teeth) He also knows the answer to every question. I'm pretty sure in a few years his intelligence is going to surpass mine--I feel ill-equipped to be his teacher. On Teacher's Day he gave me a card that said "Thank you for teaching us about verb and adjectives, and for giving us journals." He really loves writing his weekly journal. On one of our writing assignments he was supposed to complete the sentence that began "I love..." and he wrote. "writing journals." In all areas--brightness, enthusiasm, cuteness--he is a teacher's dream student.

The topic: "Where do the stars go during the day?"

Stars go to Seoul Grand park during the daytime, because there is a zoo, shows, parks and more fun things. Stars may have fun at the parks. They could play hide-and-seek. They could each draw three drawings of pictures. They would eat lunch almost filled of carrots and made of potatoes at the restaurant called Mcdonard. They would eat hamburgers. They may have stomachache because they ate too much so they rested a long while. They rode the bus to Incheon Grand Park and met monkeys, and sharks that want to eat them. They were having so much fun that they forgot to share their names. One star said first, I'm the north star. Except one star every star shared their name. But the last star didn't say anything. Finally the last star said I......am......the...sun. I know the names of all the planets. Every single star laughed the sun. The sun said Murcury, Vinus, Earth, Mars, Jupitar, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and finally, Pluto. Everyone stopped laughing and then became surprised. they wondered. How can that sun know all of the planets name? After that moment, the stars didn't laugh at the sun. They tried to become friends with the sun, and played with sun. The sun got happier and then gave light and heat. they went to the beach for a short moment. They were happy and joyful. After that time, they did not forget that moment until they die.

-Andrea

Where we live

The science classes I've been teaching recently involve learning about the earth so I've been using google earth and http://maps.naver.com/ to show and talk about the earth. Naver, which as far as I can tell is about the Korean equivalent to google, has really great 360 degree airshots that you can pan around and zoom, so I decided to take a few screenshots of where we live.

That's us in the small building just above the crazy spiral park. I drew an arrow in paint but it doesn't show up very well here. The complex we live in is called Posco, every building on that block is a Posco building. It's nice having those towers right next to us because we can see them from a long ways away.

In the distance you can see the huge bridge. Keep in mind these photos were taken a good while ago. In the photo above there aren't any buildings beyond Posco, but by now, the area above (west side of Songdo) almost full of buildings in various stages of construction. Most of them are finished enough to look like buildings.

From the North now, you can see the building where we work right at the base of those towers (same block) front and center, and our apartment building just peeking out on the right. It's a short little walk to work and the gardens at Posco are beautiful. On many mornings there will be teams of gardeners Putting in new plants or keeping up existing ones or whatever. We'll have to get some pictures of that soon.

Here I panned on down the street to show where go so often to get samgyopsal. If you really look hard you may find the little black arrow I made. It's probably not worth it though.

Andrea and I ordered chicken tonight. That's right ordered. We have a phone. Our gracious new friends and coworkers Jesse and Emily recently decided they didn't want two phones anymore. Wham bam boom, chicken tonight. "Wait a minute Stephen," you might be asking. "How did you order chicken?" Good question. Very awkwardly. Up till now, when trying to communicate I could see the person and could see me. That goes a long way. When the man on the other end said something I didn't understand - which was everything he said- I just repeated my order a few times. Then I finally realized he needed an address so i repeated it a few times in between questions I didn't understand. I got handed over to someone else and we more or less did the same thing. Finally, he said something that ended in -ida which could have been "Thank you we'll be there in 20 minutes," or "I'm sorry sir but I just can't understand you. Goodbye." Whatever it was, we got the chicken and nobody seemed too pissed off. Success. BTW, chicken here is amazing. It's so juicy it's like they inject it with extra fat or something. The first time I encountered this was Friday night when we got soopbul dukgalbi. (It looks really stupid in english but trust me it's good.) I was like, "This place has the best chicken I ever had!" And it was mixed with a bunch of other stuff that was good too. But now we know there are at least two places in Korea that have this super juicy (like, be careful it doesn't drip when you take a bite - does that sound gross? It's not) chicken.

Anyway, enough about chicken, do I have anything else to write about?

Oh yeah, I do.

So last week we had open class as Andrea mentioned. Mine went pretty well I haven't gotten the feedback from the parents yet but whatever. The main highlight was at the beginning we were going to do a little ice breaker where the students all run around and introduce themselves to all the parents and vice versa as fast as they can before time runs out. I picked one girl to show everyone exactly how I wanted them to do this. I wanted them to say "Hello my name is _____. It's nice to meet you." The girl I was going to demonstrate with was Erica. Erica is very cute and very spazz. The kind of girl who looks like she would have the prettiest bubbliest writing, but in fact writes crazier than most of the boys. The girl who has a hard time not ripping her workbook to shreds. I'm approach Erica and shake her hand in demonstration but before I could say anything she says (In front of the class and all the moms) "My name is Erica, nice to kiss you."

And that's how Erica, my little six year old, broke the ice before I did. Adorable.

Meh. I've got to go to bed.

p.s. I cut all my hair off this weekend and I'm hoping my students aren't scared of me tomorrow.

More on that later.

My Greatest Fear

I'm the writing teacher in the afternoon program, which means that I assign a journal topic every Friday for a gazillion students, and grade them, and turn them back into them every Friday. It's a lot of journals. I have to admit, even though it's a lot of work, I generally enjoy reading them.

This one was written by a 4th grader. The topic: What is your greatest fear?

My most greatest fear is girl. Because girls hit me very strong. When girls see me, they hit together. I didn't do anything, but they hit me.

I try to hit girls, but girls are very scary and strong. When girls angry, they're stronger and hit boys. Some boys are teasing girls and girls hit them, but most girls just hit boys.

I don't teasing girls, but girls hit me. So when boys do something, we need to do carefully. We are not free. I hope that the girls don't hit boys.

-Andrea

Kindie Field Trip

Once a month we get to take the kindergarteners (that means every preschool, prekindergarten and kindergarten class in our morning program), or the "kindie kids" on a field trip. My coteacher took a lot of pictures of my Sealions class and was kind enough to send them to me.

When we first got on the bus, I thought it might be fun to get the kids going on "Wheels on the bus go round and round." Then I remembered we had a half-hour trip ahead of us and the rest of the teachers and I needed to preserve our sanity. But then this OTHER teacher got them singing one of their Poly School theme songs. Ugh, so pissed at her. It should have at least been a relavant song.

Okay, off the bus, off we go!

We didn't really get many animal shots--which is a good thing, because it's a depressing sight. The conditions those poor animals are kept in are not good. Their cages are way too small, and they are not kept clean. There are a lot of things South Korea does right, but animal welfare is not on their list.

Poor deer :(

No more sad pictures. Op, Dana thinks it's fun to try to scare the animals!

(Dana is pronounced Dah-nuh, which I think suits her personality.)

I wasn't really sure if I was supposed to keep the kids from climbing on the railings. They seemed like they could pretty much handle it, and it would have been a nightmare trying to enforce such a rule. So:

They LOVED the guinnea pigs.

Oh, man I just remembered. I wish I would have brought my own camera so I could have taken a picture of the sign next to the donkey's cage which was translated into English: "miniature ass."

Anyway.

I'm going to be honest. The little girl whose hand I'm holding--I don't like her one bit.

But I adore Helen. She's such a little sweetie.

Here's most of us! It's impossible to take a good picture when you're dealing with 6 hyperactive children. (2 of my students were absent.)

The trip back was comparatively wonderful. Sleeping kids are preferable to singing/shouting kids.

What? Friends listen to "endless love" in the dark!

Well, I'm pretty hung over.

Last night our director took us out for the second time. MAN. We've had our complaints about our director before, but you have to hand it to the guy. He knows how to have a good time, and he's pretty outrageously generous when it comes to food and drink.

So.

It was kind of stressful at first. We finished our last class, and as we were wrapping up the day in the office, Dennis walks in and says, "OKyouguyswanttogooutokaywe'releavinginfive minutes." We began the night at a samgyeopsal restaurant in the Incheon Terminal area, which is way more happening and alive than our ghost town. And it was the best samgyeopsal we've ever had.

Oh. Samgyeopsal is probably our favorite food in Korea. It's kind of barbecue-y. You get a bunch of raw pork, onions, garlic and other Korean fixins. Grill the meat, make yourself a little sandwich by wrapping it and whatever else you want in a lettuce leaf. So fresh and good.

Stephen and I usually get like 2 or 3 plates of meat for the two of us. And we leave feeling....satisfied. Never super full, but always happy.

Keep in mind that today was field trip day. (We got to show our kids around a bunch of animal cages and just have fun. Awesome. Pictures to come.) And our students' parents prepared lunch for us. We got so many sandwiches, snacks, yatta yatta, that I thought I wouldn't be that hungry. But I think Andrea and I ate more than anyone. Our boss also bought us all coffee, so this was the first time in awhile that we had "real" espresso. (Korean espresso is not quite as strong.) And among the snacks that we were brought were a few Starbucks packaged latte things. So we were totally ready to have a long nigh after a long and tiring day.

Good Lord, last night the plates of meat just kept on coming. Agghhh and it tasted incredible. And my glass was always full of soju. He never hesitated, he just kept ordering. And we just kept eating. We left that restaurant so full and giddy.

Last night they also had pig skin which I tried for the first time, I'm not sure if Andrea had it. She's kind of a wuss when it comes to weird food. :) Anyway, at one point I was about to try one and Dennis, our director, was telling me how you want it to get a little burnt before it's done and the damn thing pops and just hops right off the grill at me. We were like, well I guess it's done. HA! You know how fatty meat shrinks as it cooks, and so the side that's cooking shrinks and the other doesn't making the meat curl up, (wow that was unnecessary) well the pig skin does it in "bounds" sometimes. (Or out of bounds! (What?)) Anyway, the next time this happens, the fool thing jumps like 18 inches in the air, no joke, and lands in Alice's lap. Alice is a Korean coworker of ours who made a pretty good scream when this happened.

There were five of us for dinner. We met up with a few more coworkers at a bar afterwards, and I could not believe our director ordered more food after our hugely indulgent meal. Pitchers and pitchers of beer, bottle after bottle of soju. You just have to keep drinking. Oh my God, the food. There was this dish that can only really be described as squid jerkey. I have no idea how it's prepared, but when they bring it to you the squid is intact, which is pretty cool. then you just kind of shred it and eat! Tried soju bombs. Not what I'd call exquisite, but fun in a fratty Korean sort of way.

Okay, yadda yadda, that was fun. I think most of you already know about the noraebang. It's like karaoke, but you get your own little room and you can eat and drink. If you think it sounds like fun, then you're right, but you don't really understand. There's just something about singing songs into a high-quality microphone in front of people that you either know well or sort of know or work for that is out-of-this-world-crazy-fun. There's this kind of outspoken, staunch Republican kind of guy we work with...He and our Canadian-Korean boss kind of butt heads a lot, but all was well when they sang "Endless Love" together. There's this moment last night that's sort of frozen in my memory. We had been there for 15 or 20 minutes and everyone was drinking coffee. -- The coffee was in a can! Warm coffee in a can is so silly!-- So I sort of had this feeling that we were going to cool it with the drinking. I was sitting down, kind of checking everything out, and then the door opened and in came a cart full of liquor bottles, pitchers of beer, and plates and plates of food. Fresh fruit, fried chicken, friggin french fries! Agh!

Okay, I don't think I'm good at describing events. It's more fun to go out than it is to read about people going out. But Stephen and I didn't drop a dime last night (er, 10 won?) and we are trying to figure out who we are and how we got here, that we're living like kings.

Note: This is from Friday. I forgot to push "publish post." :/

-Andrea

Korea meets Rhumba

This was fun! Yay cajon!