ThunderSnow!

Expect a flurry of posts today (pun most definitely intended!): we've had a few updates to write about, but a combo of no time and no intarweb kept us from updating the blog.

So! The snow. Seoul weather is notoriously wacky--hot as hell with drenching rain until September, then hot as hell and dry for a month, then cold as hell and damp (but with nary a drop of rain) for two . . . all the while, the daily weather report being about as reliable as a . . . uh . . . an unreliable thing. You come to expect the unexpected. But still, our first snowfall Monday night still threw me for a loop.

Now, I began the day Monday, as my lovely wife can corroborate, by commenting on how much colder it had gotten overnight, and by whimsically proclaiming that "it smelled like snow." (I have been convinced for a long time that a well-trained nostril can detect the  combination of cold and damp in the air that precedes a snowstorm, though I can't really describe what impending snow smells like . . . all I know is that I take a deep whiff and fell a sudden urge to ski.) Sure enough, that night, we opened our curtains (we had them closed to keep in the heat--more on that later) to a snowy downpour. Nothing unusual, right? Until a deep, rolling boom echoed down the streets. Salt truck overturning? North Korean invasion? No, this was a rare (to me) instance of what I have right now very authoritatively dubbed a thundersnowstorm. In any event, we woke up the next morning to a dusting, which had mostly melted by midday, and this morning to a much more substantial dusting that, by all indications, could last well into the afternoon.

Which leads me to two questions: 1) Frequent light nighttime snowstorms--is that what winter's like here? Not that I'd mind, of course, but 2) If so, why in the hell does no one own a windshield scraper? As if the drivers here weren't bad enough when they could actually SEE the road!

Fate Does NOT Poke Us in the Eyeball, Part - Wait, fate didn't poke us in the eyeball?

In a shocking turn of events, something we thought had gone catastrophically wrong turned out to be completely fine. Yes, believe it or not. This is a stunning exclusive and you heard it here first!

This morning, we could only find one of our passports in the drawer where we've been keeping them since we last used them to apply for our Korean Alien Registration cards (We walk among you! Take us to your leader!) We turned the drawer inside out, checked all the other places we store paperwork, tore our desks at school apart, checked the school office, and finally came back home to halfheartedly confront the inevitable. And yet, wonder of wonders, we found it on the bookshelf! Huzzah!

On the plus side, we are now experts in embassy passport policy. Or at least the web links.

And in reference to Justin's post earlier - anybody want some Pepero? We're freaking drowning in the stuff. I got five more boxes yesterday.

Snakes on an Afterlife

From the homework assignment "If I were a pharaoh, what would I put in my tomb to take to the afterlife?," by Grade Six:

- pencil ("My pencil is my friends because, it always working me.")

- "I will bring my lego box because if there is someone with children, I can give a lego box to them and they can play with that legos."

- "a watch to see the time after time."

- a television, "because I love TV"

- "bodyguard, to guard my self from saints afterlife"

- "APIS teachers, to learn more even after having death."

And of course, the titular comment:

- "I will bring snakes."

I did follow up on this one with the student - would she bring them as pets? Did she remember that they were the symbols of the pharaoh? Were they there to guard the tomb?

In fact, none of the above: I don't think Korean has a flat "a" sound (like "hat") - I've only heard "ah," "eh, and "ay" as in "say". So "snakes," it turns out, was a Konglish mistranscription of the word "snacks."

Everything tastes better after death!

Old and Busted / New Hotness

Ask and ye shall receive.

Old and busted (with expert electrical-tape repair job by Nana):


NEW HOTNESS!!!!
Nana aptly describes this shot as "emo book jacket."

Bonus: Nana acts fierce as I test the camera. Thus illustrating the perils of watching too much America's Next Top Model.


(Nana asks: Why are my eyes the size of peanuts?)

Peppered with Pepero!

Today, Nov. 11, is Pepero Day in Korea, a day when young people shower their friends and favorite teachers with Pepero Sticks, the Lotte-megaconglomerate's answer to Pocky--a delicious, chocolate-dipped sesame-cookie stick. The holiday is a stroke of marketing genius: Started in 1994 by a bunch of schoolgirls in Busan (read: Lotte marketing execs in Seoul) who thought 11/11 looked like Pepero sticks, the holiday now rakes in millions of dollars in Pepero sales for Lotte every year.

Not that I'm complaining, of course. While I spent much of my life trying desperately NOT to like Pocky and its derivatives (the Pocky-lovers I knew where all creepy and irritating Japanophile anime fans--except for Hudson, who was not irritating! I kid, I kid!), I have since developed a fondness for the little things in this country where every third thing I eat makes righteous war on my gut. And any holiday that results in piles free, unreciprocated candy is fine by me!

Spectacular!

I can't remember if we've mentioned it already, and I'm too lazy to go check for myself, but this past weekend, my dear departed eyeglasses of five years finally gave up the ghost. The scene was actually downright cartoonish, as I picked my glasses up off counter and, pop!, metal rent from metal, leaving the left lens to drop suddenly out of the frame. While my industrious and clever better half did manage a temporary fix with the aid of some electrical tape and ten fingers infinitely more graceful than my own, I was nonetheless forced to court disaster (see, I don't know, any recent post at all about us attempting to do just about anything) by going to the optometrist in our building and buying a new pair of glasses.

The good news: Though I'm not ready to write off the possibility of my new glasses spontaneously combusting or something like that, I was at least successful in getting a new prescription, new lenses, and new frames.

Now, the whole glasses-getting-experience here in Korea is pretty different from how it is in the States, which is to say it's not excruciating and expensive. First, there are optometrists everywhere. We have at least one in our building. There's one in the Homever. We pass two on our way to work every day. Second, everything is walk-in, the frames and lenses cost about half what they cost at home. Third, they're open late. Fourth, they keep tons of lenses in-stock and cut them for you in 30 minutes or less! Honestly, I was expected to be de-spectacled for at least a week, and these folks fill my order in as much time as it takes to deliver a pizza. Of course, the downside is that you don't get all the doctor stuff. But, still, that kind of service can't be beat.

On a related note, Nana is now extremely disoriented by my appearance. I hadn't quite realized that I'd been wearing the same glasses since before we met. The new ones aren't a huge departure, though--basically the same shape, but a half-frame--so I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean the deal is off.

By the way . . .

. . . after reading Leslie's infinitely more entertaining, infinitely
more informative, and infinitely more frequent blog (see the link at
right), I have unilaterally resolved to post more often, come heck or
high water (or unreliable broadband . . . or web filters . . .).

[Edit by Nana: Speak for yourself! My posts are entertaining, informative, and frequent! That's it, Leslie. It's on.]

Hopefully, though, figuring out this whole posting-by-e-mail thing
should help, so I can fire off brief missives from the classroom in
some of those rare free moments I steal during the day.

Daylight Savings

Just FYI, all you folks on the East Coast are now 14 hours behind us. Which fact I remembered in just enough time NOT to wake my folks up with a 5 AM phone call!

As for us, I'm pretty sure lack of daylight savings will actually make zero difference, since we're up and out of the house shortly after dawn anyway. Not so bad, though, compared to the kids, some of whom are busing in from two hours away.

Everyday is a holiday at Everland

Everland is a Korean amusement park - think more Disney than Cedar Point - whose slogan in "Everyday (sic) is a holiday at Everland!" In my limited experience - one day at Everland, which also happened to be a holiday, Halloween - this statement is one hundred percent true.

Instead of having a regular school day on Wednesday, APIS had a field trip to Everland. I think it had something to do with reconciling Christianity and Halloween, which apparently is difficult for some people, by avoiding the issue entirely. Personally, I think anti-Halloween parents are overreacting a bit, but then again, I have seen some pop star costumes on little girls that offend me, much less God. So to Everland we went.

I was quite concerned about the safety of the rides, but it was actually a high-quality amusement park. And I've never been to one in the fall, and I have to say that the cool day was much nicer than some of the scorchers I've been to at Cedar Point (although the water rides aren't quite so much fun). My seventh graders behaved impeccably. We did lose a couple of sixth graders for a while, and I had a crisis where the cafeteria lady said my lunch voucher was only valid for the acorn noodles, but all came together in the end. The kids got a kick out of seeing Justin in jeans.

What really amused me was the fact that on Thursday, back at school, all the kids seemed like they'd been steamrollered. I was pretty pooped, but I had to bounce back to teach, so I did. Aren't kids supposed to have faster recovery times? The difference probably came from Justin and my 8:30 bedtime. Amazing what eleven hours can do for you.

And on a last note- thanks so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes! We had a party last night at a fellow teacher's apartment and I baked cupcakes from care-package cupcake mix. No Korean birthday soup for me! Two students actually gave me small presents - a lavender aromatherapy pillow and a picture frame - which I thought was very sweet. And tonight, Justin took me into town for a birthday hamburger at TGI Friday's. Hooray birthdays!

The Land of Murphy's Law

I'm not really feeling "Land of the Morning Calm" for Korea these days, and I'm really leaning towards Murphy's Law as the defining characteristic of life here. For instance, our really anticipated outing today? Toast, due to slow breakfast service at McDonald's, constant transit problems, and directions to go to "Yongsan Post Office" when there are at least three post offices and the only one that shows up on the map is very evidently not the one where we were supposed to be. So we got up at 6:30 on a Sunday for absolutely nothing.

Really, it's been frustrating. I know you've seen our posts about how the Internet refuses to work (both at home and in our classrooms), about the fact that the recycling pickup is on Saturday mornings before 10 AM, about how I can't eat the food without getting sick, about the month-long delay in our shipment... it just seems like nothing will go right here, even the stuff that honestly shouldn't be that hard. And I know that once you get in a funk, you always pay attention to the negative and forget the stuff that's going right - for instance, my care packages from my mom have gotten here great, and the slingbox is working right now and has provided us with football and an amusing new show called Pushing Daisies on top of our beloved House. But even typing that, I want to point out how I can't use some of the stuff in the care package because we're the only school apartment without an oven and how the slingbox still cuts out for no reason, sometimes in the middle of shows.

Anyway, we were pretty bummed to miss that trip today for yet another stupid reason. I'm going to send an e-mail and see if we can get some refund or at least apply the money to a future trip.

Now, back to Slingboxed college football...

The Royal Dorkiatic Society

Last night, Nana and I went to our first-ever meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, an old and respected club of shameless dorks who want to learn more about Korea. We've had our eye on joining the Society for a while now, but not until yesterday could we muster up the time and the energy to trek all the way downtown for a lecture.

Thankfully, it looks like the RAS could be well worth the effort (and the 80,000-won membership fee--discounts for married couples! finally, my motives become clear!). While last night's lecture certainly didn't earn any style points--the speaker could barely speak English and was completely shackled to his hideous Powerpoint notes--the content was very interesting: a history of Korea's representation in Western cartography. (Apparently, we white folk took a good three centuries to notice that Korea is, in fact, a peninsula, not an island. But, hey! At least we knew by then that it existed!)

What's more, we signed up for a day trip to Ganghwa Island with the RAS this Sunday--Ganghwa-do being one of Korea's UNESCO World Heritage Sites, on the strength of its fortresses, its temples, and its prehistoric dolmen tombs. We've been wanting to visit Ganghwa since we learned about it, and sweet serendipity caused the RAS to reschedule the trip for precisely the weekend we're able to go. Plus, apparently we'll get to visit a certain RAS member's swanky Ganghwa-do pad. (Nana says: "Bonus for networking, eh?")

But the real news, I suppose, is that Nana and I are finally finding/making the time to get out and do something, other than sit around and work all the time. Slowly--very slowly--we're getting this school thing under control and carving out little pockets of dorky leisure. If only we could wrangle some Korean lessons somehow. Though that may have to wait for the summer.

Ah! It's too bad that we live so far out of town--the RAS adjourns for a round of ale after every meeting, but our long train ride back to Nowon gets us home pretty late. Though maybe we'll just have to suffer through some sleepy Wednesdays here and there.

In other news, Nana and I got to share our bus home with an utter lunatic tonight. Tourettes or schizophrenia or something. Shouting, flailing. Totally weird.

OMGHOLYCRAP Part II, or the continuing adventures of my name in romance novels

You may remember that about six weeks ago, I posted about Carla Kelly, one of my favorite romance novelists, deciding she liked my name and using it in a book. Well, today, I got an e-mail from her asking for formal permission to use my full name (duh!). In the event that I declined to give permission, she was willing to change the character's name to Nana Marlowe. Horrors!

She also gave me a bit of information on the character as well as the first chapter of the book. According to Ms. Kelly, "Nana is a delightful character" - how could she be anything but? - "and she gets an excellent man, a post captain in the royal navy named Oliver Worthy." In fact, she says, she had so much fun with the whole thing that she's hoping to do a trilogy around the Worthy family, so I may even reappear in the future! This has to be the first time ever that I've hoped for a gratuitous cameo by the protagonists of previous novels.

I did enjoy the first chapter, although I won't distribute it because that's probably not appropriate. You'll all appreciate the fact that Nana spends most of the first chapter looking for food. The neatest thing by far, though, is that Nana is her character's nickname, too, and her real name just happens to be Eleanor. Eleanor, for those of you who don't know, was the name of my maternal grandmother, a wonderful, brilliant woman who died just a couple of years ago. I did not tell Ms. Kelly this, although I did write back to let her know. It is just a lovely coincidence.

Now I need everybody to send positive vibes to Carla Kelly's editors: Buy this book! Love this book! Pay Carla Kelly all the money in the world for this book! Don't change the names of any characters in this book!

Gruesse aus... Seoul?

Yesterday we found ourselves downtown around dinnertime, so we decided to coddle my poor belly and take it out for some foreign food in Itaewon.

Itaewon is the foreign district in Seoul, historically, I believe, sprung up because it's right by the US Army base. It's not just American, though - all the expat communities hub around Itaewon (except, of course, the expats affiliated with APIS, because we live over an hour away). It's where you go for African hair stylists, Pakistani restaurants, international grocers and the like.

As we left the subway, Justin spotted sort of a shabby-looking ad for a restaurant called Chef Meili, which promised authentic Austrian food. (Amusingly, the picture on the review is of the dish Justin actually ordered - the beef roulade). I wasn't completely confident but I didn't have a better idea so I went along with it.

Nobody was in the restaurant when we got there, which added to me being nervous, but it turned out to be a huge success. The prices were a little high for Korea, which seems to be standard for foreign food, but I would say it was worth it. I had smoked salmon on a potato pancake, and we got a vanilla ice cream/berry sauce dessert that was really amazing.

None of that, though, was as awesome as talking in German to the Austrian chef. I think he got a kick out of it - he says he's only been here four months, and there are about 150 Austrians living in Seoul, so it was probably nice to talk to somebody new in his own language. But for me? It just felt good not to feel so stupid.

Being surrounded by these kids who speak Korean whenever our backs are turned and then coming home on a Korean bus with Korean speakers everywhere - well, it's not like I didn't expect that, coming to Korea, but it really does make me feel like an idiot not to have a clue what's going on. The school did promise us Korean lessons, but that hasn't started yet, and it'll take a long time to get anywhere with them. So we can certainly look forward to months of more cluelessness.

Anyway, I just felt a lot better about myself after a nice reminder that no, I'm not a language-deaf moron American - I just don't happen to speak this one.

PS. Put a hold on the optimism regarding having only one class with student failures. I forgot the one sixth grader getting a 42%. Which I suppose is fair, since by all indications he's forgotten about my class.

Short and mediocre post

Just pointing out that we're alive.

Highlights/lowlights:
1. The slingbox is down again, inexplicably.
2. The weather has been spectacular lately--very clear, very cool.
3. Visited a big info fair for foreigners down at City Hall and finally got in touch with the Royal Asiatic Society. Hopefully, we can rescue a weekend or two here or there from the clutches of schoolwork and actually get out and see some of this country!
4. There's a possibility we may finally be able to ditch our awful internet service provider.
5. I (Nana) now have only two students failing my class in all grades! Two students have reached the magical 60%! Grades are due a week from Monday and I will do everything in my power to keep that D- alive.
6. We miss our dog.

Observations

Hi all,

In the event that anybody has noticed that we haven't been posting as recently, I apologize. To the rest of you who didn't realize we were missing, carry on. There's nothing to see here.

It's been pretty hectic lately. We went into the school yesterday (Saturday) for four hours and Justin's entering hour six or seven of work today. The depressing cause of all of this is that our kids just don't seem to be able to write.

It's very odd. Yes, there's the whole ESL barrier problem, but it's more than that. Some kids whose English is just fine are totally incoherent on paper. The concept of "paragraph" does not seem to exist. After a heavily plagiarized assignment on Alexander the Great, I made all the seventh graders keep a research notebook as they worked on a project about Rome, but some of them have submitted a typed version of their notes in place of an essay. We can't figure out if they're honestly confused or if they don't actually think they need to bother.

On that note, I read a disheartening quote from a Korean mother in one of the English-language papers, where she essentially said that she condoned her high-school child buying papers online because homework wasn't as important to getting into college as his exam grades, so she wanted him to buy the papers and focus on studying for the tests. Of course, given some of the test scores we see, they're not doing that either. But can you believe it? I sincerely hope no parent at our school feels that way.

I hesitate to say TOO much about the Korean school system, seeing as everything I know about it is hearsay from our students who have been in it, fellow teachers who went through it, or from deductions based on experiences (students are constantly surprised when I ask them to stay awake in class.). But I guess I will say that American newspapers rhapsodize so much about the glories of the "Asian educational system" and stereotype the kids so heavily that I couldn't have helped but come here and be surprised.

Culture Quiz!

Culture quiz!

A Korean movie contains the following scene:
A man goes to the store and buys a container of seaweed soup. He then sits in his apartment alone eating the soup.

The reaction of Koreans in the audience: sobbing.

Why?

Ready for the answer?
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In the United States, we celebrate birthdays with cake. In Korea (and Japan, too) the birthday treat is a bowl of soup (this in and of itself might be enough to make me cry.) The Koreans in the audience were crying because they knew that it was the man's birthday, but he was all alone and had to buy himself the soup and eat it by himself in his apartment. In an American movie, the comparable scene would have the man perhaps lighting a candle on a cupcake, wearing a limp and crooked party hat, and singing a particularly tragic rendition of "Happy Birthday to Me." Oh, man, now I'm going to cry.

Tuna Surprise!

The other day, Nana and I had a hankering for sushi, and while we've had some pretty good stuff at the U9 (a chain Japanese-ish restaurant), they always insist on bringing weird stuff with the platter, too. So we thought we would check out what appeared to be another Japanese place in our building (the pictures of raw tuna on the sign were pretty promising)--especially since our lunchtime success at a little sandwich shop downstairs had left us emboldened to try something else new. (I swear, the cole slaw and sketchy beef patty made it taste VERY vaguely like Primanti's. Oh, how I would kill for Primanti's!)

Anyway, the restaurant. No picture menu, it turned out--in fact, not much of a menu at all. Our dinner choices consisted of tuna, tuna, or tuna, sliced and raw, in various portions (the cheapest of which was 18,000 won per person). But, hey! We chalked it up to cross-cultural experience, sat down, and opened our collective wallet wide.

Now, the good news is that the food was excellent. After an utterly inexplicable aperitif consisting of one shot of cold whole milk, we had several different cuts of several different kinds of tuna (ahi, yellowfin, albacore), all very high quality, and thanks to some gesture-laden instruction from the server, figured out that we were supposed to dunk the tuna in either salt oil or soy sauce before we laid it on a sheet of dried seaweed (with a dab of wasabi, of course). She did not, however, show us that we were supposed to eat the resulting contraption with our hands, and no doubt got a good laugh out of whitey fumbling needlessly with chopsticks. Bonus: the tuna came with a creamy roasted corn casserole of some sort and a really tasty salad.

When the corn casserole was scraped clean, then, and the last bit of tuna devoured, Nana and I, very satisfied (but very much $36 poorer), stood to pay the tab, at which point the waitress all but shoved us back into our seats. To our utter and lasting horror, she returned with another heaping plate of raw fish! Which means that the 1-person, 18,000-won portion would have been plenty for us, in fact not much more than dinner for two at the KBBQ! Curse you, Korea, and your ban on two people sharing one plate!

Video Links

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video clip of sequential images must be the equivalent of War and Peace. Okay, maybe just One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. It's more than this blog, at any rate.

These are Korean news clips on the opening of APIS. They're a little old (that's my fault for not getting them up here) but now you can finally check out what our school looks like on the inside! And even more excitement, continuing his Korean megastar trend, Justin shows up on camera in the second one. I have yet to have a star turn here, but I remain confident that great things are in store.

Clip #1

The APIS segment here goes from 3:00-5:35 and doesn't show either of us, although you will see Shelby the math teacher and Colleen the science teacher. For the record, our principal is much more articulate in person.

Clip #2

The second one is a little bit harder to find but it's totally worth it because that's the one where you can see Justin gettin' his English instruction on.

Basically, ignore all the Korean and go to the BOTTOM link - the last NBS orange box that says 8/21 and then some Korean.

You can see Justin in the frozen frame when the APIS segment starts, at about 4:24, and then there's clips of our opening ceremony and some other teachers until you see Justin again at 6:25 and, less flatteringly, his butt (he's facing the other way helping a student!) at 7:10. And once again, I promise you, our principal is actually a really articulate guy. Not sure why the camera did that to him.

So that's what our classrooms look like! That's what SMART boards are! That's who are students are! Exclamation point!

BONUS KONGLISH NOTE (from Justin): In that second video, right after you see me (Justin), but before you see my butt, you can totally hear the voice-over say "miguk ibee leeguh," which, of course, means "American Ivy League."

Konglish quiz!

Just so you can see what we're up against.
(link)

Note: Unlike Spanglish or Germisch, Konglish doesn't refer to English-speakers mangling Korean, but to Koreans . . . not mangling, but . . . appropriating English words into their native tongue. And many of these appropriations are complete fabrications, or at least a total stretch. Example: "skinship," which, as far as I can tell, is the middle-school equivalent of "friends-with-benefits." Let me tell you, I had students who were appalled to learn that I had no idea what that word meant.

Reasons Why Being Married to the Social Studies Teacher is Awesome

1) Collaborative projects.

Seriously, we're having the eighth grade start a current-events/research-skills/media-literacy mini-unit on the (sadly waning) uprising in Burma-Myanmar (has that been getting as much coverage in the States as it has here?), and we're setting the seventh grade out on a research-skills/proper-citiation mini-unit on the Roman Empire. Not only is this going to be really cool for the kids, it will make meeting some of my standards SO much easier! Plus, we'll get to synergize a lot with our work.

2) The social studies teacher totally cute.