::A Geek in Korea::

One of the more frustrating things about teaching smart students is when they think they are much smarter than you are and want to show everyone their skill. I want to encourage students to do their best and to always try hard, but when they spend the class trying to put me in my place I get annoyed. For example, a student was trying to redefine the definition of the word “grandfather” in my class.

This 10 year old student said that his father is now a grandfather. I asked if the student was now an uncle. He said, “No, I’m not an uncle. I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Oh, so are you a father? How could your father be a grandfather unless you had a child? The only way your father becomes a grandfather is if you have a child of your own. You are only ten years old, and you don’t even have a girlfriend.”

He sighed and tried to explain to me how ridiculous I sounded. “I don’t have a baby! Of course, it was my Uncle’s daughter. She’s my sister cousin. So, my sister cousin had a baby. A sister cousin had a baby, so my father’s daughter, my sister cousin is my father’s daughter niece, is a grandfather! Don’t you see? It’s so easy!”

No, his family isn’t a bunch of inbred weirdos. Had I not known what was going on in Korean, he would have had me convinced his family had a few wreaths in the family tree however. He had a new baby “sister cousin”. What he really meant to say is that he had a new “second cousin”. His first cousin, his “Uncle’s daughter” had a daughter, who he was also calling a “little sister”.

The word cousin exists in Korean (samcheon) , but you talk to an older female cousin with the same title of respect you use to talk to an older sister. There are probably specific titles for all of these things in Korean as well, but I have no idea what he should have been calling this new addition to his family in Korean. I’m just an English teacher. I don’t work to translate family trees. All I know was that he was translating the honorific title from Korean to English, but using the wrong word. He kept thinking everyone was his sister instead of “cousin” like we would describe the family.

Since his “sister” had a “baby”, that means his “father” was now a “grandfather” as long as you have a very strange definition of fatherhood that doesn’t actually imply a direct lineage. I told him that he wasn’t using the word “Grandfather” correctly, and drew a family tree listing out words like “great uncle” and “second cousin”. I told the student he needed to be more accurate with his descriptions of his family when talking to other foreigners, because he’d probably get a very different reaction from someone else.

I usually don’t gawk at scenes in the street, but there was a doozy of a showdown happening as I walked to work today. What I witnessed was a twenty to thirty year old woman with a track suit on grabbing a large garbage can. She was trying to smash it into a car window. That window had already been cracked. There was a metal food vending box with the lid off next to the car, which looks like it had been used to cause the initial crack in the front window.The woman had her hair up, and was wearing makeup, but seemed totally out of her mind.

The parking attendant had gotten the garbage can she was lifting away from her, but she was still trying to cause more damage. She tried ripping the side mirror off the car by hand, but couldn’t. She went looking for more things to use to smash the car. The woman was clearly intoxicated and enraged at someone. The parking attendant responsible for that side of the street was trying to stop her from causing any more damage by grabbing her wrist and stopping her from using any other objects on the street to break the window. Someone else was trying to call the owner of the car, who appeared a few minutes later with a golf bag. He had been practicing golf in one of the golf schools in a building nearby.

They kept trying to calm down the woman, but she kept trying to break away or smash things. They held her by the wrist, presumably to wait for the cops. She kept trying to get away from their grip to try to run away, but no one was helping her. She was slurring her words and eventually fell on her back to try to kick at the people detaining her. She got back up and then passed out on the hot concrete a few minutes later in frustraition. I have no idea what was going on that caused all of this craziness.

I don’t know if the owner of the car knew the person that had cracked the windshield or not. I don’t know why the woman was either piss drunk or on drugs at 2PM on a Thursday. It was a huge scene, and it was the only time I ever saw the parking attendants actually do something other than chase down people to make them pay for parking. The woman would have trashed that car, and had cracked the windshield before she was caught. I know there are some shady businesses in the area, and they might have come in contact at one of the bad night clubs, singing rooms, or golf rooms that are fronts for prostitution. If not, this might have just been random craziness. Either way, it was one hell of a scene to witness on the way to work and put me in a funky mood for the rest of the day.

As a rule, I’m done with work when I leave the door. Last night the director offered to treat the entire school staff to dinner at the local Wolnamsam restaurant. This was the first time I was able to go out to eat with everyone in the evening. Several of my coworkers said that I simply had to meet them for dinner because I always skip out on the late night dinners. I told them I’d make an effort to arrive as soon as possible. I arrived only slightly late with some of the other staff and was seated with the men who were of the beer drinking/lots of pork variety.

My wife and I handle dinner at a pork restaurant by cutting off excessive fat, cleaning the cooking surfaces to remove buildup of burned detritus and generally not eating till we explode. These guys took the free meal to the extreme.They kept ordering round after round of meat. They kept the fat on, and as the cooking surface approached a darked state of charcoal, they kept piling the meat on. There is a lot of peer pressure to keep up with everyone at the table, so I couldn’t really object to “yet another round” when they would order. There also was no way I could go down to the other table and eat with people more health-friendly because all the chairs were full.

The people at the table were surprised I could follow the entire strain of conversation in both English and Korean, so they said they felt nervous around me. I’ve been pulling this stunt for years now, and I can’t believe people still get surprised by it. If you feel nervous around someone that understands you, perhaps you aren’t saying something appropriate in the first place? It’s not like they were talking about anything shocking in either language.

Two large bottles of beer, and countless rounds of duck and pork later, I was feeling a little tipsy but good.

A few of the ladies left to meet dates or to avoid being dragged around town all night, but the party ended up at a singing room nearby that was of the “less sleazy” variety. We had to search for one that wasn’t also a front for prostitution in some way or another. After the third or fourth place we found one suitable for the female coworkers, and even then some of the hostesses looked a little dodgy… The catalog had enough songs to keep everyone interested at least.

I had to get the party going with a couple of terrible renditions of songs to lower the bar. One of the most enthusiastic people that got everyone to go singing didn’t even crack open a book for the first thirty minutes. Everyone relaxed when they saw I was willing to sing horribly off key just to make sure somebody was using the time in the room. Eventually a few other people joined in. I got to hear my foreign coworker sing a song entirely in Japanese, and one of my Korean coworkers accompanied him! Polyglot workplace, rock on! One of the school “Captains” and a teacher even did some Korean punk rock and a few death metal songs! Fantastic and way out of character! It was fun to see some of my coworkers out of their comfort zone. It’s also a very good thing that no one has to pretend to be a Kindergarten teacher and sing for students. No one would pass that interview.

I ended up blowing out my voice and required large amounts of water to even speak in appropriate tones. I’ve also been suffering from the oil in the meal last night, and the first bit of alcohol I’ve drank in months. I wasn’t out extremely late, but I did have a fun night. It’s good timing to have a late night on a Tuesday because on Wednesday everyone’s class load is extra light.

Having computers with large projectors absolutely changes how you can teach classes. In the past, I would need to struggle to make copies and waste tons of paper recreating most of the things I put on a white board for the students. Now I can just put something interactive on the board and show them how it works. I can also search and find up to date information on any safe for work topic the students might inquire.

In my first class today, the students were learning about money. I went to the Wikipedia entry for American currency and showed them the pictures of all the different currency. My Korean co-teacher was printing, laminating, and copying tactile money for them to interact with, but I introduced them to all the bills before she ever came in the room. I could also look up the exchange rate (ouch!) and tell the students the approximate value of each bit of currency in Korean won so they’d understand the relative value of each.

In another class I was teaching about Egyptian mummies. We got to explore a virtual “tomb”, which was one of their vocabulary words for the day. I also got to show them the mummy’s elaborate protection against weather and corrosion in their coffins. Then we even got to explore the forensics of how they made a mummy. Pictures of mummies and everything else turns the topic into something much more interesting than what the book presented.

In my last class, we were talking about “life on the prairie”. After reviewing the topic yet again, I fired up a game of Oregon Trail. I explained, “This game was old when I was your age, but it’s still awesome. We’re going to see which of your classmates survives on the Oregon Trail!” Students watched with morbid fascination as our oxen pulled the wagon across the trail. We set the pace to gruesome when class was winding down to add more casualties. Measles, typhoid, dysentery, and lots of food shortages were par for the course. Three students died, and we had to stop while floating down the big river at the end of the game. The students thought Oregon Trail was awesome. They told the Korean co-teacher it was SO much fun to watch their classmates die. Hah.

Anyway, all my classes have changed because of the projectors in one way or another. I’d be hardpressed to go back to the old “draw everything and copy the rest” way if I had to in the future. Students love the interactive nature of the Internet, and while I have added responsibilty to make sure everything is suitable for them, I think it’s augmented my teaching and expanded my flexibility as a teacher too.

The park near our house had a grand opening ceremony. Fireworks, Korean dancers, singers, music, etc. My wife and I invited some friends of ours along on a picnic to celebrate. I had seen the place in the past few weeks getting finished, after they installed the bunnies. There was only one bunny left that we saw, and one chicken. Where did they all go?

I was excited the park was finally open for everyone to enjoy. We organized at the nearby subway stop and headed over. Most of the grassy area was still “off limits”, but we found a secluded spot for a picnic. Like clockwork we got rained on shortly after we settled in to eat. Luckily, the park had provided for that contingency and handed out free umbrellas we could keep! Awesome! We held off from leaving, as the storm blew over in less than 20 minutes, staked out some chairs and sat back down to await the fireworks.

One of the couples has a young baby, and people were constantly coming over and taking a peek at the child. I guess this happens everywhere, but I can’t imaging trying to play with or pick up a complete strangers child. The baby had this drawing affect on the crowd, as if everyone wanted to see what a “foreign baby” looked like “in the wild” or something. The father told me that butchers in the local street market will come over and try to pick up the baby fresh from chopping up some pork chops without washing their hands. Ew. I’m going to need to devise some sort of barricade system for our child when she’s born to keep people away.

The baby lasted through the Korean drum session, but the Korean zither put her to sleep. That instrument, accompanied by a flute was almost enough to lure me to sleep too. It’s very comforting stuff. The baby didn’t cry the entire day until the fireworks started to bang and flash across the sky. It was pretty loud, and she wasn’t the only baby crying. The path leading out of the park needed a little trickery, but thanks to scouting out the park with my dog the past few weeks I knew which way to go to avoid the big crowds. The group got out with minimal fuss and they headed back home via the nearby subway stop.

It was a good experience and I can’t wait to have more picnics in the future.

Michael Jackson – Thriller (Official Music Video)

When I was a wee lad and had no money of my own, I spent most of my time listening to Sesame Street records on my personal record player. Sing-alongs and whatnot. I had gotten a cassette player as a gift sometime in the 1980’s, and my mother and I were shopping for cassettes. I don’t remember the particulars of the situation, but I do know that I was in a department store with my mother and happened to spy a Michael Jackson “Thriller” cassette. I begged and I pleaded. I might have even thrown a tantrum of some kind.

I really wanted the cassette version of “Thiller”. My mother resisted. I don’t know if it was cultural, generational, racial, or musical resistance to my request that initially caused her to say, “No!” Seeing as I was a little kid, I must have been determined to get this cassette because I remember this being one hell of a crying session. I think I got in big trouble afterwards.

After the long drag out fight, I got my mother to buy the cassette. I ran upstairs when we got home to my tape player in my room and popped in the cassette player. I’m not sure I was first exposed to Michael Jackson’s music, but I do remember seeing the video for “Thriller” around the height of it’s popularity. Perhaps it was shown on television for Halloween? It stuck with me for a long, long time, because it was more of an event than a song. This was before we had cable television or interactions with music outside of the radio in the car. Maybe my older cousins had talked about it at Thanksgiving or Christmas? Whatever happened, it left a mark on me that said, “That’s really awesome.” Also, zombies that vomit up their bowels were really, really scary. Now I had the cassette, and I could listen to it any time I wanted!

I only knew that one song, so it took me a long time to find it. I remember being ready to listen to the song and looking outside to see it was already dark outside. As soon as Vincent Price started rapping, I freaked out and stopped the tape! I couldn’t listen to the rest of that because it was too scary. I waited until the next day before I listened again, and only after I was sure there were no zombies going to chase me down and force me to dance with them before they ate me.

I’m pretty sure Michael Jackson was the first “real music” cassette I had. Thriller is still probably one of my top favorite videos of all time too. It’s a classic that has stood the testament of time. Regardless of what you think of the man, Thriller is still awesome, and always will be.

I have a group of students that I’ve taught for a month that needed to do a project for class. I had them write short plays they had to present to class. The goal was to have them memorize four lines of dialog each, work together to present their material, and to work as a team. I didn’t let them pick their own teams, and instead assigned them groups. This, of course, ruffled everyone’s feathers because I didn’t assign groups by gender. I assigned them by a particular seating arrangement and weathered all the criticism about my decision the first day.

I told the students that they must be pro-active and put in time to finish the project for their group. I gave them time in class to delegate their responsibilities, but only two of the groups decided to use the time to figure out what they needed to do and assign their tasks properly. The other group decided to fight me and refuse to work together. The boys wouldn’t talk to the girls, and when the girls got around to setting up the scenario and arranging the dialog the boys protested that their dumb ideas were being ignored. I was in “Put up or shut up” mode and wouldn’t allow any sort of changing of groups or splinter groups to form. The groups that got to work right away had their materials ready to memorize before they went home on the first day. They needed “masks” and to memorize their lines to complete the activity.

They had an entire week to organize everything between classes and finish up. They met once between the time I assigned the project and before the actual “performance” that I recorded for their parents. If anyone was responsible in the group they had plenty of time to get the work done, as evidenced by the two successful groups in the class that had their stuff ready to go on time. The two responsible groups had hilarious, cute plays I recorded with the school’s camera. I’ll show the parents in conferences this video when I get it off the camera.

The irresponsible group ran into a snag. The girl that had written the materials had forgotten to type it up and distribute extra copies. Everyone else tried to blame her for not having a second script to work from. “I couldn’t memorize my part of the script because I didn’t have a copy. I couldn’t email anyone else because my computer motherboard is broken. There is no way I should have to present the material. It’s not my fault! Don’t make me do it!”

All four students claimed that each of their computers were broken, absolving them of responsibility. I told the students that they didn’t have to type something up to memorize it, so that if they wanted to just write something in class instead of trying to weasel out of the assignment they could be working RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT! I told them that while they might not have their original script, something was better than nothing, so if they all work together while the other students presented, they could have something small instead of nothing at all.

The very same girls that wanted to try to work in class before got down to writing a short one line script for each of the students in their group. The boys, of course, contributed nothing and continued to whine. I have no way of knowing, but if I had to put money on something explaining the boys behavior in class I’d say they were definitely “First sons” in their family. Probably no one actually enforces rules around them at home, so they think if they pout and whine loudly enought they’ll get out of everything.

I can not STAND this attitude in teenage students. Students that whine about needing to go to the bathroom only after they see someone else go first. Students that get caught hitting someone in class as say, “Oh, he STARTED it.”

While the video I took is daming enough just showing the amount of effort involved for the different groups, what I really need to do is record the sheer number of ridiculous lies and stupid complaints that come out of these students mouths when I ask them to do ANYTHING.

Huzzah! Our new toilet seat electronic bidet has arrived!

My wife had spent several hours researching different brands, and was trying to decide which online shopping mega-site  had the best deal. She called the company that made the bidet itself, and they offered a better deal than any of the resellers at GMarket. She was annoyed that she had to spent a long period of time looking for a great deal only to order directly from the company, but she ended up getting two years of filters for free, a substantial discount on top of the free stuff, and next day delivery.

We had a premature installation attempt yesterday. The delivery person had to set up the system, but after unpackaging the seat he discovered he brought the wrong type. Our seat was supposed to have a “dryer” feature which the model he brought lacked. Also, his delivery note had no mention of our extra two years of water filters. He repackaged the bidet with no worries and said he’d return with the proper delivery.

The package arrived today, and after a five minute pro installation it was ready to use. The bidet seat sits on top of the normal toilet bowl. It draws water from the sink line pipe, then filters it. The bidet installer told us that the person that did the electric work gave us a steep discount. He was impressed we were able to get the electrical plug installed as cheaply as we did.

There are fifteen buttons, and an entire guide book dedicated to it’s operation. My wife read through how to use it in Korea and gave me some directions as to what most of the buttons did. There are buttons for water strength, water location, tempo, sensors for using the seat, woman and child settings, a fan for drying afterwards…etc. I knew all but one or two buttons after she explained it to me. It’s an incredible feat of engineering to squeeze all this in such a small space. You can customize the water stream exactly how you want it, or you can go with some of the preset features.

It’s important to know which buttons is which however, and despite the helpful illustrated buttons I had a few problems with the operations earlier in the day. The first time I used it, I went through the trouble of moving the stream with pin point accuracy. I decided that was a lot of work for every time I needed to sit down. I thought I’d just try the automatic “macro” key instead the next time I needed to get clean.

I thought I had hit the “macro” key so that I got a water stream, then a dry, but instead got hit with a powerful blast of water that felt like a jaccuzi jet aimed at my ass. It was strong enough that I considered getting up and risking get shot in the back if the seat sensor didn’t shut down the water in time. Eventually I got control of the proper keys to back down the intensity to a more comfortable level as I had before using the manual controls.

My wife told me I must have hit the “enema” button instead of the “macro” button next to it. Whoops. Next time I’m going to be extra careful before I press a button, it’s my ass on the line.

I am not an abnormally large person. I am a normally proportioned person of slightly above average height (184.5 cm). I don’t have three arms, or a hunch back. However, the bell curve in Korea has me sitting slightly out of the three sigma range of acceptable sizes when shopping for clothing. I can’t walk into some stores downtown without being chased out. “MEDIUM SIZES ONLY!” as if I’m Yao Ming. I’ve never needed to shop at the Big and Tall store to find something that fit me in the United States. Damn it, I’m not tall, everyone here is too damn short!

Today we were shopping and I ended up picking “what they had in my size” instead of any first choice off the shelf. If I was shopping in the United States, I would have had no problems getting anything in my size, but I was forced to walk from store to store asking “What’s the largest size you have? Nothing larger? Can you check in back?” like i was a carnival freak.

Anyway, the issue of the moment is trying to find comfortable summer pants for work is something of a fiasco. I am a half size too big to fit in the largest pants sold in most Korean stores in Asian sizes. I’m also 5 centimeters too large to fit into “X-L” shirts as well. If I don’t need to stretch, and I don’t have a full lunch, I can squeeze into things, but ultimately for comfort I’d like just a slightly looser fit. I can’t pull a “Fat guy in a little coat” or anything, but it’s not like I feel completely free in smaller shirts. I’m just slightly too large for the bell curve. Over time, I might eventually get a Mr. Burns hump as I continually hunch over in my clothing.

I’m not alone. One of my students was asking how tall I was. He said that his brother was shorter, but had much larger shoes than I. He said his brother has shoes four sizes larger than mine, and had to order all of his clothes via the Internet, or custom made from Seoul. All that work just to find something to wear. That young boy’s brother fell farther out of the bell curve than I did and now had to wait days by the mailbox just for clothing to arrive.

I’m too lazy to shop for clothes online just to get something to fit. I’d rather scrounge around in the “freaks and left over sizes” bin of the department store hoping to find something in my size than actively hunt down clothes for me to care about online. It’s close enough, and it motivates me to exercise to see if I can lose those last few pounds to make my small Asian sizes fit better. I’m glad it’s an option if I ever need to, but it’s still a nightmare for me to consider. At least when I walk out of the department store I can say, “I did the best with what they had.”

I’m sure this is much more traumatizing if you care about fashion at all. For a fashionable expat in Korea of my dimensions, ordering online must be the only way to survive.

The school I work at operates on two floors in the building. Administrative duties are handled downstairs and online, while the majority of classes are taught upstairs. If you are upstairs, you should be studying. All the rest of the school duties happen downstairs. Downstairs, the secretaries worry logistics and fees. Upstairs is where the teaching happens. This is usually a good thing, as it keeps parents from spying on classes in a disruptive way, and it draws a distinction where the “study zone” begins. As long as a wire doesn’t get crossed somewhere onlong the line, this is how I want to keep things.

The Korean coworker and I were surprised to see a new student in a class. She had no listing in the attendance logs for the class, and lacked the proper books. She had been told to come upstairs by someone upstairs, so I let her sit in my class. She wasn’t bothering anyone, so I let her stay. She didn’t utter a word the entire time she was in class with me. I thought there was something wrong with her placement since my Korean coworker hadn’t been told beforehand and she is a very organized and well connected person.

When my class ended, I grabbed my materials, moved on to my next class, and got down to teaching. My Korean coworker went down to talk to the office staff, and told the student that she was in the wrong class. The girl showed up in my next class with one of the office staff from downstairs. This seemed odd, as she was clearly a shy girl, but was leaping up two whole levels to join this next class. I poked my head out of the room and found the director nearby. The Director took the girl back downstairs and tried to figure out where she belonged for a second time.

I went downstairs to eat my dinner, and I saw the girl again. She was sticking around until the next set of classes started. They had given her a book to read so she could catch up with the students. She still hadn’t said anything to me yet after hanging out for a few hours in my classes. Turns out she had shown up at the wrong hour, and had to wait for the last set of classes. She’d have wasted 6 hours waiting around and studying in different rooms.

When I went upstairs to teach my final set of classes, I wasn’t surprised to see her again! She was in a class that had only one other girl, which is really good. The more girls that can balance out a group of rampaging boys the better. She had the right books, and now she had seen me so much throughout the day she was comfortable enough to speak to me. She seems like a nice girl, and was clearly very patient to deal with a huge clerical error of that sort.