::A Geek in Korea::

The lowest level class in the school had grown so much in the past year that it had filled an entire classroom and needed to be split into two different classes at the same hour. Due to a scheduling issue, instead of my coworker handling all of the newly created classes, I got the new “pre-reader” class. I had gone a whole year without teaching phonics, and I was pretty used to it. Now I’ve got to adjust to the new students I have that are still learning the letters, the sounds, and how to read.

Starting a new class with 7-8 year old students is rough, because anything you do is something new to them, and you’ve got to get over the “dance monkey, dance” stage with these students pretty quick.My first class, students kept poking me to see if I was “real”. Yeah.

If you speak Korean, they are shocked. If you only speak English, they act like you are from another planet. If you ask them to read, they’ll wait for your prompts. If you tell them to write, they’ll pause after every word as if it was a herculean effort to continue. These are the sorts of things that wear down over time, and eventually they’ll learn what to do in class.

One of the girls, in particular has a wicked case of ADD. I’ll ask her to sit down, and while I am telling her to sit down and face the board, she’ll turn back around to talk to her friends. She’s got different ways of distracting herself. Playing with erasers, talking to friends, playing with her bags, playing with a chair, standing around. Anything and everything but looking at a book and studying. She can’t sit still long enough to read a sentence.

I’ve started using peer pressure to keep her in check. I pause the class and just WAIT for her to realize we are all waiting on her. She’ll get the point eventually. Today she turned around and chatted with her friend so often I asked if her chair was broken. I made her stand up, then I turned the chair backwards. Then I told her to sit down again. I said, “If you always face the wrong direction with the chair facing forward, maybe THIS is the solution.”

Of the five students in the class, when reading any sentence together, one of them will get the word correct while the others will just make sounds. It’s never the same student, and it’s never the same word that they get correct. It’s just that if you flap your gums and make random sounds, EVENTUALLY one of the words sounds close enough to be correct.

This is a pretty big adjustment for me. I complain when students can’t write coherent sentences, or don’t listen to my explanations fully before trying to argue their points. Now I’ve got students that don’t KNOW the shapes of the letters yet. They are very cute, and a few of them try hard, but it’s a challenge to go back to the very juvenille behavior and short attention spans of very young learners. It is rewarding to help them grow, and hopefully when they get to higher level classes I’ll know they were helped by my attention, but right now I’m adjusting.

This was the gift I got. Slightly racist individually wrapped cookies.

This is what my wife got. Eeeewww. Placenta Essence Mask.

Last week I noticed that I didn’t have my ATM card in my wallet anymore. Odd, since I had kept this particular card for several YEARS, often going a year or more without using it. It was always there just in case I needed it. I talked to my wife, who knew she hadn’t moved it for whatever reason. Uh oh, time to cancel the card.

While we were skipping around to different banks to find out loan rates for the house, I decided this would be the perfect time to make a new ATM/Debt card. Since I never use my card to actually withdrawl cash, if I actually needed to purchase something I didn’t have money for, an actual card to spend from would be better. Whenever foreigners deal with banks, they bring their foreigner card, as well as their passport. I grabbed these two legal necessities and headed out the door. After we got the needed info and signed for the card, we headed to Emart. I picked up my WIFI router. We dropped into a realtor for some paperwork, then headed home.

Last night, we got an automated response about my debt card. They needed my passport number. Odd, since we had BROUGHT my passport with us to the bank. My wife asked, “So, where is that passport. We need the number.

“Where is the passport? I thought YOU had it,” was my reply.

Uh oh.

Yesterday night we spend an hour or two tearing the apartment to pieces. We checked all the newly laundered clothes. No, it wasn’t in the wash. I checked every coat, bag, and book in my computer room. No where. My wife checked our legal documents drawer where all the paperwork is usually kept. Nothing. We found HER passport, and all HER documents, but mine was still nowhere to be seen. I found a copy of the passport info I kept for emergencies, but not the real thing.

We retraced our steps and hoped for a miracle. We headed back to the bank. They took down the number from our copy of the passport and told us that if they had found the real passport, they would have called us. No luck. Next we went to Emart. There was a list of all the items they found each day at the information desk. They find a LOT of stuff in that store, but not my passport. The trip to the real estate agent was fruitless, but extra awkward because we had signed a contract with the real estate agent across the hall, meaning they had lost out on the commission. No wonder they hadn’t looked very hard.

The bad timing of everything freaked me out more than anything. Losing a bank card AND a passport in the same week? Was I getting senile? Was I being robbed by a very patient identity thief? What the heck was going on?

We returned to the house and proceeded to tear it apart again. We have a small house, so looking involved checking the places we looked at before. We went through the computer room, and started looking back through documents. My wife got in touch with the bank and started to move funds from my account over to hers just in case of fraud resulting from my missing document.

We hadn’t found anything, and I was already looking at how hard it would be to replace the passport. As long as we had a copy of the information provided on the passport, as well as a police report, made an interview, paid a large fee, had all the places I had visited outside of Korea, and made two trips to Seoul, I could probably have a new passport in two weeks. Gee, it’s almost TOO easy! I was resigned to having to call the cops and start on this process rolling. Once we reported it missing, we couldn’t stop until we had a new passport, as it rendered the old document invalid.

I picked up a pile of documents we had sorted through to put them away. Wherever the passport was, it wasn’t in the house…then something plopped on the floor from the pile of documents. I thought it was just my wife’s passport, till I noticed it was blue. ASSA! I FOUND IT!

There was a huge sigh of relief, then an angry scowl from my wife. “NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.”

No kidding.

Whenever my wife and I end up eating from the same plate, bowl, or dish, there is a sort of mind game going on to see who will get the last bite. I didn’t catch onto this for a little while, but whenever we eat anything together, she always times her bites, or does something so that I get the last bite.

I don’t complain about this behavior. It’s rather nice of her. Today I had cooked a very big meal to repay all the hard work she did this week. We were eating some salad out of a bowl together. I took my bite, then she took hers. We both agreed it was delicious.

Eventually we got down to the last bit of cheese and roasted almonds, and I was waiting to see if she was going to pull some sort of stunt to get me to eat the last thing again. Did she know that she did this? How long could I delay before testing to see if she was really waiting for me to eat the last bite?

I moved some scraps around on my plate, waiting for her to take the last bite. She made no move for the food.

“Why don’t you just eat the last bite?” I said.

“I want you to eat more than me,” she replied.

“I eat faster than you, so I probably did eat more. Also, it doesn’t matter if I get the last bite, or the first bite. I still ate. If I want more, I’ll make something, or just ask for it. Just eat it please. I don’t always need the last bite.”

“Oh, okay.” She finished off the salad.

She claims to never have delayed or stopped eating so that I can eat the last bite of food, but I’m not sure I believe her. There is probably some deep seated Korean manner rule that she wasn’t aware of following.

Making a test for students can be a hit or miss performance. I had to make several tests today, and I went about making them in a different way than I had before. It worked out pretty well.

In my lowest class, I set up a modified multiple choice test. The twist was that the multiple choices were definitions of different words. The listening part of the test was me saying the word that they had the definition for. The students copied it down for each number as a spelling test on top of choosing the definition. This has several advantages over a standard multiple choice test.

First of all, none of the students could go faster than I let them, so I could give all the students time to look over their answers and try to find the correct response. It also tests multiple skills at the same time. Listening, reading, spelling, and comprehension. Even if students couldn’t spell the word, they had enough time to pick the correct definition.

Also, because of me being the only person knowing the answers before I started the test, I could control the difficulty of the exam as it progressed, question by question. Since I pulled all the definitions from their books, I knew all the answers were valid. Some words are much harder to spell than others, and some have much harder definitions. By manipulating the difficulty from question to question, I made sure every student was being challenged without frustrating anyone or causing them to quit.

The downside was that I had to make the key as I was announcing the words for each question. When you make the test yourself this isn’t so difficult, but I also loaned my test to my coworker, who might have a harder time figuring out which hints correspond to the student’s vocabulary in the book.

In my other classes, I used a repeating table structure that modeled one whole question and answer before I left gaps that the students had to fill by modifying their patterns. This helps remind students what I am looking for them to do.

Just to see if the example made a big difference, I left one table in the test without a set of examples, and gave it more complete directions with English and Korean. Students had more trouble with the section with Korean directions and no examples than the sections with English directions and simple examples. This is because they don’t READ directions, but DO use the examples. In the future, I’ll include examples if suitable for the questions and levels.

I had a frantic day of testing, then grading in the next class. I handed tests back to the students as they headed out the door to give them homework. They had to get their tests signed. There was a very typical spread for all my classes, but there were less people completely bombing out, so I think my tests were better explained this time around.

There is one key piece of software each my wife and I both need that we can’t use in Linux. While we can use Linux to great success 99% o the time, she needs to access her work documents saved in a proprietary format, and to use Internet Explorer for terribly designed Korean websites (aka, all of them requiring IE). I need to run the proprietary Nintendo Wifi connection program for my wifi USB adapter to work. They don’t work in Linux.

Before, I was running Virtualbox. It is completely awesome, and solved my need to access Windows XP applications while also keeping my computer free of viruses and the actual hassle of managing Windows. However, since I upgraded to Hardy Heron, the new version of VirtualBox 1.6 is broken. I can no longer set up my machine to use the virtualization software. Whenever I try to use Virtualbox now, it locks up the machine completely and I have to restart.

Until I can get the Virtualbox program to work, I can’t connect the Wii to the Internet. I really would LIKE to do this, because Nintendo is launching the “Nintendo Channel” in the USA, and I can now download game demos to my Nintendo DS. FREE GAME DEMOS! However, due to this problem, I’m sitting here with nothing. Not only that, but the Wii Ware channel with tons of interesting games will be released this month, and I really want to get a piece that action.

I could install the “Virtualbox Open Source Edition” so that my wife can do her work, but once the fix is released for the binary version, I’d have to reinstall the closed source version, since it is the only one to support USB. It is either that, or break down and by a proper wireless router and figure out how to connect all my machines to this. This is what I should have done from the start, but now I’m invested with the Nintendo USB adapter and hate to buy something twice for the same features, even if it would work better.

Today, my wife and I were on our second round of searching for an apartment. The previous attempt led us to investigate a house around our neighborhood. This time, we were traveling several subway stops down the line to try to find a cheaper place we had been alerted to by a friend. We contacted the realtor and told her to meet us at the apartment.

We arrived to see the apartment. We got into the elevator with our realtor and then met the housing realtor. The apartment was open, so we walked around. While we were viewing the apartment, an old grandmother, wrinkled and hunched over on a cane, walked into the apartment and sat down.

She didn’t live there. She didn’t have an appointment. She was just some random old woman that came in while this apartment was open to a public viewing. She was sitting on the floor asking questions about who we were, and why we were there. She didn’t look like she was on top of her senses. She reminded me of my grandfather who couldn’t remember much when he got older, and she had wandered into our housing deal.

Why WE were there? Why was this random person there? WE had made the arrangements to see the apartment in the first place! She said she liked the house. She didn’t walk around to examine it, or see anything. She just sat on the floor and kept eying me.

Everyone in the room was thinking she was a senile old woman. She kept trying to stay in the apartment while we were leaving, and had to be shown out of the apartment by the realtors. Every time they went to get her to leave, she kept on talking about random stuff and told them she could stay in the house. They were confused about why she was there, but didn’t really want to toss her out since she might not have know what was going on. Since you have to be kind to elderly people who aren’t in the best state of health, they said, “If you like the apartment, here is our card. Bring money to the office and you can buy it.”

We dismissed the old lady after the elevator let us down to the ground floor. We had two more apartments to see. We looked at another apartment in a different complex, then came around to see an apartment nearby the first one. We had to get to work, so we didn’t spend much time at any one place.

After seeing the third apartment that had been remodeled (we had considered this option), we had settled on buying the first apartment. It was in our price range, the location was good, it was near to most things we needed. We didn’t have financing worked out yet, but we were planning on going to the bank to get our loan this week to sort out the details.

The realtor joked, “Please, decide quickly. Maybe that old lady might buy that apartment. Who knows you might have competition?” This is a standard tactic. The first house we saw INSTANTLY had a second bidder an hour after we had visited the place, despite being on the open market for months. No one falls for this sort of thing, and besides, the lady couldn’t walk without a cane, and didn’t even know what was going on.

We were talking about how much we liked our apartment choice, and how nice it will be to live there as we rode back on the subway. Then we get a message.

The old woman had gone straight to the realtor’s office when we had been walking around seeing the other apartments over the course of thirty minutes. She bought the thing out from under us. We won’t get the apartment, she will. She hadn’t made an appointment, didn’t check out the place, didn’t have anyone helping her, was hunched over, and didn’t even look like she could have MADE it to the realtor’s office in 30 minutes by herself, but she was quicker on the turn around than we were.

The old freaking crazy lady stole our apartment. Now we have to go out looking for a new place to look AGAIN. What the hell, Grandma?

I’m on vacation at the moment in the southern areas and islands of Korea. We’re part of a tour with some foreign friends who are celebrating their wedding anniversary. We get our first chance to see Bosung, the capital of the green tea industry in Korea. We’ll also go to a sauna, as well as go to a few islands that have extensive gardens. There is a three day weekend, so we’ll be able to head out and see the sights with a day to recover on Monday.

We don’t know the makeup of the rest of the tour, but there is a high chance it consists of nothing but really old Korean people, since no one else would go on a bus tour if they could drive. I’m a little worried about the makeup of our tour, because if there is a karaoke machine on the bus, all of this will end in headaches and tragedy. A chance to sing on a bus tour is like crack for old Korean people, and they have no concept of “volume control” on any bus rocking down the highway.

In addition, there is always the potential embarrassment of nude saunas, as well as everything else multi-cultural that could end up blowing up in our face that we have yet to realize. Excitement! Intrigue! Tone Deaf Elderly People!

Will I survive? Only time will tell! Return in a few days to see the results of the tour after these canned posts are finished to see.

Add Glitter to Pictures

Blingee is possibly the largest collection of tools to add moronic, terrible stamps to pictures. Now you too can have a website with HORRIBLE animations. Once completed, you can share these abominations with the world. For example, this seizure inducing picture of jon Stewart was completed in ONLY 5 minutes!

Please, go to Blingee with a picture of your choosing and “bling” it in the most ridiculous manner possible. Post the results in the thread so that it may live on in infamy for the Internet at large to admire. (SFW images only, LINK to NSFW in the thread please.)