::A Geek in Korea::

Sometimes the absurdity of teaching English in my school makes itself openly apparent. I’ve been tutoring a girl in an intensive 1 on 1 sort of class. She goes to a privately run religious all English elementary school. I’m sometimes helping her with reading, sometimes with her homework, or science projects. I’m basically a paid to help the girl review her work in class and prepare her for her upcoming tests and speeches. Keep in mind, this is a 10 year old girl that studies in a second language entirely.

Her mother is sending her away for a home stay in the United States. She’ll be attending school, living with a family, and will be immersed in English for an extended period of time. Some of the students at our school are staying for approximately one month while touring Ivy league schools on the east coast. She might be traveling for the same period of time, or she might be staying longer. I don’t know if she is touring with the groups of students that are going, or if she is doing her own thing. Since she isn’t in class with other students, she might be doing something entirely different.

I’ve been told to prepare scenarios, dialogs, or vocabulary lessons based on what I think she might encounter while staying in the United States. Whoa. That’s a pretty tall order, considering I know none of the details of her stay. According to my director, she’ll need to know how to speak to her host family, as well as be able to stay in a classroom full of English speakers.

Since she already studies in an all English environment, her uptake of English classroom commands is excellent. She knew all the vocabulary I prepared for the lesson today. I made sure to cover things about asking for repetition, asking about clarification, and how to get more details. We also went over the vocabulary for readings books, (turn the page, flip through the magazine, etc).

Since I have to worry about English for her home stay host family, we did a dialog about introductions, as well as vocabulary for getting ready for bed. My mind is overwhelmed when I look at the books at our disposable for general vocabulary. She’ll probably never need to know how to do laundry or change a car tire, but how much focus do I give to paying cash for something? Is it more or less important than listening to directions how to go somewhere? What’s there to cover, and how much depth does it need? I’ve never really prepared someone expressly for this purpose.

I can think of a few role plays that will help. I think that the girl is bright enough that she knows how to ask for help when she doesn’t understand. She certainly doesn’t seem scared about going, but perhaps it’s because it’s still a few weeks away. I teased her by telling her she’d have to work like Cinderella, cleaning all the dishes and floors for her evil home stay parents and children. We reviewed the cleanliness and scrubbing chapters intensely. She didn’t believe me, or so I hope.

Mike Nelson’s Rifftrax finally got around to making fun of a movie I actually own, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Even better, the track co-stars Kevin Murphy (otherwise better recognized as the voice of Tom Servo). Considering the whole "I’m a huge geek" factor, combined with the "I was a rabid MST3k fan" (Thus Torgo) This was a no brainer sort of purchase for me. Besides, I don’t very many DVDs, so the chance that they’d do another film in my collection is pitifully small.

I paid via Paypal and after some password and confusion about the browsers (I had to use IE. Eeew),  I got the Rifftrax files onto my machine with no problems whatsoever. That was relatively painless. They aren’t locked down to any player or service, just plain .mp3 files. This gets a huge thumbs up of support from me. Now that I own these tracks in an open format, I’ll always be able to listen to them at any time with anything under the sun. If they had gone with a protected file, I wouldn’t even consider the service. For around four dollars I got a modern "MST3k" like alternative track for a long movie. That’s pretty sweet, since MST3k DVDs themselves are really expensive. This is probably the next best thing to watching an old MST3k video, which is nigh impossible for me these days.

The problem, and there always is a problem, is the DVD region protection scheme. I’ve bought my movies, but I now live in another region of the world. My DVD drive is "Region 3" while my DVDs are "Region 1". When I would go to play the DVDs on my computer, it warned me that the region was wrong, and that if I played my DVD in this drive more than 5 times, I would be locked into Region 1. Now, If I just ran Linux on my machine like a good geek should, I wouldn’t be complaining, but at the moment I’m too busy to format a hard drive and install just to watch a movie I should be able to watch in Windows anyway. I’m trying to watch a movie I bought and yet I have more problems than I would if I would have simply downloaded the movie.

Instead of pirating the film, I decided to simply back up a copy onto my hard drive. Freeware DVD Shrink to the rescue! It was really easy, and now the movie sitting on my machine, wasting space while I have the DVD in my hand, just so I can watch this movie. The DVD backup software ate up one of my "Region 1" viewings before my hardware sets it’s region automatically against my will, but now that I have the movie on my hard drive I won’t need worry anymore.

I’m sure there are ways around hardware limitations in viewing movies in other regions, but I just wanted to watch what I paid the easiest way possible without locking myself into future problems. Sometimes the whole "pushed to piracy" excuse of people downloading things they legally own just to get around Digital Rights Management protection makes a lot of sense. I was tempted to do it myself.

Advanced Wars by Web is a uniter among my friends. I stumbled upon the site trying to find out a way to play Nintendo DS games without an online component over the Internet. Eventually, I stumbled across the game I had been attempting to play, "Advanced Wars DS" playable in a somewhat diminished form online. It lacked some features of it’s console counterpart, but allowed for a robust strategy game using the same recognizable interface online. The best part was it’s near "Play by Email" like quality. This allowed me, living around the world, to play a game with friends living in the States without having to wake up at awful times, or keeping them up past their "bed times". Since it was always being maintained, and had a healthy following as well as a decent interface, I gave it a try.

I played it to make sure it was quality, then passed my recommendation on through the forums. I have friends with strong opinions about trivial matters, so trying to get them to try new things can be, at times, like trying to melt a glacier with the power of your mind alone. After a few demo games where I tried to show them the basics (and crushed them), I eventually got enough players for a full on team effort. Later, my friends started recruiting players, and now we have full on games that span months. One of the games recently competed by my friends actually was over seven months in length. Talk about dedication! I bowed out after a few months when I had to move my house, but they kept fighting on. I was proud to see my friends take up a passion for something even though we were spread out across the world.

The last time I played Advanced Wars by Web with any seriousness was before I discovered Nexus Wars. Nexus War turned out to be too much for me to handle. I became addicted. By the end I was waking up at odd hours, playing at any time I could. Who would thing that clicking buttons and leveling my characters would have turned into a habit forming game? Eventually it started seriously getting in the way of my life, so I had to make the decision to stop playing it entirely. It wasn’t even all that fun, but sometimes the "Grind" wears your senses down and you forget why you started playing. I’ve been free from my Nexus Wars habit for a few months now. I understand the dangerous addictive lure of the MMORPG genre far too well. I don’t plan on taking up the genre ever again.

Since their last "big game" has finished, my friends asked me to return to the fold. We’re playing on a map created by one of the people my friends introduced to the game who studies game design. We’ve formed up teams for another epic game that just kicked of a few days ago. My friends and I were smack talking back an forth on Instant Messaging clients like rival sports teams. I’m in the middle of the fray, claiming victory for my team as always.

It’s awesome to feel included into something that brings back that feeling of college and friendly competition. Also, getting my friends involved in something together gives us more to talk about as well as keeps our conversations moving forward. I also like giving help to friends learning the game. Some of my friends have gone from novices to something approaching a "gamer". Seeing enthusiasm wear off on someone is good for me. It reminds me why this is my group of friends.

I accompanied my wife to an English educational book store to help her pick out new books for some of her classes. I was there in an advisory role, as I needed to give her some advice as to the books, and look at what kind of materials and books they had for what she needed to do. We went over to the series I had recommended and started working through how her lessons would work, page by page. I told her how I structure my lessons for class, how I use the material in the book to cover the basics of reading, writing, listening, speaking.

We were having this conversation in lowered tones in one corner of the room by the elementary school books. It shows what I poor tactician I am, because I didn’t realize that giving seemingly free advice about books and how to teach classes would be like catnip to Korean mothers in the room. In the manner of minutes, there were people swarming me for answers about book recommendations. Remember that scene in Interview with a Vampire, in the theater, where they rip off that woman’s clothing and all the vampires move in to feed in a mass of fangs? It was a lot like that, except with less death and more phonics books.

Giving recommendations to my wife was difficult enough. I’ve never taught or met her students, so I simply have to rely on her experience and understanding of the student’s levels to give a best guess as to how to proceed with the material. Factors such as age, reading ability, determination to study, and parental involvement all need to be considered when choosing a book.

When a random lady in the English book store comes up and says, "Hey, what book should I pick for my kids to study" it’s nearly impossible to give a good answer. I tried to get an idea of their age and general speaking ability, but when you get an answer like, "They can read, a little," does that mean they have bad pronunciation, bad phonics, bad intonation, or all three? All I could do is give them recommendations about good and bad book series and why. The strengths and weaknesses of series, or things I would or wouldn’t use myself.

Even after I had escaped the recommendations phase, women came up to us with purchases and asking us if they had made good choices to teach their kids on their own. One of the problems, of course, is that they didn’t realize we were a married couple. They simply thought I was a foreigner for hire at the right price. It’s almost scary how Korean parents can go from meeting a random person in a bookstore to inviting them to teach their children without thinking about the consequences. I guess I sound like I know what I am talking about. Must be my disarming American charms that wiles away their reservations. I was always mentioning what worked in my current school as the basis of my recommendations , so if they really wanted to get a class from me they knew where to find me.

One of my duties as a teacher is grading my students journals. This is where they write a short paragraph or page about what they like, what they do, or something important in their lives.  Usually I grade a dozen journals about soccer, family members, and computer games each time. Currently it’s getting too cold to play soccer, so they’ve started talking about other topics. One current hot game trend for students in my school is a game they call "Survivor".

Survivor, so I’ve been able to figure out, it basically a shoot out between students. Some students improvise awesome rubber band shooting guns with chopsticks, tape, and rubber bands. They have actual triggers and everything. Other students buy guns that are plastic replicas of actual guns. Those have been illegal in American for quite some time. Students will bring in guns that look exactly like the real thing, except they shoot plastic beads instead of actual rounds of ammunition. I have one myself that I got from a friend.

The Glock model "Survivor" Gun

So, as you can see, Survivor is about running around with frighteningly realistic weaponry and shooting your friends and classmates. The joy of living in a gun-free society is that when kids are running around with guns in school, they are actually toys. Not that this doesn’t violate every rule I learned in a gun owning home as a child, but at least no one is going to get killed.

One of my students was talking about how he owned seven replica Survivor guns, and he always played the game with his friends. He said none of his friends are allowed to have the guns, so they use his. His brother and his brother’s friends also play with his Survivor guns. He said he hoped that his friends would be able to get their own Survivor guns for Christmas.

His essay was interesting, well written, and grammatically easy to understand. Still, I was compelled to write a note after I gave him is grade. "You’ll shoot your eye out kid!"

Owning Yoshi was one of the biggest changes to our lifestyles this year. When I was first told about the plan to purchase a dog for a present for my wife’s father, I was dead set against it. I wanted nothing to do with a plan I knew was doomed to end up with us in care of a puppy. Sure, at the time I thought dogs were cute, as long as they were confined to being a puppy in a window. I had no intention of taking care of one. I didn’t know what being a pet owner entailed, and I certainly didn’t want an animal running around destroying things in my apartment, or worse yet, the apartment itself.

Now, after living with a pet for about eight months, we are a pretty inseparable pair. Yoshi has integrated himself into our lives, and now having him around makes both me and my wife happier than simply being alone. One of the reasons for this is the fact that while he might be a little naughty, overall he’s a pretty good pooch. He’s learned some ground rules for living with us, and he’s not terribly difficult to take care of when we work together. He’s gone from a pile of defecating fur to a nice dog since we’ve owned him.

This means that I’m usually in charge of walking Yoshi around, while the occasional bath or trim is handled by my wife. I usually head out in the morning for a lap with Yoshi around the block. If we have time before lunch, I’ll head down to a park or near the river to let him run. He’s tightly supervised, but this serves as exercise for me. Right now, it’s starting to get cold, but we can still take him outside.

One function of these walks is to keep his funky dung out of the house. He’s gotten very good at bowel and bladder control as he’s grown. While there was a 1 and 3 chance that Yoshi might do something undesirable in the house when we purchased him, now he almost never makes a mistake in the house. He’s pad trained and usually waits to go outside. This was a major concern of both of Yoshi’s owners, so he’s gotten lots of praise for his regular actions.

On walks, he’s starting to control himself around strangers. Right now, it’s a 50% chance that he’ll sit down and patiently wait for the elevator. If someone gives him attention on the elevator, it’s tough to keep him from wanting to jump. He doesn’t bite strangers, but if he got the chance, he’d push every toddler down and lick their faces until they surrendered. Some kids like this, some do not. Keeping him away from the little ones is usually fairly easy. Other people on the street either get ignored, or get lots of attention. Anyone that stops to pet him probably will get jumped on. He can’t be trusted without a leash, because he’ll simply run thinking he’s free. This works in a safe park, but on the street it’s much too dangerous.

He’s smart enough to chase balls and toys, but doesn’t like disc like objects. It’s very gross. He usually keeps people on the computer or couch company while they do their thing, hoping to get their attention long enough for someone to play fetch with him. Since he’s a little dog and our apartment has some places he can run, this helps him get a little exercise even on rainy days. He wears clothes on cold days, and recognizes his leash. He knows never to step in our bedroom, and to wait when we feed him food in a dish until we give him permission to eat. He’s on a no protein diet due to a skin allergy, but on the plus side, will never shed his hair because of his breed.

All and all, having a pet is very rewarding experience. I don’t think I would have been capable of properly taking care of a pet before this year, but now that I’ve had the experience I’m very glad we’ve taking care of Yoshi since purchasing him. Hell, even the security guards don’t mind him. He’s been a constant and loyal companion for these months and I wouldn’t want to live in Korea without him now.

Today is the final semester tests for students. The students take standardized placement tests in five core subjects. Some schools add more tests to this regiment to cover all the disciplines as well. Some schools have tests over two days instead of one, so some students were still studying today. As a result several classes I’ve had this week were nearly empty. Third year middle school students finished their tests in November, so those students weren’t at home studying today, they were the only students in class during my last hour.

Instead of doing a lesson in the book, I found some topics to discuss relevant to their interests. We sat around for an hour and chatted about school, tests, teachers, classes, and homework. It was fun, because I got to see a different side to some of my more advanced students. At the end of class, one of the girls pulled out an electronic dictionary and said she was going to return it. The other girl in class started laughing. The girl wanted to return the dictionary because her friend in the same class had the same electronic dictionary.

I thought it was funny as well, because the girl had the same talking dictionary design that my terrible student uses to curse at his classmates. I asked the girl if she knew about how the dictionary could "speak", and that some students liked to curse using the dictionary. The other girl in class responded. "Yes, that’s a very childish game. Elementary school students do that all the time."

I explained that I had a class where students were cursing all the time. I said that the electronic dictionary was the source of the problems because a boy student would use it to find bad words and use it to make other students angry. I said that the boy in question was very badly behaved. This made the girl in class that didn’t have her dictionary with her today sit up and take notice. I said I thought it was funny that three students would have same design of electronic dictionary. The girl said, "Oh, no, I think the student you are talking about is actually my brother."

She acted surprised that her brother would be someone I would call, "A very bad student."

I explained what he did in class, what he said, how he acted, and what trying to educate him was like. She seemed to understand his lack of manners from my description, but was shocked to hear about how badly he had done on his report card and on his lack of improvement. The sister actually has a very similar style in class, where she interrupts, dominates conversations, and generally talks to much. The only differences being is she studies, knows what’s going on in class, and doesn’t swear. While other teachers think she is just as bad, I actually like the girl while I detest the boy.

After I spent some time trying to tell her how bad her brother was in class, she promised to call her mom and repeat what I had said. If her brother comes in with a different attitude, or no dictionary tomorrow, I’ll know why.

I remember the first time I sat down to study a foreign language in the high school library with some classmates. The first thing we did was grab the English to Spanish dictionary and look up curse words that we couldn’t conjugate or use in sentences. We didn’t know how to use the basics of grammar, had an exceedingly small vocabulary, but we thought we could curse in another language.

The whole "We are cursing in school right now without getting in trouble" aspect was one part of the allure. So was the whole exclusivity of being able to curse in another language when no one else could. Since no one could understand us, it became a sort of secret code of rebellion against our hated Spanish teacher. Literal translations of curses stink anyway, since you don’t know the feeling behind the words and can’t properly intone them anyway. We could have been shouting gibberish or making up words like Dr. Seuss for as much meaning as any phrase we might have memorized had in all likelihood.

Still, we never dared to curse in Spanish in class, or to actually use curses where we had the opportunity to be understood. There is a joy in cursing, in the taboo of the act. For teenagers, the anticipation or fear of punishment, and the exhilaration of getting away with the unthinkable is a powerful thing.

I’m not surprised when my students use their electronic dictionaries to learn new swear words. They spend a considerable amount of money on them, and they use them constantly. Of course people use them for the same things I used to do. The problem is, when they do that in class, it’s highly annoying and disruptive. I had a class that went crazy today because of an electronic dictionary.

One extremely foul mouthed student always brings his electronic dictionary to class. I don’t know if he curses like a sailor at home, but he swears more than movie gangsters in class. He has a really bad habit of cursing, and having new ways of learning new curse words isn’t helping. He’s started corrupting the entire class. He doesn’t hold anyone in respect and will curse at them for anything.

When he isn’t cursing, he’s using his electronic dictionary to curse for him. He’ll use the phonetic dictionary speech to say loud curse words in class. When I tell him to stop, he’ll act innocent as if his dictionary is simply possessed and speaks long sentences calling other students terrible things on it’s own. I’ve tried to take his dictionary away from him, but it’s an expensive toy, and it does help him with his homework. He shouldn’t be using it in class, but since he does nothing but curse at other students anyway, I’d rather have him playing Tetris int he back of class than making me angry.

Today, he started looking up words for the lesson, then started to play with his dictionary again. He called a girl in class a terrible name. She got out her dictionary and responded. The other student used his phone with English dictionary to curse at both of the other students. The students assume that I don’t know anything and I don’t understand that they are saying bad words, but I know everything they say, and they aren’t all that good at being subtle. Since they don’t know why English curses carry the weight they do, when they curse in English they just laugh instead of getting angry. I’m the only one getting a headache because of it. I just wait until after class and tell my head teacher that the class was swearing, again. I can’t punish students that never do homework and behave this badly because I need to have a reward to remove in the first place.

As I type, a solution to the situation seems to have presented itself as long as my head teacher will agree to it. I’ll just take their beloved possessions and put them in my desk until the next class. Use your dictionary to curse? Fine, bring your mother to school and get it back. When she watches your behavior in class, I’m sure she’ll understand why you can’t be trusted to have such materials anymore. Will it work? I doubt it. My only other choice is to wait them out and hope they quit or get reevaluated at the beginning of another semester and removed from my class. That’s not much of a hope either.

When walking home from the film, getting caught up on some of the story elements I missed, or something my wife hadn’t gotten a chance to explain before the movie had moved on, we heard some people yelling at each other. The usual Korean response of "Head down, I didn’t see anything" kicked in, and we kept going past the couple. None of our business, right? We were just witnessing a quarrel behind a wall near an apartment complex. We kept walking, but then we heard what they were saying, and took more of an interest.

The man happened to yell, "I saw you kiss him. I saw you. You did it. Didn’t you?" just as we passed.

The woman simply said that she had, but we didn’t hear anything else.

Of course, I happen to look up in shock as we hear all of this, and see him bring his hands down on the woman. Two quick chops or slaps to her face or shoulders. The woman didn’t run away. She didn’t cry for help. I don’t think the man hit her very hard either, but that doesn’t matter.  This is in a  public area, and I just saw a guy smash a woman who was pinned against a wall in the face. Despite the fact that the two people are somewhat hidden behind a wall, there was no mistake about what I had seen. I thought to myself,  "She might not be able to leave, and this guy is hitting her. We don’t know who they are, but If we continued walking, we wouldn’t know what would happen to that woman. I can’t let this happen."

I grab my wife’s hand to stop her from walking on as we cross to the other side of the entrance to the apartment complex, hidden from their view. We can make out what is going with their body language on as they walk in front of and behind a wall the size of a door. We can’t hear what they are talking about, but it’s clearly a nasty intense fight. I look at my wife and tell her, "No, we aren’t ignoring this. We are calling the police."

My wife protested. The Korean response to such situations is, "Lover’s quarrel. Ignore it. Don’t get involved. It’s a messy situation. Adding police will make it worse. It’s in public, it won’t go too far out of fear of shame. Someone else will handle this. Move on." My wife’s family have had problems in the past where stepping in has caused as much of a problem as what was happening in the first place, thus explaining her reluctance. Also, no one wants the police involved in anything, because they aren’t the friendly public servants they are made out to be at times.

I’m an ignorant, hopeful, foreigner, with a desire to change the society I live in by living by using a different set of moral principles than the ones common here. I speak out when I see violence, racism, and other problems that people ignore in this culture. This might make me an irritant, but I was raised this way and I will not change. Forgive me for my rudeness, but I can not abide your rules tonight. I took out my phone and I dialed the number myself. If I had the ability I would have explained what was going on myself. Sadly, I needed to involve my wife in this despite her objections because I wouldn’t have been any good to the woman if the police didn’t understand what was going on when we called.

I told my wife to explain the situation to the police officers. We gave the location and what we saw. My wife said the officer that answered sounded annoyed, and he wanted to make sure we had witnessed everything from the street, and not an apartment nearby. I don’t know why this mattered. We were watching the couple fight as the police were rudely dismissing us as crank callers. My wife told them we had been walking, heard them fighting, saw the woman get hit, and then had been peeking around the corner to keep tabs on the situation. They agreed to send a cop down to the location to check it out. They hung up without telling us anything. No directions whatsoever.

Would we be needed? Would they even really come? Who knows? To paraphrase and culturally contaminate Public Enemy, 1-1-2 is a joke.

With this, my wife said, "Enough. The police are involved. We’ve gone beyond the call of duty now. We can walk away without feeling bad about this."

Again, I couldn’t walk away. I had to see that something was going to happen. I honestly didn’t expect the police to arrive. I wasn’t going to leave this woman, whatever she had done, in potential danger from this man. We weren’t in any danger of being seen. The man so focused that he couldn’t detect some people across the apartment complex entrance peering at him. People were walking past at this point and not doing anything about the situation. If we didn’t do it, no one would have. The woman hit the man a few times in the stomach. They talked some more.

At one point, the woman walked away, almost got into a taxi, then walked back to the man. At this point, it was pretty clear that whatever was going on, the woman wasn’t being intimidated or forced into staying. It was an ugly fight we were witnessing, and perhaps the final straw in a long drawn out unhealthy relationship, but the man didn’t physically keep her on the wall she had been arguing. Since we couldn’t see what was going on the entire time, every time she disappeared behind the wall, we didn’t know what was happening. He could be hitting her, or they could be making up. We saw she could walk away, and had a chance to get into a taxi before turning back.. You can’t call the police about an unhealthy relationship, as bad as they are.

By the time the police arrived, around 10 minutes later, we got a call. The police were flashing they lights nearby, and said that the couple in question were sitting where we said they had been. The police were watching. Their hands locked around each other, friendly as can be, hugging each other. No problems of any kind. No, really? With the police in a car parked nearby they were no longer fighting or hitting each other? Who knows how that had happened. The police officer said he would watch them for a while, and if things turned sour, we’d be needed as witnesses. He didn’t seem to think anything was going to happen as long as he was there at least.

We then were hung up on, again. I asked my wife to call the police officer and ask for his name, badge number, and the number of his supervisor. I was in a divinely inspired sort of justice seeking mode tonight. My wife said that going over a police officer’s head was asking for trouble, so I stopped. I could see where such a complaint might lead, and there was no reason to bring that on her, as well as myself. There might be a rude cop at the scene, but we had done all we could do.

Seems that my heroic act turned out to be little more than an over reaction. I made a stand on a principal that I couldn’t live with ignoring. The part of me that read comic books as a kid and believes in justice and things worth fighting for is somewhere deep inside of me. I’m not brave foolish enough to fight my battles with fists. I’ve heard other foreigners have done so in my situation, and have lost, getting tossed out of the country, or fined in the process. I know that when it comes down to it, I’m a foreigner in a country that has a different set of rules about how it operates. Sometimes the difference in these rules is minor. Sometimes it isn’t.

I’ve surrendered a lot of my cultural identity to live in this country for as long as I have, but I am proud I haven’t lost some things that make me "me."

My wife and I had an altogether shitty day today. We went to go see the early evening showing of Pan’s Labyrinth and missed the sale of tickets for the movie by five minutes. They couldn’t sell us tickets after the movie had started for ten minutes because we would miss the advertisements and safety regulations…or something. Whatever the reason, we had two hours to wait around for the next viewing. We walked around and killed some time before the next show. No big deal, except the whole "wasted lots of our time" thing was a real annoyance.

Next viewing, we were purchasing snacks for the film. We disliked the "Squid, Popcorn, Soft Drink" set we got last time because the peanut butter roasted squid was stale and nasty. I’m the only one that likes the taste of the squid anyway, so if I wasn’t going to eat it, it was best to move on to something else. We decided to get a "Churro, Popcorn, Soft Drink" set instead. I don’t know how this snack store is told to operate, because they make excellent popcorn, have cold drinks, but then hand me a cold stale Churro. If I’m going to eat a long stick fried donut covered in sugar, the thing needs to be warm. I complained and got a less disgusting Churro for my troubles, but everyone looked at me like I was a maniac for deserving a refund after I had tasted the food. How else could I have known how bad it was going to be?

Anyway, we finally sit down for the movie and I come to the realization that, "Hey, all the credits are in Spanish. That’s an interesting stylistic—shit. This movie is entirely in Spanish. With Korean subtitles." While this made the movie more difficult, it was much easier than my last subtitle debacle in French. Since I’ve forgotten the majority of my high school Spanish education, the audio was nearly useless. Unless they were talking about something easily, like greeting each other or talking about books or mornings, I really didn’t know what they were saying.  I tried reading the Korean subtitles, but I had the same problem. As long as the speakers were using simply declarative sentences, I was pretty good. As soon as they delved into more complicated motives for actions, or were talking about things they weren’t doing, I needed my wife to help in the translation. Still, the movie wasn’t that complicated that I couldn’t follow it.

It’s like a fairy tale in construction, so having such rich visuals helped keep my interest. It’s a fantastic film, and even thought I watched in a language I don’t understand anymore with help from subtitles in a language I barely understand enough in, and had my wife translating scenes in my ear, I felt I got a lot of the story and didn’t walk away as confused as I have watching English language movies in the past. I’d recommend the film, but I’d see it in a language you are more comfortable with if possible.