::A Geek in Korea::

Today was a non-stop testing day for me. All my classes finished their materials for the month and needed to be tested to see if they retained anything from their month of study. (Results: inconclusive.) My day was an endless grind of preparing material between classes, photocopying, instructions, and then sitting in silence. I’d grade papers when they finished in class, record the grades, then starting over for the next hour.

Perhaps because of tomorrow’s national holiday, or the start of a new school year, or the realization that students had only a day or two at most with their current classmates left, I had all sorts of discipline problems today. It might have been because of a paperwork mistake that revealed to the students what classes they would be in next session. They already knew if they had advanced or not, so the tests were of no consequence to them.

It stated off in a class where I had prepared a test that closely followed the homework I had assigned the previous class. When I came to class, no one had done their work. They all looked surprised when I was upset. Since they hadn’t prepared their work, the test was much more difficult. The answers I got as a result on the test were either borderline acceptable, or absolute nonsense. I also had to keep the students from telling each other the answers.

My coworker had complained about one of the groups of students I taught in another hour of class. He told me about how glad he was that I was teaching the students I had in my next class because they had given him a lot of problems. They weren’t exactly my favorite students either, but it was like he had predicted the future. Every complaint he made about them came true in the next class.

When I went to split the class up to prevent copying (students call it "Cunning"), the girls in the class refused to move. I wouldn’t start the class until they moved, so they wasted more and more time arguing with me. Because of this, I didn’t have enough time to help them cover some of the material they needed for the test. Thus, their attitudes hurt everyone in the class. Eventually they erected an elaborate book barrier to keep themselves seated next to each other while preventing copying of each other’s papers.

The next problem was a boy that is just really, really strange. I kept having to bring him back to the land of the living. He’ll just open his mouth and stare. His long ears amplify the creepiness. He looks like a fish that lacks oxygen to keep swimming and is just about to start floating. You could throw a pencil from across the room and it’d block his windpipe. There just isn’t anything going on. This fish-boy was so out of it today that the easy confidence boosting questions I put on the tests were beyond him.

When I got his test back, not only had he answered all of the questions incorrectly, but had written a rude Korean word for an answer to the questions he didn’t know. I got one of the Korean teachers to yell at him for me. After further examining his test, I found something that might have explained his brain dead appearance.

"What do you like to order at restaurants?"

His answer: "Soap."

That might explain it.

I got nice surprise from my director today. It turns out that one of my wife’s relatives, a younger cousin, signed up to attend our school. It seems that the trip to the Korean beef restaurant with their family was a bit of a test to find out more about my school. During the ride to the restaurant they had mentioned that the academy the boy was currently attending had some staffing problems. Foreigners would call off for the day with no advanced warning, leaving classes canceled or substitutes scrambling to cover everything.They decided that the liked what they heard about my school and came to enroll today.

I wasn’t around when they came in for the interview, so I don’t know how well he did. My director mentioned that since my wife plans to tutor him in grammar in addition to his normal academy classes as a supplement, he got bumped up into a more difficult level to push him. He’ll be with students his age that are probably a lot better than he is at the moment. My director said he needed to work hard to keep up. I’m a little surprised at where he ended up, but it might be a case of modeling. If he sees other students working hard, if properly pushed, he can follow their example.

The reason they are interested in enrolling the boy in a harder class to get him up to speed quickly is because of a recent success another family member had following the same model. The boy’s sister recently enrolled at a school that might even be more difficult than where I work when it comes to vocabulary tests. She has to not only memorize fifty words a day, like our students at her age, but she has to memorize the sentences that use them in context. Since she’s been in this school, she’s shot up from the bottom student in her middle school class academically to the top five. Hopefully the boy will follow his sister’s model and kick his bad study habits.

Having been around the boy when he studies, I know some of his quirks and ways he gets out of studying. Water breaks. Bathroom breaks. Hiding books in elevators to "lose" them (!) Unfortunately, I won’t be teaching him in the upcoming semester, so I won’t be able to hold his feet over the fire and turn him around. My coworker will be getting wind of all the stuff he did that our aunt told us about.

I have an interest in seeing the boy improve. Of course I want to help my wife’s family as much as possible. Keeping a watch on a cousin to see that he’s studying is a good start. Also, my director will of course want to bring in good students to the school, so if I’ve got a relative that’s dragging down a class, it reflects badly on the family. Also, the another uncle in the family (his wife zip-locked my wedding buffet) I least get along with happens to be a private math tutor. I’d love to prove I’m working at a good school, or show that foreigners that teach professionally can earn respect.

With all this pressure for the boy to succeed, I’m a little worried that if he doesn’t get put in the right class, or with the right classmates, he’ll give up and make everyone regret the decision to enroll him. It might be for the best that he isn’t in my class. He’ll be less of a distraction for my coworker than me. My director told me "Thank you for recommending the school and getting him to enroll." She seems to think this was my idea. I have no idea why she would think this sort of thing, but if it works out well, I’ll be more than happy to try to take credit for his success.
 

Today is the last "phonics" class I’ll teach for the year. At least that’s my plan anyway. I don’t know how admission works at our school, but we don’t "do" phonics at our school normally. Everyone in all the classes should be able to read before they get here. They might not be good at reading, but they aren’t in the "ABC" phase of things. For some reason though, an entire class of students are right around the same level of reading comprehension and listening skills couldn’t read worth a damn out loud. Someone never taught them consonant blends, and when you have a class of 15 students, trying to hear one mess up a subtle sound when they all read aloud is nigh impossible  Because of this weird coincidence, this single class got a phonics book for their February materials. This means I have to go in and help children work on their pronunciation, reading, and spelling.

Before the bell was supposed to ring, I told the students we would do a "line up game". This is a "kill the time" sort of review thing. I picked the brightest student as a model, then told him, "Tell me five words with the ‘CL’ blend."

"Clock, class, clam, club, clothes." he answered. He gloated to his friend that wasn’t paying attention, then went to the front of the line.

"Who can tell me five words with the ‘Wh’ blend" I asked next?

I called on his friend who was playing around, trying to catch him off guard. "What?" he answered.

"That’s one!" I replied.

Another girl called out, "Why?" because she didn’t know what was going on either.

"That’s two!" I answered with a wider grin.

Another girl shouted out, "Who?" but I think she was just playing around.

It still counted, "That’s three!"

Finally, someone figured out what was going on and started telling the boy what was happening. He finished his set of words before the bell rang. Even though they had been promised to line up early for dismissal, we finished class at the same time as everyone else.

My wife’s youngest Aunt on her mother’s side, along with her two children and husband treated us to dinner today. They have a tree nursery on the outskirts of the city, and like to take us to restaurants far out in the country we would never get to eat at due to our lack of vehicle. Today, I was given five minutes notice to be outside, as my wife was already with them. I got picked up and taken to yet another unknown destination. They didn’t tell us what we were in for until we pulled into the restaurant and could read the sign.

The place we ended up eating at was a Korean raised beef restaurant. The cows of this restaurant were Korean born, raised, and slaughtered. There is a special name attributed to Korean cows. Even hamburger chains have special burgers to charge a premium for Korean raised beef. It’s all the same to me. The sign said, "Korean beef story". The meat was sitting in a small refrigerated locker greeting you as you walked in the door. What a story it was turning out to be already.

I’ve got a reputation in the family as being a picky eater. This is probably pretty fair, as my stomach simply isn’t strong enough to eat spicy foods. Even if I liked spicy stuff that they would serve me, I’d be sidelined with pain if I tried to eat it all. There really are some foods I can’t eat because they are too hot for me and I’ll pay for it. I’ve learned to live with this, but for people used to extremely hot food all the time, I’m viewed as a person to be pitied.

Luckily the food on the menu people wanted to eat was Kalbi-tang, or "Meat soup". It’s beef cooked on the bone until it’s absolutely tender. It’s a delicious soup with leek, egg noodles, and some black pepper. I happen to like it, but I don’t eat it all that often. The meat is literally served on the bone, so it can be rather messy to eat if not give the proper tools. This restaurant gave not only chopsticks and spoons, but tongs and kitchen scissors to everyone at the table to eat. You had to cut the meat off the bone, then eat it. It was really tasty.

My uncle in law then asked around if someone wanted some "Yuk Hwae". Whenever anyone says, "Hwae" around me, I usually lose my appetite. When using this word involving food, it means "served raw". "Yuk Hwae" means "Raw Beef". He wanted to know if anyone else was interested in eating raw beef.

His son and daughter immediately chimed in, "It’s really delicious! Yes, I’d like some please!"  A single serving of raw beef was then ordered. The logical, food safety conscious, bacteria and parasite fearing response of, "Oh my god, you just ordered raw beef?! I’m not eating that!" was not something I could say without being rude. Him being an older gentleman treating me for dinner, the best I could do is a "None for me, but feel free to order it for yourself. I might try it." I was lucky, as my wife and her aunt both declined his offer as well. The stage had been set.

We waited for the beef as we at the kalbi-tang and watched television. I have no idea what was taking so long, but my mind remembered the numerous plates of raw beef I had seen sitting untouched at numerous buffets and wedding halls I had visited. I’m not sure that yuk hwae is entirely popular outside of the country areas of Korea, but the idea of eating raw beef went against every rule of sanitation and food safety I could possibly imagine. Korean cows or no, raw beef just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

When the waitress brought the raw beef, she set it down on the table, cracked a raw egg on top, and then mashed up the egg and meat with a hand covered in a plastic glove. A raw egg on beef? Are you kidding me? The plastic glove was an encouraging sign, because at least the woman was worried about having raw beef and egg on her hands, but really, that’s too much in the "Fear Factor" method of food preparation for my tastes. The bacterial stew was then placed in front of us for consumption.

My uncle in law dug in heartily. His children took a few pieces for themselves as well. They took much less, but more than enough for me to consider them brave. While their enthusiasm might have encouraged him to order the dish, there was far too much meat on that plate. There was no way I was going to get out of this dinner without trying some. The fact that the meat was even on the table at all was like a dare to me. If I didn’t eat some, I had the feeling we’d have been there all night until someone had. It’s ridiculously expensive food to waste even if it wasn’t cooked.

Then, I happened to remember that the yearly parasite medicine we take as a precaution against poorly cooked foods was sitting at home. It’s a once a year pill. We had purchased it a few weeks ago since we hadn’t cleaned out our system for potential parasites for a long time. It’s not unusual for people to purchase this after going on a vacation in a foreign country, or when they are worried about something they ate. The raw beef and egg was tripping ever "food safety" warning I had, so to know I had a pill waiting to kill any potential unwanted passengers riding on the meat was a welcome thought.

Eventually, I got up the courage to try a little of the dish. The meat is served on a bed of lettuce and Korean pear, and the meat itself is marinated in Korean pear juice and sesame oil. I adore Korean pear. It’s my absolute favorite fruit. I tried the smallest bit of beef I could while getting mostly pear. The verdict? I kept down the first bite despite my apprehension, and it tasted pretty much entirely like pear with sesame oil. I was cautious about approaching the meal, but really didn’t want to eat any more of the meat than I absolutely had to. It was simply uncooked meat that tasted like a sweet pear with a funny texture. I had a few more bites, but once everyone saw that I was willing to try something not everyone at the table was willing to eat, I was off the hook. My uncle in law ate the entire rest of the dish.

When we were in their car riding home, my uncle in law said to me, "Now, you’ve eating raw beef. I’ll take you to a place that serves cooked cow heads."

"Cow heads? What part? The brain? Nose? The tongue? What do you mean?" I asked. I didn’t get an answer. I guess I will have to wait until the next time they decide to treat us for dinner. I hope I’ll be able to shake my reputation as a picky eater eventually.

One of my more annoying students has been getting on the nerves of all the teachers recently. He will do things just to piss us off over and over again. Today, before my class started, he managed to anger the head teacher by making dumb noises in class. She brought him into the office to explain himself, as he was making sounds all the time in her class.

The boy is a masterful actor, and can turn on and off the tears at will. While she was lecturing him, he started weeping. She stopped and asked him what was going on. He said that he was afraid of her, and that she was probably going to hit him. Our head teacher denied that she would have hit him, but he had gotten her on the defensive. He might be a somewhat poor student, but he isn’t dumb.

During my class the next hour, I had to warn him about making sounds a few times, but told him that tears weren’t going to work on me. I had seen through his act. I wasn’t going to get fooled by his little game.

When it came time to write homework on the board, the boy shouted he wouldn’t be attending the academy next week. He was beaming with joy. I did the same thing I always do when students tell me that they would be in class in advance. I told everyone else we would have a huge party to celebrate their departure. I’m always very sarcastic about it.

I asked him why he wasn’t going to be at school, and he said that he would be in the hospital. He had some kind of surgery scheduled. Of all the things he could have said, this had to be his reason. I had to give the boy credit. He was good at making his teachers feel sorry for him. I asked him if it was a serious surgery, what was wrong, if he was sick, and how long he would be gone.

He was completely oblivious to any of the details. He said he had forgotten what his parents had told him. He didn’t know why he was going in, or what was wrong with him. The less he knew, the worse I felt. Why else would his parents keep details of a surgery from their children? It must have been some sort of serious surgery. He was still very happy about it all, and was looking forward to not coming to class. I wished him luck when he went home, then went into the teacher’s room to find out what was going on. If someone was going to miss class, the head teacher would know why.

"Do you know why that boy is going to miss next week’s class? He said he had surgery and would be in the hospital. Why? What’s wrong with him? Will he be okay?"

"Oh yeah," my head teacher responded, "he’s getting circumcised."

Somehow I think he’ll be wishing he never missed school after his surgery.

The quest to find the perfect video player was literally months in the making. I got this "itch" to investigate players in December around Christmas. I’ve finally made my choice, and I am now the owner of a lime green Cowon D2 flash based mini-PMP DMB player. (PMP, Portable Media Player) I already have a large capacity mp3 player I like, the iRiver H120. Taking a flash based video player with me on the way to work, or while walking the dog would be better on my hardware. The jostling and bouncing that sometimes damages hard drives doesn’t affect flash players. That way I can carry a few dozen videos, some converted Youtube clips, and some music files with me to watch between classes or when I need to go out to eat by myself.

At first I was leaning towards the Cowon A2 due to great reviews. When I brought it up with my wife, we traveled to the store. It turned out that the Cowon A2, while a good player, was filling a niche I didn’t have. It could do DMB broadcasting with an adapter, but it’s hard drive and form factor were more suited to air travel or cars than carrying around in a pocket from day to day. It was also a tad expensive, and lacked a touch screen.

The geek in me appreciated the i-Station V43. It runs Linux, it has a touch screen, robust homebrew support, and was all around a very cool player. Another model of the same line even did DMB, but with an ugly antenna! Again, it was really expensive, and it also was hard drive based, meaning that it would be a cool toy, basically a low end tablet machine with video capabilities, but not something good for a walk or to toss in a bag.

With one of my friends online, we scoured for hours to find players to met my rough set of criteria. The player needed to be operating system neutral, couldn’t lock me in with forced digital rights management, had good hardware reviews, had a good screen, good interface, and was hopefully made in Korea. Since Korea is a leader in digital audio products, I only needed to wait long enough for something meeting that long list to come along.

There were two players in the front running. The iRiver Clix (U10) and the Cowon D2. I ultimately decided to get the D2 due to the SD storage ability which would would expand it’s capacity, and some of the extra features included like DMB and TV out (I still need those cables. Not for sale yet.). The delay in getting the iRiver Clix2, the newest model, to the store due to manufacturing process was the final nail in the coffin. Cowon had my money.

For a while we had difficultly finding the player in stores, but my wife finally tracked down the model today. She even got the guy to throw in a free case and screen protector. I’ve been converting some videos and playing with my new toy today and I’m impressed with all the features packed into such a tiny little player. Right now my main hurdle is the Korean software interface that would help me sync and manage files. Since I can view files and transfer things without needing to use the bundled software (one of my requirements), I’ve been able to find English language programs that work just as well.

My player arrived just in time too. Tomorrow I have to go in extra early and choose books at work. My entire lunch is shot, so I’ll need to wait around at work instead of going home. Now I can watch some videos at work instead of sitting around bored or playing around with the computer all day. The screen is big enough for my tastes, and I’ve got some new content to watch now that I’ve converted some files. Since the player gets long battery life, and seems to do what I want at the moment, I’m very happy with my purchase. After I’ve given it a more complete run through, I’ll post a detailed review.

My current conversion and or tools at the moment to convert and manage video files:
iRiverter
gSpot
Super

In one of my classes we were studying present tense verbs by describing animal sounds.  We’d name an animal and describe the sound it made. The class mostly consisted of me saying an animal and having a bunch of animal sounds being shouted back in response. This is in an upper level class too. It was extremely silly. The best thing about the animals they book chose was that the verbs they chose sometimes sounded nothing like the animal themselves.

The book said, for example, "An elephant trumpets with it’s nose."

All the students put their hands to their faces, made a trunk, and said, "TRUMPET!" which makes no sense, but was extremely entertaining to watch. I do the best sheep bleating sound in the school, hands down.

However, the funniest thing would have been to watch the camera that was recording the classroom. You could have seen me doing my "Chicken Dance" from Arrested Development. The students had no idea what was going on, of course, but when am I ever going to get a chance like that again?

We’ve been going to a restaurant called, "Steaky Pan" before going to see movies recently. Tonight before going to see Rocky Balboa we stopped in again. The place serves "Hamburg steaks" also know as Salisbury steaks in the United States. The coolest thing about Steaky Pan happens to be their wet tissues. The first time we were served in the restaurant, we didn’t know what they were. They are squashed folded so tightly they look like after dinner mints. The waiter explained you have to pour some water on them so they can expand and be used. I took some pictures previously with my camera phone, but they didn’t show the dramatics well enough. Through the wonder of Youtube, you too can be in awe of a Steaky Pan wet napkin.