The Gang Sees Fireworks and E.T.; Hilarity Ensues

-Okay, I know my sorry little metaphors are tiresome or, as Aldous Huxley loves to say (just re-read Brave New World), indefatigable, but I have one more. Promise. At my small rural school (~40 students Kindergarten to 6^th grade), I was teaching my 1^st and 2^nd graders (since it’s so small, they put the two grades together) a little story, and noticed, not for the first time, mind you, the difficulty they were having with some of the letters and their corresponding sounds. I think a lot of these kids have been learning on a faulty system; one based off their own language’s pronunciation. They have no /f/ sound in Korean, and for some reason replace it with /p/ for English words. “Fish” becomes “pish” for example. There are numerous others (/z/ becomes /dz/, “zebra” is “jebra”; /l/ becomes /lr/ and /r/ becomes /lr/, “really” is “lrealry”; etc.). Anyway, I was trying to help them with pronunciation, and everything I said, they would repeat… And I mean everything. I immediately thought of E.T., where he learns to speak for the first time with baby Drew Barrymore (“Beeeeeeeeee,” “Elllliooott”…you remember, right?). Let’s see it in instant replay.

Teacher Jeremy: “Andy likes blocks. Repeat!”

Students Unknown: “Andy..lrikes blrocks. Lrepee!”

Teacher Jeremy: “Andy.”

Students Unknown: “Andy.”

Teacher Jeremy: “Good. Likes. La la la la la la. Lllllllikes. Llllllllikes.”

Students Unknown: “Good. Lllllerikes. (Amid laughter) La la la la la la. Llllllllerikes.”

Teacher Jeremy: “Ha ha. Okay.”

Students Unknown: “Ha ha. Okay!”

You can see how some lessons take for ever. For one measly little sentence. No, it's really funny how cute and innocent these kids can sometimes be. Like when one of my 6th graders, ha, I am even laughing aloud as I type. Okay. I was going over an awesome vegetables and fruits slide show for the kids to draw and label. My 6th graders knew the image of "pepper", but only one kid tried to voice the English term, and insisted it was "penis" when I slowly started spelling it out. (On board) P.........E......... "Penis? It's penis?" he asks (completely serious too, he wasn't trying to be funny). I really don't want to laugh OR explain to this kid why that's incorrect, so I jump straight to "It's a pepper!"

Floor 8/14 I think

-A quick QUICK recap of our Halloween weekend in Busan, Korea’s second largest city in Southeastern Korea. Malia, RJ, Steve and I went for 2 nights, and luckily stayed with a friend of RJ’s the first night. We got in pretty late, as it’s a good distance from all 4 of us (even though we took a glorious ride on the high-speed KTX train). On Saturday we made our way to the world’s largest department store, as dictated by Guinness Book of World Records. This 14-store mall devoured hours of our day time, but it was a pretty cool experience. And they had 2 levels of food, so I mean, yeah. Can’t complain there right? I just closed my eyes and let the Fox nose take over. Of course it took me straight to a cheeseburger that I was very happy to dive into. Saturday night, after the now-routine samgyopsal dinner, we enjoyed the world’s largest fireworks festival, atop our friend’s apartment building rooftop in the rain. It was an amazing, freezing, why-won’t-this-end? yet don’t-stop-with-the-fireworks experience. We kicked it old school that night and stayed out until the sun started getting out of bed, which made the trip back horrendous (they fill up trains endlessly, there is no such thing as maximum capacity at all, so if you have any hint of claustrophobia, steer clear of the trains!). Oh by the way, the second night we stayed in a jjimjilbang, which is a public bathhouse (separated men's women’s floors) and a communal hotel. Garage-rag-like pajamas are given to you, as well as a nice wooden block pillow for the ole thinker to rest. “At least it was cheap!”.....What I had to tell myself all night to stay sane.

Good start to any day!

From inside a Gongju restaurant

Eating dumplings (mandu) and bulgogi in that restaurant above this pic