Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Hump Day in the Seoul Patch

The weather can't seem to make up its mind--reminds me of Georgia. The temperature was in the low seventies over the weekend, then took a nosedive, with today's high being about 50. Last week had the same pattern--but at least it has the courtesy to be lovely on the weekend! It rained all day yesterday ...

Meanwhile, one of Young-il High School's spring rituals is underway, the intra-class soccer tournament. I only know this due to the fact that three of my classes this week have been cancelled because the students were to attend a soccer match out in the schoolyard.

Early in my career, I would have taken offense at such blatant disregard for the pursuit of academic excellence. Over twenty years in, I am still very jealous of my class time, but I take a more laid back approach. To everything.

Another complication to my lessons this week was a mysterious internet outage yesterday afternoon that seemed only to infect my computer. The whole second grade (that's high school juniors) lesson this week involves watching and identifying elements of video clips from romance movies. So we played a version of Twenty Questions, instead.

The first grade lesson is going pretty well, beginning with a ppt on food riddles. Each slide asks the riddle, then answers it, then explains it--word play doesn't translate but at least it can be used to build vocabulary. Maybe.

A few favorites:
* Why did the tomato turn red? It saw the salad dressing.
* What do you call cheese that does not belong to you? Nacho cheese.
* Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 - 8 - 9.
* What cheese is made backward? Edam.

One that absolutely no one understands, despite laborious explanation:
* What do you get from pampered cows? Spoiled milk.

Anyway, after that we have a ten minute 'listen and repeat' exercise with restaurant phrases, and finish up by drawing a multi-course Western style meal on a plate template, and then (in theory at least) critique one another's menu, a la Michelin Guide.

plate template
The favorite foods by far: steak and robster. Sometimes even together; can you say surf and turf?

1 comment:

Andrew Lasher said...

To be honest, I don't understand the spoiled milk joke, either.