More End-of-Year

We've adopted new textbooks for the fifth and sixth grades, planned obsolescence of Korean textbooks being just as aggressive as the American version, and I've been making pretty good progress creating and/adapting teaching materials during the last couple weeks.

Today, I was all alone in my office niche of the English classroom all day long. The phone did ring once, though, and I answered it despite the likelihood that the caller would hang up immediately upon realizing they would be expected to speak English. But, no, it was the office lady who is willing to speak English, who said to me, "Come get your ddeok."

A bit later, I got my ddeok, which is a kind of rice flour "cake" of which Koreans are inordinately fond. As for me, I like a lot of it, but some of it, like the one top right in the photo below, consisting mainly of partially cooked beans, is, well, like eating partially cooked beans.


The better kind come in really nice packaging. You can't quite see it well, but the closure on this box is a butterfly that fits through a slot in the top. These were the faculty's end-of-year gift from the parents association. Last year it was a towel.