Christmas Cake 2018, and I Meet My Hero

Granted not much has been going on here in my Patch of Seoul, but not a year has gone by that I haven't proudly posted a photo of my Christmas Cake, a delightful Korean tradition. To wit:


Taking advantage of a day without a schedule, I popped over to Incheon Airport to buy baht and dollars for my upcoming vacation to Thailand, which I anticipate will be a restful two weeks on a warm beach of Koh Chang, east of Bangkok, near the Cambodian border. It was here, at the airport, that I had a photo opportunity with my idol, hanging out at a little restaurant on the Arex mezzanine. If I had a chicken leg for every time I heard someone in this country (and some other countries, too) walk past me and murmur to their friend, "KFC!", I would be buried in chicken legs. Come to think of it, not a bad way to go.


I had hoped to include some pics of the MagLev train, but it was quite a disappointment: the entire journey 12 minutes, 5 stops, with a maximum speed of 78 kmph. So instead, here is a photo of an Arex plush doll usurping seating that is supposed to be reserved for pregnant women. And looking very self-satisfied about it.


And Merry Christmas to All!

Two Photos

Photo No. 1:
The continuing saga of my unfinished "English Only Zone" classroom, um, continues. Mr Lee Geum-cheon, titular head of the English Dept, told me on Friday that my classroom would be ready on Monday (today).

I smiled, and acted all excited, but I knew it wouldn't be so, even though they had delivered two big boxes that appear to be the SmartBoard and other such paraphernalia. For grins and giggles, I asked Mr Hwang on the way to school today if he thought my classroom would be ready.

"Oh, I think so," he answered, with a level of conviction I would give a 7 on a 1 - 10 scale. Gullible.

Needless to say, though I'm going to say it anyway, the room was virtually unchanged from Friday, when I had hopefully (well, to show them I was serious, and prepared for the new classroom) stapled up a bunch of information on the bulletin board labelled "English Information".

So, today, as I was leaving, I was pleased to see the truck I've photographed below outside my building. I am informed that it contains the furniture for my classroom, and perhaps even the office.


Ironically, I learned today that I will have no classes on Tuesday (tomorrow) as the students are all taking mock-up exams. So perhaps I will be able to put this new classroom, or at least some furniture, in order!

Photo No. 2:
The new unit in the first grade textbook is about food, eating habits, poverty, etc. I dl'ed a powerpoint from Dave Duebbelweiss titled What People Eat, and added a component at the end about restaurants and restaurant foods. The endpoint of the lesson is a student survey of their classmates about their restaurant preferences and habits. In English, of course. [cough, cough]

Anyway, I decided to inform them about YUM Brands, the world's largest restaurant company, which has a strong presence in Korea--and about 80 other countries. KFC is the strongest American fast food brand here. Its popularity after arrival in 1984 is the source of Seoul's ubiquitous "chicken hofs" that pair fried chicken with draft beer--an Oriental Breweries import that arrived soon thereafter. And, as I have mentioned before (just look it up in the label cloud to your right), I am nicknamed the KFC grandfather (AKA Col Sanders) by the students.

At the appropriate point in my presentation, the following photo comes up:

Seoul Weather Report

Yesterday I went to another one of those committee meetings (this one was the School Planning and Development Committee) that is pretty much a party at a nice restaurant paid for by the school! It rained off and on all day.

I was invited because ... well, I'm not sure why I was invited, except I am the KFC harabuji. And a minor celebrity hereabouts. And every Korean wants to speak better English (as well they should, trust me). And I provide a handy sounding board, as possibly the first foreigner they have ever met. There were seven Koreans, and four of them had the Asian alcohol blush--one guy looked like Hooker Hill at night!

We went to a Korean sashimi restaurant at which in addition to raw saltwater bream and sea squirts, we had raw haddock and squid, and smoked shad. And beer. Lots of beer. And soju. Not a grain of rice on the whole table, which is a first. Just like with samgyupsal or galbi, sashimi here is eaten with panchan and wrapped in a lettuce or sesame leaf. Later was a visit to the noraebang across the street from the restaurant. And later still was the ride home in a taxi.

Still, I was bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed this morning, for my last day running through the interview lesson described about three posts down. Recall that in one section, students write their own questions to ask of classmates. It had to happen, and it did: How long is your penis? Another student wrote, Would you like to kicking my ass hole? I answered, "Yes. Hard." In a related story, one kid had drawn a picture of a penis on the back of his paper. I rolled my eyes in my inimitable fashion and walked away, making sure they could hear me say, "Oh, it is very small." The laugh and the penis were in inverse proportion.

After being warm to hot ever since I got to Korea, and so humid I am drenched after a twenty-minute walk to school--today was downright chilly! It's almost as if autumn lasted 20 minutes sometime yesterday afternoon. However, paran haa-lul, as the Koreans say--the sky was blue!

Blah Blah Blogging

Welcome to Tuttle's Five Minute Minutiae Report:

* Well, so Seoul Medical Center faxed a copy of my medical check to the school--I was normal in all respects (yeah, shocked the hell out of me, too) except slightly high blood pressure (yeah, no surprise there). The fax is not good enough for the Immigration Office, so tomorrow morning, I will be skipping my first class to travel all the way to Samseong Station to pick up the original; then, at the end of the day, Mr Hwang will drive me over to Mok-dong to apply for my Alien Registration Card.

* The basic interview lesson went well in every class today--at least as well as could be expected from students who have never had to express an idea of their own in the English language. For instance, wanting to ask, What is your favorite food? one student put down Would you like favorite eat? And this is after modeling "What is your favorite ________?/Who is your favorite ________?" severally.

* That one was easy to figure out, but what do you do with What do you want to buy at first?

* I got to use one of my favorite jokes today (yeah, just TRY to stop me), when the question was "What is your favorite brand?" The kid I picked to respond said "Polo." So I said, "Ah, Polo. By Ralph Lauren. You know why those Polo shirts are so expensive? Because the little guy on the horse is wearing Izod!" Two or three of them actually got it. Eventually.

* Mr Hwang came over after school to tell me about the new medical check/Immigration Office plan and we went downstairs to one of the hofs. We had beer and a sausage plate w/French fries. We talked about how I was enjoying living in Seoul, how I was enjoying the students, etc. Then after a short Korean lesson--focused on word order as emphasis--he told me that the students have responded well to me, even if I have been a challenging teacher. My nickname is "KFC harabuji" or grandfather, so the Col. Sanders thing has expanded to the whole school. He insists it's more my hair style and hair color than my age (Koreans have difficulty figuring the age of foreigners, he says)--plus, KFC harabuji is viewed as a very kind man.

* We also talked about the wide range of fluency among students at Young-Il. It is largely explained by the area served by the school. Students from Mok-dong are wealthy and have parents who have traveled abroad and readily pay for hagwons (private English schools), while Deungchon-dong is solidly middle class, and the neighborhood north of E-Mart is decidedly working class. The advantage of uniforms is that these differences are less noticeable to students; the disadvantage of uniforms is that these differences are less noticeable to teachers.

Tips on Aging Gracefully

I was just about to write this exact same post, but Jo-Anna, at The View from Over Here, beat me to it: What You Need to Know About Korea. Have a look. In the "Metro" section, she writes:

Do NOT sit in the seats labeled for handicapped/elderly/pregnant women, even if there are none around. More often than not an angry ajumma that you
don't see coming will give you a lecture in Korean about how rude it is that you're sitting there, then proceed to kick you out of your seat. If that doesn't happen, you'll certainly get nasty looks from other passengers. Maybe this rule
may become more lax around 11:00 PM.

Now, this is all true, unless, like me, you resemble the KFC Grandfather, in which case someone will probably insist that you sit. No, I'm not kidding. And damn right, I'll sit there. Chances are, if I'm on the subway, I have been walking till my feet are bloody stumps. Uphill. Both ways.

It's kind of like when they charge me the Senior Citizens price at Golden Corral--hey, the cashiers are, like, eighteen years old, so everyone over thirty is old (I keep telling myself). Is it insulting? Yeah. Do I take the discount? Damn right, I do. Little shits.

English Dept Faculty Meeting

We had a faculty meeting today after school for the English Dept of Young-Il HS to get to know me. I know it sounds dreadful when put like that, but we ate at a samgyupsal restaurant. On the second floor of a building about two blocks from campus (there are about 18 restaurants per square foot in this neighborhood, swear to God).

Samgyupsal is basically the pork version of galbi: strips of fatback pork, onion, potato, tofu, garlic, and mushroom (this particular place's specialty) are put on a hot grill in the center of the table; lettuce and other green leaves are provided, along with panchan (condiments and side dishes). You put the stuff you want into a leaf, roll it up and stuff it in your mouth.

Eight of ten members of the department were in attendance. After dinner was finished, we moved on to "second round": a western-style bar across the street called Adonis. The crowd thinned out a little, but we sat there for almost two hours drinking and snacking on the world's nastiest nachoes and small, raw freshwater snails that you suck out of their tiny little shells. I had one go at each--I'm a pretty good sport, but if I don't like it, I won't eat it.

We were there long enough they provided "service-uh", a free bowl of canned peaches, pineapples and fresh grape tomatoes (huh?) on ice. By this time, the give-and-take was flowing as freely as the beer. They are all nice folks, and I think they like me, too. After all, what's not to like? One of the teachers, Mr. Song, told me the seniors (who I do not teach) think I am the KFC grandfather. That's, you know, Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Colonel. Welcome to Korea. Hell, I don't even have a goatee (anymore)!

Young Mr. Lee, who has the Asian alcohol blush big-time, excused himself when we went to "third round": my first noraebang! This is a small karaoke room. More beer; I sang "My Way," my way. I also sang "Daydream Believer" and had to explain the lyrics to them. Yeah, good luck with that one.

Anyway, I held my own, at least, alcohol-wise, singing-wise and funny-wise, and wowed them with my knowledge and experience (and hardly even had to lie to do it).

Words I learned today include kyu-shil=classroom and kareem=painting.

Tomorrow, I meet up with Mr. Hwang to walk to school at 7:30 and go through the same fucking lesson four more times--fear not, O faithful readers, it will be as fresh and funny and interesting to the students as it was the very first time. Aside from it simply being Friday, the best thing about Friday at Young-Il is that they quit work an hour early. I'm tellin' ya, gang, I've fallen into the very shit, here!