All Aboard the Smoking Bus

Had a snack with The Stumbler this afternoon to catch up on his USA trip and daughter's wedding--it all sounds like it was lovely--in the Beer King at the Sinjeongnegeori area.

Since the smoking ban a few years ago, many bars and restaurants have installed a sealed off, generally really small, smoking booth, often jokingly called things like the gas chamber, the cancer cubicle and so on.

Ding! Ding! The Smoking Bus is now boarding.


It's quite roomy compared to many such booths:


And had a message in English, as you often see on cafe walls. As not all that often seen, the grammar was correct:


In case you have trouble reading that, it says: "It is regrettable that many smokers are still lighting up in unauthorized areas. So, it's for you. This area is designated for smoking."

Interesting Lesson: Sentence Relay

This is a lesson called "Sentence Relay", somewhat like a "running dictation" activity. Here's how it works:


Each team's members take turns being "the runner" (one at a time) while the others are "the writers". Supposing there are four members, they have three recording sheets. A runner goes to a station and deciphers the sentence in the image. The one below, for example, is "He is eating a pizza".


The runner returns to the team, dictates the sentence, and they write it in the appropriate space.


The runner takes the recording paper from the next team member and becomes a writer, while s/he goes to the next station to figure out the next sentence.


In this case, the target language was about sentences with present continuous verb phrases, like "I am feeding the dog." However, you can create sentences with practically any target language or topic. Here is an example from a sixth grade lesson about the seasons:


I have done four or five iterations of the Sentence Relay activity, and you may be wondering where one goes to get the "word pictures" on which it is based. I use a website called Tagul - it has the ability to be a url-linked "label cloud" on your website, if you like.

As I prepare to leave my current school, I think I may put more of the activities that the kids here have responded to really well.

Tuttle Archives

Please don't tell the kids at my school, but I won't, according to my handler, be returning there upon the new contract--the school I've been at for four years is losing its Native Speaking English Teacher. I am really unhappy about this, and my feelings will be addressed later.

First of all, this doesn't mean I will leave Korea, or even SMOE--just like I was transferred from Young-il in 2012, I will be transferred from Yangmyung. Even though that's true, I recognize more than ever that my time here is limited. I'm looking around the apartment and thinking about the packing-up.

Anyway, I have had a number of vacations since living in this apartment that I had not archived. What do I mean? In addition to the photos I take and post here, I have also collected as much artwork as I could afford--carvings, pottery, paintings, scrolls, books, fabrics, etc. Maybe I'll be documenting that stuff later, but ...

What I meant was I have a backlog of tickets, flyers, maps, brochures, business cards, clippings and the like that I collect and organize in "clear files". Like these:


Not only are there tickets and the like, but even laundry receipts, restaurant bills and bus fares. Why? Well, good source of info if someone asks, or if I want to go back, and can't remember what things cost there!


As long as I was at it, I thought I might as well take a snap of the various snake oil elixirs (in some cases literally) I have collected on my trips around Asia. Tiger Balm was something I kind of grew up with, but Cobra Oil, Lotus Balm, White Monkey Holding Peach Balm, Siang Pure and Dragon and Tiger White, usually under a dollar, seem like a bargain. And the silver Jarungjit Inhalor works a treat for a stuffy nose!


Mostly, but not always, when I travel, I research things both online and with a dead tree edition, though more and more eschewing the LP guides. Still, I have a collection, or archive: