English Conversation Lessons

A few weeks ago, Paul posted some of the videos he has to teach from. Teaching English conversation from texts not written by native speakers can be quite trying. I thought I might post some of the more stellar conversations I have to teach. My books are a little older than Paul’s, and there seems to be an attempt to make the students more aware of Western literature, including, but not limited to: The Little Matchgirl, The Little Mermaid, the Fox and the Stork, Who Will Bell the Cat, Sherlock Holmes, and the Dog of Flanders (extra points if you know that story). The following is a dialogue between the Princess and the Frog.

Princess: Oh, I dropped the golden ball! What shall I do?

Frog: Cheer up! Don’t cry. I will bring the ball to you.

Princess: Really? How kind you are!

Frog: Then, will you marry me?

Princess: Why not? That’s fine with me.

Apparently, the Princess has nothing better to do than marry the frog, and no standards for a husband higher than 'someone who will find my golden ball'. Why not?

The next conversation is beside a picture of two kids standing in a forest (the children are real, the forest is a drawing). There’s a Korean kid and an American (she’s wearing a USA sweater); they’re looking at a sign written in Korean.

Korean: Watch your step!

American: All right. Look, the flowers are very pretty.

Korean: Oh, don’t pick the flowers.

American: I’m hungry. Let’s make a fire and cook something.

Korean: Don’t make a fire. See the sign here.

Stupid Americans – always wanting to start forest fires. Don’t they learn anything from Smoky the Bear?

This goes well with the reading from the following chapter. In it, an ethnically Korean girl moves back to Korea after living in New York. There’s a picture of her schedule and her American classmates beside a picture of a Korean’s schedule and classmates. The Americans are, of course, dressed very sloppy (it’s a picture from the late 80s, so very strangely sloppy), and standing in a hallway. The Korean students are all sitting at their desks and bent over books. Yumi’s schedule is half taken up with “homeroom” and “lockers” times; most of her classes are covered with the picture. Sudong’s schedule, however, shows all seven classes.

If I took a picture of Korean kids in the classroom, I’d show them standing on their chairs, painting their desks, and punching each other. All of which happens during class time; none of which makes a Korean teacher blink.

Meg's School

A few weeks ago, my students went on class trips, and I was left behind to hang out in my office. I thought it would be a good time to take some pictures of my school.

This is a fairly standard classroom. Most classes have between thirty-five and forty students. They sit in double rows; most teachers have boys and girls sit side by side in order to decrease talking. I’m not convinced it works to keep them quiet, but it is more convenient for copying homework, or ‘cunning’, as they call it here. It also keeps them closer together, which is nice. I have one class that has the desks a bit more spaced, and the students seem so far away and so close at the same time. It feels strangely crowded and uncomfortable.

In the back are the student’s lockers and a closet with cleaning supplies. The stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers rotate, so each classroom really belongs to the students. Each class has a homeroom teacher who is responsible for a lot of paperwork, decorating the classroom, and making sure that the students clean their room every day (Most schools don’t have a cleaning staff; ours is responsible for the bathrooms and hallways, which, from what I hear, is really nice – apparently leaving 7^th graders in charge of bathroom cleanliness doesn’t work so well.)

Other than what their homeroom teachers dictate, the students have free range over the classroom. I was amazed at first when I saw some of them doodling on their desks – sometimes even with whiteout or permanent marker – and sometimes right in front of teachers – but each desk belongs to the student as well. (Somehow they manage to take any writing off their desks either with an eraser – one that can remove pen, maker and whiteout – or, if the super-eraser fails, they can simply use the sharpy knife they all have in their pencil cases.) I’ve even seen students standing on desks and chairs. Before the beginning of term, all of the returning students came back to the school for an hour one day (in their uniforms) and moved their desk to their new classroom. My coworker explained that they’ll keep their desk for the three years that they’re at this school. Of course, it makes me wonder if they throw out the desks when the students graduate or if they give the new students some really beat-up desks. From what I know about this school, I’m sure they don’t know what they’ll do.

One of my first few days here, my coworker brought me to a classroom full of desks and chairs with a sign outside that said “Language Lab.” She told me that we would use the classroom when the new school year began in March; the school wanted to trade the desks currently in the classroom for new ones. Next door to the Language Lab was a room labeled “Native Speaker.” She explained that I would have my own office in the new year as well.

And so I waited. Three day before classes began, they moved me from the main teachers office downstairs to the room next to the Language Lab. The Native Speaker sign, however, was removed. My coworker told me she would be visiting me often. I think this was to prevent me (or the other teachers in the school) from thinking I was too important.

Two days before classes began, they moved the old desks out of the Language Lab to get ready for the new desks and the new year. This is what it looks like now. Sometimes I use it to practice cartwheels.

Though, I can pretty much do cartwheels in my own office. This is my desk and computer and the blanket I wrap around me when it’s too cold. There’s also a teakettle and piles of worksheets from my extra classes as well as two of the desks that used to be in the other room. I’m not sure what they’re doing there, but I don’t really need the space, as you can see. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that my office is larger than anyone else’s reading this blog and definitely larger than any office I’ll have in the future (about 25x13ft). Too bad there’s no leather couch and rock fountain.

Gyeongju in Photos

As Meg mentioned earlier, we spent our long weekend last week in Gyeongju. Gyeongju is the ancient capital of Korea and outside of Seoul probably the most interesting place to visit in Korea. We had a really nice weekend (even though everywhere we went was jam packed). I've posted some photos below:

This is at Bulguksa Temple. Bulguksa is the most popular temple in Korea and is home to 7 national treasures. It is also a UNESCO world heritage site. It was probably as crowded as it gets the day we were there. Being the main temple in Korea, many Koreans visited the temple for Buddha's birthday.

The next three photos are of the lanterns that have been at all the Buddhist temples for the past few weeks. I thought they were really neat. They added a lot of colour to the temples.





The final photo is of Seogaktap. It is one of the national treasures of Korea. It's sometimes known as the "shadowless pagoda." It is across from Dabotap, which is another pagoda that is slightly more popular. I might put a photo of it up later, but it was much more crowded and I don't particularly like any of the photos I took of it. Both pagodas were built around 751. Seogaktap is on the back of one of the coins but I forget which one (maybe the 100 won coin).

Our trip to Gyeongju

Paul and I are returning from work from a three-day weekend. Yesterday, the country celebrated Buddha’s birthday. We decided to take the weekend to do our first bit of real traveling in Korea. Though we’ve been here eight months, we haven’t left our province except to go into Seoul.

One of the best parts of the weekend was simply seeing a different part of Korea. Until now, we’ve been in one of the more population-dense areas; everywhere I look, the mountains and greenery are hidden by massive apartment buildings. But as we drove south, the apartment buildings slowly disappeared. We could see more lush mountains and rice fields.

It was about a six and a half hour trip to Gyeongju, the ancient capital of Korea; the home of the Shilla dynasty. (Six and a half hours for a 150 mile trip.) Yongin is made up completely of rectangular concrete buildings; but Gyeongju actually had more traditional-style buildings. We stayed in a traditional Korean guesthouse where we experienced sleeping on the floor of a very small room. Perhaps not my favorite traditional Korean experience; though it’s something to laugh about. (We took pictures, of course.)

We spent Saturday wandering around the tombs of ancient Kings; tombs that look a lot like the burial grounds in southern Ohio, but perhaps a little nicer, and a lot older. We saw one of the oldest astronomical observatories in Asia (which looked suspiciously like the kilns in East Liverpool). And we saw the forest where the first Kim was found in a gold chest with a rooster crowing over him.

Sunday, we went to Bulguk temple where we saw some the oldest pagodas in Korea and a gold anteater. After a quick look at the temple, we hiked the mountain to a grotto to a Buddha statue from the 700s – definitely the best-preserved thing we’ve seen in the country.

Though we had intended to stay until Monday afternoon, the trains were sold out. We had to buy tickets for the last train Sunday; we boarded the train at 10:00 and got home at 3:30 after a rather exciting cab ride from the station. Though we enjoyed the weekend, we were both very excited to be back at our own apartment.

Monkeys

Well I sat around and did absolutely nothing today. It was a great day. I watched the SJ/Dal hockey game and then an awful lot of TV. Meg and I are in Seoul tomorrow all day for a Lotus Lantern Festival for Buddha's Birthday and so I figured I just take the day off to relax. I did make it outside once today, but that was so that Meg and I could go to McDonald's for Ice cream so it doesn't really count.

It was hot enough today that Meg made her "real" iced tea. Of course she didn't drink any, so maybe it was only hot enough to warrant making it, but not to drink it.

I know I've uploaded a lot of photos this week, but I like monkeys and so I've decided to put up a few more photos. This time only of monkeys though. All the photos are from Angkor Wat (again).

More from Cambodia

We've got a long weekend this weekend and aren't doing too much for it. We're going to head into Seoul on Sunday to see the Lotus Lantern parade (which celebrates Buddha's Birthday). We've heard good things about it and we hope it lives up to the hype. We actually have a long weekend next weekend too. Definitely a nice way to start off May.

It was 27 degrees here today. Way too hot for this early in May (or anytime in May for that matter). I'm definitely not looking forward to the summer. It's going to be miserable. I suspect Meg will be better prepared for it (having lived in Nashville) than me. I'm a little concerned. I don't do so well with extreme heat.

I've still be sorting through the massive amounts of Angkor Wat photos I took. So I figured I'd post a few more:

Meg took an elephant ride. This is her on her elephant about to enter the South Gate of Angkor Thom. I rode an elephant when I was in Thailand a few years back so I just followed behind on foot taking photos. I think the elephant driver thought I was nuts.

Another photo of the sunrise at Angkor. We really enjoyed the sunrises. We woke up at 4am twice to see it. We probably would've done it a third time if we had stayed any longer.


Bayon Temple is the second most popular of the Angkor temples. People really like the faces that are prominent throughout the temple. This is me with one of the faces (you can see a few more in the background). I really liked Bayton, I think we would have liked it a bit more if it wasn't crowded when we were there.

A monk entering the Angkor Wat Temple. I was pretty lucky to get this photo as the temple was quite overly crowded that day. I was just in the right place at the right time. The people around me were also very considerate when they saw I was taking photos and none of them walked into my frame.

We saw a bunch of Monkeys wandering around Angkor Wat Temple one morning. They were trying to hit the tourists up for food. This guy managed to get an orange and took off away from the pack with it.

The trees and Angkor were amazing. We've never seen anything like them. I could have looked at them all day.