Historic First

Usually, I choose to provide my thoughts purely in written form, but for today's post something a little more...visual seemed appropriate.

I went out with some coworkers last night and had 산낙지 (san-nak-ji), also known as "live octopus." This is technically something of a misnomer, because the octopus isn't actually alive, only very recently dead. Very recently.

When we arrived at the restaurant, I took a quick peek at the octopus tank:

Take note of the one on the far right. You'll be seeing more of it (him? her?) shortly.

And, well, let's let the video do the talking...

The obvious question, of course, is: how did it taste? And the answer, perhaps surprisingly, is: unmemorable. Apart from the shock factor of eating food which occasionally grabs onto the inside of your cheeks, most of the flavour from eating 산낙지 comes from whatever sauce it's dipped in. It's a strange experience, of course. Most of the food I'm used to eating bears little or no resemblance to its live state, so this is a profound difference. The cruelty question also comes into play, but I'm not really convinced that it's any worse to eat the freshly-amputated limbs of an octopus than to eat a McDonald's cheeseburger. This may, then, be an argument for vegetarianism, or it may simply be an argument to realize that life itself is a cruel and oft-dangerous proposition, and participants do so at their own risk.
Discuss.

Prepositions

Every month or two, we have a staff meeting, in which two teachers are asked to give a short presentation of techniques and ideas they have used in the classroom. Until recently, I'd managed to avoid being called up, but my time came as I had known it inevitably would.

Rest assured, it was a magnificent presentation. Even my notoriously-hard-to-please boss told me afterwards that it was, and I quote, "quite impressive."

Because you are all, I'm sure, quite distraught at having missed out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I give you now the handout I prepared, that you may have at least a glimpse of my awesomeness.

Beyond the Textbook:
Five Fun and Simple Things to do with Prepositions

1. Listening: Spatial Movement:

One by one, call the students to the front of the class, with specific instructions for each one on where to stand:
- Rachel, come stand in front of me.
- Leo, stand beside Rachel.
- Rocky, stand behind Leo.
- Emily, stand between Leo and Rocky.

By repositioning yourself, you also force the students to move as well- by turning around, for example, the student who was previously in front of you is now behind you all of a sudden, and must reorient herself accordingly.

2. Writing: The Basket Game

Divide the class into two teams. Have one student from each team come up to the whiteboard; give them each a marker.

Put your teaching basket on an empty desk at the front of the classroom. Establish what constitutes in front of the basket, beside the basket, and so on.

Take an object- a pen, a die, an eraser- from the basket, and place it somewhere on the desk. The first student to write down the correct preposition gets a point for his or her team. Depending on the level of the students, you can either have them write just the preposition (“in front of”) or a full sentence (“The eraser is in front of the basket.”).

3. Questions: The Hide and Seek Game

Have one student wait in the hallway. Choose a small object and hide it somewhere in the classroom- in a schoolbag, behind the door, under a desk, etc. Once the student is brought back into the class, he or she must find the object by asking yes/no questions:

-Is it under something?
-Is it next to the wall?
-Is it in something?

4. Speaking practice: The drawing game

Bring some simple drawings to class, or if time permits, give your students 3-5 minutes to make their own basic line drawings. Collect the drawings, then invite two students up to the whiteboard.

Show the class (but not the students at the whiteboard) one of the drawings. They must now describe it in detail so the students at the front are able to draw it:

-There’s a Christmas tree.
-Under the Christmas tree is a cat.
-The cat is on a pillow.
-The pillow is next to a present.

This is also a good activity to introduce new vocabulary such as “to the left of,” or “in the middle of.”

5. Assessment: Drawing test.

This is similar to the drawing game, but rather than having students come to the whiteboard to make pictures, each student is given a sheet of paper at their desk, and the teacher then tells them what to draw. I try to keep it simple by using geometric shapes rather than people or animals, as otherwise the students become distracted by adding details. This is also a particularly easy test to mark, as each paper can be checked in a matter of seconds.

-Draw a circle in the middle of the page.
-Draw a triangle above the circle.
-Draw a square beside the triangle, and a small circle in the square.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Yesterday was Teachers' Day, a holiday that is sadly lacking in Canada. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd gladly swap the August Civic Holiday for a Teachers' Day in May. It should be noted that it's not a public holiday here, but our school did decide to take us on a hike for the day instead of teaching. This is another trade I would recommend to any teachers looking to escape from school for a day.

The delightful thing about Teachers' Day, from a purely selfish point of view, is the windfall of gifts given to us by loving students and their parents. They're sometimes useful, sometimes hedonistic, but always appreciated. While there is some overlap between Canadian and Korean ideas of what constitutes an appropriate present, there are also some differences. To illustrate, I present to you now my list of received gifts. In order to forestall any otherwise inevitable wisecracking, I should note that, for the gifts listed, my co-teacher(s) for that particular student or class received the same thing. Unless otherwise noted, each gift is from one student.

Jeff's Teachers' Day Presents, 2008

-socks, 100% silk, 3 pairs
-socks, ankle, athletic, 3 pairs
-vitamins, Centrum Silver ("Specially formulated for adults 50+")
-movie tickets, 2
-t-shirt, white, 1 (my coworker Steve also received a t-shirt, but his was hot pink)
-lime and salt body wash, one bottle
-Nivea anti-perspirant spray, one bottle
-handkerchief, 1
-toothpaste, 6 (six!) tubes
-journal, 1
-Old Spice aftershave, one bottle
-L'Oreal "UV Perfect Advanced Fluid Protector (Dermatologically Tested on Asian Skin)" SPF 50, one bottle
-Krispy Kreme donuts, 6
-30,000 Won ($30) gift certificate, redeemable at various restaurants and stores in Korea

The last two were from the parents of my Dolphin kindergarten class. As you can see, there's a greater emphasis here on skin and beauty products , even for guys; I suspect this has a lot to do with the general importance of physical attractiveness for Koreans. The subway stations are covered in ads for plastic surgery clinics ("Small face, lovely breast"), and even our English textbooks aren't immune ("Does Helen have a fat boyfriend? No, Helen has a thin boyfriend. Helen likes thin boys.). As a teacher, I try to skirt away from these lessons as much as possible, though I do try to teach my students that "fat" is not typically considered an acceptable word for everyday conversation, at least not in the contexts shown in the book.

In part inspired by the gift of aftershave, I decided to shave my beard this week, and therefore came to school cleanshaven for the first time ever. The reaction was interesting. While the majority of my students (and coworkers) noticed something different, many were unable to put their finger on it, guessing instead that I'd gotten a haircut. I'm not sure if there's any particular significance to this, but if pressed to find some, I would hypothesize that it has to do with the scarcity of facial hair among Korean men (and women, for that matter). Because virtually no Koreans have beards or mustaches, they notice it when we Westerners have one, but may find it harder to spot it when it's gone. This is all pure conjecture, though.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go apply some Advanced Fluid Protector.

334 down, 31 to go

It seems a little strange, but my year in Korea is very nearly up. This time one month from today, I'll be zipping up my backpack and preparing to go to Cambodia and other magical places.

So now, 11 months since my arrival in the Hermit Kingdom, I once again find myself in the position of figuring out what to do next. Fortunately, for the moment I've made my decision: procrastinate. I'm putting off most thoughts of the future until my triumphant return to Toronto two months from now.

This past weekend was spent in Seoul. We had Monday off for Children's Day, and I have a friend visiting from home at the moment, so the timing for a three-day weekend was most opportune. You can also expect a guest column from Sara-Jane later this week.

Random thoughts on Seoul:

I've been there a few times now over the course of the year, and it's always been an enjoyable experience. I like the opportunity to get out of Busan for a couple of days, and Seoul has a cosmopolitan vibe that my "hometown" doesn't. It's not just more international, though that's certainly true. Rather, Seoul as a city emanates a certain confidence lacking in Busan. There's a vitality, a vibrancy to the city which makes it a great place to visit. Museums, restaurants, palaces...I like it.

Having said that, I do like Busan, and in some ways I'm pleased not to live in Seoul. For all its attractions, it's much easier to live a Western lifestyle there, and I suspect I would have fallen even more deeply into that trap than I have in Busan, where one is forced to practice rudimentary Korean regularly, and where Korean food is about all one can eat in many corners of the city.

On a different note, one of the sites we visited in Seoul this weekend was the Seodaemun Prison Museum. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, it's where the political prisoners would be taken, tortured, and often murdered. It is, as one might suppose, a sombre site. However, I left it feeling dissatisfied because of the overall tone of the museum. It's clear that the museum founders and curators have striven to convey an understanding of the horrors committed there and what it was like for the prisoners. This does come through, but not always in the manner they might have intended. I found there to be a certain low-budget theme park feeling to the museum at odds with the respectful tone they might have intended. Many of the cells have animatronic figurines sticking bamboo spikes under fingernails, or screaming mechanically, and one is not allowed to forget, even for a second, that the Japanese were the ones committing these atrocities. One of the cells has been reproduced as an execution chamber, which isn't a bad idea, but visitors are encouraged to sit on a stool which suddenly drops four inches. Presumably, this is to show what it might feel like to be hanged, but instead it gives more an impression of a house of horrors in Niagara on the Lake. So that was a little strange.

We also went to a microbrewery which featured the best beer I've had in Korea. The most popular Korean beers are OB, Cass, and (s)Hite, and are generally even less flavourful than the Molson/Labatt/Budweiser stuff one might find back home, so it was a great relief to try a nice brown ale and a stout that actually had some colour and taste. Hurray for microbreweries!

Oh- and I learned recently that (apparently) Koreans weren't allowed to travel outside of Korea until the late 1980s. I intend to investigate this further; the results will be published here as they become available.