Monday, April 30, 2007

Exam Funnies...

Such as they are - and a limited crop at this semester's midterms - I offer up some 'exam funnies' for your delectation. You probably need to know that we were dealing with the topics of 'introductions', 'hobbies', 'descriptions & adjectives' and 'personality' - apart from that, most of the sentences will speak (albeit in a mangled manner) for themselves...


One student wrote, hopefully,
'I want to be familiar with you..."
Dream on, kid.

Another, drowsing then realizing his tactlessness:
"Lesson is very sleeping
but english conversation very fun
and english teacher eyebrows very interesting!"
(I should explain that I usually draw a little curlique of eyeliner from one eye or brow as a quirky personal statement. My kids often comment on it and enjoy it.)

Several introduced their families, doubtless not as strange as made out to be here:
"I have a father, mother, and little bother". Yeah, join the club!
"My family is father, mother, old sister, and me..." Poor girl, nineteen and on the shelf already.
"My family is six: Dad, Mom, older sister, younger brother, my puppy Azi and me." (Note that the puppy gets billing before its owner - but wait! She goes on:) "We all go to church together on Sundays..." I could not resist writing on her paper, "What, even the puppy?"

Others made more personal confessions:
"When I smile, my mouse seems like Jim Carry's mouse..."
"I have thin ears. This means I lack backbone."
"My bloodtype is A, so I am introvert." (What, a young vampire in the making?)

This student announces: "I am painful whenever I attend school." Probably true.
Another, simply: "Chocolate is my necessaries." We can all identify!
Even more simply: "I'm short".

I love this sweet characterization: "My boyfriend is homely but amiable..."

Some got carried away:
"She has very attractive leops and noses..." (alien girlfriend!)
"She has brown shoulderless hair" (ouch)

And finally, I feel for the sister:

"I usually surfing internet in the evenings and talking about roommate's sister...."

Friday, April 27, 2007

A Day in the Life of Bryan

In response to the fast-growing number of pernicious rumors flying about as to my current location and status, I am pleased to present, in multi-media no less, proof positive that I am alive, well, and enjoying life at Myongji University.

Easy to write, you might think to yourself. How do we know that this isn’t really Judy masquerading as her husband, or a very lucky monkey pressing a random concatenation of keys?

Skeptics all! I shall take you through one of my days to prove to you that I am not—repeat not—in some sort of captivity to vile aliens. Quite the reverse! I am a certified card-carrying alien myself, and some of my students could well be complaining that they are in captivity to me, at least for 50 minutes of the day. More on that later.

This being Thursday, Judy starts teaching at 9AM, so we are able to leave together, riding off in our new white Leganza (Note: not an alien spacecraft!) and weaving between moving obstacles—wait, those are students!—before dropping Judy off at the building where we teach,
Hambokgwan. Then Katherine and I drive down to the university entrance where her bus stop is located. This morning we have enough time to indulge in our favorite pastime, buying and drinking a small carton of chocolate milk while waiting for the bus. We talk about the different traffic and buildings that we see before her bus zooms up and whisks her away.

I drive back into the university and park within walking distance of the afore-mentioned Hambokgwan. I have over an hour before my first class, so I stop in at the E-Café to say hi to Jinhee. The E-Café is like a student lounge; it has internet-access computers, a big wall-mount video screen with movies often going, comfortable chairs, a few round tables, and some newspapers and magazines, all carefully tended by Jinhee, who works for our department by running the place. The only rule is that students must use English while they are in this room, and they do. There are a few classes run in this room, one of them by Judy, offered free of charge to the students in order to give them some extra chances to practice their English. As this is midterm season, most of these voluntary classes are quite short of students, who are belatedly realizing that they are indeed going to be held accountable for the knowledge they have been offered.

I help a student with a grammar-based question, chat with Jinhee for a few moments, and then head down to our office. Jisu, one of our office assistants, is there and I chat with her for a while (this would be the Darling Jisu whom Judy has mentioned before.) Then I settle down with my textbook to plan the lesson I will teach to four classes today and another four tomorrow. While the material is the same, the classes are all very different: my first class today is made up of students who work hard but have no sense of humor, the second has a rowdy element who need to be monitored carefully, the third is a wonderful bunch who are quite self-directed, and the fourth love to talk in Korean but need to be encouraged to use English for the activities.

At eleven o’clock I stride into the classroom, setting my books down on the desk and walking up onto the teaching platform, about four inches high and made of a wood on which my shoes make a most satisfactory attention-getting sound. I greet the students while holding a small paper cup of coffee, my favorite baek-oship-won coffee (150 won, worth about 15 cents Canadian). I regale them with the tale of how I bought this coffee and then challenge them to tell the other students at their tables of four what, when and where they last bought something. While they are doing this, which gets them started using English, I take attendance.

Our next activity is a pronunciation session. Today we are focusing on the sound V, which does not exist in the Korean language. Students need to be taught to bite down (very slightly) on their lower lip, and then we practice with some common words. Once they have made the words accurately, we put those words into sentences. Some students are already looking at me expectantly, knowing what I’m going to do next. So as not to disappoint them, I walk up to the chalkboard and write a sentence for them to read.

For the TH sound, I wrote, “The thin thing is over there with those other things.” When we studied F, it was, “Farmer Fred fell four floors but felt fine.” The lesson on R/L featured, “Red lions roar really loudly.” The trick, of course, is to use the sound we are practicing as often as possible. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a good way to use the V sound in a really concentrated manner, so I’ve compromised with “I think that red violins are really very wonderful,” which uses all four of the sounds in a short space.

I do one such pronunciation seminar for each of the six units we cover each semester, focusing on sounds that English uses but Korean does not. Some of the students know how to make these sounds, others do not, but all of them need practice, and my job is to create an environment where such practice is possible and, as much as possible, enjoyable for the students.

I get the students started on the next task, a talking activity in which they need to discuss hypothetical situations such as “What would you do if you found a lot of money?” or “What would you do if you saw another student cheating on a test?” The skill focus of this unit is giving advice and suggestions, so I put up some example sentences on the chalkboard: “I’d keep the money.” “I’d tell the teacher.” Then, as the students start to talk, I begin to walk. Table by table, I stop and listen and correct and encourage. The single most frustrating part of this job is that I cannot make students learn; they need to do the work themselves.

No two days are ever the same, and this week—being a midterm week—is a challenge. In my first class I have a student who needs to leave after 10 minutes because he is sick, and another who walks in at 11:25, literally halfway through our 50-minute session. After my second, I have two students appealing a mark I gave them in the midterm tests of last week. In my third, a student is about to fall asleep, and I need to allow him to head to the washroom to splash some water on his face.

Lunch! I’ve included a photo of the midday meal offered by our cafeteria. Soup is a staple and so is the rice. Today we have beef for our protein (as opposed to fish, boiled eggs or tofu) and the vegetables have not been soaked in the fiery red pepper paste called gochu-jang.


I have four classes throughout the day and an office hour to keep as well. Usually I have students coming in for mandatory teacher chats, but I didn’t even try to get them organized for this week since my students are in midterm mode. I’ll get them started again next week. As a result, my office hour is unusually quiet and I can get some relaxation in during this time.

5PM is our normal quitting time, but today we have a teachers’ meeting. I have to zip out halfway through to pick up Katherine at her bus stop again, and I get back just as the meeting is wrapping up. I have, however, arranged for this beforehand, so there is no difficulty. As a bonus, I’m able to get all the teachers together for a group shot, no mean feat in and of itself.Left to right are Katherine (not a teacher!), Mirim, Bryan, Jules (standing), Devon (sitting), Pam, Andrew, Matthew (with the tie) and Grace. Judy took the picture for us, which is why she's not in the photo. But then again, you believe SHE hasn't been kidnapped by aliens...

The teachers all head their separate ways; Judy and Katherine and I have some supper at the teacher cafeteria. On the way home, we pick up our laundry from the student dormitory. We do have a washing machine and a drying rack available to us, but with three of us we prefer to pay about $15 a week to have our clothes washed, dried and folded for us. We’re home by 6:30, and now we can relax for the evening. As Judy may have mentioned, we have our boxes, and our little apartment feels like more of a home to all of us. Katherine sings the songs she has been learning at her kindergarten, and Judy reads some of her magazines. The sun is setting on another beautiful day.



(Cue theme music from The Twilight Zone.)

Or…..this has all been an elaborate hoax, filmed with stunt doubles, and I really am being held prisoner in a vat of noxious Jell-O somewhere in orbit around Plenoxia III. Choose for yourself….

BA

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Customs, Communication, and Carrying Boxes

So I am all hyper and excited because I HAVE MY BOXES! Expect plenty of footnotes aka bracketed clarifications (like this) in this entry...

We have been 'negotiating' with Mr. Chang of Molax Shipping for the last two weeks via email and phone. He originally sent us an email saying our sixteen boxes from Canada had arrived (but not where) and we owed money on them (but not how much). In the course of determining this so-crucial information we exchanged various emails, phone calls, proxy phone calls (where we give up on communicating in poor Korean (on my side) and poor English (on his) and ask for the phone to be passed to 'my assistant'. Darling Jisu (no, that's not her name, despite the fact that I append the epithet to every mention of her. Her NAME is Jisu, and she sweetly and cheerfully takes care of all kinds of requests from the eight foreign teachers ranging from 2000 photocopies to translating artsy poetry) was a huge help in that last case.

Upon determining that we owed about two hundred in port fees, gasoline, transport from Pusan to Shingal (a suburb of Yongin!), and various administrative expenses, we were able to send Molax their money by direct deposit, fax the deposit slip Proof of Payment, get back a receipt by fast courier, and take that receipt into Shingal Customs... all on the same day! The Customs Office, amazingly, is about thirty minutes from our place, and we were able to contract (in poor Korean on my side and even less English on theirs) the warehouse roughneck ajusshis (uncles) to forklift our pallet onto a little blue pickup truck and bounce their way back to Myongji with us.

I got to ride with the truck driver, who was somewhat apprehensive about merely following a foreigner in his white Leganza, until I assured him that my husband had been a bus driver back in Canada. Interestingly enough, this produced a much greater impression than my prior announcement that we were English professors - usually the cue for an awed look and the typical breath-suck of respect that such educational status brings! He got us and our boxes home safely and then carted them inside as well (all part of the service, ma'am...)

Of course, I had to open just a few right then and there, and thanks to my meticulous packing list chose the most IMPORTANT ones... like #9, with the SHEETS! Yay, real sheets and pillowcases, at last! And my knife block! (I've been cutting oranges, dicing tomatoes, bisecting bagels, and spreading butter with the same little paring knife for two months now...) And Katherine's books! She's so happy....

(dances around living room singing) I have my boxes, I have my boxes, I have my things....

Lest I seem incredibly shallow, please note that we've been living in a a very 'improv' sort of way for the last, oh, six months or so. Being able to settle in and have a few of the most important tools, craft supplies, household goods, and basic means of living is a very necessary security. And then there's the higher level (on Maslow's pyramid) of sensual and spiritual satisfaction; having my artworks and precious souvenirs and memories around me!

I HAVE MY BOXES!

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Friday, April 20, 2007

ElectroJude... Aprez-ortho & Aprez-therapy...

Disclaimer: following entry contains serious silliness, two strangely coloured pictures, depressing dental details, and still 'no comment' from Bryan. On the plus side, it's more information about your TMJs than you'll hopefully ever need, and calorie-free. Dig in!


I am shocked - shocked, I tell you! - at the accusation of 'mundane' in the comments on the last entry. Certainly it's not an adjective that's ever been applied to me prior to this - but then again, I should be thankful my dear friend Ken didn't capitalize it.... (in-joke for the Harry Potter fans out there...)

Despite the striking resemblance, the picture to the left is NOT me, but rather Harry himself, as depicted by Daniel Radcliffe in one of the movie teasers. Me being shocked - literally - is below.

Having belaboured the pun (yeah, yeah, it's another in-joke. This one you'll get later if you have the patience to read on) long enough, let me explain - and, hopefully, justify my earlier mundane recountings of a very unmundane week. ..



I believe I mentioned that I've been attending the dentist's office on a regular basis, namely, on every day off I've had so far this month? He and I have been dealing not only with my much-neglected molars (yes, the Drama of a Root Canal, in four acts so far. I'll spare you the cast listings and the critics' reviews and simply say that at least it cost less to stage it over here in Korea - about one-tenth of what it might have in North America.) but also with my equally neglected TMJs. That's 'tempo-mandibular joints', for those of you not up on your jock terminology, and 'the little ball-and-socket affairs that hold your jaw onto your skull' for those of you who've forgotten your Grade 13 anatomy classes.

Place your fingertips gently on either side of your head, just in front of your ears and a bit back from your cheekbones. Now open your mouth slowly. Feel those bumps push your fingers out? It is to be hoped that they don't, as mine do, seize up like a cranky tractor stuck in a wheel rut about halfway through and then jolt over the rut or spasm sideways... no, apparently they should move with all the grace and ease of one of Reg's miniature engines, smoothly up and down. Oh yes, please feel free to close your mouth again. And appreciate the marvelous design of your jaws as you do.

Anyhow, my rusty TMJs, after being subjected to forcible and intensive effort keeping my jaws open for my won-jang-nim (Honourable Dentist) seventy-five minutes at a time, usually throw a hissy fit and refuse to close properly again. Which means that upon attempting to rise gracefully from the dental chair and thank the considerate staff, I drool incoherently from a dropped jaw and gesture spasmodically at my non-functioning face. My Korean is bad enough without the additional handicap of not being able to touch my back teeth together...

After three separate sessions of emergency jaw massage, my dentist shakes his head. 'Ju-Dee', he says seriously, his eyes blinking through his round wire glasses just over his mask, 'I suggest orthotic therapy.' While I try to process this, wiggling my aching jaws and keeping my tongue away from the bad tooth, he continues. 'I must continue with orthodontic treatment of the first carious premolar. But we cannot facilitate the treatment today. Your tempo-mandibular disorder requires orthotic therapy."

(Note: He always talks like this. Translation: "This tooth has a huge cavity and you're going to need a root canal, but you can't keep your mouth open long enough without discomfort." I rather enjoy the formal language - how often do you get to use 'carious' in normal conversation? - but he's fortunate that I'm a student of arcane words and an amateur latinist! Mind you, I'm fortunate that he rather enjoys explaining what he's doing in minute detail, complete with sketches, X-rays of the tooth in question, and sound effects. I realize it's rather strange to be so fond of someone who causes you so much pain, both in the short and long term, but he really is a sweetheart and we never have difficulty communicating - something to be thankful for in this country. The other day I rushed in with an emergency toothache on the 'carious molar' which has been under treatment and he took twenty minutes, two x-rays, and a discussion session and then refused to charge me anything! I got the ladies at the front desk to accept samchonwon - three bucks - for the x-ray film and then went out and bought the whole office a bag of fresh fruit...)

So I take the address and phone number he gives me and trot off to my office, where Jisu, one of our darling assistants, not only calls up the 'orthotics office' and makes me an appointment, but draws a little map to show us exactly where it is, just down the street. Bryan drops me off that evening and takes Katherine to E-Mart while I'm having my 'therapy session'...

Well! The place looks more like a spa waiting room than a clinic for injured athletes (apparently it caters to a lot of Myongji students and their sports-related ailments), but the head honcho, Dr. Kim, has a nice lot of reassuring skeletal models sitting about his office and can speak about as much English as I can Korean, so we work things out. He is not quite sure how to react to my gentle teasing at first, but gets his own back later (see below). After feeling the rusty clicks of my limping TMJs and asking a few bilingual questions, (yes, I'm a teacher, no, I don't chew gum, I sing on a regular basis, it's been over ten years since my last chiropractic venture, etc. etc.) he informs me that the problem is due to 'overuse'. Straightfaced, I look him in the eye and ask: "Must I diet? Stop eating?" He blinks at me for a second and one can almost see the gears processing, so I go on: "Should I stop talking?" I flutter my lashes innocently, press my lips together, make a 'cut' motion with my hand across my throat, and allow a grin to spread. He gets it. One can see him getting the joke, as his professional stern face, set with the concentration of language issues and the weariness of a long day, begins to melt into an actual smile.

He prescribes some medication, still smiling, and decides to send me for X-rays (real ones, not these wimpy little dental Polaroids) and what he describes as 'electro-therapy'....

I am not reassured when I step into the X-ray room, a dimly-lit box with huge brown files all along one wall, a looming Frankensteinian table, and a metal rack poised against one wall. A giant lens droops from the ceiling on a morbidly white-enameled arm, like a depressed droid from the Star Wars universe. However, the technician who waves me over to the rack and positions my head against it with huge, gentle fingers, is considerably easier on the eyes, being about six foot three with football shoulders and a classically-hewn Korean face (dark brows on a strong forehead, forty-five degree-angle jaw one could crack walnuts on, sculpted lips... yes, well, there wasn't much else in the room to peruse!). He is, ironically, painfully afraid that I might speak to him in English, and gestures all of his instructions to 'turn', 'open my mouth', 'close it', and 'hold still'.

(Another side note: this, too, is still typical. We have seen a pair of young policemen, working in convoy, turn and trot smartly off down the street with veritably panicked faces when a female waegukin (foreigner, foreign) tourist approached them pleadingly with a map, and ourselves have reduced muscular cadets and notable student athletes to quiver-lipped incoherence. Who knew language could be this terrifying?)

After Dr. Kim studies my rather artistic headshots, he sends me up to the fourth floor, clutching a little slip of paper to say I've paid for the undernoted treatments and would the techie please hook me up?

This room really does look like a spa, with heated couches in individual cubicles, soft music playing, low lighting, and a pleasantly non-aggressive floral scent. I'm given no time to savour any of this, however, as a very efficient and iron-fingered young woman whisks me onto one of the couches, probes my jaw, and attaches small octopodal suction cups with tiny electrode fangs inside each one. She lays a white cotton washcloth over my eyes, turns a heat lamp on the lower part of my face, and then turns on the electrotherapy machine. It feels rather like someone poking or tapping insistently on one's cheek with a small dental tool; a throbbing, slightly burning sensation focused quite precisely in one spot - or rather, several spots. The rhythm becomes predictable, like Morse: dash - dash - dash - dash - dash - a tiny pause - then dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot, like a manic miniaturized woodpecker. My fillings begin to tingle and the skin of my cheeks have defined circles that feel like the beginnings of a sunburn, around each of the octopus suckers. However, the couch is not just warm, it's luxuriously hot, and the 'dashes' are rather lulling in their repetition. I have just begun to relax when the machine beeps peremptorily and the throbbing tingle ceases.

My washcloth is whisked away and I am informed by a pleasant tenor voice, 'Laser therapy.' It must be my day for eye candy; the laser technician, while neither as tall or as broad-shouldered as the shy X-ray wrangler, is also a well-sculpted young male. My appreciation is strictly aesthetic, and I am rapidly distracted by the Vaderesque black lens he is pointing at the side of my face. He assures me that this will not hurt and is perfectly safe - at least, so I interpret his tone and body language - but directs me not to look at it. Just to make sure, he sets the cloth back over my eyes. Shucks.

He's right, it doesn't hurt. Nonetheless, after another twenty minutes of this 'light' treatment, I'm a bit light-headed. Between the X-rays, the electrodes, and the laser, I wonder if my head will glow in the dark as I emerge onto the street? Dr Kim comes down to the pharmacy on the first floor (yes, the whole building is a clinic!) to make sure I've picked up my prescription, and feels comfortable enough to tease me about its cost (a whole three dollars, but for a second I believe his claim that it's thirty...). We part smiling, with an agreement that I will come in tomorrow for a second treatment.

I don't glow. At least, not exteriorly. But I'm rested, and relaxed, and my jaws now open another extra inch before that rusty gear decides to seize up with its characteristic click to which I've grown so accustomed. And my tooth has finally stopped hurting, for the first time pretty much all month. Perhaps it's just healing up from the last root extraction, or perhaps the therapy helped in some way as well, but I'm definitely feeling better.

Now, perhaps I can face those two hundred exam papers that need to be collated, marked and recorded this weekend, with equal bravery!


A visit to the dentist - pretty mundane? I guess mundanity is what one makes of it. More on that topic later, as it's one-thirty in the morning here and I must 'to bed' ... love, all!

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Update - Monday, April 16 - Exams!

Just a very quick note in between classes: this is Midterms Week for the English Pod! It's a rainy cold Monday (unfairly, after a beautiful warm and sunny weekend) and our students are, understandably, surly.

We are doing Listening Exams for the first half of the week and Speaking Exams the second. This involves us talking nonstop for Monday and Wednesday (Tuesday being our day off, and filled - no pun intended - with dentist appointments for both of us), and listening to our paired-off students hesitatingly slog through a three-minute 'conversation' in English for Thursday and Friday. Then our weekend will be pretty much solid with - oh joy, oh bliss - marking those exams, recording the marks, and sorting out the classes.

However, I shall be sure to take a brief break to record the 'best' answers for posterity - namely the student howlers that every teacher hopes to find glimmering in the dreck of mangled verbiage, trodden grammar, and mutilated fragments of the glorious English language. Watch this space for such gems as 'my little bother' ... and more!

It was wonderful to get so many comments on the last post (obviously you want MORE PICTURES....) and to see old friends catching up with our mundane doings. You are indeed missed - and when things settle down (rolls eyes) I promise a longer entry. I have also twisted Bryan's arm repeatedly to make his contribution here, but so far nuthin' doin'... I may have to threaten him with cashiering his chocolate milk consumption, or garnishing his paycheck!

Much love, must run and give another exam yet,
Judy

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Market Day - At the Shijang with Judy


It was market day in Yongin - all the adjummas come in with their fresh goods. A bundle of spring onions here, a bowl of harvested barley,there, a gaggle of caged ducklings, bound plants, new vegetables, twisted grass ropes, farm tools, puppies, cut flowers, foot socks, notebooks, bamboo matting...


Above left you see a typical alleyway in the market, where the adjummas have laid out their bits of cardboard or plastic to sit on and spread their wares around them. Above right is a popular snack - boiled bondeggi, or silkworm larvae. They smell like ancient socks, in case you were wondering - musty, cheesy, and crunchy all at the same time.

Left: A traditional hand grindstone. The barley (in this case) is dropped handful by handful into the hole at the top and the wheel rotated by means of the wooden handle jutting up. The ground meal sifts slowly from the sides into the large bowl where the mill is sitting.




















Above right: fresh vegetables, or 'namul'. They can be bought in bulk for very good prices here!
Left: a typical kimchi stall, with about thirty or so types of pickled spicy material. I say 'material' because it's just as likely to be pickled crabs or miniature anchovies as it is any sort of vegetable, leaf or root.


Below right: The fishmonger's. Lots to choose from, and all nice and fresh. In some cases, still squirming or flapping in its buckets!

To the left: Obligatory picture of Katherine. I call it "Katherella" (as she's holding a traditional Korean broom and staring wistfully out over the edge of the rocks....)



Enjoy your 'walk' through Yongin's market!

Friday, April 6, 2007

Ya Want More Pictures?

Ok, ok. No text, just pictures. Well, perhaps just a few explanatory titles if they aren't already self-evident, which really good pictures should be, but of course these aren't because they were taken in haste with a little digital camera under mostly low-light conditions with a fast-moving model (I wonder who that might be?) in almost all cases, so I expect that the titles will be helpful as long as they aren't all as long as this self-referential run-on sentence has turned out to be...

Katherine and Choon-so hamming it up with purple carnations. Too much cuteness!


Kath solo hamming. Almost too much cuteness, especially considering the soft-focus (not a deliberate effect, trust me...) She gets her daily dose of compliments whenever we take her out in public, and they are always the same: "Oooooooh! In-yo... nomu kiawayo....noon arumdawayo....noon-sup yeppoyo!" Which loosely translated means: "Awwwwww! She's a doll....so cute.... what beautiful eyes.... such lovely eyelashes!" Honestly, it never varies.

Antidote to all that cuteness. An artsy self-portrait (taken in the women's washroom, if you must know....) Actually it's rather flattering and you can tell I've dropped five pounds already.



Oh look! A picture with Bryan in it! Here's Kath refusing to give me a kiss after disembarking from her nice yellow daycare shuttlebus. Ah well, it was a great pose and really captures the typical apres-daycare routine....


Wow - a picture WITHOUT Katherine in it! I call it "Classic Band-Aid Solution"... and no, that is NOT our car. Ironically enough, I caught this snap in the parking lot of the Driver's Training Centre...

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Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Tomatoes & 'Red Days'

While I know that the tomato is technically a fruit, and the small ones ARE called 'cherry' tomatoes, I will never get used to seeing them served as a dessert here.

In the ready-to-eat section at E-Mart, right next to the green salads, they have stocked fruit salads: one little compartment of sliced strawberries, one of grapes, and one of cherry tomatoes. Then there's the mixed fruit salads, which contain any fruit you care to name, plus cherry tomatoes floating around whole in the medley. Mind you, they are very attractive, with their bright red colour and smooth skins - all the appeal of a berry but less costly AND less squishy. One can see a certain rationale behind this.

Today at the teacher's cafeteria they were being offered in small bowls (exactly five to a bowl, counted out meticulously), for 'afters'. Sometimes we get peaches (five segments), pears (ditto), or the little yoghurt drinks (looking like expensive face washes in their little bumpy bottles with the peel-off caps, but today it was tomatoes. I saw a couple of sidelong glances when I hacked each of mine in half with the soup spoon (it was that or chopsticks. Western implements are provided on the blue-moon occasions when 'Western food' is offered at the caf...) and sprinkled salt on them...

By way of interest, I'll give our menus for today and tomorrow, as they are quite typical. Our lovely assistants (Jay-son in our office, Ji-su next door) take turns translating them for the benefit of the few of us who don't read hangeul as fluently (and who wouldn't know what 'Tong-Dae-Mae U-Dang' was even if we did. 'Hot Spicy Frozen Pollack Soup', apparently. Never mind...) It's given exactly as they typed it up for us, so enjoy!

Thursday, April 5

Lunch:
spinach bean-paste pot soup
cereal (rice)
seasoned & simmered chicken
seasoned miyoek seaweed & lemon
beans cooked in soy sauce
kimchi
a currant tomato

Supper:
stir-fried rice and haeisu sauce
clear noodle soup
vegetable, sweet-and-sour pork
roast bun (dumpling)
seasoned pickled radish

Looks good, doesn't it? I was particularly happy to see that nothing was described as 'spicy' today; when a Korean takes the trouble to make a note of it, that generally isn't a good indication for wimpy Northern European palates like mine. (Ok, so the Dutch get excited when they put too much nutmeg on their boiled green beans. So what? Some of us actually are FOND of our tastebuds...) However, I should have taken warning from the 'seasoned', as the primary seasoning which this cafeteria employs, despite their rich Korean culinary heritage, is gochujang.

(For the uninitiated among you, gochujang is red pepper paste, used liberally throughout the country but especially at the Myongji Teacher's Cafeteria in Yongin...) It gets rather disheartening when one stares down at the row of warming pans in the cafeteria to see a solid line of red: the main dish of chicken, pork, 'beef stew', or fish has been soaked in a red pepper sauce - the green vegetables have been shaken with red pepper flakes till they are coated (including, on more than one occasion, the fresh salads and lettuce leaves) - the side dishes are usually kimchi and chigae made with gochujang - and the soup is solidly red with the same substance.

On 'red days' I usually get a bun and a carton of milk at the students' variety store. Ah well, at least I'm losing weight at a consistent rate! I call it "The Gochujang Diet" - simply don't eat anything with red pepper paste in it. However, I have to say that the 'beans cooked in soy sauce' were delicious, and I'm looking forward to the tangsu-yok (sweet-n-sour-pork), which is always good, for supper tonight...

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Monday, April 2, 2007

How to Make Gas Station Attendants Laugh

April 1st: "How to Make Gas Station Attendants Laugh"

- Drive a Hyundai Presto (This is a make of car that has been virtually obsolete in Korea for the last fifteen years. When we used to pull up to the pumps - or worse yet, to a mechanic for some further thing that had gone wrong with the rattletrap - they used to come out and crowd round us and say things like "My GRANDfather used to drive a Presto!" and "Hey, Kyong-bo, get a load of THIS old wreck!" and similar cracks) which is missing its front grille, back bumper, and one side light. This will ensure general hiliarity among the gas pump boys.

- Drive a white Leganza which you have only owned for one week and of which you don't know the location of any of the controls. Flick the right-turn signal on when you meant to activate the windshield wipers. Turn on the rear defrost when you wanted the air conditioner. And, best of all, when asked by the polite young man to 'open your gas tank' (yes, it's got its own little automatic spring switch inside the car!), pull the trunk release lever. Twice.

Trust me, they will fall about giggling. And keep giggling as they take your money, hand you your change, and toss the little courtesy tissue pack through the passenger side window.

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On the whole, the Leganza is much more comfortable and equipped with far more amenities than the Presto ever was. Power windows (and an auto driver's side lock so that Katherine can't roll her window down and hang her de-footed socks out of it - or at least not more than once....) are a nice touch. Lots of leg room, believe it or not of such a small car, is another. There is a temperature control system which delivers air to you not in the fixed Western increments of 'Icy Navy', 'Cool Blue', 'Lukewarm Pink' and 'Roaster Red', but by means of digital arrows in .5 of a degree! If you simply must have your car's internal environment at twenty-two AND A HALF degrees, this will make you happy. ( Mom Alkema? Are you jealous yet?) The back seat has a funky little pull-down arm divider which pops open to reveal a nice space for Katherine to put her toys AND a cup rest. The trunk is spacious and came with a set of bagged chains (for those icy Korean winters - not! Koreans are paranoid about snow and put their macho hardware on at the slightest hint of a flake...)

I think my favorite touch, however, is the button marked, ominously, 'Security', with its little red light built in. It's right next to the four-way flasher button, the defrost button, and the 'mysterious symbol' button - and it doesn't DO anything. The light doesn't turn on and the button doesn't depress... which of course means that in dreadful traffic I can stab it repeatedly while chanting "Photon torpedoes away, Captain!" Very satisfying - every car should have one!

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