Kitchen Industry

I decided to make some food for lunch tomorrow . . . what I usually like to eat is salad, and to be satisfied with it I have to make it myself.

It's not that I'm picky, because you can buy a halfway decent salad at Paris Baguette (a large bakery chain) or E-Mart (a large supermarket chain).

But they focus on the basics, and would never ever put olives in a salad.  I love olives.  I have to have olives in my salads, and I am so thankful that I can buy them here in Korea.

My basic salad consists of lettuce (different kinds, hopefully, which I try to buy from sidewalk vendors; I'd rather give my money to them than to a store chain), tomatoes (I much prefer a large tomato cut into pieces than many small cherry tomatoes), cucumber slices (recently I've started leaving some of the skin on), hard boiled egg, and maybe "other" ingredients (the "other" might consist of avocado, anchovies, chicken breast . . .).

I also like to eat steamed veggies (broccoli, carrots, zucchini) which I do in the microwave and top off with some balsamic vinegar and mustard dressing.

Pics:

English Teacher vs. Teacher

When I came to South Korea, like so many other native English speakers (the last count I read was 20,000+), my intent was to teach English to children.

And that is, in effect, what I do 5 days a week.

But then there is the "other" category that I teach, and that gets kind of complicated at times.

I am in the classroom to teach English, yes, but if a 3rd grader has his finger stuck up his nose, what am I to do?

"Min-seok, do you need a tissue?" usually does the trick.

Or if "Sally" comes to show me a paper cut on her finger (clearly wanting some TLC), I send her to the front desk to get a bandage.

Students running in the hallway, kids spilling snacks on the floor, doors banging, lost textbooks . . . the list goes on and on.

I'm not married, but I do have 80+ children to supervise, scold, love, and, of course, to teach them English.

Yeah! New Book!

My advanced student and I agreed on a new book to read.

Brief history: we have read "When You Reach Me", "Holes", and Agatha Chrtistie's "And Then There Were None" mystery, which was a bit difficult, given that some of the vocabulary is outdated (the novel was written 70 years ago) and the story is heavy on descriptive adjectives.  Then we read--or I should say my student read, in one week--the sequel to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" which is entitled "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator".  Fun, but much too easy.

(As an aside, I had to ask my student to summarize the book for me--a good experience for her--since she finished the book before the copy our school ordered for me arrived.  Kind of strange and another "first" . . .)

The mom selected the last two books, but this time I suggested I choose the book, so we are going to read Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass".

I have high hopes that my student will love the novel, which continues on . . .

Funny Spider Video + Others

Since I'm posting video links, here is a funny one that I posted before (it's not suitable for young kids); one of my favorites:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUI2irVtKxQ



And then, of course, there are the "trunk monkey" ads that I love:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y

African Animals Attack

Is the lion at the top of the food chain?  Watch this video and find out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIrs_ZXXiLc

Might surprise you . . .

Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum!

On MWF's I am the only male teacher/person at our academy.  I work with 7 women, and, generally speaking, I like it that way.

Last week, on several occasions, I admonished some kids who were running, etc. in the hallway before and/or between classes.

My director--observing me in my self-appointed "enforcer" role--said, jokingly, "That's why we need a man here".

Along the same lines . . .

Friday I started teaching a new class, as one of my coworkers is pregnant and having problems with morning sickness.  If I teach her last class (I have to be at school that hour anyway, as I have a following class), then she can go home early.

This class has 5 boys, three of who I have taught before.  I asked my Korean co-teacher about the class, and she said they were worried about having me as a teacher because they knew I was strict.  They like to play vocabulary games, and they were worried they would not be able to do so with me as a teacher.

I found this amusing but understandable, so I had a short talk with them Friday night, our first class, about my expectations for the class (they are 6th graders).  We got along well--and not a word of Korean was spoken in class--so I have high hopes.

My female coworkers are perfectly capable of enforcing good behavior, and I salute them for the way in which they do so.  However, I recognize and utilize my status as  the "older male" teacher (I am 46; all of my coworkers are in their 30's), and it often eases the way toward behavior modification when needed (on the down side, it takes longer for me to get close to kids).

Surprising Student Conversation

One of my advanced students and I were talking about topic sentences since I am teaching her to write essays.  Either it was boring or she just had this on her mind, but suddenly she started talking to me about the "freemasons" and how she had learned they planned to reduced the population on Earth from 6 billion people to 2 billion.  One way, she said she had read, that they were going to do this was by means of earthquakes . . . they had a machine that could start an earthquake and had already tested it on China.  (Remember the big earthquake in China in, what, 2008?)

I don't know if my mouth was hanging open as she went on, but it certainly felt like it.

This girl, 12 years old, is extremely bright, and she is essentially fluent in English.

If having a discussion about potential world domination by the freemasons is one way of improving her English, then I am not going to say no, but at the same time--wow!  All this really came out of thin air.  Topic sentences and my lesson plan kind of went out the window.

I ended up, hopefully gently, teaching her the term "conspiracy theory" as I showed her an internet article that "proved" that NASA faked the moon landing, and I talked to her about not believing everything she reads on the internet.

For our next class I intend to do some kind of "reality check" with her using the internet (it's nice that we have access to a computer and a large video screen in our classroom).

I've said it before, one of the reasons I like being a teacher is something new is always happening (but, OMG, a 12 year old Korean girl telling me the freemasons are going to kill 4 billion people by using an earthquake machine?  That I never, ever would have thought I'd hear.)