Chicken Soup, Korean-Style

In Korea, if the food is red then it's going to be spicy (at least a little bit).

Dalk dori tang (닭도리탕) is a spicy chicken and potato soup (maybe half stew), very delicious (preceded by a "pancake" for an appetizer) :

Korean Restaurant: Healthy Food (and Delicious!)

Here are two pics, the first showing the "appetizer" course and the second the full meal spread, which includes meat, fish, two soups, and a variety of side dishes (veggie):

Coincidence--?

Some of my students told me today that schools in the greater Seoul area (they said Gyeonggi-do province) will now have the option of beginning classes at 9 am instead of an earlier time.  I wasn't able to determine why this option exists, but it is interesting that I ran across the following article in the American news that said students are not getting enough sleep, and for health and educational reasons American schools should consider beginning classes at a later time in the morning:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/surprise-students-arent-getting-enough-sleep/379020/

A Bowl of Korean Snacks

From the left, all dried: mini shrimp. squid strips, large anchovies:

The Classroom

On Friday my first class had just three kids (2nd graders), two girls and a boy.

I noticed fairly quickly that the boy had an attitude problem: he was uncommunicative, depressed, and just not his usual happy self.

The two girls also seemed unhappy.

After ten minutes or so of trying to get the students involved in learning English, I had had enough; I went to the office and asked my Korean director to talk with the boy and try to find out what was wrong.

She came to my classroom and asked the boy to come with her to the office.

The two girls and I continued on with the lesson for a minute or so, and then they started whispering to each other.

I looked on and waited, as I knew something was coming.

Finally one of the girls said, "Teacher, he is talking to the director . . . can we talk to her too?" (not in those exact words, but the meaning was the same.)  "Can we go to the office?"

Rarely do students want to go to the office, unless it is to ask for a vocabulary translation.

I knew something was up, and suspected (rightly, as it turned out) that the girls wanted to defend their side of the story.

I said, "Ok, let's go," and I took them to the office where my director was talking with the boy.

As it turned out, the boy and the two girls had had an argument before class.

Within ten minutes they were laughing and friends again.

Teaching English sometimes gets a bit complicated . . .

Short Film

Here's a very creative short film to watch:

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2014/08/13/floating/

Short Video

If you haven't seen this piano player then you should watch this short video:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/12/339810432/musical-interlude-pianist-wows-passengers-at-prague-airport

Flowers and Traffic

When I traveled by bus on Friday--a national holiday--to visit friends on the east coast, the highway traffic was very bad . . . it took 5 and 1/2 hours to complete what should have been a 3 hour trip.

I had known it might be bad; after all, it was a 3-day weekend at the end of summer break for many university students (and others).

Yet it was nice to get out into the countryside and to visit friends . . .

Lunch

Kind of an unorganized lunch, with side dishes from the fridge, rice, cheese, etc.:

Buddhist Temple and Mountainside View

As in some other places in the Korean countryside, this is one where you can walk past small farmers' fields up to a rather isolated Buddhist temple . . . very peaceful and also good exercise: