K-Pop Dance Practice

I posted before that there is one place (at least) where I live that teens go to practice their K-pop dance moves, in part because there is a long and tall mirror:

Cobblestones

Here's something you don't see very often: workers laying down cobblestones.

Some kind of underground pipes were replaced in this street:

Class Story

Today one of my 2nd-3rd grade students was looking ahead in our coursebook, and she found a page with vocabulary for places, such as "clinic", "office", etc.

She asked, "Teacher, what is 'factory'?"

I replied, "Check the computer dictionary".

(We have a computer in class and use a Korean-English/English-Korean translator often: https://www.zkorean.com/english-korean-dictionary)

While she was doing that, another student said, "Teacher, if I don't study my mother says, 'You go to factory'."

I had a hard time not laughing.

Shabu-Shabu Lunch

This restaurant in Pyeongchon is good, but we ate too much:

(partly due to the help-yourself side dish area)

Still, it was nice to find an enjoyable place open on Chuseok (Korea's Thanksgiving Day).

Museum

The museum is in Seoul:

Actually, the museum building occupies only a relatively small part of the grounds.  There is a very large courtyard where you can, for instance, see a changing of the guards ceremony; also, there are lots of places to walk around, but not very much to see aside from the outsides of buildings.  

The museum was a bit disappointing (boring), though the exhibits were nicely presented.

Student Diary

From the 4th grade until middle school my students write in their diary once a week.  I find diaries to be an educational and entertaining source of information about Korean life.

Normally students write about what they do on weekends, such as going to a birthday party or visiting grandparents or having a boring period at home.

Last week one of my students wrote about her school taking pictures for the yearbook.

She said (wrote) that in one picture she looked very ugly. (She isn't.)

In another picture, she said, she looked like she was "chewing shit".

I was startled to read that, though I found the language use funny.  I asked a Korean co-teacher about it, and the teacher said that it was a direct translation.

Later, I told the student (a 6th grade girl) that it was ok to write such things in her diary, but that "shit" in English was a bad word and should not be used in public.

Lunch

This boribap (barley rice) restaurant is cheap ($7 a person), tasty, and healthy.  It also has a nice informal atmosphere:

It is essentially a make-your-own bibimbap type of place; you mix some of the fresh, prepared vegetables (on the platter in the middle of the table) in with the rice, add some sesame oil and hot pepper paste, stir it up, and eat.