Surprise Confession

We love our bosses. They might be the kindest Koreans we know. One is soft spoken and quite strictly religious. The other is big, boisterous, and the students are terrified of him. When we ask him about his weekend, he often replies, "oh, I was drunken!". Two polar opposites, but both are always willing to help us out anytime we need it.

Koreans still aren't as big into dogs as people are in North America. Most still think of them very much as vermin. Often Koreans will tell you how dirty dogs are, and how you shouldn't have one because they just make you sick.

So, after work yesterday I had to stay late to mark some practice tests for our "scary" boss (we have students preparing for an important English exam). I called to let Thomas know I'd be late, and being the kind husband he is he came over with Sawyer and some fried chicken. Our boss came in and asked, "You love having your dog?". Thomas told him yes, we loved Sawyer, and proceeded to ask our boss if he liked pets.

We fully expected to hear, "no, I don't like having a pet". We were correct, that's what he said.
Then we expected him to say, "they are so dirty". But no. He said, "when I was a boy my dog died and I cried and cried and cried. A pet brings to much sorrow".

Best ever.

Thailand

We went to Koh Samui, Thailand for 5 days last week. These are some photos from the trip.









It's funny, because when I returned people asked if I took a lot of pictures, which sitting on the beach all day I didn't think I had. Turns out I had over 600.

We're off to China September 21-25 with another couple we know here in Seoul. After one year stuck in Seoul, we're beyond thrilled at these two trips. Our next vacation isn't until February (not counting Christmas when we plan on having family visit) but I think we can make a mini vacay to Bangkok work. Warning: Don't go to Thailand unless you want to spend the rest of your life trying to get back.

Ta-da!

Here's hoping a face lift will provide me with a little more inspiration.

Apt Viewing

Things I would like to tell to the people in the apartment building beside mine:

1. That red curtain, combined with having your light on makes it look like you're "open for business" Amsterdam style.

2. Stop keeping your dog on your balcony! With all the windows closed up it must be, like, a million degrees!

3. Hey, even with your window closed a little, I can still see you dart around naked.

4. I don't care if you can see me dart around naked.

5. Everyone keep up the good work. If I ever have to give up cable I'll be turning to y'all for entertainment.

Honesty is the Best Policy?

Something about working with children that most people learn quickly is their inhibitions in regards to truth telling. Young children won't shy away from telling you, "your breath smells" or "you have pointy ears like and elf!" (both of which I've had said to me in the past, and in defense of the bad breath it was after I'd had coffee).

Being in Korea, though, you have to develop an entirely new skin of thickness for what these children will say/do to you. Keep in mind these are not things only my youngest students have said to me, but students up to age 16:

1. "Teacher, you look awful today. You have dark eye circles." (age 11)
2. "Teacher, your nose is long and big" (age 15)
3. On more than one occassion I've had students reach out and just press on the tip of my nose. It usually results in screams, and encouragement for other students to also touch the end of my nose. (ages 13 - 15)
4. Every female teacher's most dreaded, "Teacher, baby?" while pointing to your stomach. (ages 9-13)
5. The other week I was wearing shorts with tights, and a female student came up to me and "examined" my thighs (checked the girth and firmness). I got a "good teacher" when she was finished. Phew. (age 15)
6. Often changing between curly and straight hair, I showed up to class with straight hair after wearing it curly, to which I was told, "Oh teacher, better hair, curly hair is old lady hair". (age 16)
7. One time my students came in to visit me in the office, and upon looking at Thomas they simply pointed at him and laughed, "funny hair today!"
8. This last one isn't bad, quite the contrary, but I need to share it. For some reason Thomas keeps getting told he looks like Brad Pitt, "Teacher Tom, same Brad Pitt!" they say. My students saw a picture of Brad Pitt in their text books and exclaimed, "Teacher! It's Tom!". Oh brother.

I'm sure I'm missing some classics, and I'm sure by the end of the day I'll have a few more. My new slogan for teaching English in Korea:

Foreign Teaching Korea: Daily Lessons in Letting Things Go

Thomas' Look of the Week

What does a black eye and really chapped lips with lots of blistex on them look like?

This:

I'm Learned

Things I learned or realized today in Korea:

1. Finding your 2 Korean friends in a sea of 2,000 Koreans is in fact as challenging as it sounds (at one point I wasn't even able to remember what my friends actually looked like).
2. After 6 months I still hate that they all chew with their mouths open. I believe in 6 more months I will still feel the same way.
3. I see a drunk Korean man every single day.
4. I see a drunk Korean man fall down every 3-5 days. Literally, man goes from vertical to horizontal (tonight the man was fortunate enough to land in a pile of snow).
5. My favourite Korean food is meat. The meat really just tastes like meat you'd find at home. So I guess I don't really have a favourite Korean food.
6. Everyone will tell you the bus is faster than the subway. What they don't tell you is that your chances of dying on a bus (or wetting your pants in fear of death) is multiplied by 5.
7. Just because I have learned more Korean, doesn't mean Koreans have learned more English. Must remember to clarify that no, I do not want a Vanilla latte, I want a Banilla latte.
8. I will spend $70 for two bottles of my favourite wine.
9. I am not on vacation here, so I need to stop eating like I am.
10. Dairy products have ridiculously short expiry dates, while bread lasts freakishly long.
11. I like waiting to show the salesgirls my face until after they've run up to me and spoken a bunch of Korean (the dark hair and bangs usually makes them assume I'm one of them). Reactions I get usually involve them stopping mid sentence, backing away slowly, or awkward smile/giggle/red face combinations.
12. Milk is never going to smell right, just put it in your coffee and cereal and don't ask questions.

Fish is no. Engrish is Yes.

We went to the Aquarium at COEX, the big underground mall in Seoul. All of my undersea wonderfulness pictures were crap. Thankfully these ones turned out perfectly:

This is the one that got it all started.

It's funny how simple this only needed to be: Caution! Window.

Second line from the top.

This is good English. Ornot.

Confusing but Okay, Good Picture!

Instructions above the exhibit where you can pick up the starfish.

I couldn't get my camera out fast enough.
It says: City of Bastard

Lesson learned: at an inside aquarium your fish pictures may not turn out great so make sure you go to the inside aquarium in a foreign country so you will have good "wonky Engrish" pictures to share with all your friends and family instead.

Why I Love My Job

I finally, finally, finally brought my camera with me to work today. About a month ago, I walked into a class I teach three days a week, and was greeted by a student who I swear had grown at least 5 inches over night. I realized I needed to quickly get my camera to work, otherwise all my uber-cute students would no longer be uber-cute, just kinda-cute. These pictures are from two of my favorite classes.

This is Candy (L) and Julia. Julia is one of my favorites. She's smart, but it's her dramatic, wild goofiness that I soak up class after class. Sometimes I just let her "perform" her craziness for the class (anything from re-enactments of Korean soap operas, to made up stories, to TV commercials). Then I perform my impression of her. As the Koreans would say: many, many, many laughter.

Peter (L) and Harry are in the same class with the girls. Poor Harry always wants to work and study. Too bad I'm his teacher.

Genius Julia (as she calls herself) decided it would be great to let her friend give her a hickey on her cheek. I nearly died when she told me, "teacher, friend on cheek, shhhshhhcchhhoo (vaccum, sucking noise)".

The three girls here (Lisa, Linda, and Jessica), and three boys below are my youngest. Just looking at these pictures makes me excited to get back to work and see them after Christmas break. I love them. Period.

James, Eric (centre) and Jack. Wild, wild children. I probably wouldn't love them as much if they were any different. They have pretty low English, so often the boys will jump out of their seats act out thoughts they have, or words they want to communicate (yes, then I teach it to them in English).

This is James again. He's the best. The Korean teachers joke he is our child. He's always in the office talking and goofing around with Thomas and I. So much love.

These and so many more children here make me consistently happy to go to work. Thankfully, they easily outweigh the dumb, idiot children I also have to deal with.

Christmas Time

One guess what movie I watched for my decorating inspiration: Elf. I had a fun couple nights cutting up all the snowflakes, I'm an expert now. A snowflakspert.


Yes, we actually have presents under the tree, those are from my family, there have been more added since!


If it looks like he hates wearing them, it's because he does. But scrappin' crappin' he looks cute as a button.



Thomas decked out in the traditional (Guthrie side) tacky Christmas bottoms (penguins drinking beer).

It's Christmas Eve here and we are sippin' cider and watching a movie. I have part of the turkey in cooking for tomorrow and it smells just like home. Only challenge will be resisting the urge to taste test before Christmas dinner. And now, off to baste.

Special Day?

The conversation began:

Christy: Oh my gosh, it's 12 days till Christmas!
Thomas: Yes. Do you know what is only 6 days before Christmas?
Christy: Someones birthday?
Thomas: No.
Christy: Did we plan something? A movie? Is someone coming over?
Thomas: No.
Christy: I can't think of anything?!
Thomas: Try a little harder.
Christy: I have no clue!?
Thomas: Think.
Christy: Seriously, don't be a tuna, tell me, I don't know.
Thomas: Something important happened around this time.
Christy: Thomas, freekin' just tell me!
Thomas: It's our anniversary.
Christy: Oh crap.
Thomas: Yeah, I forgot until Kyla mentioned it to me tonight.

At least we both know neither of us has high expectations when it comes to celebrating being together. Correction: celebrating the specific day a piece of paper declared we'd be seeing a lot of each other over the next 85 years (no comments on what age that will put me at, thank-you).

Free Writing Time: Amy

Very fond of this girl. She's addicted to her dictionary/thesaurus though and often uses phrases like "declare math contempt" or " school delegate excursion". Here are her less than thesaur-iffic titles:

Free Writing Time: with Jerry

As promised, I have 6 posts queued up from one of my favourite ESL classes. Free Writing Time was the brilliant idea of fellow teacher Michaela, where the students write non-stop about anything for 10 minutes. Don't be fooled, these posts may be silly and good for a giggle, but it really is one of my smartest classes. They are all in Grade 3 and their comprehension is wonderful, we're just working on their writing!

Note: Some posts will be pics, but I decided to re-write others as I am not sure they would be easily read in a photo. I have resisted the urge to make any changes and anything that seems weird is because I've done my best to re-create how they actually wrote it.

Jerry wrote a poem one day:

Children's Verse
title: test

every children mind
is tep tep tep
Because test score
every children say
sigh~sigh~sigh~
and Score 100 every
children olleh But
70, 80 score every children
cry~cry~cry

Costco: not just a one stop shop,

but your last stop shop. Like, last of your life:

i die

I figured this was worth me shamefully making my way back to this poor little neglected blog. Stay tuned for a mini-series of posts from students' writing. I have been making some classes "free-write" for 10 minutes a week. Hilarious.

Eye Spy: Expensive S**t

After a little sleuthing I managed to find the bag I saw on the subway the other day that I decided I needed to have. It's some crazy $1,500 Burberry bag. I don't think I need it anymore.

Good-bye, self-esteem

In Korea, the national hand signal for "no" is making an "x" with either your arms or your two pointer fingers. Either way, it's nice that you can communicate a negative in such a simple way.

On to my story.

As the evenings began to cool off a few weeks ago, it was apparent I was in need of a warm hoodie for walking the dog and just general things you do when you live life walking and biking everywhere. There's an Abercrombie/Hollister section at our local "HomePlus" (Target/Superstore equivalent) and I decided I deserved my little piece of SoCal style. So, Thomas and I biked down last Thursday before work to make the purchase. I excitedly locked my bike, and made my way to the olive green hoodie I knew was the one for me. The sales girl proceeded to take it off the rack and help me into it. And help I needed. As I squeezed my first arm in, it was apparent this wasn't my size, but I squished my other arm in just to make sure. In case I wasn't already positive, I zipped it up. Had I needed a corset with a fuzzy hood I would have dropped the 58,000 won in a second. Thankfully common sense kicked in and I took it off to see the size. Medium. Hmmm, that's a bit of a blow. Oh well, "larg-ee?" I asked, in my very sophisticated Korea-ficated English. The salesgirl looked at me, crossed her two pointer fingers in an "x", and proceeded to giggle as she stated "no!". Now imagine the giggling trailing off as I turned and walked away.

So what did I do? Went next door to the Outlet store and dropped way more than I should have on a fabulous, down-filled, puffy jacket (size small). Take that, lil' bitch! Oh well, I'm a heck of a lot warmer and it was actually a far more practical purchase. Still, if I could go back and give that lil' Korean gal a slap, I just might.

Bare Bones Science

Here's what my Science lesson for the day was:


The lesson was about making secret messages and how to see through paper. All I know is that this combined with my art lesson a couple weeks back is making for some serious unexplainable giggles in front of my sweet, innocent students.

In other nude, I mean, news, I don't actually have any other news. I just wanted to use that clever little pun I'm mildly proud of. Anything to bring a little piece of Carrie Bradshaw to Seoul.

So long

Life hasn't been terribly busy, but I've been a little neglectful posting. We just had a four day weekend which we spent caring for our little snipped puppy and I'm happy to report he's doing wonderfully. I do have a question, would you give your dog medicine that came from a package that looked like this?:


So I don't know whether to laugh at the dead dog, or the dog licking the dead dogs a-hem.

Onto something else very important: my curriculum. In one of my ESL classes (young but advanced kids) I get to teach Science and Art classes. Being the good teacher I am, the first time I look at the Art lesson for the week is usually when I open the book minutes before class. So you can imagine my surprise when I see this is my Art lesson last week:


The assignment? Draw a picture of yourself taking a shower. Hmmm. If the kids weren't all under the age of 10 I would have been pulling another lesson outta my a-hem. But I figured at the least I'd get a couple good photos for a blog post outta it. I was right. Here are my two personal favs:

I call this one eunu-riffi-ch.

This one is titled KEEP OUT!

At first glance the crotch area may look like pubic hair, but it's actually Korean that says, "you will never see this, it's private"! That one is courtesy of one of my favourite (and most witty) students.

Now if only Science was as interesting as Art.

Short end of the leash

Sawyer needs his junk removed. I suppose neutered is the more mc (medically correct) term. The English speaking vet we first took Sawyer to recommended a clinic across the street from our apartment, which is a much better option than taking him home on a half hour subway ride after surgery. We have 4 days off next week so we decided to use that time to get it done.

So today Sawyer and I ventured out on a walk with the intention of also going into the clinic so I could mime chopping off his sac and hopefully book an appointment. I had no clue how much English to expect, so I figured having the actual package along to use as a prop would be helpful. First the receptionist thought I just wanted to get him a hair cut. Then she caught on and said, "Ahhh. Castration".

Yikes. Would it be inappropriate to say my vagina cringed in empathy at the use of that word?

Little did I know that a long walk for my fav pup was actually going to be an hour long vet visit, complete with four needles (blood tests and injections). I was worried he'd never speak to me again. Happy to report we're back to being best friends.

Wednesday is the big day. Poor lil' fella has no idea that today was only a mild annoyance compared to next week. Snip ya later.

No hatin'

I am worried this blog seems to leave the impression there isn't much to be desired in this krazy Korea-land. Simply not the case:

1. $3 bottles of nail polish in rockin' colours only require one sweep of the brush for perfect coverage.
2. When it rains, there are umbrella bagging devices when you walk in a store or restaurant so you don't drip all over.
3. The kids are pretty darn cute (I have a lil' gal that continuously exclaims, "I am genius!" and then sucks her thumb, I think she's 8).
4. You get to ride your bike on the sidewalk, a HUGE sidewalk.
5. It hasn't rained in over a week, and before that it hadn't rained in over a week (maybe not a big deal to anyone not from Vancouver).
6. No tipping.
7. Something oddly liberating being able to live and work and get around everywhere you need to go sans auto.
8. We work 6 hours a day (and it takes 30 seconds to walk to work).
9. Cans of soda are 2/3 the size, and 1/3 the cost
10. We found curry, butt loads of curry: cans of Thai curries, packets of Indian curries, and even some pretty good ramen curry if we need curry in a hurry (couldn't resist).

Mostly small things that probably don't seem like much, but we appreciate them, and we appreciate the people. Like our one security guard who is terrified of our lil' 7 lb dog, and our other security guard who busted out some English today for the first time (obviously mustering up the courage over the past 4 months)! Or the random Koreans who shout "HELLO!" and wave like lunatics when they pass you, just because they know a little English. I appreciate that although I get treated like a child on occasion, I also get treated like a welcome guest. Finally, in the nearly three years Thomas and I have been married, and 5 years we've been together, this is the first time we've kept the same work hours. Definitely not complaining.

To sum: good contraptions, great company.