Sharings

I'm settling into life in Seoul quite nicely. It's hard to believe I've only been here for three weeks. School gets better and better each day, though there are the occasional mishaps. For instance, one student the other day told me he didn't like me. I asked him why and he replied, "Because you no Korean... and you are not beautiful!" Hmmm... totally dissed by a middle-schooler.

I've changed tactics and decided humiliation is the best way to control the students. After all, I am a product of a father who once made me do pushups in the middle of a grocery store for fighting with my sister. I got this idea from a fellow SMOE teacher. If a student misbehaves, I have him or her come to the front of the classroom and sing the A, B, C's. They are completely abashed and stare at the floor. It takes a minute for them to get started, then they hurriedly mumble through the song. They're usually okay until they get to "L, M, N, O... T, R, U, Q, P, S..."

Some more facts about Korea:
1. Everyone watches television on their cell phone. They even have antennae that they can screw into the phone.
2. Native English speakers aren't so much of a novelty throughout most of the city. I test this theory every once in awhile. I'll pretend to speak on the phone to someone in English to see if I can gather any stares. Either they're really good at shooting secret glances or they just don't care that I can speak English.
3. Korea has received a lot of attention for the outrageous number of plastic surgeries. Seems that these days, everyone, and I mean everyone has ssang.kah.pul (the inner eyelid fold) -- from here on out I shall call it SKP. I was sitting in a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and one of my friends mentioned that all the women in there had SKP. It was really quite fascinating because they all did.

Well, aside from that, I'm still having a great time but I miss you folks back in the states. Come visit.