Macaroni

For a "get the day started" exercise, I had one of my classes brainstorm as many vegetables as they could.  They only got a point if no other team thought of the same vegetable (like Scategories).  I was pretty lenient, beans and bean sprouts, and paprika all made my cut.  I was a stickler however when it came to the tomato, insisting it was a fruit to many cries of protest and, "In Korea it's a vegetable", sorry kids.  My favorite though was, "Macaroni".  I was trying to be open minded thinking to myself, "Maybe there's a Korean vegetable that sounds like macaroni that I don't know..."  So I asked the kid to draw it on the board.

You'll notice the macaroni noodles growing off the stem.  The class was in hysterics.

100%

On Tuesdays I eat lunch in the classroom to make myself available to students who want extra help with their English, which leaves me little time to eat lunch.  Last week I brought in some instant ramen for myself to eat while in the classroom.  I thought this week I would get some instant rice porridge.  The label was appealing, "100%", the spoon was included, and it was about 75 cents.  Here it is:

Upon opening the package and adding water I began to suspect it was not the rice porridge I had envisioned.  Turns out nurungji is, "A traditional Korean food made of scorched rice. After boiling and serving rice, a thin crust of scorched rice will usually be left in the bottom of the cooking pot".  It tasted like soggy crackers.  I think I'll start quickly eating lunch in the cafeteria for the first half of lunch from now on.

Eyes Towards the World Hearts Full of Dreams

One of the first questions I had my students answer on the first day was, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"  Their answers included diplomat, ambassador, and CEO; welcome to Busan International High school.
So while I am not any of these things, I like to think I am teaching the next diplomats, ambassadors, and CEO's English. 
I teach 16 (ish) classes per week of high school freshman, with 9 different lesson plans, in addition to helping students individually prep for the myraid of English tests they will encounter on their arduous journey to attend only the best universities.
My classes have about 20 students each, and although I think it's in my contract, I do not have a co-teacher in the classroom with me.  However, unlike most people I have 3 other Native English Teachers at my school, so lunchtimes are less lonely, and having people to sort things out with is invaluable.

Check out my school's YouTube video.

On the left is the other new Native English Teacher (NET) at my school, Christina, (Chico state Alumna and studied abroad with Paggi and Ashley) and in the middle is Sumi, my go to "caretaker" at school.

The view from my walk up the hill to school.

The other school tower.

Refreshment Time With Drinks!

Hello friends and family. How are we doing, you ask?

Let me begin to answer that with a quick roundup of the various soda beverages I've indulged in thus far.

Chilsung Cider: It's not cider. It's 7Up. Boring. I consumed one can at our orientation at Pukyong National University, which was highly instructive in the art of English teaching and allowed us to meet a nice assortment of other recent arrivals (the orientation, not the cider). 1 fountain cup's worth was also consumed at our first Korean cinematic experience. You have to take a number before buying a ticket instead of standing in line. Better! We saw Matt Damon's The Adjustment Bureau (Or, I think, Controller, if you prefer the Korean title, assuming my Hangul-reading is as sharp as I think it is). Truly spectacularly terrible. But maybe it was just the Korean subtitles. The cider was nice, though. We asked for a Chilsung Cider (which is what they sold) and the girl at the concession stand said "...Sprite?" and we said, "Chilsung Cider," at which point she looked at us inquisitively for a few moments before asking, "Sprite?" They really have a hard time believing that Americans would bother to learn anything about their culture (including how to read the words Chilsung Cider in English). Also, you have the option of normal popcorn or sweet, kettlecorn-style popcorn. Better!

Wood Vinegar Red Ginseng: Now we're talking. Imagine a nice, slightly sweet, raspberry iced tea, poured out over the floor of a damp (very damp) shed deep in the woods, and left to steep in the general mustiness for a week or so. Then sopped up and wrung out into a can. Surprisingly, pretty tasty. But definitely a grower. Purchased at the bathroom break after our tour of the Posco Steel plant during the orientation. We drove two hours to tour a steel factory. Unlike most people, I was optimistic, picturing the penultimate scene of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. For about 96 percent of the tour I was way off, however, as that is the percentage of the tour that took place from inside the bus, looking out onto a typical array of generic industrial-type buildings and pipes and smokestacks and so on. Our poor Korean orientation group guide, who otherwise spoke an extremely competent breed of conversational English, valiantly attempted to translate phrases like "end-line girter" and "blast-furnace." However, the 4 percent that was awesome was awesome. Picture a California Queen mattress moving down a conveyor belt, but 5 times bigger, and glowing the kind of neon orange you thought was reserved for special effects studios, and whose heat could be felt on your face from a good 50 yards away, and then it gets gradually and repeatedly flattened by huge steel-mattress-flatteners and sprayed with cool water resulting in exactly the kind of industrial-type hiss you would hear in the background of, say, the second to last scene of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. That part was awesome. And the soda beverage really grew on me.

Milkis: A new feeling of soda beverage! It's a milk soda. And it's incredible! My favorite all time soda by a long shot. Before you get too furious at the thought of milk soda, remember how tasty cream soda is. Or a creamsicle. Very tasty. Also, on the can it says "A new feeling of soda beverage." Which is incredible in it's own right.

Writing about soda is apparently exhausting. More on this exciting subject later.

Oh, also, we're totally fine and teaching is tough but great and our apartment is small but lovely and Korea is weird but fascinating and people are all super nice and amused by our confused foreigner antics and kids say hello to you when you pass them on the street and I'm apparently quite handsome.