Snow Tires

Me eating a cocoon... read blog for further explanation

Bowl of seaweed and cocoons....mmm (not really)

Galbi

Our Chrisrmas party dinner!

Me and my friend Katie shopping downtown. Katie is from South Africa and this was her first time seeing snow!

Sars masks for kids!

So Christmas eve is just around the bend and even though not all Koreans celebrate this momentous holiday... it is really just another excuse to drink! I just returned home from my schools annual Christmas party and had a blast! We finished work today around 10pm and headed out for some authentic Korean food called Galbi. You sit at a long table with two holes in the middle and the waiter brings over a grill and a plate of raw meat that you cook yourself. You are also given a plate of onions, mushrooms, fresh garlic and of course...kimchi. You are then given a plate of romaine lettuce and with your chopsticks, take one of each type of food, wrap it up and shove the lettuce wrap in your mouth. For dessert, we were given rice soup (which basically taste like water with rice in it) and clementines. All in all, it was a great meal and all my Korean co-workers showed up which was awesome. There were endless bottles of beer and soju being passed around and it also happened to be my co-workers birthday, so we celebrated throughout the evening. Once dinner was finished, we moved our party to another bar (not sure of the name) to eat and drink some more. So you know how at a typical bar in Canada, they would have some nuts or chips on the table to munch on? It's the same sort of idea here in Korea, however instead of nuts they serve canned corn, pieces of fish and... wait for it....... COCOONS!?!? Yup, you read that correctly. There was a bowl of these small brown sluggish looking things (that I actually thought looked like cockroaches) but after my inquiry, I was told that they were cocoons... from a caterpillar! After MUCH and I mean MUCH persuading I decided, what the heck, I would try one... when in Rome, right?! It defiantly was not tasty... a bit salty but I can't really compare it to anything I have tried before. Very odd to say the least.

My co worker Leigh actually told me a funny story to do with food that happened to her around her first week of living in Korea. She had a sore throat and went to the grocery store to buy salt in hopes of going home and gargling salt water. Well, she found the isle of salt (or so she thought) and purchased it, thinking she is soon going to be relieved of her sore throat. She arrived home, poured the "salt" in a glass, filled it with water and took a huge gulp. She IMMEDIATELY gagged and spit out the disgusting liquid into the sink. Later that day, after speaking to a Korean co worker, she found out that she had just gargled msg!!! Apparently in Korea, they advertise msg like its a good thing! You will walk into stores and a sign will read "we sell msg :)". haha!

Anyways, the other day I was in a cab going to meet my friend downtown for lunch. It was a Sunday morning so I was feeling kid of "sick" due to the night before. When the cab saw that I was a foreigner he tried speaking to me in English, however the only two words he knew in English were "snow tires". So I guess the guy was trying to explain to me (in broken English) that his car had snow tires. But nooo that wasn't enough... he wanted to PROVE to me that his car had snow tires and literally sped up and then SLAMMMMMED on the brakes!!!!!! When I yelled out "NO NO NO" I guess he thought I was saying "YES YES YES" because in Korean "Nay" means "Yes", so he kept slamming on the breaks showing off his snow tires which made me 10000 times more nauseous. It was brutal!!!

On another note, the teaching part of being here is going pretty well. The kids are getting used to me and I am becoming much more comfortable in front of the class. The other day I was attempting to teach my grade 2's how to tell time. For the most part, they understood anything that ended in "o'clock". So from 1:00 to 12:00 they understood. I drew a clock on the blackboard and chose students to fill in the time that I asked. Once it seemed like they had all fathomed the idea, I tried to move onto 1:15, 1:30 and 1:45. They understood that 1:15 was a quarter after, and 1:30 was half past one, but they could not for the life of me understand that 1:45 was a quarter to 2. I kept getting, "TEACHA TEACH, WHY NOT 45 AFTA!?" haha.. I was kind of stuck. How do you explain something that just... IS?! I tried my best but I don't know how well they really got it.

So I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but there is CCTV in every single classroom (mostly used as a scare tactic) but it actually seems to work. As I was in the middle of explaining a theory to my grade six class, Mr. Ryu (the principal) came on the speaker and said something in Korean. All of a sudden my entire classroom sat up straight and removed their hats and hoods. I was stunned. I asked the class what was said, and one of my students explained that Mr. Ryu announced he was watching the class and saw the students slouching and wearing hats (which is against the law at my school). Personally, I don't reprimand my students for wearing hats, but I guess I need to start. I just thought that was very strange, but kind of humorous.

So a big difference I noticed between Korean and North American children, is not only their mentality, but their different ideas of what is considered funny or creative. For example, I played a game with my grade 6 class and asked them to come up with team names. One team was Microsoft and the other was Windows XP........ seriously?!

And last but not least, I was teaching my grade 5 students about Amelia Earhart and then asked them to write a couple of sentences explaining where they would fly to if they were pilots and what they would bring along. One of my students presented her paragraph in front of the class and said, "If I were a pilot and could fly anywhere in the world, I would fly to Canada so I could see what it is like to live in an Igloo. I would bring lots of blankets and green tea to stay warm".

Definitely got a kick out of that one!

Write more soon,

Happy holidays!

Signing off,

Gillian