삼겹살

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Dear Blog Readers,

I fear that without a soothing ‘Angel-In-Us’ hot chocolate, the thought of Laura wasting money on some new jeans (which are now soaked due to yesterday’s torrential, but visually stunning, thunderstorm) and the comfy seats in the café that this blog won’t live up to last week’s. However, I will try my best, and I’ve jotted down a few classics this week along the way (although my notebook is no match for ‘The Weekly Update Manual’ of years gone by).

Monday in Wonnam was great fun. I was worried about my ‘At The Restaurant’ lesson being a bit boring. Luckily, the students found my video clip to be hilarious and the pictures of fried spiders and jellied eels to be suitably horrendous. The activity was to create their own restaurant menu. I’d even tried out my artistic skills to make my own menu of kimchi soup, fried spiders and chips finished with a scoop of squid-flavoured ice cream.

Thankfully, the kid’s menus were much better than mine and had some absolute classics. My favourite dish was snot soup for the bargain price of 50 Won. The best menu went to a reasonably shy student who doesn’t really speak much English during the lessons but came up with this phenomenally deep menu. He had created the ‘Lonely Restaurant’ with the starter of cry soup and a main course of water. I don’t think he got to making a dessert which may be representative of anybody wanting to dine there. There was also the ‘Dead Restaurant’ which was selling eyeballs and flesh steak – I was quite worried.

I wish my 3rd Grade class on Tuesday was as good. Unfortunately, they weren’t sympathetic to Eun-bi’s worsening cold and didn’t really want to play my matching game which took ages to prepare! I’ve had a couple of classroom ‘incidents’ this week to make note of. The first one was in this lesson when one of the students decided that instead of completing my worksheet, he would set fire to it. The second incident was in my 1st Grade class when one student moved the chair of another when he was stood up. I remember this being classic at school but this took it to a new level. The kid went to sit down, missed the now moved chair, and smacked his head against the desk behind him. I thought he was going be knocked out but the trooper only suffered for a few minutes before being back in full English speaking action. He got a well-deserved sticker for dedication.

This week marked a new milestone in my time in Korea and a further testament to trying to adapt to the culture and way of life – I brought my toothbrush to school. Most of you will think this is strange, and so have I for the past three months, however, in Korea, everybody brushes their teeth after lunch. They found it odd that I didn’t so I bought some mints to eat after lunch each day. However, I have now turned over a new leaf and brought my toothbrush and toothpaste to school and happily brushing every lunchtime. It feels great. I feel one step closer to actually being Korean.

In my feeble attempt to bring some Englishness to the proceedings, I brought in some PG Tips teabags for Eun-bi and I to have a brew during our Friday afternoon chat. It’s becoming a regular occurrence as it is one of the few times that both of us are free during the week so we make the most of it! Unfortunately, there was no sugar, or milk, which meant that it was probably one of the worst brews I’ve made. I think this is representative of a couple of things which are slowly occurring – firstly, the longer I am in Korea, the less English I become, and secondly, the longer I’m in Korea, the less I can speak actual English. I constantly find myself struggling for simple words or phrases! I will try and make amends soon!

My decreasing sense of national pride was somewhat recovered with laughter as Laura told me about one of the adult extra classes at school during the week on the topic of stereotypes. For Koreans, the three words/phrases to describe their stereotype were, ‘metrosexual, eat dog and geeks’. England faired quite a bit worse with, ‘ugly, bad kids and biscuits’. I enquired, “So what about fat?” Laura replied, “Oh, that was America”, brilliant.

On Thursday, as family and friends back at home were marking the day as an act of remembrance for the war dead, in Korea, they celebrate Pepero Day. Lotte, the Korean equivalent of Cadbury’s, has created this day where friends exchange chocolate covered sticks. Lotte well and truly fooled me into thinking I wasn’t contributing to giving them vast quantities of money in exchange for the chocolaty-stick-goodness. The call it Pepero Day because the Pepero look like two sticks, i.e. 11/11 – genius. I got a couple of boxes from two teachers in the staff room which was nice and one student gave Mr Shin and me one on Friday. Whilst chomping on my thirteenth Pepero, though, I did take a moment to remember those that died for our freedom. Laura got chatting to a teacher at school who was telling her that at the weekend he was going to Seoul. “Ah cool, why are you going there?” to which he replied, “For my mother’s death day.” To avoid any miscommunication, Laura replied, “Ah, her birthday?”, “No, her death day, she died 10 years ago.”

To avoid myself, and ultimately, this blog becoming progressively more morbid, I decided to look through the Grade 3 textbook to get some ideas for lesson plans for the next few weeks. I noticed this, what can only be described as kimchi propaganda:

"I often hear my friends say that they don't like kimchi. But that's
unbelievable. Remember, kimchi is our traditional food. And it's a key
to maintaining good health. If we Koreans don't like to eat kimchi,
who will? No one will. Then kimchi will die away. Would you be pleased
with that? It's time we stopped throwing away our traditional pride.
So, let's say to ourselves, "There's nothing I like more than kimchi,"
and eat kimchi every day. Thank you."

Tink and Laura

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Photos

Oh no.
Something bad is going to be happening on 25th November because it is in red letters. We have no idea what's going on!

Games Night
Games night at Betty and Chris's!

Korean
Laura being Korean.

Comments

[roxi]

Well, I'm convinced...
"THERE'S NOTHING I LIKE MORE THAN KIMCHI!!!!!!"

[Gavin]

I too have started brushing my teeth at school. I might email my dentist, he'd be happy.

[Tink's Mum]

돼지고기
Having used Google translator to find out what 삼겹살 means and finding that you could listen to someone saying 'Pork', I thought I would put 'pork' onto the translator and find out what 삼겹살 sounds like in Korean - only to be informed that the Korean translation for pork is 돼지고기 which apparently should be pronounced 'dwaejigogi'!! (there isn't someone speaking it in the same way as 'pork' - very disappointing!)

[Tink And Laura]

Good try!
Ah the disadvantages of using an online translator! The word is Samgyeopsal which I was telling you about over Skype - it is BBQ pork and really famous in Korea. I guess the word you found is for pork but the word in the blog is a pork dish.

[Lauren]

Kimchi
Aww, i think the Kimchi advert worked on me, how is it really? And the other food.. is it good? We've been eating russia food for too long now and Im looked forward to getting to China!

[Tink And Laura]

Kimchi
Oh dear. I've had kimchi at least once every single day whilst I have been in Korea. I was told that if you eat something 5 times, your body will like it even if you initially disliked it. I don't hate kimchi, it just tastes so completely different to anything we have at home. If I ever go out of my way to buy kimchi, I will know I've become Korean.