Teacher! You are Picasso!

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Said TWO students to me this week, each in a different class.

Can I help it if the easiest way to explain some Vocab words is to draw them? Can I help it if I don't have enough time to make perfect likenesses? I cannot.

Classes are getting better. I'm starting to feel out that balance between fun and work where you can joke around with your students without them demolishing the building. It's nice. The great thing about teaching English as a foreign language is that any conversation, no matter how off-topic, helps students practice their speaking skills. So what if we were talking about human/dolphin reincarnation rather than the chapter of the book we were reading? So what if they were explaining some of the quirks of Korean Middle Schools? I was speaking, they were speaking, and that's all that mattered.

By the way, according to my students, girls in middle school are limited with how long they are allowed to grow their hair. Some schools don't let them paint their nails. Boys have to keep their bangs less than 3 centimeters long. No one can dye their hair. Every school is different, but rules like this are common.

And back in the day I thought Prescott's rules were cheesy.

Also apparently Korea is to Japan as the U.S. is to Cuba. Students in one class emphatically agreed on this one. Don't ask me how we got there, but apparently it's true.

Anyway, today I took a trip to Suwon, which is just south of Seoul. I meant to go walk the fortress wall, which is supposed to be really cool, but got mixed up and ended up in a former-castle-turned-museum instead.

*Really sorry about the balding head in the middle of the video. Believe it or not, it was the best shot I could get.

The guy did, if you're curious, make it all the way across the rope. It was pretty cool to watch.

Hwaseong Haenggung



Was an 18th century castle used when the King was "roaming the country" or something like that. It had a lot of courtyards. My guess is that the royal family didn't exactly go roaming in the dead of winter.


I know I probably wasn't supposed to find this funny, but I did. I hope someone at hope appreciates it too.


For the viewing pleasure of anyone who cares what old-fashioned Korean military wear looked like. I took this for you. You're welcome.


The main audience chamber or something like that. The English translations were not, shall we say, fantastic.


On the hill above the castle, this is one of two lookout pavilions. The writers of the English translation apparently thought that the necessity of the giant wooden fish didn't need an explanation.

I mean, duh.


Some kind of musical instrument. Why the ducks? Why not?


This came with Korean subtitles that I could read but not understand. It stretched the length of the castle's outside wall, and my guess is it's telling the story of a war. When and against who? I don't know, and my students would probably say Japan.

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