Could You Recommend Something?!

In a week of oddities, yesterday sure stood out amongst the rest! I only say a week of oddities because for the first time in three weeks I am not teaching the same TOEFLing lesson out of a book to a dozen different classes a week! As I (might have) mentioned earlier, it's testing week for speaking class. . .oooooo!

Anyways, instead of preparing (meaning look at) a lesson, I have no responsibility outside of simply showing up for class. . .how exciting! On Monday and Tuesday, in Moon Young's class, I sat patiently during the first hour as the kids took a multiple choice 'listening' test. A CD was played with questions, half in Korean, half in English, that the kids then answered on their multiple choice sheets. The only one I can remember is the first question in which the students were asked what was happening in a picture of two bears hugging. . .beats me!

After finishing the listening part of the test, they turned in their answer sheets and were handed a small packet for the 'writing' and 'speaking' portions of the test. . . my parts! The students were then played another short dialogue, similar to the ones that I play for them each day in their regular lessons. They take notes on the story and then are asked to summarize what they heard in the following four paragraph format: 1) Introduction of Problem and Two Solutions 2) Solution One and Benefits of 3) Solution Two and Benefits of 4) Conclusion.

As you can imagine, grading a class full of these is extremely boring, and seriously just about puts me to sleep; but more on that later!

While the students begin making their outlines, as they are instructed to do before writing their 'essay,' I had the privilege of calling on them one by one to take their speaking test. Each student was told to prepare two speeches at home, each one answering one of the following questions (in so many words); 1) Many people do different things to help protect the environment. What do you do to protect the environment? and 2) Some people prefer to spend their weekends relaxing without doing any special activities. Others prefer to spend their weekends learning something new. Which do you prefer?

My job was to record the students while they recited their prepared speech and answered questions that I was to ask following their memorized text. I was to ask the students either one of the questions randomly. This however I did not do for the following reason; I have been in this position before where I was expected to ask them one of two questions randomly and as it turns out, only a very small percentage of students follow the complete directions and actually prepare two speeches. As a result, when I ask the question that they haven't prepared for, they will sit there in silence and stare at me or the tape recorder until I agree to change questions. Rather then deal with their horribly awkward silent treatment, I simply asked the student which question they had prepared for (in a whisper so that the teacher did not hear) and then proceeded to ask them that question. What do you know, everyone was well prepared for the question they got this time!!

On wednesday, yesterday, I was to conduct the same speaking and writing tests that I had done the previous two days in Moon Young's class, but with Ji Young. Ji Young is a new teacher to DYB who began (I believe) the same day we did. While she is very nice and has a pretty good grasp on the English language, from four years in VA an done in CA, she is not what you would call the most motivated or driven teacher in the world! As I entered class Wednesday morning (ha, by that I mean 4:30pm) she asked me how I had conducted the tests the day earlier. Okay, fair enough, she's new and I had already learned the ropes from the second best in the school. . . so they say!

I explained to her how MY administered the multiple choice listening test for the first hour and then I took over from speaking and writing. This confused JY however as she was not familiar with the multiple choice test and had none prepared. Okay, well I guess we can just begin then, right? Well, JY took over in Korean and, as it appeared, told the students to begin preparing their speeches, which I'm pretty sure they had already done at home. After a half hour or so of killing time on my CYONWorldSeries Baseball game (good thing I have a phone) JY began calling on students to come up and record their speeches while the rest worked on their summaries.

The recording went well as it involves no more than me reading the date, announcing whose speaking test it is, and asking them the primary question followed by creative supplements. I will admit, all of the students were extremely well prepared and I don't think I gave anyone lower than a B+ on any given category: Pronunciation, Intonation, Creativity, Fluency, Vocabulary. This is not surprising however as I have quickly learned that I am a push over for grades, which, possibly thanks to Prof. Carl Bankston, I do not think of as a bad thing! It only becomes an issue when I feel bad for giving one student a really high grade so I feel like I need to average it out by grading down on the next. . . I hate evaluating. . . they all do such a great job! Well, except for the pissers that refuse to speak when I ask them questions, prompt them with answers and stand right in front of them. . .they earn the marks they deserve, believe me!

So, after finishing recording, the students were given more time to finish their essays (only different from summaries in that they get to choose a topic to write about) which they turned in to me for evaluation once finished. Well, I'm not sure if JY actually drew up the test or not, though I don't know who else would have, but I found it (un)interesting that the two topics the students were asked to speak on were coincidentally the same two topics that they were given to chose between for their essay part of the test! Wouldn't you know, these sly students all used their speech preparation time to simply write their essays, which they then memorized, and presented for their speaking portion of the test. This means, that reading through and grading their essays was literally just reading the transcription of the speeches I just sat through for an hour. How exciting!

I made it through all my grading with at least a half hour to spare in class. . .never a good thing in JY's class as she simply has nothing planned and does not offer anything to keep the students busy. I guess it's up to me, although I'm still totally in the dark about what exactly we should be teaching these kids and how our performance is evaluated! So, knowing of the upcoming holiday, Chuseok, I decided to write up a chart on the board comparing it to Thanksgiving, as LP suggests it is similar to.

I gained very little information from the students other than they go to the countryside to visit relatives and eat lots of food. I tried to pry into what types of food which is very difficult as you can imagine many authentic dishes do not translate that easily. While they told me dishes in Korean, I would try to sound them out and spell them on the board in Hanguel, the Korean alphabet I am slowly learning. This proved to be extremely amusing for my students as my phonetic Korean is in its infancy still and I was apparently, just writing hilarious things all across the board. That or it is simply hilarious for Korean youth to see their silly white teacher pretend to have a grasp on their obscure language!

Finally, class was dismissed and Ji-Young reminded me that my only student in the 6:30-8:30 class would be absent today, so I should return after 8:30pm for the last class. Woe is me, right!? I took this opportunity to enjoy myself as much as I can at work, retiring to the Native room and Stumbling across the internet for two hours.

Oh, I did spend a good amount of time looking up English idioms as Anna, my Thursday/Friday teacher, informed me that one student's parents had complained that the student is not learning enough since Chris left! To remedy the problem, which she assured me is not my fault but that of whiny parents, it was suggested that I teach the students English expressions. What exactly is meant by English expressions and how exactly do I teach them. . .I'm not too sure. But I looked up a bunch and picked out 15, all beginning with the letter 'a,' to present to my students when instructed to do so.

This is a very odd exercise for me as up to this point, everything has been very structured and taken directly from the TOEFLing books. Now that I'm expected to just 'teach expressions' I'm not really sure what to do, where to begin, how to 'teach' that, and what sort of time I should spend on it! I'm sure I'll figure it out though through a long awkward process of trial and error! Why? 'Cause that's how you learn around here! Asking only gets you more confused. . . I promise!

I returned to class a little after 8:30pm, as JY always requests that foreign teachers show up a bit late (okay with me). Repeated the same writing and testing exercise as I did with the 4:3opm class, finishing up just before 10:30pm. . .as I managed to drag everything out to fill the void that usually finishes off the class.

I took off from work starving, as usual, having only eaten a small bowl of spaghetti before class; yes, they do have a legitimate spaghetti, not ramyeon, restaurant here, although the portions are definitely Korean sized! Having patronized most every, if not all, the restaurants in our immediate area (which are the only in a greater area so far as I can tell), I decided to take a little adventure looking for something unusual.

Again, our school is located on a bustling four way intersection on which all commercial activity in the area takes place. I picked one of the branches that we had traveled less and decided to wander. Passing a fried chicken joint, I noticed a group of boys watching a soccer game on television. Figuring it was the thing to do, but not in the mood for KFC, Korean fried chicken, I headed onwards, vowing to stop at the next restaurant with a tv.

The first place I came upon I seriously considered entering. It had traditional Asian style seating however and with my size and flexibility (or lack of) sitting on the floor is simply not an option after a day of work! I ventured further and ducked into a breezeway with bright lights on the other side. Exiting on the other side of a large Officetel, I saw a large set up of tables covered in food and drink facing three televisions on which the game was being played. This is obviously the spot to be I concluded and took a seat at a red plastic picnic table.

I was quickly brought a menu by a young woman whose ears were plugged with headphones. As I might have guessed, the contents were entirely in Korean. On one side was a dozen different (what appeared to be) food options and the other, drinks. Waiting for my 'waitress' to return, I grabbed my LP and skimmed the food section to see if I could make any matches between the listed items and those displayed on the menu. While this sounds outrageous, it does in fact work some times and has yielded some promising results. No such luck this time however as I found nothing in the book.

When the young woman returned, I pointed to menu and then the LP food section inquisitively, hoping that she would be able to locate a dish and the LP Gods would translate. Well what do you know, not a single thing they offered was in the book! Now I don't know if that counts for against authenticity, but I think it's gotta mean something.

Consequently, I resorted to a line I have used before in the country that ended up proving useful in the end. I pointed to the Korean text and just barely managed to mutter something along the lines of "Mwo chucheonhae jusillaeyo?" Could you recommend something! She chuckled at the question, as seems to be the trend, and then pointed to something on the menu. The price seemed to be 8,000 won, and it looked just as good as any other option, so I agreeably nodded 'yes.'

Just my luck, by the time I look up from my ordering ordeal, the soccer game I came to watch had concluded and the station had returned to Korean 'drama,' as they call the prevalent mixture of soap operas and bad sitcoms. A few minutes later, I was brought a large bowl with a small portion of a bright red mixture of what seemed to be vegetables in the bottom. The young woman, still with head phones on, shoved her phone in my face for me to look at. Usually people are a little more discrete when asking for me number, geeze! Just kidding!

Displayed on her screen were a few words of Korean followed by English, which read something along the lines of "taste, try a small bite, sample." Ahhhhh, I gotchya now! I tried the colorful mixture which went down well, although spicy, and eagerly ushered her to bring on the full dish! She went over to the elderly lady who was standing outside cooking over what seemed to be an open flame bbq pit, and they shared a laugh, I'm sure at my expense!

Minutes later I was brought a table full of dishes, as so frequently happens here. To top it off, a small gas burning grill was placed in the middle of my table! How exciting, all this for just me! The many small plates were filled with cucumber and carrot slices, halved cloves of raw garlic, chopped raw onion, sliced raw pepper, a chili paste, and cucumbers in vinegar along with a basket of lettuce and what looked like over grown mint leave. Oh yeah, and some more whole hot peppers in the basket too!

Eventually I was brought the main dish, piping hot of course, which looked like easily enough for two. I think it might be actually as many people around me seemed to be eating the same thing, some with two people some with three sharing what looked like a similar sized portion! Just in case the bubbling plate wasn't hot enough, they flipped on the stove for me to keep the dish at a wholly inedible temperature.

Well I'm no genius, I figured that the spicy veggie stuff went in the wrap with as many side munchies as you could fit. Easier said than done! I managed to get a few bites into one piece of lettuce without the slightest bit of room for any sides. Shoving it into my mouth I was quickly approached by the elderly woman who grabbed a 'mint' leaf and a piece of lettuce, stacked them together, then pretended to grab one of everything including a bite of the 'main course.' I nodded in a agreement and set out to make another wrap as she watched. On went the chili paste, followed by some raw onions and a couple half cloves of garlic. Oh yeah, and then I dropped on the already too spicy stuff on the hot plate! Believe me, the girls were lining up for kisses after this one!

I seemed to have won the approval, or at least acceptance of the old lady who then let me be after watching me sloppily stuff my face with an overloaded leaf wrap! No more than a minute after she left, the young woman was back with her phone again. She pointed to the steaming dish and then to her phone, on which I read. . . . ."The small intestine of cat"

Hm.

Well I'll be.

And here I was enjoying my meal.

Completely content to be on a culinary adventure.

Luckily, I quickly found out that my first impression was not quite true. After pausing only a second, but long enough for me to consider throwing up what was in my mouth, she scrolled down a line on her phone. Below it read simply, "tle."

Hm.

Well.

I guess that's better.

I mean. . . I love steak. . .and, that's, kinda, like, steak?! Right?!

I smiled appreciatively for the unnecessary information and went about my meal. By this time my attention was turned solely to consuming the mass of food as quickly as possible, figuring that the longer I took, the more time I had to think about it! The little wraps actually worked quite well and offered a very interesting mixture of flavors, each of course with it's own unique consistency! In less than half an hour I managed to polish off the majority of the food on my table, leaving only a few garlic cloves and the better part of the chili sauce. I cleaned up using the moist towelette I was given at the start of dinner, and went to pay my tab.

I thanked the two ladies that had helped me and tried to express that I actually enjoyed what I had eaten. They both laughed, accepted my money and waved me goodbye. I'm still not quite sure if they were being kind, in recommending an authentic Korean dish, or, if they thought it'd be hilarious to feed intestine to a know-nothin-white-folk who wandered too far from his hogwan!

I eventually met up with Nate, soon after leaving my all too interesting dinner. He had taken a taxi back from Bundang, which turned out to take about and hour and forty five minutes as Seoul rush hour does not cease and in fact, picks up around midnight! Why you ask? The answer is simply. Because Koreans simply do not stop working. . .ever!

I accompanied him to a peaceful, uneventful jealous dinner of cutlet and rice in bbq sauce at our local gimbapchongook. I might've felt a tinge of jealousy at his pure enjoyment of his food, but then again it might have been my intestines talking!

Anyways, that was that. . .and I guess you don't have much to argue about when you order by asking, "Could you recommend something!?"