Rose gets around

About cyberclasses

2010-03-10T09:55:00.003+09:00

I have done a few cyberclasses for DGEV. We do these so that kids who come to the English Village for a week can have follow-up lessons to help them remember the English they learned (or not). It's not difficult to do, as long as you don't mind being posed and manipulated and asked to say sort of stupid stuff. I am encouraged to use exaggerated gestures and manic facial expressions, but I typically ignore those suggestions. I don't mind any of it too much, and I like the extra pay.
I've done three Grocery Store cyberclasses. What it involves, in my case, is writing the script and shooting the footage in the Grocery Store. I also have to write a quiz and do extra voice recordings, that are set to animation. Then I have to check the finished product for errors in the subtitles.
So the other day, I met with the crew to film the Advanced class. We shot the intro by the front of the store. The crew and DGEV staffer who is running this program weren't satisfied with the way the front counter looked, so they added a bunch of stuff....
.... but that wasn't enough so they added more stuff and plastered the counter with old Safeway ads we had in a pile:
The bright light and camera! That's how the MAGIC HAPPENS.
I wear a borrowed Starbucks apron. We just don't zoom in on it.
We were filming in the aisles of the store, so they had to move the shelves around a lot to fit the cameras in.
It made the grocery store look weird, but I guess the final shot looked good.
Of course, when we moved the shelves, we discovered lots of nast. The shelves probably haven't been moved since they were installed.
I like the crab leg in the foreground:
Ah, so that's where my students' pencils disappear to. And look, chocolate!
YUM!
I can't find the video they sent me of the Intermediate cyberclass, which was finished months ago. But when I track down the link, I'll post it. It's pretty painful to watch, but mildly entertaining.

I learn something new every few days

2010-03-07T10:27:00.003+09:00

I don't know how to properly introduce this fact, so I'm gonna come out and say it: you can use a sausage as an iPhone or iPod Touch stylus. This is really great news!
Ivan introduced me to this fact, which he also demonstrates here. It's in Spanish, but do you really need a translation?

Rose meets Billibowling

2010-03-07T10:03:00.003+09:00

I like to play games while I'm out with friends. Euchre, poker, pool, darts, bowling, or those touch-screen games in the corner, I love nothing more than a little activity while I'm drinking. Enter BilliBow. It's a bar in downtown Daegu, mostly frequented by non-Koreans, that has a pool table, darts, and a magnificent game called BilliBowling.
It's set up like a miniature bowling alley, with gutters, pins, and bowling scoreboard:
But instead of bowling balls, you're using a cue ball and a pool stick to knock over the pins. Ami demonstrates here:
I line up my shot:
Teeny-Weenie little bowling pin!
It's a super-fun game. Combines two sports I'm awful at but love.
Later we played darts, and something must've been in our drinks, because we were racking up bullseyes. I even got one!
Sherri:
Dave:
This was a night that a bunch of teachers went out together with the "village guides" - non-Korean university students that work at the English Village, basically shepherding the kids from class to class. It was fun!

The EV Mart

2010-02-25T20:57:00.003+09:00

At the English Village, I've taught several different classes. I've tried my hand at social studies (I even designed an African Studies class that I'm asked to teach on occasion), weather, quiz game, and writing, and in the situational rooms, I've done Fast Food, Post Office, and a lot of Pet Shop. The situational class I've been teaching for several months now is the Grocery Store. I really like it. The kids usually enjoy the room - it has enough different realia to be interesting for 90 minutes, which means that usually they are pretty happy and not bratty. I'm constantly having to tidy, organize, and rearrange, but maybe that's part of why I enjoy it - my touch of OCD is satisfied by the opportunity to obsessively straighten and neaten.
Anyway, I took a few photos of my first class this morning.
These are shots of the Grocery Store before the first class arrived. You can see that it's pretty big, which is nice.
From the front of the room:
From the back of the room:When the students arrive, I ask them for their English names, and we come up with alliterative food names for them. Usually at least a few crack them up. Sam Sandwich really loved his name. Personally, I'm partial to "L" names because I like saying "Lollipop".
For the first big activity, they get a map of the Grocery Store and have to do a little inventory of 3 random items from each section.
Kids asking me how to spell "crab":
Girls writing down fruits:These kids worked fast...
... and finished first, so they got the biggest stickers in their English Village passports:
I like to spoil my students with awesome huge stickers. It's a good motivator!
The second big activity is the shopping.
They first have to write menus ("one drink; one dinner; one dessert!") and then write shopping lists before shopping. Sometimes kids have very low English, but we work together to pull something out ("toast and cookies and juice") so they can still go shopping. One student a few weeks ago, who didn't speak English well and was a little lazy, wrote the following:
DINNER: X
DRINK: Potato Juice
DESSERT: Potato
In general, what the kids write as "dessert" can be pretty interesting. Koreans don't often eat sweet desserts, but they might have noodles or rice at the end of a meal, so I get a lot of "pasta!" or "cabbage!" for dessert. Hey, it's fine with me - the last thing our students need is more sugar.
Finally, there is usually a little bit of time left at the end, as students finish their shopping and individually report to me about what their menu is and what they bought. I have puzzles for them to work on during this lull before they leave.
A lot of times - and this is understandable! - kids do NOT want to sit quietly and work on puzzles. But it's amazing how often the puzzles DO work to calm them down. During this time, I stamp their English Village passports with the Supermarket Stamp, and then I send them on their way.
In a full week, I teach 17 classes, and it's often the same subject every period. It can be a little surreal. The children will always wander around the grocery store muttering about what's "chincha" (real) and what's fake. They will always sword-fight with the fish, and pretend that the ribs in the meat section are their own ribs, as if they had an exoskeleton. They will always put the chicken on their heads, and always beg me to give them candy and pop, despite the fact that the candy and pop are 3 years old and have passed through thousands of grubby hands. But still, it's entertaining for me. I definitely feel that Grocery Store is the most fun situational class!

Moving day

2010-02-22T20:31:00.004+09:00

In this post, you can see an image of what my room at DGEV first looked like when I arrived there. Actually, I only lived in that room for about six weeks, then I moved across the hall to a room that got a lot more sun and looked directly down on the DGEV airplane. Still, living in such close proximity to the people that I work, eat, and socialize with started to get to me, and when our employer gave us the option to move away from DGEV and live in efficiency apartments off campus, I jumped at the chance.
So, on Saturday, January 9, I packed up all my stuff. And it was a lot of stuff.
This is the amount of luggage I came to DGEV with at the end of July:
A big suitcase, 2 medium-size suitcases, and nothing more. A purse. That's it.
Well, this is what I had when I finished packing on January 9:
Impressive, huh? HOW did I accumulate all that STUFF! But I wasn't alone - the other 8 teachers I moved with had just as much, if not more, stuff - we filled up the back of this truck:
Jennifer trying to smash it down?
Anyway, we got moved in, and I've lived here in my new place for about 6 weeks. We live in Chilgok, and a shuttle picks us up and takes us to work every morning. It's about a 25-minute commute. We leave at 8:00 am and are walking back through our own doors at about 6:40. So it's a long day, but it actually feels shorter to me, since I am truly able to leave work at the office at the end of the day. I thought I'd miss the convenience of being a 3-minute walk from my room, but the extra distance has actually made me a lot happier!
Downtown Daegu is only a 25-minute bus ride from my apartment, and the bus stop is a 3-minute walk away. Chilgok is great, too. In my neighborhood there are a few bakeries, a few juk (hearty porridge, eaten for lunch or dinner) restaurants, and lots of places with barbeque or soup. I can also easily catch a bus to a different part of Chilgok, where there is more shopping and even better restaurants!
This evening I took a few pictures of my apartment. It's really just a room with a bathroom, vestibule, and tiny kitchenette attached. It came furnished, but I added a few lamps and had the landlord remove the hulking TV. I haven't completely finished making it cozy (good home furnishing is SO hard to come by here!), but it's getting close.
Yes, that's a big piece of fabric covering the window. I will eventually fashion the fabric into a couple curtains, but for now it just hangs there to block the light from the love motel next door.
Same room; different direction:
The teeny kitchenette:
As for the neighborhood, it's a sort of seedy part of Chilgok - love motels, sex shops, liquor stores. But not unsafe. Korea is one of the safest places I've ever lived!

A post about eating

2010-02-21T10:32:00.005+09:00

A few weeks ago a group of teachers went to a French restaurant to celebrate Cat's birthday. The food was great and the company was - well, for the most part great, and if not great, entertaining. Leave it at that.
The birthday girl, in her stylish Korean dress (meaning she purchased the dress here, not that the dress is somehow inherently Korean-looking):
I loved Jazmin's sweater. She told me that she stole it from her mom and then asked me to take photos of her looking so good in it.
Blurry Jaz and Naomi looking long-suffering...
Naomi ordered the pork and it came with an adorable pyre of rice:
The menu had a wide selection of tasty apps, salads, soups, entrees, and desserts, and I was looking forward to cobbling together the perfect meal. I was happy to learn that the entrees came with a soup and a dessert. But then I was informed that I did not, in fact, get to choose what soup and dessert I would receive! What's the point of having a variety of soups and desserts on the menu if you're going to force your customers to eat watery minestrone?!?! (I'm sorry that I'm over-punctuating here, but even weeks later, the my annoyance bubbles up when I remember how ridiculous it was.)
Anyway, eventually the waitstaff approached the table and let us know that if we wanted, we could substitute the cream of mushroom soup for the minestrone. I took it!
It was yummy. Crusty croutons, frothy cream, and rich, comforting mushroominess.
Jazmin ordered the soup I really wanted, the French onion. She was kind enough to share. It was bliss.
As an aside, I'll have you know I got through the entire meal without spilling on my silver sweater.
Then my steak came:
It was good, but there weren't enough mushrooms and it wasn't cooked to my order. (I ordered medium-rare; received rare. I know many feel that the cow could be walked to the table and carved directly onto the plate for a delicious steak, but I like it slightly less alive.)
This isn't all meant to be ultra-complainy; I was happy to be there celebrating my friend's birthday in a nice place. But sometimes I get annoyed when I spend so much and don't feel like I got my money's worth. Especially because most of the Korean restaurants I eat at are incredibly cheap and SO filling and delicious.
When I left, $50 poorer, I reflected that I would have rather had Gorilla Burger, which I did, a few nights later...
I didn't eat all of those sandwiches alone; I had help from Naomi and Serg. Best burgers in Daegu, and possibly in all of Korea!

My Germ Mask

2010-02-19T21:18:00.007+09:00

So one of the things that's always confused me is why Koreans are often seen wearing protective face masks. It's something that I have never seen anywhere else that I've lived or traveled, except one time in grad school a Japanese friend came to class with one on when she had a cough. I see Koreans wearing these masks all the time - you can get surgical-type masks, even ones with supposedly advanced filtration technology, and of course, this being Asia, you can also get adorable masks with kitty faces or Sponge Bob or 2N1 (a pop music group) or whatever. I can think of a few reasons people might do this. Perhaps the wearers of these masks are infected with some type of virus and want to avoid spreading their germs. Or perhaps there is a nasty bug going around and folks want to avoid infection. There were certainly more masks on the streets than usual last fall, during the multiple H1N1 scares here.
I personally think these masks seem pretty useless to prevent spreading infection. It seems that they'd just trap warm air and germs, and be like a little petri dish right next to your face. Maybe I'm wrong about that; what do I know? But until Koreans start WASHING THEIR HANDS WITH WARM WATER AND SOAP, I don't wanna hear bullshit about how masks are keeping them healthy.
Anyway, today, this happened:
I assure you, there is a logical explanation!
Well, sort of.
For like the 12th time since I moved here, I have a cold. The students and their viruses - what can I say? So I'm sneezy, congested, and snotty, and my nose is sore and sensitive, and the cold air was really hurting my nostrils. I was constantly holding a tissue to my face, or my scarf, or my shirt, just to breathe into it to have some warm air, and then it struck me, that that is why so many people wear those stupid masks! So I bought a couple at a convenience store where I was picking up some ice cream and immediately put it on. And the thing is, it totally works. I can breathe warm, moist air, and it makes my nose feel a lot better. So it might be Germapalooza by my mouth, and as my friend Ivan tells me, I look like I am wearing underwear on my face, but it's a great temporary solution for my tender honker. Plus, now when I cough or sneeze in public I don't get as many dirty looks because I'm wearing a mask. (Or perhaps I can't see the looks because this thing hampers my peripheral vision. Enh, same diff.)
Obviously, though, I wash my hands with soap more than ever!

Updated paint job on our plane

2010-02-17T19:51:00.004+09:00

In this post, you could see that the DGEV airplane was surrounded with scaffolding because it was being painted. A few weeks after, they did finish the job and remove all the scaffolding, and many of the housekeepers who work here (we call them the "ajuumas", which is a not-impolite term for older women) all came out to clean up the mess left by the painters. I thought it was a cute scene, them milling about in their little blue jackets, so I took a few photos.

Nice paint job - too bad someone doesn't know how to spell....

2009-09-07T20:10:00.010+09:00

Korea has a professional baseball league, and we have gone to see two games in Daegu. The Daegu team is the Samsung Lions. In the US, teams are typically branded based on their city, not their sponsors, but here, teams are identified almost exclusively by their sponsors: LG, Kia, Hyundai, Samsung, etc.. Even though Samsung is a huge company, their stadium is kind of dinky. We arrived very early for the first game and picked up fried chicken sold to us by screaming vendors in front of the stadium.

The Samsung team has 4 mascots and 4 cheerleaders, from what we saw. The mascots are hilarious lions; two that are apparently female and two that are male. They prance around the field, mostly punching and kicking each other, which Koreans think is hilarious.
Kids watching the mascots:
The mascots came out at one point with pictures of the cheerleaders attached to their faces, and proceeded to strip out of their lion costumes, to tanktops and bike shorts, and do a racy dance.
It was hilarious, and I caught it all on video, but I can't figure out how to post it here because it's a huge file.
The cheerleaders stand on a platform in the crowd, and they come out wearing different outfits throughout the game. Things get pretty exciting, especially during the last few innings.
This is a picture of the stadium (see how small it is!) towards the beginning of a game. Many people inflate thundersticks, which are essentially just tubes that you smack together. If you work on your technique, they make a loud cracking sound.
Baseball players stretching out:
I have lots of photos of baseball players stretching out. It's fun to see what the zoom on my camera can do!
Michael, Naomi, and I before the first game we saw:
And Miguel, Naomi and I before the second ...:
...and Antonio, Sergio, and Michael - we were sitting in the front for this game, right by the fence and just past third base:
... sitting this close to the field, we could see lots of the baseball players warming up before the game. One of the players:
....was obviously not Korean. The old zoom lens came in handy again!
Michael called him over and he kindly obliged. His name is Gary Glover and he's played for the major leagues in the US for about 8 years. More recently, he's played for Japanese and Korean teams. He plays for the SK Wyverns now, so he isn't a Samsung Lion, but this didn't stop dozens of kids from descending upon us when they saw that one of the baseball players had come over to sign autographs!

Korean baseball fans have a lot of fun at the games, and we were drawn to this guy, sitting behind us. He was chanting along with all the cheers, enthusiastically. Behold, a rare Korean beer belly:
The Samsung Lions didn't do well at either game I saw.
In the first game, the Kia Tigers scored 10 points in the first 3 innings! The Lions rallied, but couldn't save the game. The second game, the final score was 2-6. I may have to switch loyalty if it continues like this ... I'm a fair weather baseball fan!
What would a game be without some confusing English? This shirt was in front of us at the first game:
....huh??

pre baseball game wandering

2009-08-22T10:51:00.004+09:00

Before going to the baseball game last Sunday, we wandered around Daegu for most of the day. Under much of the city there are underground markets. In one of them, there was a shop selling beautiful hanbok, traditional women's dresses.
We were also amused by this mannequin, sitting in a junkyard, fully dressed.
Here's a video of the street. The buzzing you hear is cicadas - the trees are thick with them and they often drown out the sound of the traffic.

Fun with masks

2009-08-22T10:40:00.003+09:00

Everywhere I go, I see these 1000-Won (less than a dollar) masks. Seemed fun, so I bought a bunch to try with Naomi. They are hilarious.
The assortment:
I went with the pomegranate. It is supposed to control my aging.
It makes a happy face!
So elegant:
Naomi strikes a pose:
The stuff nightmares are made of:
Of course, we walked up and down our hall scaring/annoying people and giggling. After removing the mask, you are supposed to squeeze any leftover "essence" from the pack and apply it to your face and neck. The "essence" is essentially the slime the mask soaks in but we cheerfully obliged. Mostly, I felt sticky and goofy. So yeah, I'll do it again soon!

day off

2009-08-22T10:29:00.004+09:00

This past week, I worked Monday thru Friday, but the week before, I had a Friday to myself. I took the shuttle to Chilguk, enjoyed a cup of coffee and wandered around for the morning.
I was alone on the bus (most everyone else was working at DGEV) so to pass the time I took some photos of the scenery outside. It was a beautiful day.
It is mostly farmland and most of the farming seems to occur under these long sheltered greenhouse things. There are a few on the DGEV land as well.
My delicious Americano, at a local chain called Sleepless in Seattle. It seems that Koreans love their espresso drinks, which is good news for me!
I did not eat here that day, but McDonalds is ubiquitous ....

high-tech toilet

2009-08-13T19:39:00.004+09:00

We passed an LG store while walking around Chilguk and decided to check it out. Lots of fun gadgets, included some high-tech toilet seats that we got a kick out of. The buttons were so confusing! The toilets apparently come equipped with an extra nozzle, which can be aimed, and its pressure adjusted. At least I assume ... I mean, what else could all those buttons do? There was also a button to heat the seat.
I did not whip out my camera and take photos there in the LG store (I'm a classy broad) but then when I used the restroom at the barbecue restaurant, I was thrilled to learn that they had high tech toilets there! Photos had to be taken.
Toilet with the "control panel" at left:
Closeup of the most important buttons:
Maybe I'm just not adventurous enough - I did not try pressing any of the mysterious buttons. But I will ... oh, yes, I will.

mmmm, meat!

2009-08-13T18:59:00.007+09:00

Naomi and I went to a restaurant that I believe could be called a Korean Barbecue (I'll have to check on that). We did not get Bulgogi, a popular spiced meat barbecue dish this time around, but I'm sure we'll go back soon so I can try that, too. This was actually the first time I've had Korean food that wasn't prepared in our cafeteria here. As I had been told many times, the "real thing" is SOOO much better than what we have in our cafeteria!
After we removed our shoes at the door, we were escorted to a private room with a low table and cushions to sit on. In the center of every low table was a hole covered by a metal disk. The owner/manager, who told me to call him An, speaks a little English, and recommended something from the menu that would be good for someone who had never tried that kind of food, so we got that. (Couldn't tell you what it was called; he pointed at some Korean words on the menu, we agreed to the Korean words, and that was it.) Then a different man came and removed the metal disk from the hole and inserted a pan of red-hot coals. He lowered a chimney from the ceiling to suck up the smoke. I was drinking a frothy glass of Hite beer.
Next, a waiter and waitress came to the table with a huge platter of dishes, which they spread out all over the table. There were 3 different types of lettuce-based salads, a small scoop of a potato salad, a few different types of kimchi and pickles, onions soaked in soy sauce with a dollop of wasabi, some random seaweed-type dishes, a bowl of red bean paste, a plate of octopus with cabbage and hot chili sauce, cloves of garlic, and a basket of green leaf lettuce and sesame leaves. It was a spread! A waitress also had a plate of thinly cut steaks, and she cooked them one-by-one on a grate over the coals. (I'm told that often restaurant guests do it themselves, but they probably thought we were too clueless and would set the place on fire! Anyway, it was sweet of them to do that for us, so we could focus on chowing down!) One way to eat the meat is to roll it with various toppings in a green lettuce leaf or a sesame leaf. Yummy!
In the photo below, there pieces of meat cooking (they start with a strip of meat like the one above, and as it cooks, they cut it into smaller pieces with scissors). At the left there are a few salads and watery kimchi of some sort, and on the right there is a sampling of more delicious food!
I love eating meals where you get to try dozens of different things, and this did not disappoint! Here's a shot of my own dish in the center. I had decorated my meat with some garlic the waitress had grilled and onions and wasabi. The garlic, onions, and wasabi were mild so they accented the flavor of the meat perfectly without overpowering it. You can also see the dish of octopus with chili to the left of my dish. I admit that I'm wary of big tentacles of octopus, but I tried one piece. It was so drenched in chili, there wasn't much else to taste.
After the meal, they took the coals away and covered the hole back up. We got some "popinsue" (sorry, I don't know how to spell it, but that's how it sounds!) for dessert.
It's a sort of strange dish - it's shaved ice with fruit cocktail, red beans, rice gluten nuggets (sort of taste like marshmellows) and a little yogurt. It's COLD and sweet and was pretty good!

Pet Store!

2009-08-13T18:52:00.002+09:00

I have been teaching in the Pet Store "situational" since last Saturday. I had a day off on Sunday, and also get a day off tomorrow. The classes this week have been GREAT - only a few minor behavior problems, and really fun students. Their English level is low, but I'm getting better at running the class to scaffold their learning. It's going well!
One of the activities I do is a scavenger hunt, which allows the kids to pick up and play with the animals while also filling out a worksheet. Here's a photo of some of the more adorable kids, hard at work ...

Good clean fun on Saturday night!

2009-08-09T09:54:00.004+09:00

After my nightmare last-class-of-the-day on Saturday, I relaxed in my room for a while, and then a group of friends and I caught the 6:10 shuttle into Daegu. We stopped first at some ATMs on the campus of Yeungjin College, which is the University that runs DGEV. It's a beautiful campus, but I didn't get any photos of it.
We walked to a bowling alley, here are shots of me, Naomi and Antonio on the street, and the street itself. I hadn't been in this area of Daegu before; it was pretty hoppin'.
We passed a medical clinic, and I was surprised to see patients walking around on the street in their hospital PJs (no open backs, thank goodness), including one who was dragging his IV around with him! My companions informed me that this was completely normal.
I liked my shoes at the bowling alley, they were pretty awesome. I probably should have put both on before I took this picture, but I got excited about the one shoe I had put on.
I bowled well, for me! My first game I scored 126 points! The bowling alley had 8 or 10 lanes, and the rest were occupied by Korean men who meant business. They probably weren't expecting our ragtag group to come in!
That's Lauren, Chris, Jazmin, Naomi, and Michael.
After bowling we went out and wandered around. Someone wanted Indian food, so we went to a touristy restaurant. The food was delicious, and I had my first Korean beer to wash down my very spicy Masala. Hite makes a lager and a stout - I didn't try the lager but the stout was not bad at all!
And here's a shot of the street at night.

First class ...

2009-08-09T09:37:00.004+09:00

I found out on Friday afternoon that I would be teaching my first class on Saturday morning. Yep, plenty of time to get a lesson together! I was to teach four classes in the Pet Store situational room, and the students were all part of a one-day field trip to DGEV. I didn't know their ages, behavioral problems, or language level ... we sort of fly blindly into these things.
I prepared a lesson plan for the 70-minute class with about 2 hours worth of activities - always good to overplan these things! The students for the first period were 40 minutes late, which was nice ... a good short class. They were excited to play with the animals, and seemed to enjoy the scavenger hunt. After that, a DGEV staffer approached me and told me that my second class was canceled. Off the hook until after lunch!
The first class after lunch was still pretty good. 70 minutes is a long time (and usually, the classes are 90 minutes!!) but I filled it up. My last class of the day was the nightmare class. It was filled with LITTLE kids - Not the 9-11-year-olds from other classes, but probably closer to 5-6 years old. Twenty-one of them! There were a couple older students there, too, but they were sort of trouble makers. I ended up kicking one of them out of the class. Although I had overplanned my lesson, it was still contingent upon the kids at least being able to write English letters ... these kids couldn't! I had to wing it, and then I finally gave up and just let them play with the animals.
Here, some shots of the pet store. The walls make it sort of a strange room to be in, but it's nice and green. They tried to match some of the fake plants in the store with the plants in the photo on the wall, which is a cool effect, but after the last class, most of the fake plants were strewn across the floor.
Pet Store seems to be one of the more popular situationals - at least there are toys to play with! And it was one of the classes I had observed, so I had some idea of how it could be planned. It could have been worse. All in all it was an OK first day!

Nori Bong

2009-08-09T09:17:00.004+09:00

This being Asia, Karaoke is a very popular thing. Instead of drinking until you have the courage to sing in front of a bar full of strangers, here you can rent private karaoke rooms (Nori Bong) for you and your friends. Of course here at DGEV, we have 3 Nori Bong for the students to use, but we teachers are also free to enjoy ... the first time I was invited to Nori Bong, on Tuesday or Wednesday, I was very apprehensive, but it ended up being fantastic! So we went back again on Friday, and I took a few photos.
Our favorite room has darker wallpaper with a bit of a swanky safari feel.
This is Antonio, who sings a lot of Coldplay and Sting. The picture is a little blurry, but you can see the TV and the awesome disco light above.
The TV just plays random Korean pop videos while you're singing your song, at least for the English songs. I don't know if it's more accurate when you sing Korean songs, in terms of matching the video to the song. But the Korean videos are entertaining. They typically involve tragic love-lost type of plots.
We spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get the disco light to work ... finally, we gave up and started singing, which is when we realized that the light goes on when the music starts! I used the "slow synchro" setting on my camera to take these shots, which is why they're blurry but the lights came out really well. Here you can see Jim and Jennifer waiting their turn.
This is Michelle ... she gets really into singing the songs. I think here she was doing "Don't Turn Around" by Ace of Base.
I haven't gone to a real Nori Bong in Daegu yet, but it's only a matter of time!

Confusing graphic...

2009-08-07T14:08:00.002+09:00

Confusing signage in all the elevators at DGEV ... i suppose that the first one means "no leaning on the door"; the third one is "don't stick your hands between the doors" (maybe?) ... but the one with the yellow background seems really terrifying, yet I don't know what it could mean!

Where is that poor individual falling from? There appears to be a chute high on the wall that he slipped out of, to fall on the floor and crack his head.
The simple solution is to ask a Korean the next time there is one who could explain ... but I prefer to be bemused and amused.

airplane shots

2009-08-06T08:05:00.003+09:00

Here are two photos that I took from the "sky lounge" - it's a teachers' lounge that's above the dorm rooms and higher than just about everything else. In this first one, you can see the pyramid, the Creativity building, and the Main building in the distance.

This is another shot of the airplane, surrounded by scaffolding. Since I took this photo, they've draped the entire thing in blue and white tarp ... and now the workers are gone and it's just sitting there ... presumably it'll get repainted some day.

DGEV grounds

2009-08-02T15:32:00.008+09:00

I walked around outside the other day and took a few photos of the buildings and the grounds. There are essentially 4 buildings here: The Main building, the Creativity building, the Situational building, and the dorms. All the buildings except the Main building are connected by hallways underground, but because these passages are all completely functional, there's no clear delineation from one building to the next. One minute you're strolling past the laundry room in the dorm building, and the next thing you know you're in the cafeteria, which is in the situational building.
In this picture, you can see the Creativity building. The playground is in front of it, and a nice little gazebo.

I took this shot a little closer to the Creativity building, and the Main building is visible on the right. There are lots of beautiful flowers here, though it has been mostly hazy weather.

Here's a closer shot of the main building and the flowers in front of it. You can't see it in this photo, but there is a cool fountain in front of the building that actually starts at the top of the steps.

Turning around from the place where I took the picture of the main building, you can see the Situational building (sort of) at the right, and the dorms at the left. The glass pyramid in front is at the center of a cul-de sac, and serves as a skylight for a large round area below. That round area is where most of the situational rooms are. I don't have photos of the situationals yet, but they are the areas that are set up for hands on learning: a grocery store, police station, post office, gift shop, et cetera. They are all arranged around the central, sky lit area under this pyramid.

Looking to the left of the Situational building, you see the DGEV airplane, which is currently being painted and that's why it's surrounded by scaffolding in this photo. Its nose is pointing toward the situational building. Since it's being painted, I really haven't gotten to check it out.
Behind the airplane are the dorms. The brick rooms with balconies are teachers' dorms (mine is on the other side of the building) and the yellow building beyond is where the students stay. The grounds beyond that are more gardens and ponds, and way off in the distance is greenhouses where they grow lettuce and maybe some other vegetables for the cafeteria (though I've only had lettuce, so far).

If you click this link you can see an aerial rendering of the village with the Main building on the right, the dorms on the left, and the pyramid more or less in the center. There is an extra building shown between the Main building and Creativity building that hasn't materialized yet, but apparently it's in the works.

First Post!

2009-08-02T10:36:00.007+09:00

Daegu English Village (hereafter DGEV) is about a 30 minute drive outside of Daegu, in a little valley surrounded by trees. It seemed completely dead when I arrived, around 10:00 PM on Friday. Not having slept for 30 hours, finally being able to hit my bed was a wonderful prospect, but Saewon, who had picked me up, insisted on showing me lots of stuff and taking me around first.
On Saturday, I woke up early and immediately rearranged my room and unpacked my stuff. This is a shot of my dorm room:

At lunch, I met several fellow teachers. I decided to take the shuttle into Daegu with a coworker named Naomi. The ride all the way into town took about an hour and ended at Dong-A department store. It was several floors of clothes, housewares, shoes, accessories, and cosmetics - fun but expensive! On each floor there were many salespeople, more than you'd think would be necessary, who were ready to help. I relied on Naomi, who's been in country for about a month, to greet folks and ask questions while I just looked around. The basement of the store had a bustling food court and grocery store. I had a great time checking that place out. There were people offering samples of food on every aisle, which was tasty. I really loved the produce department; its standouts were huge stacks of bundled seaweed and more different types of mushrooms than I've ever seen!
After we had our fill of wandering around in Dong-A, we set out to look around the neighborhood a little more. This was at the heart of Daegu and it was Saturday, so the streets were packed, mostly with young people. We walked down narrow streets of cramped shops, and even found a Senegalese guy selling jewelry and drums. I think I really freaked him out when I started speaking Wolof to him! We had delicious Pho at a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. The shuttle back to DGEV picked us up a little after 9. It was a different bus than the one we rode in on - it was decorated with scalloped panels of red brocade on the windows that had pom-poms and little gold tassels. There were green and gold lights running above the seats and a pink light running above the aisle. Deluxe!
This is an instruction page I found attached to my chair. It's a reeeeally dangerous chair, I guess.