About cyberclasses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!