Konglish Jokes

I made up some Konglish jokes. They will only be funny if you understand and can read a bit of Korean, and also if your standard for humor is extremely low. I have been testing these on my classmates for the past week and they all want me to shut up. :)

1. What country do all the dogs come from?
개나다

2. What did the annoyed mother tell her annoying baby?
아이고!

3. What is a shepherd's favorite number?
십

4. Looking at a map of Asia, if China is a dragon, what is 한국?
꼬리야

5. What do people get at the post office every day?
매일

6. How does a cow apologize?
소 소리

7. What does oil do to bugs when you fry them in it?
기름

8. What hairstyle do you get if you want to look like the US President?
오파마

9. Where do you go if you want to put a new building in the middle of Busan?
부동산

10. What do you call a movie about rice cakes?
떡큐멘타리

Extra credit! A Japanese joke: What did the one cat say to the other after it took its food?
내 거!

Scenes from a Boat

The slow boats of the Mekong in Laos.

Day 7 (Jan. 30): I'm on a boat (!) in Laos.
Here's a short and sweet account of the day I spent riding a boat down the Mekong for six hours. I arrived at the pier in Huay Xai not too long before the boat left (the lack of scheduled departure time notwithstanding, everyone "knows" you should get there before 11am), so I just took the first seat I saw available. Fortunately for me, it wasn't one of the minivan carseats crammed into rows along the length of the boat, but part of a pair of minivan carseats set facing one another. This meant more legroom for me and the three others with me, although anyone who walked down the aisle of the long and narrow boat had to step over our legs. Anyway, what made it fortunate was that I got to spend the entirety of my trip getting to know three very fun and interesting folks: Greg, Corine, and Ian.

Probably not the most flattering photo of them, but +1 for capturing personality and +1 for mangosteens!

The latter two were friends traveling together; both are from England, but Ian teaches English in Malaysia while Corine teaches English in Japan. They were extremely pleasant to talk to and joke around with. Corine in particular was one of the funniest people I've ever met. She had a tendency to say pretty much anything that came to mind, without filtering it or even subconciously judging the conversational environment for relevance. This led to quite a few hilarious non sequiturs, which I remember for their hilarity rather than their actual content. Corine and Ian had a good rapport: she would talk, and he would explain, and they played off each other quite well.

Even better, though, was the discovery that both of them loved to play word games! I was reading a book at some point in the mid-afternoon when I saw them get out paper and pens and begin playing Boggle. "Genius!" I thought. You don't need the letter cubes to play; you can simply think of random letters and write them down, et voila. Noticing my obvious interest, they invited me to play the next few rounds, and the epic Mekong Boggle Tournament was born. Well, it wasn't that epic. But it was loads of fun. I had my books and my camera, but playing word games with new friends was the absolute best way to pass the time.

A monk on a riverbank.

As for Greg, he lands squarely in the top 10 list of Most Interesting People I've Met. He's a 교포, half-Korean and half-White American, and -- surprise -- he teaches English in Korea! That was a good jumping off point, but Greg is the kind of person who probably doesn't need to have anything in common with you to engage you in some serious talk about anything. With tons of travel experience, he had a lot of great advice for the rest of us on getting around Laos. In fact, he could speak Lao and bits of Thai, because he'd been going back to the country regularly for the past ten years or so.

The more I talked to Greg, the more impressive his story got. He held very strong opinions against America, capitalism, and technology, explaining that he'd found the quiet and laid-back modus vivendi in parts of South America (Guatemala) and Southeast Asia (Thailand and Laos) to be a much more human way to live. He even told us about the family he'd sort of "adopted" since his first visit. There's a single mother with five children who lives in a tiny village perched on the banks of the Mekong; after meeting her and her family for the first time about a decade ago, he has returned a dozen times with gifts, living necessities, photographs, and a genuine offer of friendship. In turn, he has become a part of the family. I'll write more about this later, but suffice it to say that as I got to know Greg on the boat, I realized I was talking to someone quite unlike anyone I'd ever known.

So that's how I spent the boat ride: making new friends, taking photos of the pretty (if repetitive) scenery, reading, napping, and avoiding the overpriced snacks. Here are some of those photos:

It wasn't just a boat for tourists; we stopped periodically to take on more passengers and cargo.

Lovely natural scenery along the Mekong. It's dotted with villages, and more roads are being built, but for the most part, it's just brown water, green trees, and blue sky.

And this is what everyone on the boat tends to look like after six hours... ("Ugh get me off")

Me in Pakbeng in the late afternoon! Fog is already starting to roll in.

Our boat arrived in Pakbeng shortly before 5pm. I found Jesse again, who had teamed up with Chris, a guy I vaguely remembered from the hostel in Chiang Mai, and the three of us found a guesthouse in the Podunk of Laos. I have no travel recommendations for Pakbeng: every guesthouse is basically the same -- cheap and spare, but comfortable -- and the restaurant food is all overpriced, but what can you do? There's nowhere else to go. The locals here are smart. I enjoyed dinner, anyway, and we spent our evening quietly; I taught Jesse and Chris how to play Big 2, tried my first Beerlao (which is just as good as it's hyped up to be), and fought a losing battle with the "free WiFi" that is advertised in every building. As if!

I bought a sausage from this smiling lady whose grill was billowing smoke so thick it stung my eyes.

Spiderboy playing with fire, quite literally.

The next stop was supposed to be Luang Prabang, the most beautiful city in the country. Instead, my next would turn out to be a tiny village perched on the banks of the Mekong...

Marxism

A few things happened today that would have astounded me when I first began teaching, but after a year and a half of experience with the Korean school system, I hardly batted an eyelash.

First, my schedule changed. This was completely expected; my class schedule is adjusted several times in the beginning of the semester, and then once more towards the end of the year once most of the second-year students have been admitted to various universities. Instead of teaching each of the four second-year homeroom classes once a week, I will be teaching one section of the early-admitted students five times a week. I did the same thing last year, and it was actually quite fun. Being able to see my students every day and to build lessons upon other lessons (the way I was taught English and French in high school) was a positive change that yielded some good results. What's different this time around, though, is that there are more students who have been accepted to university, so although my section is currently about twenty-five students, it's going to continue to grow as more admissions decisions are announced. Eventually, my class will either become too large to hold in a classroom and we will move into the small auditorium, or I will have to take over two sections, which will mean five more classes per week. We'll see how that turns out.

The second thing that happened was unprecedented and slightly unwelcome, but not at all surprising. I was looking forward to teaching the third-years again after the schedule change, but it looks like I won't be doing that. Instead, however, I was informed right after lunch today that the head teacher of the third grade wanted all his students to be administered speaking tests (sort of like a short oral exam) by tomorrow. Again: he wanted all the students to take a speaking test in twenty-four hours. I haven't even been teaching the third-years all semester! What the heck was I supposed to test them on? I argued a bit with the co-teacher who relayed this message to me, protesting that the idea was absolutely ridiculous and that there was no way for me to make this fair for my students. Apparently, though, there was some deadline for grade submissions that the head teacher had to meet (and had probably forgotten about until today), so the tests had to be this week at the latest. I managed to push it back to Thursday -- the day of the 수능, by the way, which a few of my students are taking -- and then threw together an assignment and rubric to guide the students as they prepared for what I hope will be the easiest 3-minute conversation with Andrew ever. I'm so sorry to drop such a load of bricks on my students' heads, especially because I really like my third-years and it's completely unfair to do this to them... but what else can I do?

Lastly, a funny story: every student was called to the auditorium today for a hastily-announced assembly on school violence during fifth and sixth periods. Consequently, my afternoon classes were canceled. I found out, however, that there was an ulterior motive to the assembly. As our vice principal lectured for two hours about nothing, essentially, the homeroom teachers and class captains went through every student's locker and dorm room to look for prohibited items (like snacks, electronic devices, pets, etc.). The second- and third-year students totally saw it coming, but my first-years were in for an unpleasant surprise. My co-teacher confiscated a few granola bars and brought them back to his desk. I thought the whole thing was hilarious, but also just a bit unethical. What about students' rights? I suppose they're waived when they decide to enter a school with a reputation for being like a prison. (I mean that in jest!)

Ah, the vagaries of Korean education. It's funny how lightly I can take all of this when the hyper-task-oriented and inflexibly organized me from one year ago would have taken the collapse of his meticulously-planned curriculum, the delivery of one shiny new pile of extra work, and the flagrant disregard for privacy with utter alarm. On the contrary, teaching here has never ceased to entertain. This is just one of the many reasons why I love my school and my job.

P.S. The title of this post comes from class today, when I played the "Six Degrees of Separation" game with my students. They had to link two random words using semantic associations with other words, like: Roy Kim/music/iPod/Apple/fruit/Jamba Juice, connecting the singer to the smoothie. I challenged my students to come up with the most difficult words they knew, and long story short, one poor student ended up having to connect "Marxism" with "anthocyanin". Those nerds. I love them.

Trash and Taboo

I embarrassed one of my students to near humiliation the other day. Oops.

Here's what happened, in the present progressive: So I'm telling one of my second-year classes about their speech tests, which is visibly boring them. I think to myself: well, they have a worksheet with good directions on it, and they've done this before, so let's just speed through the rest of this stupid lecture and play a game. (It's also been kind of an off week for me, since my teaching schedule was changed, again... with any prior notice, again...)

So I whip out the deck of Taboo cards that I brought from home but have never used in class before (shoutout to Jen, Rebekah, and Irene for helping me choose the most ESL-friendly!) and make up a sort of charades-Taboo-mashup game right on the spot. Some of my students have fairly low vocabularies, so I allow them to act out the words on the cards as well as use language -- English only -- to describe them.

The first few rounds go by just fine, and the class is finally beginning to wake up, thanks to their ever-competitive spirits. And then it's MC's turn. He's generally quiet in class, but I know he's not shy, because he's pretty boisterous when it's just him and friends, no intimidating foreign English teacher in sight. MC's been getting into the game and goes up for his turn with confidence.

I show the representatives of both teams the card: "trash". As it's a Taboo card, there are other words below it, but we ignore these. MC looks at it and nods, and his competitor from the other team immediately starts miming crumpling up paper and tossing it, or something like that.

MC decides to go verbal. He uses his hands to mimic a pile of something, and calls out, "Ga-bee-jee".

My ears perk up. What was... did he just say galbi jjim (갈비찜, steamed short ribs)?

"No Korean!" I warn him.

In an instant, the entire classroom has erupted in laughter. I'm confused for just a moment, and then I lock eyes with MC, who looks completely stupefied, and realize... Oh. He meant to say "garbage".

Moments later, the opposing team gets the word and the point. MC walks dejectedly back to his seat, but the class is still giggling uncontrollably and it actually takes a minute to get them settled again. I apologize profusely before turning to the board and writing "GARBAGE" in big letters. Anything can be turned into a lesson: time for some pronunciation practice, class!


P.S. So-called "proper" English pronunciation is a tricky subject, one that I don't think I'll delve into much, but I'm not the only Fulbright teacher whose misadventures with misunderstood words has turned into a teaching moment. I present to you: Samantha Teacher, whose blog you should read because it's great!

Reunion: Fall Conference 2012 (pt. 2)

You could also call this the Group Photo Post. Last weekend's conference was a fantastic time of reuniting with all of our friends after seven weeks of being apart. Of course, I've traveled to other cities and I've seen tons of other Fulbrighters; I may be the only one in my city, but I'm not as isolated as that. Nevertheless, for everyone to get back together was really something. When we were all gathered in the main conference room, I was taken aback at our numbers. In one large room were represented dozens of cities and over one hundred and twenty different schools, families, and experiences. This amounted to thousands of stories to share.

Contacting the night away! Left to right: Ashley, Sarah, Thomas, Kelly, Sara, and Erin.

On the first evening, a bunch of folks decided to walk around the Bomun Lake (보문호수), the large reservoir central to the tourist resort area where our conference was held. We got drinks and chocolate and, braving the nighttime autumn chill, sat on a pier by the lake and talked and played games. Contact -- my favorite game ever -- was the order of the evening. I love a good two hours of Contact. I mean, not even that, I love a good two hours of speaking quickly and fluently in English with my friends. A nice break from the Korean and intermediate-level English that surrounds me in the classroom every day. And on top of that, a word game that gives your language faculty a run for its money! Kelly perhaps described it best when she said that it felt like her brain was being massaged.

한우, Korean beef grilled over charcoal. The cuts were twice as thick as what I usually see at barbecue restaurants!

On Saturday evening, a group of us got adventurous and went out to get Korean barbecue. Fortunately -- or unfortunately, depending on how you view the situation -- we chanced across a nice-looking restaurant: 강산한우. I wasn't aware of this when we walked in, but 한우 (hanwoo) means Korean beef. Korean beef is really, really expensive. And sure enough, this restaurant turned out to be a wallet breaker. But was it worth it? The small cuts of meat that we got (10,000₩ per 100g) were delicious; juicy steak grilled over pure charcoal, along with tons of garlic, mushrooms (as much as we wanted), and a variety of 반찬. Mhm, there's no denying that it was an excellent meal, surpassing the quality of most of what I eat these days. On the other hand, I've also been stuffed to satisfaction at barbecue joints to the tune of 5,000₩, whereas this tourist trap restaurant, which charged extra for rice and even for setting up our table and grill (who does that?!), landed us with a bill of 20,000₩ per person. I'd pay $18 for that in the States, no sweat, but in Korea? Hmph. I'll say it was worth it, but I don't think I'll be treating myself to 한우 again soon...

The adventurous group that shelled out for some mad-expensive and supremely delicious Korean beef barbecue. Left to right: Kelly, Ashley, Jason, Katelyn, Ben, Tsu, Nina, Elaine, and me. (taken by Neal)

After the meal, everyone was stuffed -- almost uncomfortably so -- which called for a night-time stroll around the lake. I took photos and played with long exposure...

Katelyn, Ashley, Ben, Kelly, and Jason at Bomun Lake in Gyeongju. Jason likes his ice cream.

And that evening ended in a great Bananagrams and Pirate Scrabble marathon, during which I continued to fend off Ashley's attacks on my claim as Bananagrams Boss and Pirate Scrabble Captain and generally had a blast.

What I liked the most about this reunion was that all of us Fulbrighters could basically pick up exactly where we left off at the end of Orientation, which strangely seems like it was simultaneously very long ago and just yesterday. Only now in addition to our crazy antics and long chats about our lives back home, we have stories to tell of our students' crazy antics and long chats about our lives right now. Over all the meals, throughout all those long hours just chilling, between games of Bananagrams, the conversation continued unbroken, and, well, I guess it was telling of just how wonderful it was to be together again.

The wonderful 인터미디엇 (촣아, 촣아, 촣아!) class reunion photo. Left to right: me, Lizzie, Tracy, Jaeyeon, Susie, Amber, Soon, Monica, and Kyla. Missing: Kelly, Megan, and Ashley, who wandered off early :(

Dinner with the 선생님s

I don't know if I've mentioned this in earlier posts, but one thing that's been making Korean classes a bit more awkward than they already are (picture a class of eleven females and one male, and two female teachers) is the fact that I am my class' 반장 (banjang). This roughly translates to "class captain", and it means that I have some classroom responsibilities (erase the chalkboard, for example). I also was in charge of planning an evening outing with our two teachers. Let me add that I didn't volunteer to be captain... I was nominated against my will and won an election in which I didn't want to run. Oh well, that's what I get for being an awkward minority!

Anyway, yesterday the Intermediate class skipped mediocre Jungwon University dinner and went into town to find a good 냉면 (naengmyeon, Korean cold noodles) place. Tracey suggested a good restaurant, but when we arrived there it was unexpectedly closed. Luckily, Kim SSN (short for seon-saeng-nim, which means "teacher") knew of another cold noodle restaurant just around the corner, so there we went.

Goesan is a tiny city with hardly anything in it, but one essential that it does not lack is restaurants. I think my favorite is still the Chinese restaurant called Shanghai that has 자장면. But until yesterday, I'd never tried 냉면 before, so I was excited.

My first 냉면!

The photo on the left is of my huge bowl of Korean cold noodles, 냉면. It was... not what I expected, to be honest. The beige-ish stuff in the bowl is ice and slush, and the noodles are in the dark brown pile beneath radishes, peppers, a boiled egg, and assorted green things. Cold noodles are vegetarian, and mildly spicy.

I was eager to try the bowl -- it was fairly large --but the slimy texture and slight tang from vinegar surprised me. I think I had envisioned something more like Japanese chilled soba noodles. But it wasn't bad at all! I finished my bowl (except for the slush) and even tried a bit from my friend's 비빔 냉면 (bibim naengmyeon), which is just cold noodles without the slush and with a lot more spicy sauce.

During the meal, I didn't have much to say. This is mostly due to the fact that my Korean is still conversationally poor. I did, however, ask about the other section that our SSNs teach -- the Advanced class. I'd heard that when the other class took our SSNs out to dinner earlier this week, the most lively topic of conversation was my own class. So I intended to return the favor and get all the latest juicy gossip about them... alas, I didn't receive very much for my efforts. Besides other students, we talked about Kim SSN's love life, Chinese, the upcoming ETA talent show, and aegyo (I'll explain that one later).

After dinner, we went for dessert at Tous Les Jours. "뚜레쥬르" is a Korean bakery and cafe chain that has arguably the best 팥빙수 (patbingsu, or shaved ice dessert) in Goesan. We got three flavors: blueberry (블루베리), green tea (녹차), and original red bean (with 떡!)

Tous Les Jours 팥빙수! Blueberry, green tea, and original red bean.

They were absolutely delicious, and incredibly 달아요, or sweet. I finished all the slush from every bowl! However, I'm going to have to say that Taiwanese 剉冰 and 雪花冰 (shaved ice and shaved snow) beat patbingsu by leagues. I was really craving some 玉井-style mango shaved ice, but really, sweet dessert and good laughs with friends and my Korean teachers made it a great evening nonetheless.

Not everyone in our class could even fit inside the tiny cafe seating section of Tous Les Jours. From left to right: myself, Kelly, Tracey, Lizzie, Kim SSN, Amber, Hong SSN, and Monica. (photo taken by Jaeyeon)

P.S. While walking back to campus, we were playing Contact, but I felt bad because our teachers weren't able to play with us. So, we learned a Korean word game instead! I was instantly hooked, of course, because I love word games more than any other kind of game. It turned out to be a word-chain game that I've played in Chinese class before: one person starts by saying a two-syllable word, the next person comes up with a second word that starts with the final syllable of the previous word, etc. In English, this might be like playing the last-letter game, but in languages like Korean and Chinese, syllables (or morphemes) are easier to work with than "letters". Here's an example of one of our word chains: 기사 --> 사과 --> 과일 --> 일요일 --> 일번. (Translation: article, apple, fruit, Sunday, Japan) It was tons of fun!