A Walk to Work...

Today, I decided to take pictures of all the the random stuff I see on my way to work everyday. My apartment is a 15 minute walk from the school. I think I've mentioned before that Koreans love English and use it quite a bit but most of the time it is not grammatically correct and doesn't make sense. There are many times when I find myself thinking way too hard about what they are trying to advertise and how exactly they came up with that combination of words. You can click on the photos to see them in their original size.


So here it is. They'll be many more of these posts to come.





Toilet seat display outside a store. These toilet seats have warmers and bidets.

Yes, this store has a "Fashion Address."

Korean Gas Station

The pumps come from the ceiling. See them hanging?

This is a advertisement for a photographer's shop. Mixing French and English bad combination. It says, "Petit Diable. if only we could see what baby sees. if only we could hear what baby hears. if only we knew what baby knew. then the problems of the world wouldn't hold us down." Wow, those babies must really know something the rest of us don't.

An entire store dedicated to rice cookers.

One of the many hardware stores on this street. Look at the beautiful paint in the front window.

One of the bigger hardware stores.

Troy. The bar. What more could you ask for?

The lumber yard. The product is just sitting out on the sidewalk.

Another hardware store with gigantic sliding windows.

Umm...organized chaos.

Your dinner is swimming around in the tanks outside. Probably some of the freshest seafood you'll eat. By the way, it's delicious and cheap!

The clams, mussels, and their other shell friends.

Anyone need some hose? I think this is a version of a hardware store. It seems to sell large quantities of stuff like hose and chain.

It is pretty common practice for restaurants in Korea to put pictures of the animal they serve on their sign outside. Why wouldn't you want to see the animal you're about to eat jumping out of the ocean or running in the farm yard?

Beerseason anyone?

One of like fifteen animal hospitals in the neighborhood and yes it's called Zoo Zoo Puppy.

The yellow sign on top says, "Computer, Imagineer, Graphiss." Umm....okay?

One of the many camping/hiking stores. Hiking is a sport in this country. I love riding the subway on the weekend and seeing the little old men and women with their hiking poles and matching outfits. Yes, there are outfits to go hiking in.

Recycling is a big deal here.

A Weekend in Seoul

Fire Breathing Dragons

This elephant even trumpeted as he carried Buddha down the parade route. (Yes, I had to google the sound elephants make).

I've managed to make some Korean friends which is extremely helpful. I spent Saturday with them. We went to Saemi's university to some conference she thought was going to be in English. There was only one section that was in English and it was about the "Untranslatability of Poetry." Yawn! Not my type of thing. We did get free lunch though.

We then wandered to a pool hall and met up with our friend Yehwa. Alfred lost four games to us girls which was amazing! The pool hall was pretty relaxed. It was filled with guys playing billiards. I think this was the first time I've seen billiards played. The Koreans told me that guys play billiards in Korea and girls play pool. When then headed to a coffee shop which served "free" cake with your coffee. I had some pretty great chocolate mousse.

Here is where the fun begins. We were talking about playing cards and miraculously I had a deck of cards in my backpack. We started playing poker (not that I really know how to play) and my Korean friends taught me some Korean card games. In exchange, I taught them "B.S." They loved it! Yehwa is horrible at lying so she constantly ended up with most of the cards.

We then moved to Alfred's house where he made us Kimchi Bokkeumbap which is Kimchi Fried Rice. Kimchi is spicy fermented cabbage that Koreans eat with every meal. It's kind of like spicy saurkraut. Alfred's food was delicous! We continued playing card games and Alfred broke out the Korean version of monopoly. I have to say the Korean version is much more fun! The "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards were combined and were called "The Golden Key Cards." I didn't find anything "golden" about them. I think there is more bad cards than good cards in the deck. Anyway, the best property you can buy is Seoul. I wish I would have taken a picture of the game board. Next time I will for sure.

Sunday, I spent the morning doing laundry and hanging out. Alfred and Saemi were in the neighborhood so they stopped by my apartment. Our plan was to sit on my roof and order some food (delivery people will go anywhere in Korea) but it was cold so we decided to leave the neighborhood. We sat out to eat Mexican food at a new restaurant in Jungkuk. It didn't happen as we stumbled upon something even cooler than Mexican food...The Lotus Lantern Festival. This festival celebrates Buddha's birthday.

There was a huge parade with some amazing floats. It took place at night. My camera died shortly after the parade started so I'm a little sad but I'll share the pictures I did take. I experienced even more Korean hospitality. I was standing front and got an excellent view of everything. We were waving at the people walking by and as I've said before most Koreans are amazed by foreigners. I was given two lanterns, candy, and a pin. It was pretty awesome.

This parade definitely puts Denver's parade of lights to shame. There were huge dragons that breathed fired, pigs on motorcycles that shot fire from guns, and LED peacocks that raised and lowered their feathers. Ahh...I'm so mad my camera died! I know you're thinking pigs shooting guns? What does that have to do with Buddha? The answer is, "I don't know." One thing I've come to realize is Korea is pretty random and I think this is just another example of it.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing weekend!

My Students Rock!

As promised, I took pictures of my students. I am only missing one class. As I was looking at the pictures, I realized how much I like them. I caught myself smiling. So without further ado, here they are....



Tuesday Thursday Hi Kids 2-3

Tuesday Thursday Hi Kids 1-7 (They didn't want their picture taken).

Tuesday Thursday Fly High 2-4

MWF Hi Kids 2-1 (They are pretty much my favorite students). I really love both of the boys. The both raise their eyebrows a lot when the speak English. It is super adorable.

MWF Hi Kids 2-1 These kids are really smart and really rambunctious. You can see Ban (the second boy from the right holding up his stack of SLP dollar bills).

The girls. They are so cute!

MWF Hi Kids 2-6

This is my Aim High Junior class. They are the most advanced English speakers at the school.

My Fly High 3-4 class. I love these girls. As you can see, they are a ton of fun.

My Five Year Olds. (Not all of them were here today). These are the kids I see everyday and are my biggest challenge.

I'll end this with another story. Today in my Fly High 3-4 class (which is the three older girls) we were studying past tense and we were using vacations to talk about where we went and what we packed. I asked one of them, "Linda, where did you go on vacation?" She responded, "I went to (some Korean city I haven't heard of) and we stayed at a condom." It took everything I had not to burst out laughing. It was priceless.

Priceless Classroom Moments

I thought I would write a quick blog of my favorite classroom moments so far.

I teach a group of three older girls who have little experience with English but they are very eager to learn and are always asking me questions to improve their vocabulary. They draw pictures on the board and I try to figure out what they are talking about and give them the English word. On one occasion, a girl drew a picture of a stick picture of a person which seemed innocent enough, and then she drew three bubbles coming out of the stick person's back side. She asked me, "Teacher, stomach, (made an sick looking face and pointed at the bubbles), What is this?" I tried to contain my laughter but couldn't. I ended up turning bright red and told her it was called passing gas. I felt like I kind of cheated them by not teaching them "fart" but I didn't want them to go home and tell their parents that is what they had learned in English school that day.



On the other end of the spectrum is my 5 year olds who have been in English school for 2 years and have a pretty great grasp on the language. We teach them from the same books that first graders in America would use. These kids can create sentences and describe the word they are looking for. We had just finished reading "Little Red Hen" and I told them they needed to draw a picture of an animal and write me a story about it. This super cute and smart boy was like, "Teacher what is a pig with horns on his face called?" I told him it was a boar. He then was like, "If my car is hungry, what do I feed it?" as he was patting his stomach. I was confused by this at first but the rest of the kid's assured me this is what he wanted to know. I told him, "You feed your car gas." Then he wanted to know, "Where you feed your car gas?" I told him at the gas station. He wrote this awesome story about a boar who worked at the gas station and how much fun he had it his job. I love this kid. Today, he came to school with his hair permed. I told him I liked his hair and he told me, "I went to the barber and he just made it curly." He cracks me up!


This has story has got to be my all time favorite so far. I was teaching a class of 8 year olds about nationalities. I told them that they are Korean and asked them what my nationality is. One kid told me I was American (good answer, kid) and one kid slipped and told me I was from Africa. I started laughing and told him, Africa are you sure? The smartest kid in the class piped up and was like, "Teacher, you can't be from Africa, you don't have enough melanin in your skin." I wasn't sure I heard him correctly so I made him repeat it and sure enough that is what he had said. I was amazed that he not only used the word correctly but in that context. Some days, I am just utterly amazed.

I'm sure I'll have many more to share with you over the next 11 months. I'll try to take pictures of my students soon and post them.

Korean Healthcare

I had my first experience with a Korean hospital last Friday. The four new teachers all had to go to the National Medical Center to get our health checks which are a required part of our visa. The process went quickly but they definitely don't have Patient Privacy Laws here. The exam rooms for eyes, teeth, blood pressure, height and weight are all open and near the waiting room. There was a big group of high school age girls that were also getting health checks.

Most of the staff spoke enough English to tell us what they were doing to us or what they needed us to do but we had a Korean co-worker there to translate for us just in case. In one room, a lady asked us if we had or ever had various types of diseases. Most of the questions she asked, I had never heard of so I told her no.

To pee in the cup we had to use a non-western style toilet (a/k/a a squat toilet). Not an easy thing! We then carried our samples through the busy hallways to the lab. It was so funny! After we filled our cups we took them to the lab and sat them on a table out in the open (something else that I don't think happens in America). The lady gave us stickers to put underneath our samples and then took three vials of blood. We were then off to the x-ray department to have our chest x-rayed to ensure we don't have tuberculosis.

At the top is a picture of my identification card for this particular hospital. I have no idea what the first line of numbers means. The second line is my first name written in Korean. It doesn't have my last name...very interesting. The last line is my date of birth written year first with a -6 at the end.

We should have the results by the end of the week and then we'll have to send all of our documents to immigration to be processed. After this is completed, we will finally get our alien registration cards. This card acts both as a Social Security Card and a national identification so we don't have to carry our passports with us all the time. This also leads to getting a bank account and other things we all take for granted.

Cherry Blossoms!

Over the past week, I've made some Korean friends that are around my age. Their English is very good and one of them has offered to help me learn Korean. I need to finish teaching myself the alphabet and then I'll set up some time to practice with him. Two of them lived in Florida for a year while in a language exchange program. Another learned English in college and wants to travel but has never been on an airplane. I'm going to try to change this!

On Saturday, Alfred and Saemi took me to Kyung Hee University to see the cherry blossoms. Saemi is a student there. The university was founded in 1949 but it feels much older. The campus is beautiful and the cherry blossoms make it amazing! Check out a few of the pictures. There were many festivities going on. There were people performing Taekwondo and traditional dances among other things. The most amusing performance we found was "The Hip Hop Club" performances. Evidently, The Hip Hop Club is a group on campus who get together and sing hip hop. This was one of the better groups. There was one group where my Korean friends asked me if they were singing English and I told them, "No." They didn't think they were singing Korean either, so who knows what was being sung.

There was also a museum that we walked through that had many artifacts of the many years of Korean history. At one point, there was an entire hallway of paintings that were painted on silk from around 600 B.C. They were amazing. Sorry, I couldn't take pictures there.

I was even approached by a Jehovah's Witness while I was there. She approached Alfred first in Korean and I could tell they were talking about me. I asked him what she wanted and she asked me if she could talk to me. She asked me if I was a foreigner, (Duh!) and told me they were with a group on campus called "Friends for Foreigners." She then asked if I was interested in Bible Study that I could attend in over 160 countries around the world. She then tried to give me the infamous "Watchtower" brochure. I politely told her ,"No" but then I had to try to explain to Alfred what a Jehovah's witness is and what they believe in. Not an easy task!

We also visited Sushi 1000. At this restaurant the sushi was placed on a revolving belt that went by every table in the restaurant. If you saw something you wanted to eat, you just took it off they conveyor belt. The best part is each plate is only 1,000 won ($.70). There were other options besides sushi, like little deserts, Korean rice dishes, tempura, and fruit bowls. It was yummy!

They also took me to get my haircut. The lady did a great job and it only cost me 12,000 won (like $9.00). On a side note, tipping is not customary here. If you tip someone they take it as an insult. Their mindset is that they make good enough money doing whatever it is they do (cutting hair, waiting tables, etc.) that they don't need you to supplement their income. If you try to give them more money, they think you're insulting their chosen profession or taking pity on them for doing the job they have chosen.

I'm looking forward to spending more time with my Korean friends and learning Korean. I'll keep you updated! You can see many more photos of my day in my Picasa web album. http://picasaweb.google.com/christinestroup

Look here in the next few days about my visit to the "Boulder of Seoul."