Surprise! Euna Lee gets a book deal

What a surprise! Eun Lee, one of the journalists captured by North Korea and rescued by Bill Clinton, will write a book about her experience. Her partner in crime, Laura Ling, is apparently already pitching a book with her sister Lisa Ling.

Did anyone NOT see this coming? The fact that these women will profit off of their naive and irresponsible actions strikes me as rather appalling. The only way I could see them justifying their books is if they donate ALL of the proceeds from their sale to organizations working to smuggle North Koreans out of their country. Their original documentary, after all, was supposedly about the plight of these refugees, who spend months or years fighting for their freedom, often only to be recaptured by the Chinese and shipped back North, where a lifetime of labor camps (a fate that Lee and Ling miraculously escaped) awaits them.

More rice cakes!

On Thursday the 3rd grade students will take 수능, the Korean version of the SATs but with a lot more at stake. If their scores aren't high enough, their career options will be limited. Teachers and parents have been swarming to Buddhist temples in recent weeks to pray for their children's success on the exam. Mrs. Yoon, one of my co-teachers and a sometimes-Buddhist, told me that she had never bowed to a statue of Buddha before, and had to look up the procedure online before she visited the temple with her father. I don't know what would happen to her son if she messed up the prayer.

Today everyone in school received sticky rice cakes as a sort of good luck charm for the third graders. The sticky rice is supposed to make good fortune stick to the students so they can enter the university of their choice.

Since Koreans also love to give rice cakes as gifts to celebrate success, I betcha I can guess what will happen after exam results come back and we find out how many students got the grade they were hoping for.

Writing

I had a couple of articles published on Matador Network, an online travel magazine that I've written for before. I'm also an "Expert on Kenya" to provide travel advice for people to the country.

While I don't really like some of the edits they made to my original pieces, that's the price of getting writing published I suppose. I doubt anyone likes seeing their words cut from a page.

The articles are here:

Running Wild with Kenya's Safaricom Marathon
I ran a half marathon in Lewa Conservancy while I was in Kenya with the Peace Corps, and came face-to-face with a zebra in the process. It was one of the coolest races I'm sure I will ever compete in.


What Can Scuba Teach Us About Travel?
Lisa and I were recently SCUBA certified in the Philippines, and I thought the course had some good parallels for travel as well.

Matador Network is very accessible - they publish a lot of reader articles, and make submission guidelines very clear. They also have a "bounty board" of articles waiting to be written. The user community is quite active and diverse, and very supportive of each other. I hate how comments on any other site inevitably devolve into a mass of hate messages. Matador Network seems to be largely free of petty anger incitement, and not because they moderate the messages but because whenever someone posts something derisive, other commenters gently chastise them until they feel bad and apologize. It's quite nice, and funny.

Pocari Sweat

When we first arrived in Korea, and I saw Pocari Sweat on sale in vending machines and convenience stores, I laughed and mocked them and swore that I would never drink it. I tried it once, but the combination of the off-putting name and the fact that it actually looks like bottled sweat was too much for my mind to handle, and I hated it.

After a while, though, if you see something enough it starts to become ordinary. At some point the name of a product just becomes that product and nothing else, and the words don't have any other meaning outside of it.

So it was with Pocari Sweat. Lisa and I both have grown quite fond of it, and drink it regularly after a workout or on a hike. It doesn't have as much sugar as other sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade (both of which are sold in Korea, though only in one flavor) and I have to admit it is quite refreshing.

Swine Flu update

Korea has been taking the threat of swine flu very seriously, especially now that it's showing up in schools. In I-dong High School, at least six first-grade students have left school, allegedly suffering from the virus, though no one can tell me if any of the cases have been confirmed, and students and teachers have expressed an increasing unease. Some of the teachers have complained to me about the principal's lack of urgency on the issue, saying that it seems he is waiting for something serious to happen before he makes any changes.

On Monday this week he announced that night study would be canceled (classes finish around 5pm every day; until 10pm the students are expected to stay at school for one long supervised study period) and students would not change classrooms. During a regular school day, student classes are split into high level and low level students - high level students from different classes are grouped together, and low level share a classroom as well. This week the high and low level students will be in the same classroom, in order to keep them from moving around too much and spreading their germs all over the school.

The administration has also installed hand sanitizing machines in the cafeteria and distributed antibacterial lotion to every teacher's office and classroom. The teachers are checking students' temperature daily with electronic ear thermometers. The regular use of masks in the school has jumped significantly.

One co-teacher informed me this morning that the government is considering shutting down schools nationwide in order to prevent further spread of the disease.

Low Standards: What it takes to be an English professor in Korea

I stumbled across some notes I scribbled at a conference and wanted to put them somewhere I could find them again. So here they are, with some observations. Forgive me in advance for my condescension.

I attended this provincial conference a few months back with my Korean co-teacher. She took me because it was a conference for English teachers, which I am. It turns out that it was for Korean English teachers, which I am not. As a result, over half of the conference was conducted in Korean - only two presenters gave their productions in English: a Korean recently returned from a sponsored trip to London, and an American English "professor" at a local university.

The following are quotes as close to exact as possible that the "professor" made during his presentation on Creative Writing:

"Curb it down." (He must have said this about 37 times. I still don't know what it meant.)

"I can't tell you how to do it. That's your job." (In reference to teaching Creative Writing.)

"Creative writing means no mistakes."

"You have to..." (This is how he began 62% of his statements.)

"Sometimes you have to use negative reinforcement. If a student produces something that doesn't make sense, ask them "Why did you write this?" Then maybe they'll think about it and then write about it."

then, later...

"If a student writes something inappropriate, say "Why did you write this?" That's not positive or negative reinforcement - it's neutral."

"What students think are important." (This was actual text from the PowerPoint presentation he was using - not just a grammatical slip of the tongue.)

"Don't ever put anything nationalistic, like a picture of Lee Myung Bak (Korea's President). I don't put up a picture of Bush."

"Don't ask them to write 'Why I love Korea.' I don't do that to my students."

"Show and tell is never bringing it in and explaining it."

"You have to do everything as they're doing it." (As in, complete every activity along with your students, so they can see that it's important.)

And my favorite nonsensical quote of the day:

"Apply the UPs: 50% loosen up and 50% tighten up. You could go up to 60% tight sometime. You could even do 70%. But 50-50 is the ideal mix."



Leaving the amphitheater was one of those moments when I actually felt dumber than when I went in. I felt sorry for everyone involved. I felt sorry for myself, for being associated with him by virtue of my birth. I felt sorry for him, for having received such a substandard education. Most of all I felt sorry for Korea, for having to put up with people like him.

South Korea upgrading communications with North Korea

I just saw this headline this afternoon; though it was two days old, it was the first I had heard of it. While I suppose a communication infrastructure between the two Koreas is convenient, it hardly seems necessary. Particularly in light of the fact that one of the communication hotlines runs to an unused resort in the North, owned by a South Korean company. The article also snuck in, near the bottom of the page, the revelation that "the rival militaries also share a hotline." Does this seem strange to anyone, for two nations that have technically been 'at war' for the last 50-odd years to be sharing military information?

A Stroke of Luck and a Brick of Rice Cake

My Principal recently became a grandfather, so to celebrate he bought every teacher in the school a package of rice cakes and a bottle of banana milk.

In Korea, rice cake is used in a similar capacity whenever anyone experiences a sudden stroke of luck or joy in their life. If someone gets engaged, we get rice cake. When someone has a baby, we have rice cake. When a student gets into college, their parents make sure we get full on rice cake. Usually it's more than I can really stomach - I mean they give us BRICKS of rice cake. Since I've been here I have probably thrown out a kg of rice cake after getting home from school. I mean, I can't share it with the other teachers - they have their own gigantic lump of rice cake to swallow.

I remember learning several years ago about how when a Japanese golfer hits a hole-in-one, he or she is expected to throw a party and buy food, alcohol, and gifts for pretty much all of their friends and everyone else on the golf course that day. They actually buy hole-in-one insurance to protect themselves against such an unlucky event.

In Korea I haven't heard of anything quite so drastic, but they do have traditions in a similar vein. When you experience good fortune in Korea, you are generally expected to share your happiness with others in the form of gifts (often rice cake). On your birthday, you are expected to buy all of your friends dinner - not the other way around, as most English teachers here are accustomed to doing. When you get engaged, married, have kids, and your kids do well enough to get recognized for something, you show your appreciation for those around you.

Granted, their friends and family will also buy them gifts or give them money to celebrate certain occasions, but the onus generally seems to be on the one celebrating to do the sharing.

As it turns out, either I'm getting more Korean or the rice cake the Principal delivered today is starting to taste a lot better. I'll probably eat the whole package by the end of the day.

Happy Hangeul Day

Today - October 9th - is Hangeul Day (한글날) in South Korea, to mark the creation of the unique Korean written alphabet. Invented in 1443 at the behest of the celebrated King Sejong, hangeul(한글) has become a source of pride for the Korean people. Prior to the dissemination of hangeul to the public, Koreans used borrowed Chinese characters to write their language. It was an unfortunate situation - Chinese was not only notoriously difficult to write; it was also unable to express certain Korean words. As a result, many ordinary Koreans were illiterate, and the ruling class took advantage of the dichotomy to exert power over them. King Sejong's creation of a national, simple written language was widely seen as a gift to the common citizens of the country. He is still a revered figure in Korean history largely because of this contribution.

In honor of the day, Google.co.kr changed their logo accordingly:


This year hangeul is not only celebrating its history - it has an ongoing achievement to celebrate - its advancement outside of Korea! The Cia-cia tribe in Indonesia, lacking a written version, has decided to adopt hangeul to transcribe its spoken language. Next month they plan to open a cultural center to educate the 60,000 tribespeople about their new Koreanized alphabet.

Check out this website for more detailed info on hangeul and its history.

Korean Fire Drill

As opposed to a Chinese Fire Drill,



a Korean Fire Drill is actually a fire drill. It's in capital letters here because it is a pretty damn serious affair. When my co-teacher told me that we would have a fire drill two weeks prior to the date, I wondered about the advance notice. I mean, it takes me two seconds to get ready to evacuate a building. I realize now that the notice wasn't for me, but for the teachers and students who had actual responsibilities during the drill. Setting off the smoke bombs, for instance. Or Hooking up the fire hose to the hydrant out back and spraying down the front of the building. A team of four students ran into the "burning" building and rescued an "injured" student on a stretcher, carrying him to a waiting ambulance. Thirty minutes later, after a frenzy of activity and a speech by the fire chief on our school's performance, we were back in class.

smokin' the kids out of school:

effectively washing the school windows:

you think they'd know the difference if the smoke were real?:

saving the school's important documents:
the fire department expends their water surplus:
his heart! this 16 year old boy is having a heart attack!:

luckily the paramedics were on the scene: