I had a dream the other night. And for once it didn’t involve various breakaway attempts in some murky yet apparently significant hockey game (you know it was important if you wake up with a palpitating heart). Instead, this dream had to do with a mountainous pile of books– the complete Massey Lectures series, in [...]
Archive for the ‘South Korea’ Category
A Bookish Fantasy
Posted in Canada, South Korea, tagged Dreams, jealousy, Massey Lectures, New Canadian Library, Sokcho on June 11, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Reflections at the Ten-Month-Mark
Posted in Rant, South Korea, tagged Asian dust, ESL, Foreigners in Korea, K-Pop, kimchi, Korean Mothers, one year contract, soju, South Korea, Swine Flu, teaching ESL, yellow sand on May 31, 2009 | 3 Comments »
One year is a long time. Three hundred and sixty-five is a large number, especially when meted out in days. No matter how fast time might seem to have flown, one year, taken incrementally, hour-by-hour, takes a long time to pass.
We are now over ten months in Korea and both Colleen and I are finding [...]
Photographing the Urban
Posted in Photography, South Korea, tagged Daejeon, Daejeon shopping, Eunangdong shopping, Korean shopping districts, Photography, South Korea, tteok bokki, urban photography on April 29, 2009 | 3 Comments »
When I first started this blog last summer I envisioned posting new photographs regularly. I thought it might challenge me to produce better photographs, while also giving me the chance to talk about certain images that I really like. Since I have yet to do this and am also busy with a writing project I shelved two [...]
Word for Word pt. 5
Posted in South Korea, Word for Word, tagged English Academy, Engrish, ESL, Hagwon, Luigi, Rockhopper Penguin, South Korea, teaching ESL, translation on March 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Lest you think my students are only capable of techno-brutalized Engrish sentences, I thought I should make mention of a few instances where the electronic translator, well, worked…kind of.
Ex #1
Usually, after working through a new reading passage with my students, I request that they create sentences using their newly acquired vocabulary. Try as I might [...]
On Aging (and latent notions of heroism)
Posted in Miscellaneous, South Korea, tagged Aging, Alan Bradley, Bathhouse, Cohen Brothers, Donatello, ESL, Growing Old, Hagwon, Jjimjilbang, Korea, Korean Bath, Lance Armstrong, neurosis, Ninja Turtles, South Korea, Steven Spielberg, teaching ESL, underachievement on March 1, 2009 | 8 Comments »
“Your late twenties are all about coming to terms with your own mediocrity.” So said my minutely older friend a few months ago, before resigning his body to the lulling heat of the green-tea bath, sliding out of sight beneath the water’s shimmering, yellow-green surface. I wanted to object, to muster a bold retort. I [...]
The Demilitarized Zone – a Travel Review
Posted in Photography, South Korea, Travel Review, tagged commodity of war, Demilitarized Zone, DMZ, DMZ Tour, Freedom Village, Joint Security Area, JSA, Kijong-dong, Military Demarcation Line, North Korea, Panmunjom, Propaganda Village, South Korea, The Axe Murder Incident, Tunnel, United Nations, USO Korea, war tourism on February 8, 2009 | 7 Comments »
There is something ethically unsettling about buying into a half day tour of a military standoff. At what point in the progression of battle does one side decide that there is money to be made parading tourists along the line of contention? And at what point does that tour become the “must see” destination of [...]
Word for Word pt. 4
Posted in South Korea, Word for Word, tagged classroom managment, clothing, curriculum, Engrish, ESL, Hagwon, Konglish, lesson plans, South Korea on January 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Recently, I was teaching a lesson on clothing to beginner students. We worked through the standard vocabulary and associated verb structures fairly quickly, so I pushed them to begin describing the clothes. We reviewed the use of adjectives and I taught them more descriptive vocabulary words (ie. plaid, striped, checkered); the results, in class, were quite pleasing.
For homework, [...]
Silence (Saturated and Served up Nightly)
Posted in Canada, Photography, South Korea, tagged burn site, ESL, forest fire, generator, Hagwon, Haveman Brothers, noise, Northern Ontario, planting camp, reforestation, silence, sound of silence, South Korea, spruce, teaching, Thunder Bay, tree planting, white pine on January 15, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Ever have those days when everyone about you screams forth your name and demands your undivided attention? Ever have those days when you feel like no one speaks your language? When the cacophony is so great you can’t hear yourself think?
There are a good many such days here in Korea.
Amidst all the noise (and [...]
Word for Word pt.2
Posted in Word for Word, tagged Aesop, Education, English, Engrish, ESL, Fariy Tales, Hagwon, South Korea, The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, translation on December 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
According to Aesop, there was once a
goose that laid golden eggs. Of course, the farmer, who quite happily collected the droplets of pure gold, became rapidly rich and even more rapidly greedy. Not content to wait through the gestation of gold, he decided to kill the goose in order to harvest, in full, its precious [...]
