Archive for the 'Korea' Category

May

Chon Dak

On Saturday, I went to Samson Dong for lunch. One of my favorite places to go is Chon Dak. I love their spicy chicken dish. It’s chicken, small rice cakes and vegetables in a spicy sauce. They top it with cheese, a hard boiled quail egg and a few shrimp.

They start off by giving you some pickled radishes and a cabbage salad. The dressing somewhat resembles French, but I highly doubt it is. The chicken comes with a bowl of rice.

One of the ladies who works in the kitchen speaks a little bit of English so we usually have a short chat. Between her limited English and my limited Korean, we get by ok.

Enjoy! Just don’t drool on your keyboard.

Outside of the building

Close up of the sign

Salad and radishes

The whole meal

Chicken close up

posted by Kathryn in Food and Drink,Fun things,Home Life,Korea,Off time,Pictures and have No Comments

May

From the Heart

This is a picture of the note on the balloon Julie gave me for Teacher’s Day. She’s a genuinely nice girl. I’m glad I’m teaching D4. I was dreading it based on past experience with some of the students in that class. But they’ve matured a lot in the last year or so.

From Julie

posted by Kathryn in Celebrations,Fun things,Holidays,Korea,Little Campus,Students,Teaching and have No Comments

May

Teacher’s Day — 2009

Today is Teacher’s Day in Korea. I’m touched by the generosity of my students and their parents. It was such a treat to have kids come up, give me gifts and hugs, and tell me how much they appreciate what I do. There are good days and bad days in teaching, as in every profession. Today was definitely a good day, and not just because of the gifts. And those good days really do make up for the bad days.

Emma from Picasso got me a bottle of perfume
Mel from Nobel gave me a homemade muffin
Lucy from Einstein gave me some lip gloss
Lina from Dewey gave the teachers cookies
Denny from Newton gave me an award ribbon
Fred from Newton gave me ginsing slices
Lola from Einstein gave me a note and some rice cakes
Rocky from Picasso gave the teachers pizza and soda
Penny from Newton gave me a hair clip
Warren from A3 gave me a pen
James from A1 gave me some jam
Eric from A1 gave me a scarf
Ellie from A1 gave me sunblock
Nick from D1 gave me flowers
Rose from D4 gave me soap
Alex from B2 gave me soap
Sally from D3 gave me lotion
Julie from D4 gave me socks and a note written on a balloon
Flora from D3 gave me chocolate

I’m so blessed to have wonderful students. They all have their quirks and problem days. But for the most part, they are good kids.

posted by Kathryn in Celebrations,Food and Drink,Holidays,Korea,Little Campus,Students,Teaching and have No Comments

May

English Test for Native Speaking Teacher?

I came across a few blogs posts in my RSS feed today talking about the possibility of hogwan teachers having to take a test to prove their ability to use the English language. OK. Whatever. Who knows what will come to pass with this. I think it’s interesting it only applies to teachers at private schools. So anyone teaching for the public school system will be exempt.

“We don’t think we can test public school teachers as it is a job of the Korean government. The headquarters plan to measure English skills of teachers at hagwon from next year,” said a source from the institute.

I’d really like to know if this test only applies to foreign teachers or if the Korean English teachers will be required to take the test as well.

ETS to Introduce Test for English Teachers (via The Korea Times).

posted by Kathryn in Korea,Teaching and have No Comments

Apr

Sue’s Wedding

Sue got married yesterday. Unlike the previous weddings I attended, this one was in a church. It was a beautiful service. Sue’s husband sang a love song to her during the wedding. I wish her and her husband the best of luck for the future. They’ll be honeymooning in Saipan.

: Sue and her new hubby

: Sue and her mom

: The parents and the new couple

: Check out the little one with the Nike’s and his hanbak.

: The whole family

posted by Kathryn in Celebrations,Korea,Little Campus,Off time,Pictures,Staff and have No Comments

Mar

Happy White Day

It’s White Day today. The streets of Samsondong were crazy packed with couples being lovey dovey. Oh wait, let me digress a bit.

What is White Day? Another wonderful Korean Hallmark holiday of course. White Day falls on March 14th, a month after Valentines Day. The tradition on Valentines Day is for the women to give candy and gifts to the men. It’s just the opposite on White Day.

So back to Samsondong. I had to go to Kidari today to pick up a workbook for my D1 class . Kidari is right across the street from Lotte Hotel. There are quite a few little restaurants in that area, including the one I went to lunch at. The cab driver almost hit about 12 cars on the drive down to Samsondong. Ugh. I hate cabs in Korea. This one section of Samsondong has a bunch of very narrow streets that aren’t really fit for automobile traffic. So many people. Not just people. Couples in Love. Disgusting. I was glad to get done what I needed to get done so I could get the heck out of that madness. On the plus side, lunch was good. Spicy chicken and rice. I’ll have to find out what it was called because I just can’t remember.

I got a nice little haul of candy from students yesterday. I’ll probably end up giving most of it away to kids who come in and chat with me. I like to reinforce the whole speaking English thing. Korean Hallmark holidays are good for building up stashes of candy and treats for that.

posted by Kathryn in Celebrations,Holidays,Korea,Off time,Web sites and have Comment (1)

Jan

The 12 Days of Christmas — Korean Style

On Christmas Eve, I took my turn in the cycle of teaching Ivy. Not wanting to do a boring discussion class (oh how I hate trying to get teenagers to talk), I decided to turn them loose on The 12 Days of Christmas lyrics. We listened to the song a couple of times and I told them they could work in pairs or small groups to come up with their own lyrics. The catch was the things they used as gifts had to be tied to Korea in some way. Here’s what we came up with in the end.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a big pot of spicy kimchi.
On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, two shots of soju.
On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me, three orange restaurants.
On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, four Taekwondo belts.
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, five hand phones.
On the six day of Christmas my true love gave to me, six lovely hanboks.
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, seven rolls of kimbap.
On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, eight bags of ramyan.
On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, nine taxi drivers.
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, ten chewy rice cakes.
On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, eleven English hagwons.
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, twelve bowls of rice.

I think it’s really cute. True, some of the things aren’t unique to Korea, but they are popular here. Try to find anyone over the age of 7 without a hand phone (aka “cell phone” to you westerners). I’ve seen quite a few elderly men and women with them. And the taxi drivers? Well, that was my contribution. Every time I get into a taxi I say a quick prayer to get out in one piece.