HEY! I never figured out how to do the blog without paying for it. Which is duuuummbb. 

So I started a Tumblr!!

Here's the link and refer there from now on for pictures and insights.

http://fromsocaltosouthkoreapics.tumblr.com/

-Matt

THANKSGIVING DINNER

OOOORRR NOT.

Google is saying I cannot add pictures because my "storage limit" has been reached! Trying to charge me, and that's not (going to happen) quite in the holiday spirit is it?

So just to update: I miss everyone at home! Would love to be sharing good food and some laughs so much right now. But the good news is that in less than 1 month I'll be flying home for a few weeks holidays. So all good!

For Thanksgiving here I went to a bar that had a all-you-can-eat buffet with a few friends (pictures not included). Since turkey isn't so popular (6 of 120 students I polled had every tasted it, and 1 of those 6 enjoyed the big bird), the owner of the bar had to buy the turkeys on the army base, but everything else was home made. It was delicious all around and it put a little cheer into our Thursday.

I will find a way around this picture issue, believe you me. But in the mean time:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

QUICK VIDEOS FOR YA

 

I went to a two day training course with about 80 other foreign teachers for Monday and Tuesday of this week. Pros and cons but there was some good exchanging of ideas and it was helpful just to pick up some tidbits and hear of different ways people do things. 

This is a video one of the lecturers showed. It's obviously an exaggeration, and it's one big inside joke for teaching, but it hits on some pretty funny points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ31pdj7AjU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKfFooy0QTY&feature=related

GUESS WHO'S BACK-ISH!

Hey! I'm back after a little hiatus. Sorry to say that after four glorious years my computer/best graduation present ever finally got problems beyond reasonable repair. As is life! This is my third time in the last several weeks sitting down in a PC room to update - the first was abruptly ended when power to the entire building went out, second time my computer kept crashing after the third picture - but I have a feeling this time I'll at least get SOMETHING DOWN!.

So in the last five or so weeks what's been up? Nuthin... you?


Well let's just scroll though the pics stored on the ol' phone:

I went to a baseball game.

I saw a flock of geese on a small river in a big city

I started a four week, five class Korean Cultural History course on Tuesdays. The class is mainly about the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910 (yeah, it's 1910, I don't care what you say wikipedia)).

In the first class we made soap. In the first picture is a view from the palace where the class was held.

Through friends of friends I went to a FREE (and open bar) jazz show to commemorate the first night of the of a conference on the performing arts in central Europe. Polish jazz quartet featured...experimental vocal Czech 'plunderfunk' DJs, NOT featured.

I took a trip to a palace with my culture class. Below is the main audience hall for the place for welcoming guests. Below that is in the king's personal (massive) garden. That is the portion where the king would harvest his own rice to 'gain an understanding of the life of a farmer':

SPORTS DAY! IOU. and CHUSEOK

Yesterday was our second and vastly superior sports/field day. All week I've been taking pictures and stuff to prep a nice long post. BUT my computer pooped out mid week, so I'm going to have to email pictures individually to some computer to complete the post. Which I'll do soon. So IOU.

In other "$*&# YEAH!" news I have the harvest holiday break this weekend. Thus I have no school through Wednesday. What's on the agenda? Little. With no TV and no computer and minimal funds I doubt it'll be too interesting. But I'm going to a baseball game on Saturday with a Korean friend of mine at least so that should be good!

SMELLS YA LATER BLOG

KEEP THE PEACE

Was greeted by these boys when I walked into school today: 

The loose translation: Don't Fight in School. Love Your Friends!

I don't know why these boys were carrying these signs around the school, or why they were so psyched to be doing so. But if I could pick five boys who would probably get into a fight on school grounds...it's these five. Maybe they're just putting out the good word on peace and love, but in my unfounded conclusions they were forced to carry the signs around as punishment. 

First period free today, four classes STARRRRRRRRTT now.

Today In "You see what I'm dealing with here?" News

As someone who is very lucky that old tee-shirts and jeans held over from when we had a housing market remain in fashion back home, walking around at night or even to the store here is a stark reminder that I reaaaallly don't fit in in almost anyway. And in the same regard, sort of happy about that fact. Here's a little cosmetic perspective via Yahoo! News.

http://news.yahoo.com/korean-men-makeup-foundation-success-051134289.html

ACTIVITIES (various).

School started up again and it's been SO(rt of) exciting. Getting back into the swing of the work week including all of my and my co-teachers good, bad and new habits has been fine. This semester is supposed to go faster because of more holiday breaks including one coming up at the end of the month, and thus rushed lessons. As well as a BIG 'Sports Day' at the end of the month which the students regularly miss class to practice for.

Activity 1

Another event though that was more academic than 'Sports Day' occurred two weeks ago: The English memorization contest! Here students in grades 4th, 5th and 6th had to memorize all of the dialogues (2 apiece) from each chapter about various topics.  Each teacher then whittled down (if you started snoring by now it's cool...) the top two from every class and myself and 3 other teachers presided over the judgement. What I thought was interesting was that a good deal of the students were NOT the ones who participated in class. But give them some solo study time I guess and they are good to go.

The way it worked though we had to grade each student on every line of the sheet. It took exactly two hours at the end of a busy day and my focus by the end was wwwaaaiiinnning but that is what it is.

Above is half of what the students had to memorize. Below a 5th grade girl finds out which dialogues she had to recite

Here was the lottery to decide the order in which the contestants would recite.

Activity 2!

The 5th grade lesson was on 'birthdays' (months, dates, "When is your birthday?"). I had the students do an ice breaking activity to start I learned in college. Two teams, boys and girls. Each team has to line up by their birth date from Jan to Dec WITH OUT TALKING. Thus my "Quite please" cheat prevention in the video.  It's a good activity to get the blood flowing, plus the lower level students can participate. This class was especially animated with the MMMMMing. 

Activity 3

I just liked this picture. We were playing a four-corners game for vocab review. There are 6 sheets of paper with different vocab taped around the room. The music plays (always, Gangnam Style) and they walk in a circle, when the music stops they say the vocab word and we somehow pic a vocab word and that word's students are out. To spice things up on Fri. I was being silly and had one student act as a wall and I tapped the word to their face or chest. Some kids took to this roll and the spotlight instantly. This one student took the more stoic -- most wall-like I suppose -- role. He got rewarded with the much coveted vitamins afterwards.

Activity 4

Finally some 6th stuff. Here the students are doing a survey to find out how their classmates get to school. Out of 30 students and two teachers usually 90% walk to school. There is no bus system so the one student you see marked on the survey takes this lil shuttle bus that goes around the neighborhood (and, vitally, cuts my commute to the subway by 10 min).

Also, in case you were not aware, surveys double as trumpets (on the left).

And lastly my own activity. On Friday I had a batting cage, Playstation Cafe, darts kind of night but other than that I've stayed in. This was my Saturday night dinner. Cajun sweet potato fries, and chicken sandwich with cheesy Cholula sunny side up eggs and greens. It's an activity because between prepping, toasting the bred on the broiler (which is on top of my fridge and so I get a decent amount of exercise climbing my chair to check on what's cooking), then cooking the fries, eggs and chicken and then finally eating (hopefully cleaning too, but I don't want to exaggerate) it takes between 90 to 120 minutes to get dinner for one. But TASTY though so details.

Should be run-of-the-mill week coming up but...

GO BOLTS!

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE APPLE VS SAMSUNG LAWSUIT

Of which I am in no way qualified to comment on. I have the NPR iPhone app and that's about it -- so don't go fact checking too hard.

Samsung is a Korean company, Apple I BELIEVE is a US company. There is an interesting aspect of general copyright attitudes here in Korea. That attitude is that they are bordering on non-existent.

To summarize that lawsuit: Apple and Samsung went to court in Korea, California and Japan over 3G and 4G smart phone copyright infringement. Apple claimed 2.5 BILLION dollars in damages and Samsung agreed to $25k in damages in the California suit before the case went to trial. So there was a bit of a gap. In the end (before the upcoming ___ years of appeals begin), the California jury awarded Apple one billion dollars. Billion with a B. For Boy that's a huge number.

Likewise, and funny enough, in Korea Apple won their suit as well. The the judge ordered Apple to fork over a whopping $35,000 and at the same time ordered Apple to pay Samsung $25,000 for copyright infringement. Look at these numbers, and that $2,999,999,975 difference in initial damages claim, represents perfectly my impression of the gap in attitude towards the general copyright laws between the two countries.

Everyone wears shirts and hats like the one below. Just random English on them and that's nothing out of the ordinary. But what I couldn't get a picture of some of other shirts I see everyday. The ones that have knock off Angry Birds. I saw a LEVI'S shirt that looked pretty legit but then I looked closer and it said below the logo "San Prancisco". Some collard shirts have massive NBA team logos -- but the team colors are off a bit -- and I see them sold for between $5-$10 from corner Mom&Pop stores. Doubt the honerable/awful Mr. Stern an co. are getting a piece of that action.

(A)tlanta night empty street indeed.

I heard a story of a Korean teacher taking a few years worth of lesson plans from her foreign co-teacher and make them into a book and sold it. A friend of mine started putting a Copyright TM and her initials on her worksheets because co-teachers were claiming them as their own. There is an unaffiliated New York University Language school in my neighborhood. Below is a picture I took of a bar in Busan. I can't imagine FOX licensing out their hit (but dropping off lately, am I right?) show to some random bar two miles from the beach+hotels in Busan.

Korea takes a lot of pride in being a collectivist society. But there doesn't seem to be a general respect for creativity and now it seems intellectual property as well. There's always the point that the country went from literally the poorest in the world 60 years ago to the 11th richest currently. I can see how disregard for the aforementioned could fall by the cultural wayside pretty easily when making that fiscal climb.

© ™2012 Matthew E. Rogers 

All Rights Reserved. 

Any accounts of descriptions of this blogpost can not be used 

without the express written consent from Matthew E. Rogers.

TYPHOON BOLAVEN -- The Great Leaf Massacre of 2012

I mean it was windy and stuff. The tree outside my window got its butt kicked a few noticeable times. I went out for Tuesday (Typhoon!) Trivia and my umbrella got wrecked on the walk to and from the subway. But that was about it. Lots of trees lost their leaves on 8/27/12...never forget...

GOOD NEWS was that the school let all the teachers out at 11. Above is a picture of the clouds before I left. I heard some schools got let out at 12 or one, and one school let the female teachers out at 11 and the male teachers out at 12 for some odd reason.

Below is the tree outside my window, during probably the worst of it all. (Note: I don't know why these pics are such bad quality. Riddle me that, 'Siri'.

I was just a little worried though because if one branch fell it might hit this mess of power lines and then I would prob lose power and that would be a drag. Total drag. Probably would not have been a big deal comparatively (sorry, Gulf Coast) but just saying.

So everybody, BACK TO WORK.

  .

Tonight us subject teachers are having a dinner to welcome/initiate a new member. Rumor has it of a Bennigans into a karaoke sorta night. Outrageous, I know!

TYPHOON PREPARATION.

There's a typhoon coming! So tomorrow I still have to report to work along with all the other teachers, but all students do not have to report to school. I guess if s*** hits the fan it'll be easier to manage a bunch of adults? Don't make much difference to me.

Here's a picture of the midday sky: 

Looks chill enough yeah?

I just finished a book about living after the apocalypse so mental I feel preparedish. Here is my survival kit I have here at casa de Matteo:

Candles, four hard-boiled eggs, two cans of corn, a can of tuna, favorite (cheap Korean) beer and some good reading.

Even if things get messy tonight or tomorrow, I'll just remember the mantra on this 5th grader's shirt:

Let's typhoon.

LIBRARY ADVENTURE, EXERCISED IN THE TIME-TO-SPARE METHOD

Nestled deep in the heart of boredom, amidst a half-month of all-encompassing downtime, lay a dilemma of gargantuan proportions: .... man, books are sorta expensive in Korea.

So I figured, check out a library!

 

 My vacation was like this. Only just the foreground, ignore all those other grounds.

I had previously been going to the pretty great English book store called What the Book? and they have a good used section for paperbacks and new paperbacks if need be (usually between $5-$8 bucks a pop, $10-$20 for a new paperback usually), but I had been going through two to three books a week and that's just not economically sustainable....well, preferable.

Through the grapevine last year I heard various whispers (slash words, in sentences, from my friend, who told me to my face) of the Ilsan public library and their respectable section of English books. Not super psyched to trek for an hour up north, I searched 'libraries Seoul' on and found out that there was one in Dongdaemun, which is on my same subway line as Hyehwa and only one stop down. Seen here, center of the map-ish, for kicks.

One morning, the last morning of break, I got up early -- like 8 AM early, which converted into vacation clock is 5:15 AM exactly -- and headed to Dongdaemun, ready to read me some free books! Yeah!

Hey guys, wanna come over and check out my Vacation Slideshow?!

 And it's over! By that I mean vacation as well as the first semester/ 1/2 of this year's teaching contract.

The biggest difference between this year's summer vacation and last years -- The last one was four days, from Tuesday - Friday, plus a weekend. This year's was 2.5 weeks!! This year however, like last year I didn't venture far outside of Seoul. Read: I didn't leave, and chilled. I still stayed busy-ish! Five books and a lot of trekking around town later I'm feeling pretty good about the time spent.

I think I'll just chronologically go through the pictures on my camera and use them as bullet points for to cover the 12 business days of chilling bliss. Enjoy!

1. My friend's balcony has a great view to kick start the break.

Second Summer Session and Open Biases

The second installment of Summer Camp wrapped up last week!

I have to say that this second session was AWESOME. The first week I think that my CT and I were still hammering out the details of the class, and there were also a few students who would rather have not been inside during break. So the class was a bit wobbly but the second week the days were set in stone and all 18 students were excited to be there and to participate.

The participated to the point of excess even! We spent some of the budget on boardgames for the students, which were utilized in the first week, but in the second the students enjoyed the activities so much we would just extend the lessons to the full three hours. Below are the (fantastic) 3rd graders doing a portion of the scavenger hunt. It was about 96 degrees and humid outside and we almost called it off because ALL the students were so engaged that the were sprinting around in the heat! I didn't know little people could sweat like that, but they were all about it.

Below is Napoli! She was a great student during class but also so clever. For a portion of the scavenger hunt the task was to "Go to class 3-3 and read the sign" and as you can sort of see the sign says "finish the worksheet" which are in the yellow box next to the door.  If I could go back again I would have made that task much more clear to the students. They thought they only had to read aloud the sign and then take a picture of the sign. After I explained that to Napoli's group what to do they started doing the worksheet and I left for a while. When I came back she told me this story:

         "Teacher! I lie. Other group and come take picture. And they say, 'Take picture only is ok?' to me and I say 'Yes yes you are okay' and then they go away! hahaha"


Sign her up for Survivor.




Below are name tags. The students were supposed to write or draw what the like on the back.

More journal fun!

Hahah OUCH! That last one burns deep. Either way last week was a blast! The students came with a lot of energy that in turn fueled us teachers and I think I enjoyed the camp as much if not more than they did!

Now off to break

Second Half of "Hollywood Week" Summer Camp

Finished! This week FLEW by incredibly fast, I think finishing at noon + afternoon nap helps a lot. As for the camp, this week's crew of 18 students are finished and next week's batch will start on Monday. I hear that there are more 6th graders and less 3rd and 4th graders so hopefully some aspects will run smoother.

Above are the snacks! Caramel popcorn curtsey of my Co Teacher Amy ("So easy! But I hate cooking and now I'm tired.") Also home-stirred peach and lemonade. Also a little something I learned from my first grade science fair: chocolate and cereal crushed to together, held tightly for to melt, and cooled in a fridge to make a nice crunch ball!

SUMMER CAMP!

Hey! Apologies about the month between posts. Let's get back in action with some pics from summer camps. Summer camp are a couple of weeks, and mine started on Monday. It's called 'Hollywood Week!' and it's most based around movies. So, for example, we'll practice ordering food at a fake concession stand, we talked about clothes by using superhero costumes as examples, and so on. 

It's very different from normal classes because there's half as many kids, but it mostly feels like twice as much work because I have students from 3rd, 4th, 5th, AND 6th grades who are all at various levels. Thus breaking them up into groups and making sure they understand directions varies greatly between every student and requires a bit more energy.

But good news is that the camp ends at noon! So I get a couple hours of general prep and free air conditioning every day!

Above are the students practicing their 'trailers'. We watched a few trailers and they rated them with stars. Then I had a few greatly abridged versions of the trailers for Shrek and Kung Fu Panda typed up and here are the students practicing before they filmed themselves (on their own smartphones haha).

Below is a few exerpts from their journals. "Hot because is Earthot" is so factual, it's scorching outside!

Lastly below was the final activity for the day: a scavenger hunt to end on a fun note! Also, they instead of having to watch them complete all the challenges they can just take a picture of the missions on their phones...While I relax.... : )

KOREA-BBIAN BAY! KOREEA-BBIAN BAY!

Last Saturday morning I got up at 8:00 AM and hopped on the subway for to hop on a bus for to go to the Seoul metropolitan area's only WATER PARK!

Getting there involves a 40 minute subway ride to Jamsil station. Then a 30 minute wait for a specific bus (which is special because it has a standing room policy so that people PACK into the bus until all the isles are stuffed), that bus takes 1 hour to travel down south to the Everland Amusement Park and Caribbean Bay duel facility.

We were running a little behind, so where as some friends got there about 9:30 to wait for the 10:30 opening time, our group got there about 11:00. The line for tickets were still an hour long, but after about 45 minutes we were in the last stage until we bought tickets and then we turned around and the hundreds of people that were waiting behind us were GONE. They cut off the number of people allowed in the park at a certain point and I was the LAST person at the ticket window when it was all said and done.

So we get in and half the rides were closed for some reason so the lines for the slides that were open clocked in at 90 minutes EACH ahahha so i got a lot of quality time waiting with friends


The rides were fun and all and in the 6 hours we were there we got to ride three. But prob the most fun was the last hour we spent in the wave pool:

The wave pool is a massive pool where every 3 minutes or so a BIG wave starts at one end (signaled by a massive fog horn) and then by the time it gets to us it just bowls you over. OH that green looking water is to signal where people with out life jackets can go -- life jackets are $6 a pop -- but we played a game where we would lineup at the green line and pick different ways to get knocked down. So that was the last hour. Was a good time all around, but a loooong day.