Alien Skin

It's the middle of summer and around 100 degrees, so it's perfectly logical to wear shorts, right?  Exactly.  Only, I shouldn't wear them to work, so I usually wear them only on Saturdays.  Today it struck me how very white my legs are.  Pretend that there's a scale of white-to-tan where 0 is the whitest-of-white, the "I've been hiding in an underground shelter for years" kind of white and 10 is the deepest lifeguard tan at the end of the summer.  About a 5 is the normal-looking, "healthy" look (if you don't mind a little skin cancer).  A British tourist in Florida is a 2.  Well, from all the walking I've been doing and the walk to the bus stop every morning, my arms are about an 8, and my face is about 5~6 (from wearing a hat and occasionally sunscreen).  My legs, however, are a 1.  The contrast between them is so huge that it makes me look like an alien.  My feet display a lovely sandal tan, while the back of my neck and my chest are slightly sunburned at the moment.  My legs have a combination heat rash and razor burn.  Great.

Some of my students are getting pretty dark from being outside so much.  The backs of their necks are a completely unnatural black color.  Some of the older girls are careful to stay out of the sun to preserve the pasty white color that's popular here.

Korean class was fine.  Wen, Wabs, and the Japanese girl were there.  After about 90 minutes, I lost all concentration and felt really drowsy.  Despite the air conditioner, the coolest it got in the classroom was 85 degrees.  The class lasted 2 hours 30 minutes today.  That's too long to study at one time!!

Wen offered to drive the Japanese girl and me to Samsandong.  (I'll learn her name one of these days, but it's so long and difficult!  Aigo was a lot easier to remember.)  She lives there, I was going to the train station, and Wen often goes on drives on the weekend.  We dropped Wabs off at her mother-in-law's restaurant before going to Samsan.  I sat in the back seat, and used a seat belt.  Usually the taxis don't have seatbelts in the back, but I feel fairly safe because they're professional, if insane, drivers.  Wen, on the other hand--I'm not so sure about his vision, from how he reads during class.  His driving was fine but a couple of times I felt like telling him to watch the road, as he was getting a little too close to the car in front of us and a little too into our conversation.

I'm so used to the Korean way--if someone is going to my area of town they'll offer to drive me there, then I often still have to take a bus or a taxi or walk a ways to get to where I'm going.  That's fine, because we can talk on the way and it's faster, more comfortable, and not as hot as the bus.  But Wen asked both of us where we were going in Samsan.  The train station was on the opposite side of the road from the way we were going.  A Korean would have just dropped me off in the most convenient place.  The American, however, got into the turn lane, waited for the light to change, did a u-turn, and pulled into the train station and right up to the door.  Thanks!

I went in and puzzled over the schedule for nearly 10 minutes.  I tried to compare the normal train and the KTX (bullet) train.  Finally I asked the lady at the information desk "KTX Ulsan ("to" gesture) Seoul time?"  Yes, that's a lovely grammatically correct sentence!!  She understood, and told me four hours.  Then I asked her how much it cost, and she replied really fast.  I asked her to repeat the price, and she did so even faster.  Wait a minute!  Slowly!  Before I was able to plead, "chun-chun-hee!!" she motioned for me to follow her to the ticket counter.  She waited until a clerk was free, then he helped me.  He didn't speak much English, but understood well enough.  It's only about $4 more to take the bullet train, which is 4 hours compared to 5 hours 30 minutes for the normal train, so might as well.  Another plus is that the normal train leaves at 7:30 AM, and the bullet train leaves then, too, but also leaves at 9:20 AM.  Guess which one I'm taking!!  It'll also be cool to compare the Japanese and Korean trains.  When they finish the bullet train it will be even faster, but for now about half the time is on a normal train, before a 30 minute "layover" to change trains to the KTX train.

Oh yeah, where am I going and when and why?  The school is closed August 2~4 so since there are no tickets out of the country (I found out about the vacation too late, then waited to contact a travel agent) I'm going to check out some more museums in Seoul.  I'll leave Sunday morning, then come back either late Monday or late Tuesday night, I haven't decided yet.  The normal train leaves at 10 PM and gets back to Ulsan at 3:30 AM, so is good as far as being able to get in a full day in Seoul and not have to pay for another night in a hotel.  I've started making a list of what I want to see and operating hours and subway stops, etc.  I hope the subway strike won't be a problem!

After the train station I walked to E-mart where I ate a late lunch (5:30 PM by then) at a newly-opened Popeye's.  All the rest of them have closed.  I got the chicken wrap thing like I usually get at KFC, except at Popeye's it comes with a chicken salad instead of with french fries.  MUCH better.  There are less chicken pieces in the wrap, but that's good because it stays together better.  The clerk gave me three choices of dressing.  No English anywhere, so in response to my blank look as I looked for the names on the packages, she read me the names.  Tomato something, pineapple something, and something something something (it sounded spicy).  Tomato is probably like french/catalina dressing--not my favorite.  Hot dressing on salad--I like spicy food, but no.  Pineapple dressing??  Sounds very weird, but I'll try it!  It was actually quite good.  Reminded me a bit of ranch dressing, but with the tart taste of pineapple and without the fatty taste of ranch.

I explored the first floor of the very popular store that's been open for less than a year.  There was a whole aisle of dried seaweed, some in sheets taller than me!!  It was chaos with all of the people shopping and the children running around.  I grabbed a few items before heading home.  There isn't a convenient bus stop from there, but I chose the wrong direction to walk--it was a half mile with my heavy bag and backpack.  The first 401 bus passed without stopping; I started to get a little worried about my milk and yogurt being exposed to such heat for so long.  When I got home I put them away immediately, then did some laundry and cleaning before showering and finishing off the night with an airplane disaster movie.

The Next Step

I read this in the Korea Herald yesterday, I think, then some blogs drew my attention to it today.  What did I write before about small steps????  First block some English websites, then start restricting freedom of expression even more!  A Korean college student drew parody pictures of some political candidates and put them on the internet.  He was fined 1.5 million won (over $1200) for trying to influence the election.  (I thought that was an allowable, and even desirable, thing in a free society!!)  What's next for this government?!  I may see a unified Korea yet; the great leader's name will be Kim Jong Il.

JQ

My first class of the day was absolutely horrible.  They spoke English, but only to call each other names--"You're a monster!"  "You're a monkey!"  "Your head is a soccer ball!"  The giggling was neverending.  A little of that is fine, but when I tell them to stop--multiple times--it gets annoying.  I set them to writing lines and had to put Tim outside of the classroom to write.  When they finished writing "It is time to study" 20 times they still weren't settled down, so I sent Billy outside and set Ricky to writing the phrase 50 times.  We finally got some studying done. 

The next class wasn't much better.  So far I hadn't instituted the "English only" rule in there because their level is pretty low and often they say the Korean word and I know it and can teach them the English word.  However, today the talking was non-stop so I told them that they should speak only English in my class.  They were angry with me, and after being in the corner a few times Sera stopped talking to me in any language, yet did say goodbye when class was over.

I really needed the 4 PM break!  Sera and Elaine came in looking for Mona to help them with their homework, but she was in class so they asked me.  It was possessives, so pretty easy to explain (at least how to do it, if not the entire meaning of it).

The 5 PM middle school students were fantastic.  We talked 20 minutes about various things.  Luby again mentioned "JQ" and I asked her to remind me what that is.  잔머리 (jan mauri) is one of those difficult-to-translate-exactly phrases.  Mauri is head; jan has a zillion different meetings, and no dictionary gave me the two words together, but according to Luby it means something along the lines of a strategic and cunning mind.  They gave me a few examples.  One example was if a textbook has the answers printed in the back, then someone with a high JQ would use the answers instead of thinking for themselves.  Another example was having a "cunning paper" in your bag--I can't believe they said that to a teacher!  I asked them if they cheated, and Luby said she "rarely" cheats.  As in, sometimes she does.

I asked them about the camp the elementary kids go to.  All the students told me that they went swimming, had a campfire, and had candles.  At the candle time the teachers talked about and they had to think about their parents, and everyone cried.  I asked the middle school students why the teachers would remind the kids of their parents and make them cry!  The students explained that many children take their parents for granted (my words, but that's what they meant) and treat them like "money machines" and talk impolitely to them, etc.  So the teachers remind the kids that they should treat their parents well.  Edward said that when he went to camp, boys who didn't cry were forced to do push-ups.  Luby jumped in to say that someone with a high JQ pretends to cry when they're really laughing, in order to avoid punishment. 

About the time we finished that conversation it was getting really hot, so we checked the air conditioner.  It wasn't working again, so a student started out to ask the secretary to look at it, but when we opened the door we found the hallway dark and the whole school sweltering.  The Kiwi classroom has so many windows that we hadn't been using the light, so hadn't realized the electricity was out.  The next 30 minutes were pretty miserable, as it got hotter and hotter, with virtually no wind.  Six kids complaining and miserably fanning themselves doesn't make for great study!  At first I thought it was perhaps a rolling blackout because of too much electric usuage (another hot day today) but then I saw Mr. Kim fiddling with the fuse box and suddenly everything worked again.

At 7 PM I saw first-hand the blue vs. green problem.  In the past (maybe still today) in Korea the word for green and blue was the same.  The lesson was on describing people, especially what they are wearing.  The girl said her friend was wearing a blue shirt.  Blue??  No way, that's light green!!  She looked confused, but didn't argue with me.

Spencer (from quite a while back) has joined my 8:30 class just for the summer break.  With Cynthia and Haley also in that class temporarily, it's up to 11 students in the 7th~9th grades now.  Spencer has apparently not been to English academy in a long time, but only studies at Ipshi Academy (the multi-subject place).  His ability was still fine.  He's grown even taller, I think, and his voice has deepened more.  When I started teaching him he was a lanky 5th grader with hands bigger than mine.  Now he's a more proportioned 7th grader.  Kids grow up so fast!!

After class finished I talked with Tanya a bit in the kids' computer room.  Lucas was there writing his English diary, and tried to keep from laughing at our horrible Korean pronunciation (comparing the Korean and Chinese numbers, among other things).  Tanya asked him for help with a couple of numbers.  I could see him watching us out of the corner of his eye; it was obvious he was listening, trying to understand what he could of our conversation.  I pointed out a couple of problems with his diary before leaving.  It was pretty good considering the short time he's been studying privately.  He wrote "Today was so hot.  I taked a shower 5 times."  I try to guide the kids rather than give them the right answers, so told him to take a closer look at the past tense verb.  He corrected it on his own.  Another sentence he forgot the subject so I asked him who was doing the action, then had to correct the place in the sentence where he put it.

This week went by so fast.  Wow.  A weekend, a week, then summer vacation!

Great Korea Herald Article!

The best article I've seen yet about the censorship is in today's Korea Herald.  It's reproduced below.  I tried to find the Wired article it referred to, but was unsuccessful.  If I do a blockquote it messes up the sidebar, so from here until the end of this post is the newspaper article.

Millions of Web users still affected by government ban 

Exactly a month ago, the Ministry of Information and Communication said it was blocking from viewers some 40 Web sites that could possibly contain footage of the beheading of hostage Kim Sun-il.
 
Now, the ministry says it has no idea how many sites are blocked and Internet viewers say millions of users are affected by the ban, due to a blanket procedure that shut off entire domains.
 
Despite these broad stroke efforts, the execution video still remains accessible to Internet surfers in Korea.
 
The ministry ordered its own ethics committee to handle the situation, in which various internet service providers were asked to close domains that could possibly contain sites with the video, an official said.
 
By casting this wide net, it shut off domains that offer pages to Internet users who want to maintain an online journal, also known as "blogs." Internationally popular sites like blogspot.com, blogger.com, typepad.com and several others have millions of registered authors. The ethics committee was told by the ministry to find and block sites that contain "yeopgi," a Korean word for perverted and gruesome content. The government ordered the ban believing the footage showing Kim's murder would further anger citizens already outraged by the slaying.
 
Kim was kidnapped on May 31 and beheaded on June 22 by Islamic militants who demanded that Seoul scrap its plan to send an additional 3,000 troops to Iraq. He was a translator working for a supplier to the U.S. military.
 
Somehow, many sites which have nothing to do with Kim Sun-il have been blocked.
 
Bloggers wonder why the government did not take more careful measures in blocking the video so they would not suffer because of measures aimed at the voyeuristic few.
 
The ministry admits it did not target these or any other writers on the Internet. But it declined to say whether it made a mistake in its procedure to stop the video.
 
"They took the easy way out." said Charlie Reeder, who writes a blog titled "Budaechigae." He explained that it is possible to block individual Web sites but would take longer to do this procedure.
 
The case caught international attention with a recent article published on the issue by a leading technology magazine, Wired, causing further embarrassment to the ministry, which has not responded to bloggers' emails concerning the subject.
 
A month after Kim's beheading, the ministry does not know when it will remove the ban. However, the banned Web sites can still be accessed through mirror sites, or anonymous Web browsers like www.unipeeek.com.
 
The ministry is facing an increasing heap of criticism for its action.
 
Some bloggers expected better decision-making from a nation that has the highest Internet user rate in the world and proudly professes to be a leader in technology.
 
"By calling Korea an Internet power, the MIC is basically shooting itself in the foot with this ban. This is not going to make a good impression on the rest of the world," said Kevin Kim, who maintains a blog titled the "Big Hominid."
 
Many compare the measure to bans that communist China often uses to block out anti-state information.
 
Weeks before Kim's murder, a young American businessmen living in Iraq was also captured and beheaded. The video tape of Nicholas Berg's death was shown almost in its entirety on Korean TV networks, including MBC. Many feel that the government is being unfair by giving special treatment to a video of a Korean.
 
"It's different when Koreans see another Korean get killed. It's a different feeling than seeing a foreigner die," said a ministry official who did not want to be identified.
 
(apetty@heraldm.com)
By Andrew Petty

Monica Is Back

Yesterday I was surprised to see Monica at school.  I asked Miro why she was there, and learned that Monica's mother had changed her mind, and would continue to send Monica to our school.  At first I was furious--Monica has a horrible attitude and was so disrespectful to me.  Today I wasn't at all angry about it.  I was determined to act like a grown-up about the whole thing (after all, she's 13 and I'm 23).  However, I was also determined to not let her get away with anything.  I would not have hesitated to put her outside the classroom or send her to Joelle or Mr. Kim. 

When I walked in I considered changing where they were all seated so she was close to me and next to one of the good students, but I decided not to remind her of last week or embarrass her teenage feelings, so left her seated by herself in the second row.  She was actually decent.  She responded to questions a lot better than normal, and I didn't have to scold her even once for speaking in Korean or not paying attention.  Apparently Joelle yelled at her pretty good, and maybe her mother even got involved?

Matt and Tanya were a bit upset by Joelle telling them, yesterday, that the lesson plans for the summer classes were due tonight, or by the latest, Friday morning.  That's where their education degrees come in handy, perhaps.  They were aggravated, but had no problem getting it done.

Today flew by, with few problems.  At 3 PM Jenny and Ally told me they were the teachers and I was a new student.  OK, sure, why not?  I went along with it for a couple of minutes, but they gave the class back to me too soon.  I was interested to see how they would "teach" the class!  At 7 PM Brandon and the other 6th graders were back.  I was really strict with them so it was OK.  I would rather not be a dictator, though!

Latest web stats:  wow, people are coming from all over the world!  It's up to 14 countries--Ukraine, Malaysia, and Sweden since 7/9.  Also interesting search terms--"anecdote," "mild tonsillitis symptoms" (from when I was sick), "makes fun of Bush and Kerry" (referring to the Jibjab site), "journal on using video to teach listening skills" (the listening meeting), and "get behind the counter phrase" (from when I talked about Jennifer's fight).  Search engines are insane!

Orphanage Visit

Playing a game at the orphanage--they were teaching it to me, and I didn't quite get it!  They kept trying, though, and only got slightly exasperated.
 

They think they're so cool! Yuri is standing in the center back.


I'm not quite sure what the point of this posed picture was--it looks like we're being punished! Wait--she has  hands growing out of her hair--she's an alien!


The two girls that I've been mostly with the two times I've gone to the orphanage.  On the left is 하늘 (sky) and on the right is 슬비.  They seem to be close friends.  At first I thought they were sisters because when I asked them if they're friends 하늘 said "No, she's my onni" (older sister) but then I remembered that they often call anyone older than them that, and that they can't be considered friends if they're not exactly the same age.  I think 슬비 is one year older than 하늘, but they have different family names so they must not be sisters.

 
I visited the orphanage in Busan on Saturday.  I rode the 1127 bus with Danica and Sarah.  It wasn't too crowded, but we had to stand for the entire hour.  We arrived at Nampo-dong at 1 PM, so grabbed something to eat before meeting the others at Starbuck's.  It was a little overcast, but fine for playing outside.  I ran around with the kids some, playing on the swings and slide, then went inside to play.  All of the windows were open, but it was still pretty hot.  Bridgette had brought a lot of games from her academy, so she and I shared.  (My director needs to let us play games occasionally!)  We played Uno, Jenga, then the kids turned the Jenga blocks into dominoes, then we finished with a little table tennis with a makeshift table (4 of the cafeteria tables pushed together).  A young girl, probably 3 in Western age, was trying to play with us.  The kids were being incredibly patient with her, but finally got tired of her disrupting the games and told her she couldn't play with us anymore.  She started fussing so I picked her up and rocked her a little.  She quieted down, and I thought she was falling asleep, but after that she went over and bothered Bridgette's group of kids for a while.

It was sad saying goodbye this time.  We won't go in August and September because many of them will be visiting relatives, then I'll be gone in October.  Lots of pictures were taken.  The girls wanted someone to take a picture of us together, so I got my camera.  Before I knew it, they were taking all kind of crazy pictures and finished the whole roll!  Less than half are decent pictures.  The lady who runs the orphanage gave us pictures she took of us last time, and also gave us a traditional Korean fan and cell phone accessory.  It was very thoughtful.  How she puts up with all those kids all the time, I'm sure I don't know!

I went with Kendall and Shelly to the Nampo-dong market, especially Rodeo Street (the electronics area).  Then we rode the subway back almost to Nopo-dong to visit a clothes-shopping area near some university, then rode the subway back the other way about an hour to Haeundae Beach.  We met up with Alex and Bridgette and their friends--Dane and KJ (from Sandra's kickboxing class), a few people I've seen around but don't really know, and Matt and Tanya.  We ate at an Indian restaurant.  The food was good, but they had run out of several things, and it seemed overpriced.

By that point it was after 10 PM, so we started thinking about getting home.  The train station is near the building with all of the foreign restaurants, so we went to check on trains back to Ulsan.  We were in luck--we arrived at 10:20, and the next (last?) train left at 10:30.  We got our tickets, got verbally attacked by a man asking if we were Americans (I let Matt answer "No, I'm Canadian"), and enjoyed the smooth train ride back.  I talked with Shelly most of the way, and was surprised at how quickly we arrived.  A taxi ride home, and the end of a long and tiring, yet fun and fulfilling day.

Korean Computers

This afternoon I went down to the university to scan the pictures.  Using a scanner when the program is in Korean is always fun.  Apparently the default is to save them in bitmap format, and I didn't notice that until I had all of them scanned.  Yahoo wouldn't allow me to upload them to the pictures part, then it had quite a difficult time even attaching them to email (mulitiple emails because there were quite a few pictures).  It was taking such an incredibly long time to attach them that I let a guy use the scanner while the pictures were being attached (after all, I'm not a student there, but they don't charge me anything to use their facilities; he was probably a student).  He had the same problem and took longer than I had anticipated with his two documents.  He finally finished but I continued to have problems.  After punching the computer a few times it finally obeyed, and I got to work at 2:45 (for my 3:05 class)--no problem, as most of the teachers were teaching until 2:55 so didn't notice me getting to school later than normal.  The kids were pretty good, again many were absent because of camping.  A few cute things happened, but nothing that I can remember now.

Chobok

The adults told me a little about today being cho-bok, then I read more about it in the newspaper.  Bok means the energy of autumn lies down on the ground since the energy of summer is still strong.  Cho means first.  There are three really hot days every summer, determined by the lunar calendar.  This year the other days are July 30 and August 9.  Traditionally, you're supposed to eat samgyetang, a dish of chicken, ginseng, garlic, jujube, and rice on the really hot days.  According to the older generation, if you shower on one of the "bok" days, you become weak.  I don't understand that one--a cool shower is necessary to survive!  Looking outside, it's beautiful--a bright blue sky with white fluffy clouds.  However, actually GOING outside feels like you have entered a sauna--your breath is gone, all of your energy drains out, and you're covered in sweat.  When you take into account the humidity, today felt like 96 degrees with a UV index of 10.  I'm slightly burnt from my walk this morning.   
 
I have seriously considered asking Matt if he wants to start teaching the adults earlier than originally planned.  They (OK, basically Grace) drive me crazy!!  Today she was complaining about the homework I gave them.  She does not seem to understand that without work, she is never going to get any better!  The even bigger problem is she thinks she knows everything all ready.  Sometimes I feel like saying to her, "OK, your turn to teach the class!"  Today I almost lost it when she wanted to hear a "full sentence."  I gritted my teeth and took a breath before calmly and slowly replying, "There are a HUNDRED 'full sentences' that you could use with that word.  It all depends on what you want to say!!"  Today they did a role play, and the other two students (attendance is down because of the kids' summer vacation) did a great job at sounding fairly natural and using intonation and such.  Grace, however, only read, and didn't even do that too well.
 
After their class I wrote the summary of last week's teachers' meeting.  Now I only have to get Matt's paper to have everything ready to give to Joelle.  Instead of spending the rest of the break to correct more journals, Joelle asked me to pick out readers for the foreign teachers to use in teaching a special class over the summer vacation.  I asked Joelle who would be teaching the special class, and she wasn't aware that no one had been asked yet.  Later when she asked Matt and Tanya if they could do it, they didn't quite understand her, so I asked her about it and then explained it to them.  I feel like a translator, but I'm translating Korean English to Canadian English!  I hope they like the books that I picked out--I tried to pick topics that the kids would be interested in and enjoy reading and that wouldn't be too boring for a teacher to teach.
 
During my 3 PM break I took my film to be developed and got some pot-bing-su from Lotteria to try to cool off.  Some middle school girls started talking with me, and we had a good, if strange, conversation.  There was a cute dog in the restaurant, sitting in the chair next to his owner, enjoying the bits of hamburger she gave them.  I couldn't help thinking what would happen if that happened at home!
 
Tanya talked to her mother this morning, and learned about the serial killer who was caught in Seoul.  She commented that she didn't even know a serial killer was on the loose--I'd guess that most foreigners wouldn't have known.  She said it like it was big news, when Matt and I talked about it several times yesterday, when it was front page news.
 
The afternoon classes were quite good.  At 6 PM I only had 3 students.  Harry spent about 10 minutes trying to convince me to buy them a snack.  "Teacher, I am tired from school camping.  I am hungry.  Please, you must buy us ice cream.....and french fries.....and play a game.  The other students are sleeping, but I really wanted to see you, so I came to class.  PLEASE, teacher!"  I haven't done anything special with that class before, and he was very insistent but in an extremely polite way, so I took the three of them to Lotteria.  We spent nearly 30 minutes there, and they did an excellent job of conversing in English.  WOW!  Even Jenny and Rosie, both usually quiet in class, did better with the more personal attention.  (The air conditioner there was great, too!  I could have lived without the Korean pop music playing, though.)  Then we returned to class and played a game.  The next class had only 5 students (normal is 13) so it was actually manageable.  They also pleaded for a game; we played for the last 15 minutes.
 
I figured out early on that I'm not teaching any poor kids, but how rich are these families?!  Elena is going with her father on a 4-day business trip to Paris while her mother goes to Japan.  Harry's family is going to China for 5 days; lots of kids are doing tons of special camps and extra academy classes over the 5-week summer vacation.  Plus they have "vacation homework" to do.  They make it sound so horrible, but if they'd do a little each day it wouldn't be so bad.  It's saving it until the day before school starts back that makes it hard to get done.

Harry Potter

The day was fairly normal.  Grace thought she knew it all, telling the other students incorrect phrases, then when I corrected her, she wanted to hear a "full sentence" from me.  There are like a dozen "full sentences" that you could use with any single phrase!  The air conditioner in the Kiwi classroom wasn't working, so we moved to Pineapple (which is working now).  Then the CD player wasn't working and someone else had borrowed the only other working one, so I had to read the passage to them.  They prefer my voice, but it's better for them to hear a variety of voices. 
 
The kids were good.  Some of the classes were smaller than normal because the 6th graders are on a school camping trip.  The 7 PM class was particularly pleasant (5 students absent, including Brandon).  We spent 20 minutes talking about the Harry Potter movie--characters, plot, our favorite parts, and the similarities and differences between the book and movie.  We did one page in the book and spent the remaining 15 minutes of class playing 20 questions.  They need some practice with when to use "Is it" and "Does it." 
 
I started taking points away if they spoke Korean in class, so the students were much more careful to speak only English.  At one point, Jessy asked me if he could speak Korean.  No, this is English class!  He sighed, thought a moment, then said to Kane, "Down open" and it took Kane a minute to look down and see that his fly was open.  Kane embarrassedly zipped up his pants, then asked Jessy, "Why you look there?!"  Jessy tried to explain that he was looking at Kane from head to toe and happened to see his pants open.  Kane asked me if he could speak Korean.  I said yes, because I wanted to hear what else he was going to say!  He called Jessy 변태 (a pervert) for looking down there.  No, Kane, he was just trying to help you out! 
 
Over dinner the three foreign teachers got into a discussion about Harry Potter.  We wondered why the book is called "The Philosopher's Stone" in England and Canada but "The Sorcerer's Stone" in the USA.  I reasoned that it's because the whole idea of philosophy turns a lot of Americans off, but Matt guessed that it's because "The Philosopher's Stone" is something used in witchcraft, and it wouldn't go over well in the States.  Then we discussed how some people don't like the wizardry part of the books, to the point of wanting them banned.  My opinion is that most kids can see the books for the fantasy that they are, while real witchcraft and the like is dangerous.  When Tanya went to class, the discussion turned to religion. 
 
How can you believe that there's a God but also believe that He couldn't create the world or that He isn't all-powerful and loving and just, etc.?  Yes, there are a lot of bad things going on the world, but that's because of our sinful nature and our having free will.  The (conversation/debate/whatever you want to call it) stayed civil but we both had our own way of looking at things.  For someone who's confirmed in the Catholic Church to think that the Bible is just a bunch of stories and to "hope" that there's more to life that the 70 years we spend on earth, that's pretty weird.