-
Korean Bananas in an English Classroom?
It looks like I not only teach my students English, but can also (in one case!) help them with their Korean grammar ( Read more... ) -
Korean Expressions in Translation?
Earlier in the week I was teaching an intermediate class of two fifth grade girls and covering the grammatical structure "know how to + [verb]". We went over the examples in the book, I asked them questions, and encouraged them to ask me questions as well. One of my questions was, "Do you know how to swim?". The first girl responded with "Yes, I ( Read more... ) -
Snow Day
Uijeongbu and the surrounding reaches of Gyeonggi-do received a lot of snow on Monday, to the point where our academy director decided to cancel classes for the day. Even better was hearing later in the week that we won't need to come in on a normal day off to make up the time -- it's like snow days in high school without any of the downsides. My ( Read more... ) -
Taiwan Trip » Surprise Meetings
You know those shirts that people make: "I went to ______ and all I got was this lousy shirt"? Well, I went to Taiwan last week and came back with a lot. As is always the case when I visit Taipei I came back with quite a few CDs - 15 this time around - and also managed to take a little over 600 photos before the battery in my camera died. This ( Read more... ) -
More on Bahasa Cia-Cia, Part Two
While taking a taxi to work last week I heard a news clip on the radio about a Cia-Cia delegation that was visiting Seoul. It was hard to make out anything else from the report on account of my poor Korean skills, but at least that was enough info to run an internet search later in the day. Performing a search for '찌아찌아' at the portal sites of ( Read more... ) -
More on Bahasa Cia-Cia, Part One
One of the big news items from August of this year was the decision by the Cia-Cia of Buton Island, Indonesia to adopt Hangeul (the Korean alphabet) as their official writing system. The subject is one that I wrote about the following month in this entry. One of the main reasons I started that piece was to offer information of how Hangeul could ( Read more... ) -
Uijeongbu Immigration Office
Tomorrow I leave for Taiwan. One of the nice things about visiting the island is that it's relatively close to South Korea - the typical flight time from Incheon International Airport to Taoyuan International Airport is only about 2.5 hours - so leaving in the morning pretty much ensures you'll arrive some time in the early afternoon. While I do ( Read more... ) -
New Camera
After last week's unpleasant surprise that my point-and-shoot camera was no longer operational I decided to spend some of Christmas Day in Seoul for a bit of camera shopping at the Yongsan I'Park Mall. I had spent most of the week looking up information and reviews on recent camera models - actually, any camera models, since my point-and-shoot was ( Read more... ) -
Breaking My Camera the Week Before Vacation ...
Our academy's winter vacation is coming up next week, and as part of my time off I will be spending four days in Taiwan before returning to Korea for a meeting with Amanda during her trip to Korea. So naturally, while taking photos in my apartment on Tuesday, I went and accidentally dropped my camera -- rendering it inoperable. Granted, it's a ( Read more... )
