Ready, Set, 시작!

The second day of teaching and my respect for educators increases daily.

First of all, I'm not quite sure I could imagine my lesson plans without the internet. Actually perhaps I can: me, the well-meaning native guide, leading my poor Korean cohorts to their lexical doom through the bubbling bogs of continuous presents and modal verbs and the treacherous trails of strong and weak verbs.

My job is made both easier and more difficult by the low level of my students' English (one of the lowest in the Seoul area apparently).

Still, the students are charming and teachers have given me a warm welcome.

Tonight I was invited out to dinner. Given the option between tofu and roast duck I sheepishly betrayed any claim I might have to being sympathetic to vegetarianism and chose the duck 꽉꽉! We went to a place that serves great roast duck. For some reason we ordered some pork followed by acorn jelly. Delicious!

I always get a kick out of the unsuitable English translations of local delicacies. Today I had 둥굴레차(dung-gul-le cha) which translates to Solomon's Seal tea. I guess this is what they drink before they banish djinns to bottles in North Korea for a 1001 nights.

Yes this place can really massage the ego right before it implodes under its own self-conscious weight. Every student at my high school feels compelled to yell out "HITEACHERHANSUMTHANKYOUBEAUTIFUL" whenever they see me in the hall way and my co-teachers (those are the ones who translate for me in the classroom), besides just having bought me dinner, are forever going through great pains to help me get settled and feel at home.

Even so, language, race, culture, and every other construct that we spend our lives trying to undo in literature departments across the US and France appear out of nowhere like glass walls. Foreigners aren't even anything new in Seoul anymore. We stare at each other out of the corners of our eyes in the subways as if to say, Although you're the only one here who could talk to me without the use of extravagant pantomime, we're going to keep pretending we're just like any other disaffected denizen of this city and stare straight ahead.

I haven't found a ton of good pop music here yet, but this makes me smile: http://www.myspace.com/leehanchoul

Today's Hanja:

小
작을 소 jak-eul so
small