Another Random Week in October

This week started with a meet up with my friend in Seomyeon, the downtown area of Busan. I hadn't really explored Seomyeon since arriving in Korea, having only passed through on the subway travelling to other places. Seomyeon is about 60 minutes by train so the distance plus wanting to avoid crowds kept me away until now.

My friend is also an English teacher and a Canadian, and we met during our orientation back in February. She lives about 90 minutes away, so I don't see her very often. 

Seomyeon is a bustling area of the city with ample shopping and nightlife. It was fairly active on Sunday afternoon. We wandered for a while in the market and side streets until we found a Japanese restaurant serving up curry rice with an omelette. I hadn't had anything like this since I lived in Japan, so it was a nice treat.

We took our temperature and recorded our contact information in the log at the front of the restaurant, and then enjoyed our meal. Conversing with a native speaker was refreshing after months of speaking with students and those with limited conversational abilities.

Later, we went to a massive coffee shop/lounge called Q Lounge on the 8th floor of a shopping center. The view of the mountains was wonderful and the coffee and desserts were, naturally, overpriced but very good. I then walked through the extensive underground shopping centre, back to the subway and returned home.

At school, students were finishing up what we think could be the last of our online lessons. While I don't give homework during in-class lessons, I need to assign some work for online students as it is a way to track their attendance and engagement with the lesson. Usually, I just ask them to write a sentence or two using the language points from the lesson. This week, I received the homework and a sweet note from a student. Sometimes I forget how long it is between seeing the students in person.

Students were asked to use 'please' in a sentence and indicate its meaning.

Friday's school lunch had an interesting item. Normally, I would be pretty excited about pizza, but you'll notice the crust on this slice is black. The pizza dough was made with squid ink! Doesn't have a strong taste, but I was left wondering just one question. Why? Why do this to a pizza?

This is also exam season for semester two and the students are extra-sleepy in class. The grade three students are gearing up for their big final exams next week, and the grade twos have their mid-terms. It's a strange feature of Korean education that the grade threes will write their final exams, in order to apply for high school admission, when there is still over 3 months left in the school year. I assume it's just fun and games after the final exam. I get to shift my lessons away from the textbook and plan fun activities and movies.

But before the exams, the students must once again complete their writing and speaking assessments with me. The third graders wrote about their favourite book and had an interview with me about the same topic. I evaluated their writing and speaking performance. The lowest possible score is 40/100 and that is earned by writing zero sentences and speaking zero English words during the interview. Any effort beyond that bumps up their score.

A surprising number of boys wrote about The Three Little Pigs. Most of the other students wrote about their favourite Korean books, but some chose interesting books to discuss. Several students read Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, or Harry Potter. There were even students who read Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Diary of Anne Frank. These students had a similar assignment in semester one where they were to recommend a famous place in Korea for foreigners to visit. 

The interviews were hilarious, as usual. Students were nervous, fidgety, and giggly. Some students were unprepared and sat in silence, while the top students spoke in near-perfect fluency. One student explained beforehand that he didn't have time to prepare, so he was going to have a free conversation with me. He actually did really well and it was a refreshing change from the memorized speeches of the other students. I gave him an A+.

I learned late in the week that there was to be a mandatory department meeting after school, starting at 5pm on Friday. Turns out it was not really a work meeting but rather dinner at a restaurant with colleagues. These sorts of outings haven't happened at all this year, so it was a nice way to end the week. 

We drove to the outskirts of Busan to a restaurant on the banks of the river. I wondered why we needed to go so far for a ShabuShabu restaurant, but apparently, this restaurant was particularly unique because it served clams and other shellfish in the ShabuShabu, which is not available elsewhere.

ShabuShabu is a multi-course style of dinner where everything is eaten out of a pot. First, we ate grilled pork and shellfish in the pot with beansprouts and other vegetables. Of course, all sorts of sides were provided in Korean fashion. Then the pot was converted to soup by adding broth and more leafy vegetables and shellfish. After we finished that, ramen noodles were added to the pot, and the flavours were soaked up by the noodles. For the final course, rice and carrots were added to make a stew.

Soju - Korean alcohol

The teachers and restaurant staff were very kind to me and I felt like the star of the show. Everyone wanted to know how I liked the Korean food, and they were watching me eat attentively, which made me nervous. Honestly, they treated me like a baby by putting food on my plate, teaching me how to eat, which sauce to use, and when to use the spoon versus the chopsticks. I was corrected when trying to fold too much food into my ginger leaf. Graciously, the restaurant staff brought me some extra vegetables and an extra tangerine. I drank soju, which is Korean alcohol made from rice and grains. We drank it straight and its alcohol percentage is about 20% so you have to be careful not to drink too much at one's first office party. We shared one bottle.

The meal was paid for with funds collected monthly from each teacher. I think we had a few won left over after dinner, so we made a run to Starbucks, where we ended the night with coffee and tea. 

Hopefully, with COVID-19 numbers remaining low, we'll be able to have more outings like this throughout the year.