I am Rubbing Off on my Kids

Me: "Where is your homework?"

Student 1: "I don't have it."

Me: "Why not?"

Student 1: "I didn't buy the book!"

Student 2: "That's your problem."

Ha!

What the Book? (Seoul Trip, Pt.1)

This weekend I took a trip up to Seoul to visit Josh. No more buses for me though: I rode in style aboard the KTX. At 300 km/h, it took only an hour to get into Seoul. At that point, I took the Metro to Itaewon, where most of Seoul's foreigners congregate. It was very strange seeing so many white faces; in fact Seoul in general has a much higher population of foreigners than Daejeon.

After stopping into a foreign food market to hunt for Tabasco (no luck), I dropped by a little bookstore called "What the Book?" I'm sure this name was very funny to whoever came up with it, but it is a rather unfortunate example of Konglish. Inside however, I was blown away by the selection of new and used books. Well, I should say I was blown away by the selection of new books. I would have thought that the people who move to Korea to teach English would be an extremely literate bunch, but the used book section was loaded with the usual crap you would see at an airport bookstore. No Thomas Pynchon, but plenty of James Patterson.

Thus, I stuck to the new books section. I grabbed copies of Gravity's Rainbow (as it may last me the rest of the trip), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (as I believe Brenda thinks less of me for not having read it), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (on the recommendation of Maureen, although Brenda assures me I will hate it), Angela's Ashes (on the recommendation of Max), and About a Boy (because I like Nick Hornby, and I figured it would be good to get a book I might actually understand). I also picked up Slaughterhouse Five, my second-favorite book, for Josh and his wife. I would have gotten him my favorite book, but Catch-22 is 450 pages long. So it goes.

All in all, I dropped around 100,000 won ($100) at What the Book?, but given the paucity of the English book selection in Daejeon, it was worth the money.

More to come on the rest of my trip.

Soccer Transfer Deadline Day

Sing it with me!

It's the most, wonderful tiiiiiiiiiime of the year.

Intensive Month Is Over!

At long last, we have completed the month of extra classes, so I can go back to waking up at noon and going to work at 3. Awesome.

Pictures!

Thanks to mum and dad, I finally have a functioning camera. He's a couple of pictures of my classroom to get things started:

TKO

Recently I was forced to eject a student for smacking his fellow pupil upside the head. The offender, tired of being teased over one thing or another, knocked the other child's books to the floor. As he leaned over to pick them up, the first student hit him with a thunderous backhand.

Here is a re-creation of the incident:

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=F1tP4a6tzaQ

I Do My Best Jay Leno Impression

For fans of Leno's "Jaywalking" segments, in which he asks people simple trivia questions and receives hilarious answers, this will sound familiar:

Me: "In what year did the War of 1812 take place?"

Class: *Silence*