i sabotaged my class today. it was fun. it was almost nihilistic experimentation. but done somewhat cleverly. i started the class with something that i knew would work, i ended the class with something i knew would work, and then the middle was a little chaos to see the ways things wouldn't work. i created 6 individualized assignments, and 6 little groups, and i set them loose so i could know what would and wouldn't work later. it was my method of quickly learning mistakes. it's as if i was a haphazard social scientist that had one day to figure out people's capacity for problem solving. so as this scientist i gave the 6 groups these items:

1.a live grenade
2.an angry skunk
3.a man quickly bleeding to death from a missing leg
4.edward scissorhands on speed
5.a foreign pregnant woman in labour
6.an old naked man peeing on everything

then i quickly documented in my head how each group positively or negatively reacted to each situation. and tada, that's some fast science.

by the way- pretend right now you just received each of the aforementioned problems. so, just imagine, you are sitting right now at your computer, and a live grenade rolls in, or a naked peeing old man walks in. now, for each situation, suggest what you would do.

I've killed 3 birds with one stone. The 3 problems were sometimes being bored at work, not drawing enough, and not creating enough personal relations with the students.

so, when my students got 10/10 on the daily test, I drew a picture on their test. the first time i did this it was ok, but i ran out of ideas for what to draw. so next class i asked my students for suggestions. they said zombies and flowers, and teddy bears and stuff. i drew some of those, but i still didn't know specifically what to give each student. so this last time i said, write on your test what you want me to draw. and when i got the tests it felt like reading a christmas wish list. it was great. some things i drew were: detention, starcraft battlecruiser, an ugly picture of the girl sitting beside them, and here are 3 examples of other things...

a phantom and a zombie duking it out.
a teddy bear and a cat...at lunch time.
a motorcycle...


i think next time i will warn my students that they might not get exactly what they expect.

interesting and useless things to do on the internet...
go to youtube.com, type in a random animal (it could be a fox, a giraffe, a sloth, it doesn't matter) then watch some videos about that animal. it's a personalized, and hackneyed self-serve discovery channel.
i typed in polar bears and i found this...

alright, the video won't load so, here's the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JE-Nyt4Bmi8

koreanisms

transportation:
bus- the bus driver yelling at everyone for talking too much. buses are libraries. actually all public modes of transportation are libraries. shhhh.

motorcycles/scooters - as the motorcycle turned the corner, the riders sandal fell off. and as he wheeled his bike back to get the sandal, i thought, forget about lack of helmets, how bout just some proper foot gear. or better yet, how bout not carrying a big metal case in your hand as you ride.

subway - the rule applies that everyone should be quiet... unless you're a solicitor that stops with a cart of junk and announce your sales pitch. the best solicitors of course are the ones that sell compilation CDs from the 60's of generic music. and then they play the music to let you "enjoy".

cars - screw child safety seats, we'll do things korean style.

fashion
notables - i saw a guy with little teddy bears dangling from his ears. i think they were supposed to be on a keychain.

konglish- even my english don't really read what the english on their shirts say. and they definitely don't pick up on the atrocious grammar. i liked the shirt that said "Jesus I will save you"

Observations - fluorescent is coming back in. and also currently girls still try to look like magazines, and they succeed more often than in Canada. Lastly I noted in many of my classes an element of superficiality. Actually more than an element. I asked what makes a person a good person and they said if they are good looking. I asked if an ugly person could be a good person. they said no. partly joking. only partly. so i asked if their mother was good looking. and they were a little stuck for an answer. check and mate.

Food
Sales- whole watermelons were about $10 and half watermelons were about $4.

Extra - if you thought we were bad for extra packaging, come here. Plus everything in the grocery store is wrapped with another random product. Example, i got pencil crayons with my cereal.

soju - the ultimate teenage pressure system plays out in korea. except it's not only with teenagers. the bosses take their employees out drinking, and they need to accept, and then they need to drink soju a horrible tasting cheap alcohol. it's gotten so bad that sometimes these employees carry an extra empty bottle with them so they can pour their drink in it when the boss doesn't look just to avoid drinking. my friend that has started university told me that she will need to drink a lot this weekend even though she doesn't want to. all the students are forced into drinking games... with their professor for frosh week. it's funny, i remember my university completely banned drinking during frosh week.

that's all the koreanisms for now.

On my way to work today I saw something very strange. I saw a claw vending machine. Actually, that isn't so strange. there are claw vending machines on almost every corner in korea. These are the machines that look like mini cranes that try to reach down to pick up toys. Usually the claw drops the toys. Anyway, this claw machine didn't have toys in it, it had real lobsters sitting in a tub of water. There were 3 older guys gathered around trying to get them. They already got one. It was great.

Then I got to work, and I started reading some of my students' essays. Actually, I couldn't even get past the first one. I laughed 'til i cried. Let me explain some details first. The school I work at is Avalon, The head teacher who disciplines the students is Jinny. And the essay topic was that they had to write their own ghost story. Now, here is the story (edited a bit for readability)...

World of Ghost

A European horse, and a Korean dog, and an Indian cat and a French crocodile all crash at the same place. They all die. Their souls all combine. They are made into a ghost. The ghost is crazy. It stole a knife at the Korean dog's master's house. When it finds people, it carries them to Avalon. Then the human feels horror because Avalon makes them feel horror. Finally, the humans kill themselves. One day, it carried a woman to Avalon but she didn't kill herself. It carried the woman to the top of Avalon. It said "why don't you feel horror at Avalon?" She said "I'm Jinny". The ghost was surprised and felt horror, but it said "I will hit you."
"Okay".
It advanced to Jinny, and it kicked her arm. Then Junny was angry, so Jinny kicked the ghost's face. The ghost picked up a knife and threw it at Jinny, but Jinny did the matrix. She kicked between the ghost's legs and the ghost is a boy. It ran from Jinny far away. The ghost felt horror. It wanted to die. So it tried to fall out of an apartment, but it didn't die. It was still okay. So it cut some trees and made a house and carried a female European horse, Korean dog, Indian cat, French crocodile, and crashed them at the same place. The souls combined too. It made a ghost. They loved and got 100 babies and went to kill Jinny. The got knives. They advanced to Jinny and hit Jinny. But Jinny is very strong, so they all died.

Did I mention that the students hate going to avalon, there's too much work, and they're always tired.