토니

That's my name in Hangul, the Korean writing system. I'm trying to pick it up to make things a little easier over here. My school computer has a dual keyboard that lets me type in Hangul so that's pretty fun sometimes although I don't know what I'm saying. My phone has a sweet English-Korean dictionary too that makes it easy to translate when I'm out and about.

영 This means English, pronounced yung.

I have a sound chart posted next to my desk. If anyone wants to help me study leave a comment and I will try to figure out your name and post it back.

Open Lesson

Wow, they were really stressing this thing. It is basically a performance review but I know that the school would be out a bunch of money and the prestige of a foreign teacher if they fired me so I have a pretty nice job security. This is my co-teacher Hyun Seon's first year with this school though so I thought I would give it my all for her sake. We ended up practicing the exact lesson with the exact class we were to teach the day before. I feel like this is cheating and it makes me feel dirty. I think it's quite normal over here though. In addition to the students we were teaching in front of:

The Principal
The Vice Principal
3 other English teachers
3 random teachers
about 6 or 7 interns

We have a group of interns observing random classes at our school for the whole month. I think it's really funny that interns are observing me, I'm basically a teaching intern myself. The other English teachers keep asking if I was nervous. It's hard to be nervous when no one that is judging you can understand what you're saying. The P and VP speak very little English and I believe it's their opinion that matters most.

All in all it went well, we had to ad lib a bit towards the end but no one important noticed. They asked if I will be teaching in Korea again next year. They said if I am they will give me a good rating on their score sheets.

BEEF

The big issue over here there days is US Beef imports. Apparently US cattle farmers like to send their low quality old beef to Korea. This is the beef most likely to have Mad Cow characteristics. There was a riot 2 weeks ago at the shipping port and there are articles in the Korean newspaper daily. The kids all call it "Crazy Cow" due to a translation error. For a while I thought Crazy Cow was some weird Korean kids restaurant like Chuck E Cheese.

HEY AMERICA! WE DON'T WANT YOUR CRAZY COW!!!!!

Freaky Friday

There is a troublemaker who is always sitting in the time out area right outside the teachers office. He is an attention seeker and often disrupts class. Still I like him, he is always trying to speak English to me outside of class and I was once an attention seeker in class myself. He does swear in English in class though but since I'm the only one who understands it I feel like if I acknowledge it I will only make the situation worse. Plus I think it's kind of funny.

Today he came in to school with a black eye and what appears to be a sprained wrist. I really hope he crashed his bike or something but with the way the teachers discipline the students I can only imagine what happens in the homes.

So thanks for not beating me dad!! Haha.

EDIT: I found out he got in a fight, I should have known. The great thing is that I think he pointed out a little scrawny kid as the other combatant. The main troublemaker has a huge shiner and a sprained wrist and the scrawny dude looks absolutely fine. He probably knows TaeKwonDo.

Back to School

I am finally back in the saddle after 3 weeks of nothing. It's going better than I thought it would. It only took me one warm up class to get back into Teacher Tony mode. They keep springing random stuff on me though. I just found out that in a week I have an open class for the principal and vice principal to evaluate. Also the following week there will be another open class for the board of education to evaluate. The good part is that the student's speak better English than the board and the Principal so it's not too stressful. I just have to get the little devils to participate.

I've been showing this video to my classes today. Rain is like the Justin Timberlake of Korea right now and Steven Colbert has had a pseudo rivalry going with him after Rain beat him out for Time Magazine's #1 most influential celebrity of 2007. He challenged him to a dance off, here it is:

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=156555


A lot of Koreans really are ridiculously good at that Dance video game, but I found an arcade game that is way better. It is like guitar hero but with a full drum kit. You have to hit the drums in time with whatever song you choose. The more difficult the level the more you have to actually play. It's really fun, like playing real drums almost.

Hair

I put a little gallery of my hair onto my picsaweb page:

Hair


I have this entire week off so I will be exploring nature and hopefully adding a lot of new pictures to my web album.

Hiking pics

I started an online photo gallery to store all of my pictures. The Hiking pics are Here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Tony.MurRock

This week Wednesday through Thursday were half days with no class. Next week is spring break. After that I will actually have to work again. I started playing badminton (why is there an n in the middle of this word?) with the PE teacher this week. Koreans are awesome at racket sports, especially the really fun one's that we might call hobbies back home. I am of course referring to Ping Pong and Badminton. I've had shoulder issues for a while now and I think badminton might be the perfect rehab activity for me. I get the rotation and exercise for my weak shoulder but there is no hard impact when I hit the birdie. Tennis would be a little tougher but I think eventually I might be able to get back into it.

I thought Portland was small but the expat community here is shrinking every day. I met a guy Saturday night and I ran into him randomly again last night. There aren't really too many foreigner hang outs so that definitely has something to do with it.

Tuesday is a big day for me. I'll be getting blinds installed in the morning and I will finally get a phone in the afternoon. There's a neon sign that stays on all night outside of my window. The blinds will hopefully diffuse this issue. There are nice parts to not having a phone but it can be a hassle too. The beauty of the cell phone is the ability to change plans last minute and not seem like a jerk. It's a freedom thing. As it stands now I have to make plans with people via the internet and stick to them. Once I get a phone I will be able to flow like a cool breeze once again. I hate planning.