An "Ink"redible Tuesday Lunch

Dear morning adult students,
If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't experience the real Korea.

Once again, this week another "first" was completed. This "first" was not at all expected. In fact, when I first heard about this "first" I was convinced that I would never experience this "first," simply because this "first" has taken people's lives.

Now you might expect I did something like bungee jumping or skydiving or swim with sharks, but no. I ate a living, moving, breathing squid. That's right, a live (obviously raw) squid, a squid that was still living, a squid that was brought to it's death by my own teeth. "But Natalee, you only ate the legs right?" "No, my friend, I ate the body and head as well (however, those WERE boiled)." Now let me give you the whole story.

So, on Tuesday my students took me to a town not too far away called Seochon. One of my students lives there and apparently tis the season for the camellia flower in Seochon. So, Mrs. Nam, Mrs. Ko, Mr. Che, and Yonggeun and I piled into Mr. Che's car and we were off to see some camillias. First we took a little hike and admired this beautiful red flower. Here we are:


Then, they decided I should experience what the city is really known for, san nak ji. "San" meaning "live" and "nak ji" meaning "squid." So, this is how the process went. First we walked up to what looked like a fun aquarium with many many creatures of the sea.


However, there was no fun aquarium in sight. This was a genuine seafood restaurant. On the first floor was a fresh fish market where the customers can observe their future food swimming around and on the second floor was where you sit and either cook the food yourself, or you just skip the cooking part and eat it raw. My students picked out the best looking "san nakgi" they could find, along with 2 crabs and a bunch of oysters. So, here are some containers of other specialties being sold (please notice the sea worm in the right hand corner...apparently they like those puppies raw as well...maybe next time, Mrs. Ko)



And here is a close up of one particular "nak gi" He was the grandaddy of them all and pretty aggressive.

After selecting the finest looking "nak gi," we headed upstairs to begin the feast. They pretty much just put the squirming sea creatures in a container and put it on our table. Mrs. Nam sprung into action. She grabbed those creatures by the head and "snip snip" she cut off those tentacles like nobodies business. Here is one trying to make a desperate escape:


I was told by a number of people that this meal has killed people before. At first it sounds a little absurd, but after seeing it, I realize that it is a possibility. After Mrs. Nam cut off the tentacles, they still moved around and the suction cups were still very much in tact. So, it's been said that some people (I'm pretty sure "tipsy" people) put the live tentacle in their mouth and don't chew fast enough, thus resulting in the leg attaching it self to their throat and choking them to death. So, as I was watching these tentacles latching onto the bowl, I could only picture it latching to the back of my throat. Apparently the remedy is milk and warm water (according to my kid students...yes, this meal is so common that all my younger students have eaten it too). My adult students were very gracious, they made sure the one tiny piece that I did try was small and basically dead. And in it went:


It didn't taste like much..it was just very chewy and slimy. Notice the bowl in front of me that was full of spinach and crabs. Never in my life had I been so happy to see a bowl of spinach.

After the appendages were all taken care of and now squirming around in our stomachs, I thought we would just toss the heads and be done with it. But no. Nope..instead, after eating the spinach, crabs, and oysters out of the pot, Mrs. Ko gathered up the heads/bodies and tossed them right in the boiling water.


I said I didn't know if I could handle it, and that I was pretty full. But Mrs. Ko was bound and determined that I experience true Korea. So she gave me this little head since I am a beginner afterall.


What's that black stuff you ask? It's ink. "Nemo, you made me ink." Yes, in the bigger heads, there is a large ink sac. I tried to get rid of most of the ink before I put it in my mouth. But the others were all for the explosion of ink in their mouth. Two of them even temporarily stained their mouth and teeth black. Furthermore, the bigger heads were full of eggs which apparently are "delicious."

Here I am shoveling this little head in my mouth. While I was in this process I thought I was handling it pretty well, but then I went back and looked at my pictures, and I'm pretty sure my face showed everything..I've never been one to hide my emotions.


After all this, they brought out even more food, 2 packages of ramen noodles that we were to sop up the rest of the water. This was pretty normal except for the occasional lump of black ink. THEN even after all this food, they brought out the rest of the crab and some oysters in a spicy soup. Finally, it was finished.

When I was in the moment and watching this all take place in front of my eyes, it didn't seem abnormal really at all. And even when I was finally able to unlatch a tentacle from the bowl with my metal chopsticks and pop it in my mouth I just kept saying to myself, "These people do this all the time, this won't kill me...right?" Leaving the restaurant, I felt very full. Then as we got closer to Gunsan and my mind starting replaying the moving nakgis I felt a bit queezy. Then when I was telling my coworkers about my lunch, it made me feel a little more uneasy. When I got home after work, I uploaded the pictures and that really got me. I didn't eat dinner or breakfast and lunch the next day..nothing seemed good and I still felt "full." In fact, right now, even though I haven't eaten for 6 hours, retelling the story makes me feel "full."

HOWEVER, I am so thankful to have a group of people who are truly helping me experience Korea. I love hanging out with them and I love the crazy things they make me do.

There is probably more to tell about my week last week (like the perfect weekend of grilling steaks and riding bikes through parks exploding with cherry blossoms), but Tuesdays "ink"redible lunch was most definitely the highlight and probably the highlight for the past 7 months as well.

In case you yourself are feeling a little uneasy after reading and looking at these pictures of this helpless sea animal, here is a picture of the whole purpose of our excursion on Tuesday, the camellia flower. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Blossoming Cherries

Dear Cherry Blossoms,
You are the one good thing that the Japanese left in Korea 60 some years ago.

Hello again, expect this to be short. I was hoping to write this during my "free" period, but it turned out the class that usually has one student who comes 3 times a week had a visitor...a hung over chain smoking visitor who knew very little English (but was surprisingly passionate about learning)..therefore, I did not have a free period. Actually, today was QUITE eventful..however, that is for next week's blog..look forward to it because today was "ink"credible.

Last week a parade kicked off this cherry blossom festival that will be going on until the end of the month. I didn't get to think we would be able to watch the parade (I even had one of my students ask the director if we could go down to the street to watch..as if he was the only one who wanted to) but lo and behold, the parade went right by our 4th story classroom. I couldn't help myself, I let the kids look at the open window/hang out the open window. I told them they could only watch if they would shout in English to the people walking, so there was alot of "HELLO! WHAT'S YOUR NAME? MY NAME IS SHARON! WHERE ARE YOU FROM? DO YOU HAVE BOYFRIEND" (Ok, maybe not "do you have a boyfriend?" but seriously Koreans who can barely say "hello" in English knows how to ask if I "have boyfriend")

It wasn't like any Macy's Day parade or Petunia Festival parade, but we did have the typical girl scouts, schools, army, rotc, tractors, people walking with colorful umbrellas (i'm not sure the reason for the umbrellas). The traditional dances and instruments in the beginning were my favorite. To end the opening of this festival, during my second to last class they let off fireworks at a nearby park and we could see it from our classroom. I taught them the "ooooo" and "ahhhh" expression at every explosion....very important to their English vocabulary.

For the most part the week was the same as any other week, except for Tuesday. On Tuesday, Mrs. Ko, myself, and one of my newer students went to the Gunsan library. Having not been in a library since the closing days of my college career, I felt it was time to restore ties with the place. In this library they had 1 unit for English books, the selection wasn't great but I did pick up a book I thought looked interesting and read it in one day. It's called "The Giver," I was a fan up until the ending. Anyways, it was very fun to do something with the morning class again. After the library Mrs. Ko bought us lunch at a cafe called "Sand and Food." Why would you want to buy Sand with your food? I don't know. Why do I walk by a lotion store and it says in big letters, "For your pace and bady" I don't know. (if you don't get it, it should read "face and body")

Thanks to one of my faithful readers, I read an article about money that was found in a garlic field in a South Korean city called Gimje. A man who had illegally set up an online gambling site buried (exchanging from won to the dollar) 10 MILLION DOLLARS and was caught! So, I was curious on where this city was, and it turns out, it's about a 20 minute drive from my city! That made for good conversation with my adult class and even one student suggested we go digging in other fields to "find the rest of it." If they would have offered to drive us I would have totally gone, but they didn't so instead we just talked about it for 30 more minutes.

The weekend was beautiful! The Cherry Blossoms were just beginning to bloom and the festival was underway with a singing competition on Saturday afternoon. After the first couple, everything just blended..until this little boy sang and danced to Michael Jackson's "Beat It." Apparently, the winner of the competition got 2,500,000 won which is about 2200 dollars and a certificate that told the person he or she was now an official singer. Everyone was very good..and they should be since one of the favorite things to do on the weekend for almost everybody is to go to a singing room (it's like karaoke) called a Norybong.

I know this blog wasn't as humorous or interesting as the others, but let me tell you next week will make up for it. Let me wish a good rest of the week with some pictures that I took last week. Enjoy your Easter Weekend!

I've seen at least 5 dogs with a pink tail.

Why so sad?
A little taste of Korean entertainment
I should have worn my silk dragon outfit too.

Radioactive Rain Day

Dear young JTT,
You don't have the Korean teens heart like you used to have mine.

Once again while beginning this blog, I feel I have nothing to say that will hold your interest. Plus, right now I have an 8 year old boy reading over my shoulder and crunching these shrimp flavored chips like there's no tomorrow, so this blog entry may not be the best, but here it goes regardless.

Tuesday was most definitely the most exciting day of the week last week. On Sunday and Monday the Korean newspapers were reporting that come Tuesday, the shift in winds could bring radioactive rain from Japan. I'm not really sure of the science, but for some reason, to me, it seemed silly. And from what I heard, even if the rain was radioactive, it wouldn't bring enough radiation to do any harm. And since I have always been one to stare very closely at my food being microwaved, this situation didn't instill fear in me like it did to some of the Korean mothers. Apparently, a school district in Seoul had so many mother's complaining that they decided to cancel school due to this "radioactive" rain.

Can't you just hear it? little boy runs into his older sister's room and says, "Noona (which means older sister in Korean (well, it only means older sister if the younger brother says it..oh the Korean language), the school called, we have a radioactive rain day!" Noona: "YES! Let's go to the neighbors and start a radioactive rain fight!"

But turns out, all the worry was for nothing. There were no levels of radiation in the rain. For being a country that has been threatened for the past however many years with nuclear warfare, you'd think they wouldn't be so jumpy.

I didn't take this picture, but they did show this picture of some people in Seoul on the news...I took the bus to work this day.


As for the classes this past week, nothing too interesting happened...except when two of my kid students threw unopened cans of cola out the 4th floor window of our classroom (I wasn't in there at the time)...and I'm pretty sure the director gave it to them since they spent half the class in her office.

On Wednesday we finished up watching "Wild America" in my middle school classes. I was so excited to show them this movie, I used to rent this movie every chance I got...the main reason? Jonathan Taylor Thomas. So, you can imagine my disappointment when I asked in an excited tone, "So, what did you think of the movie!?" Their response: "We hated. So boring." My thoughts, "Well, maybe if we would have slapped some swoopy hair and skinny jeans on the boys in the movie, you would think differently?"

Instead, this is what I hear from the same group of students the next day when we were talking about the word, "bid." I was asking them to bid on something they wanted. One girl says, "I bid 20 dollars on that pencil." Next girl says, "I bid 10,000 dollars on Justin Bieber's hair." Boy sitting next to her, "NO NO, I bid 1,000,0000 dollars on Justin Bieber's hair!" Come on, JTT all the way.

(Although you can't tell, I just wrote like 6 more paragraphs and when I went to publish this post, it was all erased! You can imagine my frustration at this moment, so these next few paragraphs might be a little shorter and written with a tinge of bitterness...I'll show you blogspot.com!)

On Friday, the staff at the my academy went out to lunch. We went to this pork place that was pretty good. Nothing was too abnormal until they brought out more meat and as I was eating it, one of the teachers says, "Oh, you like pig's feet?" I don't think I've ever had pig's feet, so I guess that's another one to add the list of firsts. And although no one else could see it, after I ate it, I thought I did see the shape of a little piggy hoof.

Saturday I needed to make a trip to Seoul. I needed to go to a travel agency where the people spoke English and the company was Chinese Embassy approved. That's right, yours truly will be going to China this coming October, that is if they let me in. So, Elizabeth and I decided to make this a relaxing day in Seoul, well as relaxing as Seoul can be. We ate at a Mexican restaurant, went to an English bookstore, shopped, went to Seoul tower and simply enjoyed not being so "foreign."

For the most part it was a very nice day. I'll tell you what wasn't nice though, the bus ride up there. I don't think I've ever felt so uncomfortably warm in my life. It must be the in between stage of Winter and Spring, but the temperature in the bus was absurdly warm and moist. Somehow, the Koreans around us slept through it all while Elizabeth and I had a minor breakdown and was contemplating how to communicate to the bus driver to turn off the heat. We probably wouldn't need to communicate..he could either smell us or see the sweat stains. It felt like I was breathing while I had my face in someone else's mouth. If I don't get sick this week, it will be a true miracle.

Oh and one more thing. Last week, or maybe it was the week before, it was made official! Amy Wegmeyer is coming to Korea on October 5! She will be going to China too...well, that is if she can stand the interrogation as well. So, I'm so so so so so excited for Amy to come..and see, if Amy can do it, so can you! :)

Hul!

Dear creator of April Fools Day,
You must have been a teacher.

Well, turns out my evening class from 6 to 7 has only one student and every Tuesday and Thursday she has another academy at this time, SO that means, FINALLY, I have a free period! So I think I might make Tuesdays my new blogging day. So, grandma, now Tuesdays can be your favorite day of the week :)

This blog is going to touch on two topics. It was going to be three, but then I decided I didn't want to waste my time expressing my disgust of recent and totally undeserving star, Rebekah Black. So, first I will tell you of the daily happenings of my Thursday kid classes, and second, I will tell you about my April Fools Day, which also involved the kid classes.

Nothing out of the ordinary went on during the week, but then I got to thinking, everyday has been so normal, I need to go into my classes and try to see them like I haven't been teaching them everyday for the past 6 months. So, Thursday I decided I would remember a few of the things my students do that usually I find annoying and disruptive but Thursday I would laugh (in my head of course, they don't need that encouragement) and write about them in my blog.

Lately, I've noticed my students using a word that sounds like, "hul". So, I asked them what it means and they showed me in their little electronic dictionaries that it means, "absurdity." This word is definitely overused every single time I hand out homework.

So, I think one of my favorite and most creative students is a boy named Sky. Although all his doodles and quirky invented "gadgets" are extremely distracting to everyone else in the class, I appreciate his artistic side. I've noticed Koreans never ever want to stand out. Everybody looks the same. Everybody acts the same. From what I've observed, being different (as a Korean) is frowned upon. Sky is the exception. Although I have to get on his case about not doing origami or drawing elaborate pictures of dragons during class, I hope he never changes.

Here he is on Halloween, however, I'm sure if his mom would let him, he'd wear this everyday.

On Thursday, Sky was just being Sky. I asked the students to each write a word on the board. When it was Sky's turn, I noticed he had decided to make every movement of his body a robotic movement, complete with sound effects. It took awhile for him to get to the board and write the word, but he finally finished and made his way back to his seat by the door. Maybe 10 seconds later, he droppped his pencil. In his robotic movement, he bent down to get the pencil, and on his way back up, he slammed his head on the door knob. It may have been a "you had to be there moment," but it was quite hilarious. It was definitely a "HUL" situation.

The next class is a class of all girls. They get quite giggly at times, but usually I can reel them in. On Thursday, Cindy, must have had a large amount of sugar. Not only was she laughing at every word that came out of my mouth, but when it was her turn to answer she answered in a rap. Hul. I'm not sure where she learned this, but I definitely see a future for this girl, Cindizzle.

Then comes the 5 o'clock class. This class is around the age of 10 or 11. They are newer to my schedule, but I've had a few students in other classes before. One boy in particular, Subin, I've had since I've started, and have seen lots and lots of improvement in him. Apparently he knows he's getting better. On Thursday, every time I asked him a question and he answered correctly, he kissed his fist and then pointed in the air towards the "outfield." Please Subin..."Hul"

At 5:30 I have the same age group. Mostly boys, this class can get very rowdy, but I must say, I'm surprised by their consistency of getting their homework done. One of the most talented students is named Hyunsoo. Every Wednesday we watch a movie and they answer questions about the movie, then for homework, they have to write 3 sentences about the movie. Most of the sentences from this 5:30 class go something like this, "baby is so cute." "Movie is fun." "Man is bad." But Hyunsoo always goes the extra mile. On Thursday he turned in his homework and a few of his sentences were, " Megamind's head is so big. Why?" and "Announcer was kidnapped. Hot girl." Me: "Hyunsoo, 'hot girl'? Hul."

Also in this class is a sweet little girl Esther. Not only do I love her name because I can pronounce it, but she is very strong to be in a class of all boys. On Thursday, I wrote something on the board and turned around and saw she had stuffed all her hair into her glasses. "Hul"

My last "Hul" moment was towards the end of the day. At my 7 oclock class, once again appearing in blog, Lina and 5 other middle schoolers appear. These students I give the most grace to. They are here in the academy from 6 to 8, and at about 6:30, I can tell they are about to lose it. Thursday was one of the most chaotic classes ever. It was towards the end, and I decided to stop talking, sit back, and observe.

In the corner sat one of the newest members of the class. He was the only one not spinning out of control. To my right sat one girl, who said repeatedly in a very loud tone, "teacher! teacher! teacher! teacher! I ate ramyun!" In the middle sat two girls chatting away. And then there was Lina. She sat directly in front and was the closest person to me. Sweet, quiet Lina was waving an American flag that she found in her book bag and yelling, "AMERICA! AMERICA! TEACHER! AMERICA YAYYYYY!" This was probably the most "hul" moment of the day.

And so ended my chaotic Thursday. Friday morning came as it usually does, and when I was explaining April Fools Day to my morning class, they informed me that Korea "celebrates" it too. I was very happy to hear that, but very sad that I didn't have enough time to pull a prank on my little boogers. So, I just decided that I would tell them they did the wrong homework. In America, your average elementary student would probably be like, "eh, did we even have homework?" But these Korean kids are the total opposite, they feel sooo guilty and stressed if they don't do their homework. So at the start of every class, I walked around the room observing their homework and I said in a very serious voice," Now, this is very good, but I am very surprised you did not do page 41. Your homework was page 40 AND 41." It took most of them a minute to process what I said, but soon enough there began an uproar of, "WHAT!? TEACHER, NO! YOU SAID. TEACHER! YOU SAID!" Their worried faces were priceless and I realized how truly rewarding it is to be a teacher.

Well, that's all I have. I really love my students, and I am really blessed to have such a great job. Talk to you next week :)