Korea Day 14

I did not sleep well last night so I was quite tired today. Our classes are preparing short (7 sentences) speeches to present to the class. My class is speaking about what they want to do when they grow up. I have things from a doctor (like their parents) to lawyers and cooks and food stylists. Their speeches are very cute. I am trying to get them to make eye contact and speak loudly. Tomorrow and Saturday, I will have to pick the best speech in the class and then all the classes will go to an auditorium and the class winners will speak. There will be an overall winner chosen by the teachers.

The food here is interesting. The lunch a few days ago looked like meat and rice in a dark brown sauce (gravy). It was actually potatoes and rice with sauce. The meals often consist of mixing carbs. There is often rice and potatoes in the same dish. They also try to do Western food but don't quite get it right. For example, we had spaghetti but it had a sweet and sour sauce. At a restaurant, they served rice with spaghetti on top and rice with pizza on top too. Surprisingly, we did not order either.

There is a shortage of fruit and vegetables served with meals. There is the occasional salad but they use cabbage instead of lettuce. We have learned that we can get fresh fruit quite cheaply from streetside vendors who sell later in the evening. We were wondering why most people are so thin and we think it's that they just don't eat very much!

Here are some shots from today. This is Joann's class in the line for lunch.

Here is my class working diligently??

The electronic dictionaries are very good. These girls are playing a game where a word is given with a few letters missing and they have to fill in the missing letters. When they get stuck, they ask me for the word. I had trouble with the following one:

S U ___ ___ E C T

I thought it was suspect but they told me each letter only occurred once in a word so there was no second s. Do you know the word?? The answer will be at the end of this blog. What a teacher thing to do!!

The big white machine is the air conditioner and everyone likes to stand in front of it to cool off.

This is back to my class.

Here is the lunch line where they get the food. Students are given one main dish and can pick two of the little side dishes on the shelves to the right in this picture. They also get a banana and a yogurt drink. Yogurt drinks are very big here too. Also a lot of coffee is instant coffee with sugar and powdered milk mixed in it. When hot water is added, voila, coffee. I find this too sweet. You can also get real coffee and lattes but they cost about $5 each. There are Starbuck's around too.

This is Jammy (pronounced Jamie) hamming it up for the camera.

Most of our group went to Itaewan to play trivia in a bar tonight. This area is where the US army base is so it is very westernized. I was very tired and I wasn't too excited to do something that I can do at home so I stayed in and did a bit of work and went to bed early (9pm). I slept quite well


The puzzle word is SUBJECT!