Taming the Beast

By beast I actually mean they mischievous high school students that I spend most of my week around, and I might have just found a way to actually control these little hooligans. For the first 6 weeks I did't use any technology in the classroom save for my Ipad on a couple occasions. Now that I have a workable project and a computer with powerpoint, I feel like I actually have something to leverage the bawdy minds of high schoolers. The past couple days I gave a lesson on American food--showing them all sorts of horrendously delicious pictures of hamburgers, steak, chicken, junk food and any other edible tranquilizer I could get my hands on. Besides giving them something that they *might* find interesting, this took the focus me for once...or at least off of listening to me. They're pretty much incapable of understanding complete sentences, let alone forming one on their own, so I think I might have finally hit their level: putting up a big picture of fried bacon on the screen and shouting "bacon" and "delicious" three or four times. Content, of course, cannot be overstated; So I'll have to keep thinking up either delicious or scandalous powerpoint topics as the year goes on. On one hand this actually takes takes a little time to put together. But it also doubles as Korean language class on my end--since I end up learning the corresponding Korean vocabulary after teaching the same class 6 times.

This past weekend was also something of an *event* on the FB agenda, so I guess I better go ahead and mention it. We had the FB 60th anniversary Gala in Seoul at the Silla Hotel. For those of you who don't know anything about the Silla Hotel--and if you're not from Korea then to be honest, you shouldn't--it's pretty much The Hotel. When you're Korean language textbook references it in practice sentences, it must be important...to Koreans citizens at least. Anyway, the whole ordeal was pretty nice, even if I wasn't blown away by the hotel itself. I mean, the place is pretty swank; I have no complaints. But I'm still not going to pay $13 for a beer at the bar when it comes in same bottle as one at the 7-Eleven. Well, once the actual event got going we were bombarded congratulatory readings (by "we" I mean the 500 people in attendance, not just the ETAs but past FBers and affiliates) and speeches about the merits of foreign experience and the history of FB. The food was delicious, multiple courses of scallops, some white fish, and tenderloin...all the more succulent when paired with the endless glass of wine that came with the ordeal. Well, not to be outdone by any of the speakers, the mass of FBers and myself were coerced into singing a song (for which we practice 35,243,098 hours during the convention): a precious little tune (see: sarcasm) only made palatable by the random drunk white guy in the middle of the room--in a sea of Korean bureaucrats and school administrators--fist pumping and screaming "YES! That was AWESOME!" at the end of the song. I don't think Mrs. Shim and the organizers planned for that one, but I was appreciative. And if that didn't make the even worthwhile, he gave me a high five in the bathroom immediately following the performance: "Dude, THANK YOU, you guys are AWESOME!" ***Here's to you random drunk white guy.