I'm in Korea for the summer working at a university camp. I have to wash my meat and vegetables off in a cup of water to get the thick layer of hot sauce off of them before I can manage to eat them. Ah, Korean food. No msg though, which is terrific.
Today I was teaching my university students about preferences. "Ask your partner an 'either/or' preference question." One of the students was trying to say what I thought was "Do you prefer bitch girl or warm heart girl"...but he was pronouncing it like "Beach" so I wrote "Bitch" on the board, had the class practice the contrast in pronunciation between Beach and Bitch, and finally explained that he probably wanted to say "Easy Girl" rather than "Bitch", because in America, unlike some other countries, Bitch just means evil, mean, or rude; not necessarily a whore. After all that, it turns out he was trying to say "Do you prefer a RICH girl or a warm hearted girl", (ie love or money). Oops. My bad.
My favorite student writes crazy journals. She writes things like "I slandered someone today," or "I'm a good-for-nothing." Her comment for the yearbook was "I hate you but I'll try to like you." Awesome. They write KKK at the end of entries to show humor the way we would draw a happy face. KKK is the sound they make when they giggle.
It's been raining for several days and things are being to seem illusory, like the paint of the world is running down the canvas of life, blurring the sharply defined boundaries of reality. Time is slipping by. Our schedule is botched beyond my comprehension due to an indefinately postponed allday field trip, but I can manage teaching hour by hour, activity by activity. I can rest a little on the weekend. I found an amazing sushi restaurant in nearby Jinju, as well as a cute oriental pub with Strawberry flavored rice wine by the jar. Then its one more week, a flight to Taipei, a night in Tainan, and a vacation in Malaysia.
