School has started again. Apparently the start date was changed from Sept. 1st (which is what is has been for the last however many years) to the week of Sept. 1st, which this year began on August 29th. For some reason, not one of the foreign teachers I know (except one) was told about this, so when we got the text message on Friday — yeah, on Friday — we were all shocked. I’m sure it was on a calendar somewhere — in fact, I’m told it was — but as for actually communicating the change, well: communication is not …
Category: KOREA
This is Your Own Foot, In Which You Have Just Shot Yourself — or, Why TEFL Teachers Should Read The Inner Game of Music
Not long ago, I was riding the escalator up to the local subway station when I saw an ironic — but not very surprising — sight. I don’t know if it’s common outside of Korea, but around here, women who are wearing skirts — not even necessarily short ones — tend to hold their purse behind their legs, to hold the skirt down and, presumably, to fend off perverts trying to shoot upskirt images. (Yeah, it’s an issue here.) Well, on this particular day, a young woman doubtless acting on habit did exactly this. She slipped her purse behind her, …
On Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones’ Tongue Surgery
I must admit, as someone who’s been teaching Koreans English for a decade now (more, if you include the Koreans in my classes at Concordia University in Montreal). I’m extremely dubious about this: Student Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones dreams of living and working in South Korea once she finishes university, even though she has never visited the country. But while taking language lessons, the 19-year-old found that she couldn’t pronounce certain crucial sounds in the Korean alphabet. Her dentist suggested it may be because she was born with a slightly shorter than average tongue, caused by having an unusually thick lingual frenulum …
Chocolat (쇼콜라) — The Mixed-Race Girl Group
Miss Jiwaku recently complained on her blog of how the whole musical trend of girl groups and boy bands has “ruined everything” in Korea, especially advertising. I’ve noted a few times on my Twitter feed how when actual girl groups aren’t being used to advertise water parks, girl group-like collections of women have been created for advertising. For one park, she informed me, a “girl group” was actually formed — the “Ocean Girls”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIg46YFuqIU This, she assures me, was not the case a decade ago, when water park ads featured… you know, kids playing and families enjoying themselves together, and …
Coming Soon: “Invasion of Alien Bikini”
Well, Miss Jiwaku just surprised me with the trailer a few days ago (when we were booking tickets for Cowboys and Aliens; the trailer was for what appears to be a Korean SF sex-comedy to be released toward the end of this month: Apparently, a guy steps in and saves a woman from some thugs, only to discover that she is in fact a lovely little sex-hungry alien. She wants to rob him of his virginity, and for some strange reason, he refuses… so she tortures him. No matter how cheaply done, no matter how confusing, this is definitely bound …