American Candy

A brief flash of puzzled astonishment crossed my face as 15 hands shot into the air out of nowhere. Behold, the power of a strawberry jolly rancher.
It was not but 10 seconds prior that a lone girl sheepishly raised her hand to tell me simply “I can swim.” No one else wanted to answer [...]

A completely scientific breakdown of Korean cartoon dinosaurs from the 80’s vs. American cartoon dinosaurs of the 80’s

You know, when you get down to it Korea really isn’t that different from the United States. Case in point: Dooley the Dinosaur.
I’d post the video directly here, but I can’t figure out how to embed videos that don’t involve the words “you” and “tube.” So for the time being check out Dooley [...]

It’s smart being this hard…or something like that

It’s routine of every foreigner in Korea to make fun of the Korean way of speaking English.  The name of this speaking style is referred to as “Konglish.”  If you look it up on google you’ll get some fun examples.  I also suggest Engirish.com, although that is not strictly limited to the Korean language.
The reciprocal [...]

Hey there have you heard about my robot friend?

Korean music videos generally fall under one of two categories:
Incredibly Silly
Unnecessarily Sad
The unnecessarily sad thing is something I’m gonna talk about in some later posts when I get out of my current “I don’t feel like writing” funk. (oddly enough, I have more ideas for posts than I’ve had all year…not sure what that [...]

Still Obsessed With Korean MTV

Korean Pop, or K-pop to those in the know (that would now be you) is a musical juggernaut when it comes to Asia. They make no lies to themselves about copying the American Music Industry, but they keep out the turbo sex charged videos that would turn off many consumers in countries based around [...]

Recycling frightens me

For some reason South Koreans are known to be very good recyclers. I say “for some reason” because it seems that every street is littered with a fair amount of trash and cigarette butts. Sometimes I see people throw things onto the street and I am reminded of High School. A friend [...]

Klogic Vs. Math

I thought math was supposed to be a strength of the Korean Education system.
I wondered what was taking her so long to put the students into pairs. Everything seemed so straight forward. But to my 5th grade co-teacher something just was not right.  Something needed to change.
So she moved a student here. [...]

Weekly Blog Round Up

A day late…no dollars short
- A couple via the marmot: First I’m always a sucker for running diaries. Here’s one about the elections last week. And remember a few weeks ago when I posted the 3d pictures that Microsoft was collecting/creating…well, never one to be outdone, Korea has released some of it’s [...]

Easily, the best part about my job

Usually I don’t do this, but my students were fooling around and copying every word I was saying. So why not have some fun with it?  The video works…trust me.

Plug into the Korean Paradigm

What if Koreans were really just a bunch of robots, specifically designed to give pre-programmed responses? Would they give short and direct answers to questions, searching for the lowest common denominator? Would different people be programmed differently so as to give the appearance of diversity?
If the characters of Mo Han Do Jan are [...]