Pepero = Delicious

I have about 30 boxes of Pepero candy sitting on my desk right now. They're the 6-inch skinny pretzel stick things covered in a layer of chocolate--I'm sure everyone's had 'em. And maybe this is an all-over holiday, but I'd never heard of Pepero Day. I guess because it's 11/11, they felt like honoring the shape of what appears to be all of my kids' favorite food--like they needed a reason to be more hyper. So all day long I've been gorging myself on Pepero, as pretty much every kid brought about 50 boxes to share. Wish I would have known to bring some myself, but I guess that's what I get for not understanding the all-in-Korean staff meetings. I just smile and nod, smile and nod around here.

I'm a spoken English teacher here, and all the new textbooks they gave me for the kids don't really have anything on pronunciation and intonation. So I've been taking it on myself to really hammer down on those areas, 'cause I figure what good is it for an ESL learner to speak english if the people they're talking to can't understand through the accent? Plus, it's hilarious most of the time: these kids have a tremendous difficulty with their L's and R's, B's and V's, among many others. I correct a kid who says "learry" instead of "really", and don't let him go until he gets it right, so often it's not long before I've got a red-faced little Korean dude jumping up and down in my face screaming "LEARRY! LEARRY! LEARRRRRY!!!" But I have to crack down because for their speaking tests to get into college, they have to pronounce the words correctly, so why not nip the problems in the bud? And it's all in good fun, though, because they always end up getting it right eventually and are very (not to be confused with 'berry') proud of themselves. Plus, I let them reverse the role when they seem disheartened; I just tell them to give me some Korean words to try and pronounce and hilarity always ensues--I'm terrible at it, so they like to know they're not alone. I often can't help but bust up laughing though when I recite words for them to repeat in rhythm--I'm going "pig, rig, jig, big" and 10 little Korean girls are spitting, in perfect rhythm and with incredible enthusiasm, "peeg, reeg, jeeg, beeg!" back at me with huge smiles on their faces. But after enough repetition they begin to hear a difference, and they always get it right; it just takes some time.

Todd and I hit the public swimming pool this morning -- that was quite hilarious. We still can't read any door signs anywhere, so we almost ended up scaring a whole bunch of Koreans by mistaking the apparent "pool area" sign for the "shower room" sign leading out of the locker room. Luckily a guy stopped us at the last second and pointed us to the showers; I don't think they would have ever let us back in there if we accidentally walked out in our birthday suits. But WOW what a crowded pool. The majority of the people there (who were all Korean adults) were taking swimming lessons, and we were laughed at quite a bit as we tried to figure out which lanes were acceptable for us to swim in. "Sorry grandma, I didn't know this was the senior-citizen, kickboard only lane". The pool was probably the place I've been stared at most in Korea. It didn't help that of the few hundred people flopping around in there, we were the only ones without goggles, that our swimwear looks nothing like any of theirs (speedo, no thanks), the swimcaps they gave us were nowhere near fitting, or, um... what's the other thing? Oh yeah, we're skinny white dudes. It's fun though -- still no hostility or extreme awkwardness, and we're able to laugh at ourselves. Hey, we're trying our best, which is more than most of the foreigners here could say. G'night!