English giggles

As most of you know, Andy and I have only a week and a half left in Korea. Then it's back to home sweet home.

But until then, I'm going to enjoy all the Konglish I can get.

I was correcting a student's homework today. There was a vocab section where they had to match quantities with items, i.e. a tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap. For one of the answers, they had matched "a piece of" with "bread," so that by the end of the assignment they were left with "a loaf of" and nowhere to put it. And so, ladies and gentlemen, a new phrase has been born: A loaf of information.

Für Elise

Have I mentioned how ubiquitous "Für Elise" is here? It plays when large vehicles are backing up, instead of ordinary beeping. You hear it when someone presses a "help" button in the subway station. It plays in restaurant kitchens when something needs to be taken out of the oven. It is our doorbell.

When it isn't annoying the heck out of me, it makes me giggle to think that when Bethoven composed this piece way back in the day, he had no idea that a crappy electronic version would find its way into doorbells, trucks, and subway stations of Seoul, Korea.

Picture catch-up

We spent a weekend in Incheon, a port city connected to Seoul by the subway...

...where I bought a sweatshirt with ears on the hood...


...and there was a Chinatown (that's me inside a Chinese dumpling)...


...and a parade to honor Buddha's birthday...




...and feminists?...


...and there was this cafe decorated on the outside with bottle caps...


...and in general we just enjoyed the lack of pollution and crowded streets. Thumbs up.

One of the many properties of aspirin?

I will never understand Korean medicine and its theories (superstitions?). Example conversation:

Student: Are you cold?

(I was wearing a sweater)

Me: Yeah. I'm cold.

Student: Did you catch a cold?

(this has happened many times before. Apparently, for some people, the two colds are synonymous with one another. Granted, this could be a linguistic confusion, since English uses the same word for different things)

Me: No.

Student: (confused) Oh, really?

Me: You can be cold and not catch a cold. I'm still healthy.

Student: Oh. You should take a pill.

Me: A pill?

Student: Yes. Like aspirin.

Me: Will aspirin make me warm?

Student: Yes.

..... okay.....

Excursion to Bau House!

Puppy cafe! The perfect place to go if you are suffering from puppy withdrawal (as I am), but people can also bring their own dog to sit with them as they drink coffee. When I say this place is crawling with dogs, I am not joking - dogs are everywhere, including on the tabletops and window ledges. Luckily none of them managed to steal any of our kimchi rice, though you will see a couple pictures of dogs giving the food some longing looks...











Also, here is a link to the wikipedia article about my dream dog, the Jindo:
Korean Jindo Dog

Baby's first business cards

When I came into work today, I found a little plastic box filled with snazzy new business cards with my name and contact info on them. One month before I leave. How ironic.

Sushi Dreams

Okay. We went back to Teriyaki a third time, and I think I've finally eaten too much sushi because I dreamed about it last night. We were eating live octopus-fish combination. Maybe it's time to lay off the raw stuffs.