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.