Mollusk v. Homosapien

Last night I ate chopped up octopus that was still moving. It put up a good fight. It attached itself to the plate, forcing me to abandon my chopsticks. Then it fastened itself to my fingertips, from which I had to scrape it with my teeth before I chewed vigorously. Finally I swallowed.

Later, as I watched intently another octopus left in the tank, the woman scooped it out with a net and placed it in my hand, showing me to hold it just so: below the head, above the tentacles – there really are eight of them and the suction cups are appropriately named. It curled itself all around my hand, up my wrist, attaching itself like its dead companion to my fingertips and finally, after my curiosity was satiated, dumped back into its tank to await its own fate of hungry late-night mouths.

I found out later that this dish is called sannakji: live baby octopus cut into bits. It’s listed under “We Dare You” in my Korea guidebook.

"very funny"

I have come to realize in my few weeks here that Koreans are in the unseemly habit of throwing squid into the street to let passing cars run it over before placing it on their shelves to sell as a snack to innocent passers-by. A cruel joke if you ask me.

I took this picture in a little shop near my apartment, and I don’t think the owner was amused in the slightest way. I decided to buy a bag of chips from her just so she wouldn’t think I was using her shop to entertain myself...which of course I was.

parent-teacher conference

One of my student's mothers just stopped by the school to meet me and ask that I abandon her daughter's English nickname of Sarah and change the name to Melody, because this is the name of Ariel's daughter in the Little Mermaid 2....

Today's lesson.

Week two of teaching, which is quite the experience, to put it mildly. I never knew that an “I’m fine, thank you” in response to “How are you doing today” would give me such a thrill. So next week I start them on Cormac McCarthy; I think they’re ready.

The students all know that Rule No. 1 is No Korean, but they don’t follow it very well. One boy, Timmy, incessantly calls his classmates out on breaking the rule: “Teechah, teechah! Sally! Kordean! Teechah! Kordean!” But while he isn't tattling, he is speaking Korean himself. So yesterday he had fun with all of this native tongue monitoring until he spoke "Kordean" one time too many and spent the next 5 minutes in the hallway, gloomy and teary-eyed, watching enviously his classmates learn the preposition “under.” Tomorrow's lesson is on hypocrisy and irony.

making friends

The other day I was exploring the neighborhood and this man standing outside a little shop stopped me, asked me where I was from and I ended up talking to him for probably about an hour, if not more. His English was ok, but he was really eager to practice it -- and it was insightful to talk to a regular old Joe like that (actually he was a Lee).

Throughout the conversation he regularly apologized for not being able to speak English better and was very regretful that he had not continued to study and practice it after he graduated from college, as he said that speaking English well is one of the great tickets to success here. It made me sad to realize that he sees his mediocre English as a reflection on his entire life, as the probable reason he owns a shop on the corner rather than having succeeded in becoming a CEO of a big company, which he said is his dream.

Furthermore, it made me wonder about the fact that I myself did nothing to learn this language; I just happened to be born in an English-speaking country, and suddenly something seemed unfair about our situation, because without any effort at all I have acquired the language that for so many will be the difference between success and mediocrity. Do I appreciate it, do I utilize it to its utmost potential, do I value what I have as much as those do who don't have it. Maybe I don't know how to explain it, but I wanted to be able to tell the man that he should not place so much value on knowing the English language, that his own language contains as many riches and promises, but I am not sure that he would have believed me.