It turns out that American Thanksgiving food is exactly the same as our traditional Christmas dinner. Who knew?! As I’ve mentioned before, my family doesn’t do the traditional meal. However, I was used to eating a turkey dinner around Christmas every year before I started travelling – there was always the office Christmas do, of [...]
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I’m not going to lie, I’ve used the word delicious about 20 times in two languages today and I’m only halfway through the day. I don’t even care. Today, my friends, is Kimchi Day at school. My feelings about kimchi have changed very little since my delirious kimchi-drunk ramblings this time last year – if [...]
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I think this may be the first year that I’ve even been aware that American Thanksgiving Day is coming. I don’t really know what it’s all about, and I don’t know much about how it’s celebrated. Actually, at one point I thought that it was a day to mark the start of Christmas in America, [...]
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When I was at school, we had regular unannounced fire drills. You’d be eating your lunch or doing a history test or whatever, and the bell would interrupt with its urgent, continuous ringing. We were so used to it that no one got over-excited or scared – everyone simply rose to their feet and looked [...]
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Awdi ka? (Where are you going?) barks the ajumma from upstairs as I hurry down the steps out of the building. I look at her, somewhat exasperated. It’s not that I mind her being a nosy old woman, as I will probably become one myself at some point, interrogating random passers-by from my front porch [...]
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Winter’s almost here! This is probably my favourite time of the year in Korea. The beautiful autumn colours are still around, and the days are sunny and bright, but the air is now cold enough to see your breath on it. It’s not so cold that I have to wear multiple heavy layers outdoors, or [...]
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As much satisfaction as being an ESL teacher brings me, it has also had a disturbing side effect… on my vocabulary. This seems to be a generally recognised and shared symptom amongst English teachers in Korea, and there are times when you’d wonder how on earth we manage to do our jobs, when you hear [...]
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Good morning, Hayley, says one of my Korean colleagues, coming into my classroom and approaching my desk. I’m going to the gym. She stops and looks expectantly at me. I gaze blankly at her from behind my coffee cup. There are so many strange things about this situation that my sleep-addled brain just doesn’t know [...]
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I’ve been feeling sorry for my fourth grade class lately. I was given a really awful book to work on with them. It was too difficult and too grammar-focused for them to really understand, given that they were being taught it by someone who can’t explain the more difficult concepts to them in their own [...]
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You Say Goodbye, I Say… Historical Snapshots It Just Makes Me Happy
