A Tad Off Color...

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I realize I have been remiss in blogging recently. I blame it on a cold- I've been out of commission for the past week or two and have not been able to do crazy fun things and have pictures to share. However, I do have a few funny stories.

1) I had my own personal experience with the infamous "indigo" / "sodomy" word mixup. As I wrote in a previous blog, for some reason, the words translate to the same thing in Korean. So I'm playing a game with my students at the end of class where one person is the leader and says, "Everyone wearing red stand up!" And if you have red on, you have to change seats with someone else, including the leader. If you don't get a seat (kinda like Musical Chairs) you become the new leader. We're doing good- the rounds included tennis shoes, glasses (which was all of them, ha), white, stripes, and then..."Sodomy! Sodomy!" One student yells, pointing at the pants of another boy. Me: "What? What?" The boy looks at me and says again, but slower, practicing his pronounciation, "Sod-o-me?" I say, "No, no, no, let's not use that word, let's say indigo! Actually, let's call them blue jeans! Blue!" And they get out their electronic dictionary to check, because, bless them, they are innocent 10 years olds, and find that they are "correct," so I just had to leave it at "Yeah, nobody uses that word. It's not very cool." We'll see if it works.

2) The students all do book reports every week. My co-worker, Sara, was grading one, and we are now very confused/concerned about the selection of books in our library! Here is a picture of the summary she wrote:



In case you can't read the beginning, it says, "...some are white and some are black and some are apircots. White is caucasion, black is negro and apircots is for Asiatics. In Africa there were Negros..." Talk about politicallt INcorrect! Sara attempted to correct the mistakes, and then just gave up as you can see. That was a fun break time talk!

3) I was walking home the other night with a friend, and as it was late, there weren't many people on the streets. I do see one Korean couple, about the same age as me, just up ahead. My friend is going on about how his new computer had just broken. "I'm so angry!" He's saying, "I'm so angry I might just punch this guy in the face." At this point, we're shoulder to shoulder with the couple and they are staring at us, which isn't so unusual here. My friend, to fill the sudden silence, continues, "But I won't." And just then, the Korean guy says with this weird look on his face, "Okay...thanks." He completely understood the whole conversation! I laughed so hard I almost cried. Man, it's dangerous when you think no one can understand you, and then you realize they do! Gotta watch what you say, for sure. I have a feeling I'm going to have this problem when I get back home to the States. Eek.

4) I have named a few students. I tried to get them to take on the most creative English names I could think of, such as Gus, Fred, even Huckleberry! Sadly, they were not fooled and chose two generic names - Mark and Danny. Ha, sorry bro.

5) Last night, I hosted trivia at a nearby bar. I've become a regular there with a group of friends, and its the regulars that host on a semi-regular rotation. My friend Karen was co-host, and we had a great time. The only thing is that everyone there heckles like crazy, and the famous saying every week is "Worst pub quiz ever!!" The number of times issued forth obviously depends on how truely horrible it is. Luckily, we only got it yelled once, and it was from someone we knew. So either we did good, or it was so bad people just didn't have the heart to say anything. Haha. I did get into one skirmish over a literature question. The question was, "Name the English poet famous for transforming the modern Enligsh "ode" before dying at the age of 26." This was supposed to be one of the harder questions. Then all these people were like, English or British? I say English. They look at me doubtfully. "Are you sure you don't mean Robbie Burns," shouts the Scot. "Yes!" I shout back, "And you should study up more on your idol if you're going to be so belligerent...and wrong!" The answer was Keats, who IS English, and eveyone kept saying, "No, he's Irish, you're wrong!" I was very mature, and moved on after only a few insults of my own, but I looked it up when I got home and I was right! Don't question the lit major! Psh. I look forward to hosting in the future; I can handle the hecklers!

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