"This is my brother, he's a clown!"

I was just looking at the Leigh High School Class of 1996 Alumni website, browsing through the photos that were submitted for the 10 year reunion slideshow. I recognized almost NO ONE. With the exceptions of a handful of shots of my old flag team buds Sherri and Jenna, everyone was unfamiliar....perhaps because they've gained weight, lost some hair, popped out some kids...or maybe I never knew them in the first place. It was kind of weird, to tell you the truth.

I was just starting to lament the fact that I didn't recognize anyone, and then thinking that maybe I should have submitted something, and then I came to these photos:

I love it! My brother is ON THE BALL. All the other photos are of proud parents with kids, wedding shots, happy couples sitting in boats, everyone trying to look their best to show everyone how well they've done. And then, there are the Morellos. Thank you Danny, for your choice of submission. I couldn't have picked a better photo to be remembered by!

Stupidity

Argh. The last two days have sucked. Well, sucked is a harsh word....the last two days at work have been annoyingly frustrating, due to the stupidity of a number of individuals that run my school. Who exactly I don't know, but whoever it was does not know shit about writing and administering tests. Or children, for that matter.

By the way, if the tone of this post is drastically different from my other posts, it's cause I just need to vent.

I've spent the past two days at work giving the Assessment Test to all of my students. The purpose of the test was, from what I have been able to figure out, to give the parents some numbers that tell them how their kids is doing. As if the weekly tests, graded homework, and monthly report cards aren't enough, we also have to give a standardized test that further evaluates where the students stand when stacked up against their fellow classmates. You see, Korean parents LOVE hard numbers. As many of them are not proficient in English themselves and cannot determine their kids abilities from just looking at how well they do on the homework, it is more practical to just give them numbers. As in, "Sally scored a 91% in Reading Comprehension, which is better than 83% of students at the same level." So we give these tests to produce the numbers to keep the parents happy, so they keep paying to send their kids to our academy.

But the problem is, whoever designed these tests was on crack. (Not literally, crack does not exist in Korea, but you know what I mean.) As a trained teacher and a somewhat experienced maker and giver of tests, I can tell you that these test broke virtually every rule of good testing. I used to complain about the standardized testing in California, but this blew the STAR 9's out of the water.

Let me share just a few of the problems. First of all, the test was far too long and far to difficult for the younger students. The level 200 test, which was given to mostly first and second graders was 28 pages long. TWENTY EIGHT PAGES!! Can you imagine forcing an 8 year old to take a 28 page test in two hours? That's what I had to do today. Most of them completely fell apart after the first half hour. Yet I had to keep them on it until the two hours were up. (Ok, so I cheated and let them stop 15 minutes early to do a crossword puzzle, or else they would have shriveled up and died.) If I had a dollar for every time I said, "Keep on going, you're doing great! I know it's long but you can make it," today, would probably be able to pay professionals to write the school a whole new set of tests.

As if the sheer length of the test was not enough to make it impossible, it was damn hard too. The format was confusing, the directions were complicated, and there were tons of words that kids at that level would not be expected to know. There were 5 passages in the reading comprehension section, and each one by itself was longer than the story books that would normally we take a month to finish with the class. No matter how smart they are, kids at that age simply have not developed the cognitive abilities to process such a test, let alone do well on it.

Furthermore, the administration of the test was absolute shit. The whole idea of standardized testing is that it is supposed to be standardized -- meaning every test taker has the same testing environment, thereby eliminating the advantages and disadvantages that may come from differing testing experiences. But the problem here was that the teachers were not given clear instructions as to how to administer the test, and I know we all did it differently. Were we supposed to help them by defining words they did not know in the passages? I did, my coworker didn't. Were we supposed to give them breaks? Were we supposed to go through the directions with them? Hell, they didn't even clearly communicate if there was a time limit or not. What I can say is that the testing experiences were VASTLY different between classes, and some kids probably had a distinct advantage.

Another thing that irked me (and this is getting on the the finer points of test making, but it's interesting to think about), was that half of the material in the test was stuff the kids have absolutely no context for understanding. This was a point of criticism when equal rights activist started going after the tests in the US education system -- that many questions and reading selections are unintentionally biased because they are about things that some kids just have no clue about. For example, girls will do more poorly on test that have passages about sports because fewer of them are familiar with sports. Had I not been exposed to that from my time teaching in America, I may not have noticed it today, but I did.

For example, there were a number of questions that required them to identify correct punctuation and capitalization of cities and states in the US. Ok, what Korean school child is going to know that Arizona needs to be spelled with a capital, or that there should be a comma in the middle of Seattle, Washington? They don't even know that those are places. There were a ton of baseball references -- baseball is becoming popular here, but not enough that most kids know what "pitching" is. There was a passage about taking care of dogs -- dogs are also popular here, but most people still don't have them, let alone know words like "breeds". There was a passage about star gazing -- you can't see stars in Seoul. (Now I'm getting nit-picky.) There was even a question that used the phrase, "ran through the sprinklers," and getting it right depended on knowing what a sprinkler is. But kids here don't know what a sprinkler is, because they don't have lawns in Seoul!!!

The bottom line is that these test results are not valid. They are not in any way an accurate reflections of the students' English abilities. Yet, they will still be reported and taken as such.

So that is why I am irked right now. The funny thing is that, in the end, it really doesn't matter. What will these tests determine? Nothing, in the long run. They won't result in kids being moved up or down in the classes. They don't go on any permanent record. They do not affect college admission. They really are just to provide numbers for the parents. But anyone who has spent any time in Korea knows what that means -- the scores a kid gets on this test may make their life miserable. You see, education is the NUMBER ONE priority here, and a test showing that a kid is performing below the expected level can be a death sentence (You'd be surprised at how often kids joke that "my mom is going to KILL me if I do badly). You see, when the numbers are low, the parents come down on the kids -- what is wrong with them, why are they not smart enough, they must not be trying, whatever. Usually endless lectures and yelling, shaming the child for not being good enough. And in many cases, there is also physical punishment. I have a number of kids that tell me they get hit if they do not get 100% on the weekly vocabulary tests. In Korea, the threat of the parent's wrath is the single biggest motivation for doing well in school.

So I guess that is why I am so bothered by this -- because I know the repercussions that will come for these kids that I care so much about, simply because the admin people at my school don't know shit about testing. And I know how it affects my kids -- no matter how many times I tell them that what matters is that they try their best, mom and dad will still prevail. And I know already that a lot of them are going to be made to feel like disappointments to the family because they did not do well today. All because of a test that is not IN THE LEAST reflective of how much they really know.

On the optimistic side, however, it is in the school's best interest to keep the parents happy, and the parents are happiest when the numbers are high. So I expect that they will manage to tweak the numbers somehow, throw in some sort of curve, that results in better scores across the board. If they were smart, they would scrap the results altogether, but I know that will not happen.

And.....I'm done ranting now.

Sundays in 홍대

Summer is on its way, and my time in Korea is beginning to wind down.

And wouldn't you know it, just as the end comes into sight, I have suddenly starting having a lot more fun?

I almost wish I had timed my contract so that I would be leaving in the dead of winter, when I was at my rope's end with Korea and finding very little that I would miss. But no, I will be leaving at the end of summer, and if summer is anything like spring has been, its going to really break my heart to leave this place.

I've been having a great time lately, a lot of which I mostly attribute to the improved weather and the fact that I have been meeting a lot of cool people. Of course, I have been meeting tons of new folks the entire time I have been here, but most of them haven't stuck around. Recently though, it seems as if a damn fun group has come into my life, through both random meetings and friends of friends. And unlike the various groups that have been part of my time in Korea, this one actually feels like it is going to last for awhile.

AND..... the entire purpose of this post is to share photos with them, because I am too retarded to figure out how to make a zip file that others can actually read.

Ok, so here it goes.

It all started with Steven and I. Steven is my coworker; he and I came to Korea at the exact same time, so we've known each other since way back (aka, September.) He likes fruity drinks and stuffed animals.
One day back in winter, Steven and I were in a bookstore. He spotted this sexy Korean-American babe and was immediately smitten by her tattoos and vintage shirt. After much prodding and encouragment from yours truly, he finally worked up the nerve to talk to her, and found out her name was Kathy. Long story short, we ended up in a bar with her and her friends that night, didn't see her for a long stretch, then recently reunited.
Kathy introduced us to Bruce, a fellow UC grad, and a good friend and a former coworker/housemate of her's. He is NOT posing in this photo, I swear.
Bruce introduced us to Raj, the beautiful sweetheart from Toronto. He's a dangerous trouble maker, more on that later.
And Jeremy is a friend of Raj's. Jer is the young one, just pushing 20, so we wise adults are showing him the ropes of life. (snicker)
Cowboy Steve, aka Lashes, was also a former coworker of Kathy's. He would make an excellent beer commericial model, don't you think?
Then there is the lovely Sun Park, who I met through Matt, who met her on Myspace. She is currently being fought over by at least four of us , but she knows she's mine. Song, a "Korean" from the Pacific Northwest, found me on Myspace while trolling for chicks. As this photo demonstrates, he is clearly the best dressed of all of us.
So that's the basic group that inspired this post. For two weekends, we spend Saturday night painting the "hill" red in Itaewon, then reunited the next day in Hongdae. The whole point of being in Hongdae was to go shopping, but somehow, no shopping actually happened. Hmmm.

Hongdae, by the way, has become my favorite area of Seoul. It's a university area, and quite the art/alternative/funky scene. And I'm totally jealous of Kathy because she lives there; for me it's 45 minutes by subway. Hongdae has some of the best bars, the best shops, best restaurants, and a great vibe. It's like the Berkeley of Korea.

And here are the photos.

In the middle of Hongdae is a park, shared equally by artists, punks, skids, and parents playing with their kids.

Jeremy, Raj, and Sun

You can't tell from this photo, but this is the most enormous dog I have ever seen... quite the sight in a land of tiny apartment dogs.
Notice all the people taking photos with their cell phones.
Enjoying Kamja Tang, a spicy potato/meat soup.
Song has the ability to get comfortable anywhere.
Sun and Jeremy, having a beauty contest.


Jeremy and I sharing an itellectual moment.
Ray and Whitney (another coworker), having an awkward first kiss.

The walls of Hongdae are a popular place to release pent up anger towards Japan, and the "Fuck Japs" tag is all over. I took a photo of this wall because of the anti-hate graffiti. Notice the one at the bottom that says "But Japs love you." Also interesting is the fact that all of this is in Enlish -- why? I am sure there are plenty of Korean tags saying the same thing, but I can't read them.

Another beer commercial.
Korea is loaded with places that have deceptive names. What would you imagine a Feminism Bar is? Lesbian? Nope, it's a hooker bar for men.
The essential extended arm self portraits!

This is a store that sells nothing but condoms and condom accessories.

Raj "educating" Sun. 10 points to anyone who was not there this night that can guess what he is teaching her about here.
We found the coolest bar in all of Korea...it had a pool where you could dangle your feet while you drink. A rare luxury in this city, truly.



Despite his clean cut looks, Raj is actually a dangerous criminal. He holds the special distinction of being the ONLY person any of us know to ever be slapped with a jaywalking in ticket in Korea. Anyone who has been to Korea will understand the absurdity of this.

And, that's it! I adore these people, and I'm going to miss them when I go.

Daytime Weekends are Good Too

It's Monday night and I am still recovering from another wonderful weekend, struggling to readjust to the dull monotony and responsibility of the weekday life. This particular weekend was a "daytime weekend," meaning most of my awake time was during the day -- read, no late nights out!

This morning I finally made it to the doctor to get my immunizations and malaria pills for my trip in September. The doctor was much more informative than most doctors back home, a welcome change. One interesting thing that just occurred to me about Korean doctor's offices (I've only visited two, and they have both been this way) -- instead of the doctor moving around to different rooms to visit various patients, as it is at the big facilities in the states, the doctors here stay in their office and you go in to see them. I think I like it better that way, because the doctor feels much more settled, and is able to give their full attention. At Kaiser, I always felt like the doctor was ready to bolt out the door at any second, because they were so busy. And I would often leave feeling dissatified; like I hadn't really been paid proper attention to. But when the doctor only has one office, you sort of have them "captive" until you are done asking what you need to know. And when you feel satisfied, YOU get to leave. And the doctor is sitting down during the appointment. I like that.

Anyways, I am all set on my vaccinations -- I only had to get Typhoid, Polio booster, and Japanese B Encyphalitis. The other recommendation was Rabies -- but its a $200 shot, so I am passing for now....I'll just be sure to steer clear of angry dogs, rats and squirrels! I also got Malaria pills -- and one of the most memorable moments of my day was watching the pharmacist count out 180 malaria pills. One for everyday I will be "on the road." Seeing that HUGE pile, it occurred to me that every one of those little babies represented one day of an upcoming epic adventure. That's a damn lot of days! Just imagining how much I will see, how much I will experience, how much I will learn......wow, its amazing. I felt both overwhelmed and excited at the same time. And grateful. Above all, grateful that I have the chance to do this.

So back to the weekend....yesterday was a hiking day, and I finally was able to get my butt back out on the mountain. It felt great, as usual, but I am still far more out of shape than I'd like to be. I had attempted to get a big group together, but its surprisingly hard to get people out early on a Sunday. My friend Steven did come with me, and he put me to shame running up the mountain while I panted along behind. The best part of the day though was when we descended, and found an outdoor restaurant barbecuing ribs -- American style! Usually you have to go to Outback and pay through the nose to eat that in Korea. So we devoured two racks and washed them down with a couple of beers. Damn good way to end the day.

Saturday was "cultural day," and Aaron, Diane, Laurie and I headed to the Korean Folk Village. Aaron and Diane are coworkers, and Laurie is a friend of Aaron's that I know from Tai Chi class. The Folk Village is located about an hour outside of Seoul. It's set up as a historical representation of traditional Korea, essentially a replica of a small town in the olden days. Korea the way it used to be. They have people dressed up, making crafts, serving food and what not, and a fair share of fake people inside houses. It was a nice place, and we spent a relaxing day surrounded by trees and sunshine. Honestly though, I don't find the traditional Korean aesthetic to be particularly charming or beautiful....its very dull and simple, but being at the Folk Village did give me a more thorough appreciation of it. I guess you could say that the charm is in the simplicity and rusticness. I didn't see that before, but now I do.

I got some lovely photos though. Here they are...some have been put into sepia tone for maximum authenticity!

A ceramics kiln

Upon meeting a famous actress, Aaron behaves as any gentleman should

The shitter....there are still many in Seoul that look a lot like this, only ceramic, with a flusher. I've gotten quite good at using them too. Fake or real person?

This is the basic look of traditional Korean architecture for middle class folk

A real guy making bamboo crafts

This lady is real too, even though she looks fake in this photo.

One of the best parts of the day was talking to the animals -- goats, cows, horses and pigs. I get so little animal contact here, so it's a joy to be around non-human creatures again. Check out the expression on the one goat on the left....so sweet!

A girl gets amazing air demonstrating the teeter-totter game

Seeing the land in the backround here reminded me of why people always say that Korea is a beautiful country -- its easy to forget that in Seoul.

A blacksmith forges a blade. The smoke comes from the red hot metal burning the wood as he inserts it into the handle. I bought one of his knives for an amazing price, and JUST used it to cut a melon -- its an incredible blade, so I'm stoked that I picked it up.

Protective Totems. I love how whimsical they are.

Diane, Aaron, and Laurie enjoying afternoon tea. We just about feel asleep after this, we were so relaxed.

The pharmacy

This is how ginseng is grown. Korea is considered to produce the best ginseng in the world. Plants often grow for 20-50 years and are replanted several times before being used.

A fan maker

My only disappointment of the day was that I did not find a tea set. In fact, they have NO tea sets for sale, which is quite odd. I have been waiting to find just the right one, and just haven't found it yet. I got a Chinese tea set, but would like a Korean style as well. Sigh, my tea addiction can get expensive... I guess it will have to be the ceramics village next!