J.T. vs. The Bird (and The Word)

This post contains some foul language... viewer discretion is advised.

Every culture has a way of insulting somebody with their hand. This, to me, is a hilarious thing to think about. Every culture has non-verbal ways of doing two things: greeting people and expressing hatred. I guess these are the two most important things for us to communicate. I wonder what that says about humanity. Eh, I won’t worry about it too much, mostly because I’m typing this post during the breaks of the OSU vs. M*ch*g*n game and I don’t feel like spending the extra brain power to do it.

Anyways, the point is that every culture has a way of insulting somebody with their hands, and it’s different from culture to culture. There is a hand symbol for Korea, but I forget what it is offhand (no pun intended). Needless to say, it is not the middle finger. However, most of the younger generation know what the middle finger means, and they use it exactly the way we do. This is nice and convenient for them, as their parents either don’t know what it means or don’t care since it’s not a Korean insult. As a result, I’ve never seen the Korean hand signal, but I see the bird all the time.

Now, of course, the other kids know that WE know what it means, so when another kid flips them the old bird, they come right over to the English teachers to tell on them. The problem is that the kids know the middle finger as “F*ck You.” This, of course, is exactly what it is, but these little kids will keep coming up to me and saying, “Teacher, teacher, Ji Hyun did F*ck You!” I keep trying to explain to them that, while I appreciate that they feel insulted, they can’t use that word. They nod politely, but never get it. *sigh* Where do they learn that stuff, anyways? They’re like 8 seconds old.

This, of course, highlights a bigger issue that’s worth talking about: it’s hard to swear in a foreign language and make it sound natural. When the little kids drop an F-bomb, it always makes me smile a little inside, because it just sounds cute. One of my adult conversation class books had some minor swearing it, so I had to take that opportunity to teach my adult students a little bit about swearing. Basically, I advised them to swear sparingly, and not use anything too serious because it just won’t come out right. I can’t help thinking of my friend Charmaine Chan. I knew her for 4 years at Wooster, her English is excellent, but she could still make me giggle with the fact that, when she swore, she just sounded cute. That is, of course, not how you want to sound when you swear. This applies even moreso to some of my middle schoolers who think they can ghetto slang, making them sound like idiots to a degree that I cannot possibly express to you.

Well, on a completely different note, I was lucky enough to find that the OSU vs. M*ch*g*n game is being broadcast over the Internet on espn.com for international viewers. It costs $20 to watch, but to actually get to watch a full game of football, especially THE game, it’s definitely worth it. And as I sit here watching the game it reminds me that, even after watching a just plain awful “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” call from the refs, I miss football. More than the $20 dollars, the much bigger pain was hearing that alarm go off at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. And, as I type this, the game is 19-21 with OSU down, so I’m hoping that my early morning/late night fun brings me a malevolent smile over the beating of the “Team Up North.”

25-21 OSU… 24 seconds left…

YES!!!!! YES!!!!!! GO BUCKS!!!!!

Quick observations: Jim Tressel=Awesome Coach, Troy Smith=Top-Notch Quarterback, Josh Huston=I really miss Mike Nugent.

J.T.=Tired, so I’ll have to see the results of the Penn State vs. Michigan State game in the morning. A big congrats to all the fellow OSU fans out there. And to Michigan? Well, I think my cute little students have something to say to you…

J.T. vs. Blogging

Right now many of you are probably thinking to yourselves, “Is it possible? Has J.T. actually managed to finally update his blog?” And, if you weren’t thinking that before, you definitely are now, seeing as how you just read it. Well, yes, dear family and friends, another blog entry has magically appeared in my little corner of the Internet. Why did it take so long? Well, for many reasons. First of all, anybody who maintains a blog knows it can be tough to come up with interesting content all the time. Second, I’ve kind of been in a work-sleep-work-sleep-etc. schedule for a while, as we’ve been pretty busy. Third, the brain power needed to write an entry has been expended on other tasks, such as laughing at the opening sequence of “MacGyver” in Korean (On a side note, sometimes Koreans will make up their own “English” words or phrases, and we call that “Konglish.” One of the very best Konglish phrases I’ve heard, one I think we should consider adopting in the U.S., is “MacGyver Knife,” which is their term for “Swiss Army Knife.”).

Well, all that waiting has paid off. I have to say, though, I didn’t realize I had so many dedicated readers. It seems like everybody I know sent me an e-mail or I.M. telling me I had to update my blog. I was getting requests to update my blog through my family members from people I haven’t seen in years. I even got a deadline from Ms. Mindi Dodson for last Monday… or maybe it was the Monday before; let’s face it, deadlines aren’t really my strong point. But it was nice to have a deadline… avoiding it reminded me of the good ol’ days of every single class I’ve ever taken in my entire public and private academic life. And as I pointed out to Mindi, it scares me that teaching warps you so much that you start giving assignments out to your friends.

I do have more to talk about than just my lack of talking about things. Last Monday was Halloween. Oh yeah. There are a couple of foreigner bars around here, and one of them was throwing a Halloween party on Saturday. Another one of the English teachers and I decided it would be worth checking out. I didn’t wear my costume (you’ll see why later… it’s not very conducive to hitting the bar), but most of the people there were dressed up. It was a good time. Apparently this bar is co-owned by a foreigner (only in practice; as a foreigner, he has no legal business rights in Korea). Maybe I should have replaced “apparently” with “unfortunately,” because this guy was a huge annoying idiot all night. He got on the mike about 30 minutes after I got there and, despite being obviously much older than almost anybody else there, decided to try to be “hip.” There was not enough alcohol in that bar to make this man hip. However, I met some new people and had a great time, but the Halloween story does not end there.

Before I move on, I’d like to make a public service announcement. To anybody out there over the age of about 35, let me share this with you: you are not hip. Only rarely does somebody 10 to 15 years older than you manage to be “hip,” and even then it’s usually because that person has a lot of money. Oh, and to anybody around my age or older who’s reading this: you are not hip, either. Just the fact that you’ve already been reading this far and didn’t think to yourself what a dorky, uncool word “hip” is proves this fact. Once you leave college your ability to ever effectively interact with that age group again diminishes rapidly. Once you’re more than a few years out, all you can do is go back and regale the young children with the stories of how things were “back in the day.” At least I have some pretty good stories to tell (ask me about the Super Bowl sometime)…

Anyways, back to Halloween. On Monday, I decided to go to work in my costume, which was the Invisible Man. The Invisible Man was a choice of necessity; when you’re in a culture that doesn’t celebrate Halloween, you have to make due. Since the Invisible Man is basically just a man wrapped up in bandages, this was manageable. So, Monday morning, I got dressed, completely wrapped my head up in bandages, threw on some sunglasses and gloves, and headed down to the middle school. For just a moment, I want you to imagine this; you’re in a culture that, while you’ve probably heard of Halloween, you have no idea when it is and have never actually experienced it. You’re walking down the street one day and you look up to see a man dressed as the Invisible Man casually taking a stroll. He looks over you at you and waves and walks away (which I did plenty of, because man, that’s fun!). Personally, I think I probably caused brain damage to no fewer than 5 Koreans.

And if you think that’s funny, try to imagine what would happen when I got to the middle school. You don’t have to, because I’ll tell you about it. I walked down the halls like the real Invisible Man. People stopped and stared, stepped back when I walked towards them, even shrieked a little if I surprised them. And, of course, I did everything I could to mess with them. However, as I’m sure is to be expected, all fears immediately disappeared when I whipped out two huge bags of candy. These same kids, some of whom didn’t have the slightest clue who I was, rushed up to me for candy. They saw a strange man who they’d never met, couldn’t even see, in a freaky costume that just minutes before was enough to make them scream and they had absolutely no reservations about taking candy from me. Yep, it’s a different culture. To be honest, I think that would be true of all children if we didn’t practically embroider “don’t take candy from strangers” on their pliant little adolescent brains.

I had even more fun at the private school where I teach in the afternoons, because there were some little kids to play with. Oh man, good times. What’s funny is I think the kids were less afraid than the middle schoolers! But I chased them around and poked them and tickled them, so a good time was had by all. The kindergartners are so rowdy that it’s like torture to teach them, but they’re amazing fun for the exact same reason. They are so cute it’s impossible to mad when they won’t work sometimes. Sometimes…

Anyways, that’s all from the Korean front today. I hope that’s enough to keep you satiated for a while. If not, try rationing yourself to one paragraph a week, and I’ll try to keep a little more active on this thing! And a big thanks to everybody who told me how much they like reading the blog; it means a lot to me. See ya later!