Marshmallows!!!!!

I’m sure that you, like me, find yourself wondering from time to time how things come to be. I’d like to share some pictures of “how marshmallows came to be”. I live up in the mountains, in the countryside... with not a lot to do on weekends. I have a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to share what I've discovered.

Marshmallows are actually the blossom from a special breed of sugar cane plant: The saccharum officinarum marshmallium, or "Sugar Cane Marshmallow"

Did you know that marshmallows were originally from Korea? This special breed of wild marshmallium still grows naturally here. In the fall, up in the mountainous areas of Korea, you can see them dotting the fields.

Western-style marshmallows are harvested much sooner, before they fully blossom to keep them sweeter and easier to package for distribution. Here are some matured blossoms in the process of being harvested.

They don't taste as sweet as the kind I'm used to... they have an earthy, straw-ish flavor. It takes some getting used to, but I'm working at it! Their flavor makes them unmarketable in western culture, but they have a variety of other uses.

In fact, Scientists are currently researching how to process the fully matured bloom from a marshmallium into a cheaper kind of “Memory Foam” for beds.

Yoot Nore New Years Game

Yoot No-re

Today my co-workers and I played this game. It's a traditional new-years activity.


Each team has little pieces, and you move around the paper based on how many points you roll.

You throw these sticks on to a blanket (or other designated area) and score points based on how many are facing "up" (the little hat and design is "up").

This is a fairly good demonstration of what the game is like. If you roll well (like he did), you get to go twice.

They are telling me "high! high!" (the other team) and mine is saying "no no no!" After I throw, they are saying "good! very good!"

This time I rolled badly. I started doing badly after they explained the rules of the game. I played a lot better before I knew what I was doing.

According to the Principal, I was the best player on my team. So I explained the concept of "Beginners Luck". We still lost, twice.

My dogs

Birthday at work

Haaaappy Birthday to me.

This was the birthday party my office had for me. They're really sweet. They bought me a cake, and sang to me. The kids heard it was my birthday and they sang to me in my first class as well. People don't age on their birthdays. You age on New Years. So, to them, I'm still 27. That's why there are 2 tall candles and 7 short candles.

And on top of my cake,

there were oranges, cherries, grapes, mellon...
and tomatoes!

The P.E. Teacher, aka "Mr Funny Guy #1" (I never found out his real name), wanted to put icing on my nose. I kept resisting, and he thought it was because

I was afraid of the cream... I was trying to get him to use a different finger. I explained after.

Open Class

Songwoo Joong Hakyo Open Class

How would you like to see exactly how I *never* actually teach? OK not exactly *never*. But usually I have 20 kids, not 40. But the most important part is that I never have a co teacher. I do everything myself. In this lesson, we try to make it look like we teach side by side on a regular basis. We don't. I see her once every week or two, in one or two classes, where she does discipline. Mostly we split the classes in to two groups, which works out well for both of us.

"You cannot (objectively) observe something without changing it in the process." Even more so when there are 30 people observing it, and there's a video camera. At first the kids are petrified, but eventually forget about it and enjoy the game. These are the highest level kids in the school.

The schools in Korea host these "open classes" where teachers from around their district come and observe a class, and then give feedback. Everyone really loved our class, and the principal and VP were glowing with pride at their trained monkeys (Wendy and I). This is the "Open Class" my co-teacher and I did for Song-woo Middle School. I had to cut it in to 6 pieces to be able to upload it, because the file was too large.

1) Introduction: Asking about the date, and which holiday it was, and if they can guess what we'll talk about.

2) My presentation: What is thanksgiving? What do we eat? What do we do? Crossword Puzzle.

3) Wendy's Presentation: What is Chuseok?

4) Comparing Thanksgiving and Chuseok: We spent about 3 minutes walking around talking to the kids, and making sure they were actually writing things down. Mostly the kids had no idea how to spell "August" or "Thursday" or "November.

5) Quiz Show: We quizzed them about the vocabulary and different traditions. This wasn't my idea, this was all Wendy's idea. It went over really well.

6) Summary: What did we learn today? What will we do next class?

And that's all folks!!!

This is a lesson I did on road signs.

First we talked about the difference between "You may" and "You must", then went on to "You must not" and "no..."

Then I showed them about 20 signs and they guessed the meaning, and then made a sentence (No pets, You may camp here, You must stop, You must not touch this)

Then I gave them all bingo cards, and we played Bingo for about 15 minutes. The kids loved it. Since I was just picking out and reading the names of signs, I decided to take a short video of the class. This is my actual classroom, though I only teach here about half the time.

Pocheon Middle School "Special" class

We needed some English Artwork to display at the upcoming festival. These are some of the pictures that we'll hang up. Actually only about 18 kids out of a school of 500 got to even try to make the art work. They chose the 18 best, most likely to create excellent work. Kind of like having a competition, but only letting the top 1% of your school enter. Anyway... this is the result of an early morning english art class. I was really impressed at how well they did!

(1st years project)



This is the first year kids project. They had a "main" topic (Summer/Fall/Birthday/Vacation/etc) and then they wrote down as many words as they could think of that were associated with that topic... (Summer - Sun, Skirt, Icecream, Hot, Sun) then make a shape and instead of using lines, use words.

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(2nd year project)

This is the second year students project. They created their own comic-book super-hero. They wrote about their powers/abilities, and who they would help, and fight against, and what their name would be. The picture at the top is their super-hero's symbol.
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(3rd year project)

This is the third year's project. They used their names, and then thought of things about themselves that began with each letter of their name. For example some of the kids wrote things like "J - Jamboree; I am a party animal!", "L - Lovely; I am a lovely girl", "U - Unique; I am the only one like me in the world". Then they tried to make a small picture that represented what they'd said.