EFL Classroom Halloween Culture Lesson Craft Activity and Display Part II

Earlier I wrote 3 posts about my Halloween culture lesson and my experiences decorating classrooms in Korea. Here are the links . . .

Halloween Classroom Decorations — Looking back at 2005 and my first Halloween lesson in Korea

Shopping For Halloween Decorations at Lotte Mart, Seoul Station

Carving jack-o-lanterns with my co-teacher — Co-teaching . . . it ain’t just in the classroom.

The high school boys have been responding pretty positively to the Halloween culture lesson and craft activity. We’ve been putting up the different vocabulary craft items they make in class. Creative, imaginative, artsy type activities are NOT a common classroom language learning experience, let alone a common learner experience in other subjects as well, in South Korea. This is an unfortunate side-effect of the exam/test-myopia that plagues the entire education system in Korea, and it severely impacts that teaching and learning styles that are practiced. Fortunately for most native English teachers one of the positive aspects of our classes not being tested is that we have a lot more freedom to do things that are not in direct support of the extreme tests-are-the-only-thing-that-matters-therefore-we-only-do-test-related-things-in-class . . .

In this picture you can see the yarn spider web that the boys helped me put up and attach to the four ceiling fans. At the front are the results of the craft activity with scissors and color paper . . .

Click on the link below to see the pictures and read more at Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving . . . . I've moved over to wordpress.com and will be blogging there from now on.

EFL Classroom Halloween Culture Lesson Craft Activity and Display Part II

J

Fiery Red Fall Leaves and A Monk Waiting for a Taxi in Seoul, South Korea

Today on the way to meet Julianne for dinner it was impossible to miss that the fall leaves are hitting their peak colors . . .

Click on the link below to see the pictures and read more at Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving . . . . I've moved over to wordpress.com and will be blogging there from now on.

Fiery Red Fall Leaves and A Monk Waiting for a Taxi in Seoul, South Korea

J

I haven’t written about H1N1 aka Swine Flu since September . . . and today Brian from Jeollonamdo did a write up,

More cases of swine flu, more deaths

in which he displays an awesome summary of things being written on the Net.

Here are the posts I wrote back in August and September about H1N1.

H1N1/Swine Flu in Korea — I predict all schools will be closed in Korea for 10 days this fall/winter–probably Sept/Oct

H1N1 will become an epidemic in Korea that will see a revolution in hygiene awareness, and Koreans staying home when they’re sick

“You should go to the hospital” — Korean cultural norm of going to hospital for many things may backfire on it for H1N1

South Korea – Swine Flu will close all schools and pretty much shut the country down for 10 days–and give foreign teachers another 10 day quarantine

. . . . .

Here is perhaps the biggest reason why I still think there’s a high chance of all schools being closed across Korea,

“Korea has stocks of Tamiflu and anti-viral drugs for 11 percent of its entire population but the ministers said that the stocks will be raised to cover 20 percent by the end of the year.” (Korea Times, Tamiflu Available at Drug Stores)

. . . . . .

Click on the link below to read more at Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving . . . . I've moved over to wordpress.com and will be blogging there from now on.

H1N1/Swine Flu — Shutting down all schools in South Korea . . . will it come to that with Suneung only 16 days away?

I wonder what will happen over the next few weeks . . . I especially worry about the elderly Koreans with pre-existing health conditions.

I hope things are not going to get as bad as I think they will . . .

J

Carving jack-o-lanterns with my co-teacher -- Co-teaching . . . it ain't just in the classroom.

My primary co-teacher and I finally got around to carving our pumpkins. It was her first time carving so she was very excited, and I have to admit I was too. We set up in a room adjacent to the teachers office . . .

Click on the link below to see the pictures and read more at Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving . . . . I've moved over to wordpress.com and will be blogging there from now on.

Carving jack-o-lanters with my co-teacher -- Co-teaching . . . it ain't just in the classroom.

J

Disco Jump Ride in Dongdaemun Market — The guy who does flips in the center of the ride wasn’t working tonight–damn!

Julianne and I headed over to the Dongdaemun Market area tonight to eat some BBQ galbi (pork ribs). On the way there we passed by the Disco Ride . . .

Click on this link to see the pictures and read more at Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving . . . . I've moved over to wordpress.com and will be blogging there from now on.

Enjoy,
J

My first Halloween in Korea was back in 2005. I was living and teaching on Ganghwa Island, and was one of just 6 foreign English teachers on the whole island. My home middle school (I taught at 3, and lived next to one of them) was in a two-street village next to a mountain–needless to say the kids and teachers had never been exposed to anything resembling a western cultural Halloween event so I decided to do a culture lesson and decorate my English classroom.

I spent my own money on the decorations because the middle school was small (98 students) and they didn’t have any kind of budget (especially after spending 40,000 on building a new English Zone). I went to Walmart in Incheon (back in the day when Walmart was still in Korea) and picked up supplies and some decorations . . .

Click on the following link to read the rest of this post and see the pictures.

Halloween Classroom Decorations — Looking back at 2005 and my first Halloween lesson in Korea

J

Fall Leaves Around My Neighborhood in Seoul

For the past couple weeks I have been trying to find the right time of day with the right angle and amount of sunlight on some trees near my apartment. I still haven’t been able to be free and in the area at the best time but I decided to take some pics yesterday regardless because soon the leaves will be gone . . .

Click on this link to see the pictures and read more at Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving . . . . I've moved over to wordpress.com and will be blogging there from now on.

J

Kimchi-icecream moves from blogspot.com to wordpress

I finally decided to make the move from kimchi-icream at blogspot.com because everybody has been telling me that wordpress is better. The straw that broke this camel’s back happened a couple days ago when I was trying to upload pictures and a window popped up informing me that I had exceeded Picasa’s web album limit and that I’d have to pay for more space if I wished to continue uploading pics to my blog . . . uhm, no thank you.

I'm hoping the people who read my blog regularly will click on the link below and continue reading. The link below is the title of the first post I wrote on the new wordpress.com blog I created.

Kimchi-icecream moves from blogspot.com to wordpress

I began playing around with the wordpress blog yesterday and am in the process of choosing the blog template that I like best, and figuring out how to use the dashboard features too.

Using wordpress is going to allow me to evolve my blogging style, and perhaps more importantly write more often because I'll be able to access it whenever I want to as opposed to not being able to when I'm in certain places Monday to Friday (I'm sure you can pick up on the subtext here, wink wink).

Anyways, I really hope regular readers will follow me over to wordpress, and bookmark the new blog site.

I even modified the name slightly to include a tag line . . .

Kimchi Icecream: The Second Serving

What do you think?

J

Club Freebird, Hondae, Seoul, South Korea -- A band I saw the other night and nobody can tell me their name, lol.

Last Friday night Julianne and I headed out to Hongdae to see a friend's band play. We both brought our cameras as we planned to take pictures of the band playing.

I picked up some Ilford Pro 3200 ISO Black and White film for Julianne's Nikon F4, and I had my new Speedlite 580 EX II flash, Canon D400, and Simga 10-20mm wide angle lens. I had yet to really try out the flash under real time shooting conditions, and looked forward to trying it out in the low light conditions of a night club.

The opening shots proved to be a little . . . ahem, blurry. But I still like the effect.

The band had a kind of Irish heavy metal sound and really good stage performance. I think they are one of the best live acts I've seen in Hongdae.

The lead singer had fantastic vocals for heavy metal, and his on-stage persona was funny but at the same time had an edge to it that suited the music.

The bass guitarist was also good, and exuded a subtle but powerful energy that meshed well with the rest of the band.

As you can see I did some editing of the pics using Picasa 3.

The electric guitarist and backup singer was awesome. He had a laid-back-let's-get-a-beer-and-shoot-the-shit personality offstage that I'd never have connected to the onstage performer seen here.

While I don't generally listen to heavy metal these guys were really good live, and I enjoyed their performance.

I'll leave the rest of the pics to your viewing pleasure with a few comments here and there.

With color pictures Picasa 3 has an Effects category with an option of Focal B&W that allows you to take a color picture and transform it into black and white with only the color focusing on the point of the picture that is most interesting . . . I really like the effect it has here.

In this picture it also works well to highlight the drummer in the back of the band. I considered going up on stage to take some closer pictures . . . but I didn't know these guys and some dude going up on stage while they're performing . . . I didn't want to do that. I've had strangers with cameras, and also VIDEO cameras, just randomly walk in while I've been teaching . . . I no longer get irritated by it but I know it's not cool to do to people without any warning.

This next picture is awesome! I love the poses . . .

Awesome!

I keep getting images from "The Commitments" in my head when I look at the pics here, lol.

This guy seriously has the the ultimate poses--I can't decide who has the best one-shot-moment pics: the lead singer or this guy--what do you think?

Okay, seriously, watch this The Commitments video clip and the lead singer from the movie band, and then take a look at the lead singer (below) again--I think they could be related . . .

I can't wait to see the pics from Julianne's Nikon F4--we're still waiting for it to be developed. I did black and white pics on my Canon and wonder if they'll be equal to the film shots . . .

After about 45 minutes of performing the end came with a big bang--awesome.

After the guys were done their set I went into the back and told them that if they email me I'd share the pictures I'd taken. I'm still waiting to hear from them, and once I do I'll update this post with the name of the band and each of the members.

I'll also find out where they're performing next and put that up too.

J

P.S. I finally started using my flickr.com page--here's the link where you can see ALL of the pics I took of these guys.

Choong Ahn High School, Seoul, South Korea -- Fall pictures, a soccer game, and a magpie . . .

Today was "Open House" at the high school . . . but I also heard other variations on the idea: parents day, parents visiting day, and a few others. I didn't really see many parents myself as I spent most of the day at my desk because classes my classes had been canceled due to a controversial nation wide test (see here for more info).

I put the time to good use, though, and did prep work for classes tomorrow, and next week.

When I finished work I headed outside to see a beautiful fall day. Here's a shot of the main building on the campus.

I was using my Sigma 18-200 lens, and should have switched over to my Sigma 10-22mm to get the whole building in the shot--but it's still a nice picture, I think.

The trees are beginning to show their fall colors . . . I can't wait until there are large patches of trees in fall colors. I've been told to return to Chang Deok Gung/Palace (see here for Part 1, and here for Part 2 of my pics of the palace) in a week or two because there are a lot of trees on the palace grounds and in the fall it's really awesome.

I then walked around for a while taking pics . . .

I'm beginning to explore black and white photography more on my camera . . .

This tree lies in a court yard that is behind the main building with 3 other buildings that surround it. This tree could be in a Harry Potter movie . . . I love its lines and character. I'll take more pics of it later.

After taking pics here I realized that the guys were playing a soccer game on the massive astro-turf field that sits on the rear part of the campus.

I turned on my camera's Artificial Intelligence Servo setting, and began taking shots and trying to tweak the settings so that I might get some good shots with my 18-200mm lens (I think a bigger super zoom lens would work better but I don't have one--yet).

The guys were playing hard, and it was fun watching them while trying to take some good shots.

I'm hoping to do a fall photo shoot of the entire school grounds over the next couple weeks--you can get an idea of how nice the campus is from the background here in this shot (below), but The Marmot's Hole has a gorgeous set of pictures here that I'll be hard pressed to top.

Anyways, I took shots for about 40 minutes . . .

After the game ended I began to walk off campus but ran into my favorite Korean bird . . .

I've been trying to get good shots of the magpie for 2 years now, and finally think I managed to get some.

He looks really different from the front when you can't see the blue coloring on his wings.

After wrapping up my photo shoot with the magpie I headed to Yongsan to meet a friend who wanted some camera shopping tips . . .

Well, time to go to bed . . . g'night all.

J