I hope that everybody had a great weekend! We had fun on Namhae Island, which is also called Korea's 'Treasure Island', but it was a little bizarre at times.

High Points of our trip:

Being far away from work with friends.
Being surrounded by greenery.
The delicious food we managed to make, BBQ skewers two nights in a row were amazing!
The homemade banana makeolli went down well.
Celebrating Tasha's birthday with a delicious cake from Paris Baguette.
Being given free baked eggs by a mother and daughter on a beach. They were tasty.
Meeting some lovely new people who happily wore coupling hoodies.
Our pension was really nice, clean and snugly fit all eight of us in. Plus, it was right next to the GS 25, meaning that we didn't have to make the half hour trip back into town for more provisions.

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As teachers, we are tasked not just with educating (a loaded word, depending on what is expected of you in your public school or hagwon), but of also remembering. That is, remembering our students’ names. Their English names.

 

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I remember pretty vividly the first time I cheated in school. I was sitting next to a cute blonde haired, blue eyed boy. He had a feminine name like Ashley, but his name wasn’t Ashley. We were learning about Earth in class. I think it was second grade. Most of the page was coloring and it only had one question. He whispered to me, asking the answer. I said I didn’t know.

He said he’d write “yes” as his answer if I wrote “no.” Even though I was young, I remember thinking he was cute, and that I probably would have done anything he asked. I wrote “no” as my answer. I watched him write “yes” as his answer. We both had shit-eating grins on our faces as we turned in our pages to the teacher.