Notes on November

We started a new term on Monday and with it we got a mass of new students. My school highly suggests students choose an English name for class purposes. I'm still not convinced this is for the students "immersion benefit" as it seems more for the school's reputation;  their native English teachers are not butchering the Korean names of their students. However, most kids choose their own name before they come to class. If they don't, we are allowed to choose one for them. Sadly I have only given out two and both have been pretty weak. One was my brother's name, Drew, and the other was Doug (aka, Doug Funny). 

But Monday I had a student without on English name on my roster and I got oddly excited. The thought of naming someone gives me a little thrill. So when I got to his name on the attendance chart I had my sheet of potential names in hand and was ready to start firing them off. He beat me to the punch however, and proudly stated that he was going to be named "Potter". At first I thought he said, "Peter" and I wanted to scream because I already had about 6 Peters in other classes. But he calmly repeated himself again, "Potter". He was about 7 years old and had decided to not name himself "Harry" but rather the surname "Potter" and was completely convinced that he had named himself appropriately. It was one of those shining moments of defiance and pride in a little kid's life and despite it I laughed to myself for the next hour every time I called on his proud little soul. 

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In the after math of Obama's win in the states, black people in Korea have become the new blondes. They are few and far between here, with the majority of them Africans who sell purses on the street in Itaewon. Thus Koreans didn't necessarily have a good view of them until now. In the past few weeks however, even old Korean men and women who can not even pronounce the english word "hello" have learned the name "Obama" and the word "President". It is incredible how many times people will see me and ask "meegouk saram?" which means "American person?" and when I nod they say "Obama President!!!" and give an often golden toothed grin coupled with a double thumbs up. And now everytime my students see a  picture  of a black person in one of my lessons in unison they yell, "teacher it's OBAMA!!" The attitude toward the race of black people has done a drastic shift here and it feels really cool to be at the epicenter of a change like that in a foreign country. 

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I have been hanging out with a fair amount of Brits in recent weeks and I guess from movies and some previous traveling I felt like I was pretty accustomed to the majority of their lingo. But as it stands I have laughed harder at some of their terms or maybe simply at the nonchalant way they have been expressed, than I ever had before. Terms such as "gangrape" to mean something is a rip-off,  "cunt", "tosser", and "wanker" all used like the word "jerk" in the states , and of course the term "pissed" for when they are really drunk. Thus making conversations eternally entertaining and wildly inappropriate.