learning korean is as easy as singing underwater!

Yes friends, let's remember: there ain't no mountain high enough that can keep me from studying my Korean grammar. Unless, I fall asleep reading the language books. But I keep this blog do in between to keep my mind refreshed. But you may wonder, how does one learn a foreign language? Here's how i do it:
Korean consists of Hangul (Korean writing), a collection of radicals which combine to form different sounds. I learned this by memorization and practice. No mystery there.
But all the words I learned by calling my friend named Johny Mnemonic (did anyone see/like that movie?) who helps save the day. For example, there is the word Nampyion in korean which means "husband". I remember this by thinking " ...the guy she's married to is the Champion from Nam"= Napyion. There you go. How about this one: we lope da = "lonlely" in korean. Well i think about eloping. and eloping can be lonely. There we go, it sticks! Here's a little tidbit inside my dirty mind, ojone pronounced /OJOAN/ means "am" in Korean. Maybe I end up in bed with a girl named Joan in the morning. What's the first thing I say? " Oh , Joan!" . of course. Now you try!

Screw it, lessons learned and other happy songs

These songs sing about me all the time. Take my students: Those little angels found my nest of chocolate and made good work. I bought a good 20 dollar bag and mistakingly left it in my closet in the english room i teach in. There are several students who clean that room after school when I am gone. These same intelectually driven philosophers took no time to make short work of that bag i had saved up for the less chocolate lusty, more participate in class type students who had to work hard to get that chocolate: they had to speak in my class in front of 30 odd peers in a classroom rooted in a society which sees the teacher as the sunlight and the students the maggots crawling around silently. What a chore for them! Anyway, back to the choloate fiends; guess what they did to my bag of chocolate? A rabid pack of monkeys would be harder pressed to lick clean a jar of peanuts any better than my students did my chocolate pouch.
I got the criminals to confess; but only partially. They bought me some more chocolate (not nearly enough to cover my losses) and I grabbed each by the arm and said: you're a bad boy!
I can almost hear Arnie scrambling to get me to fix his California prison system as I write this entry.

The next song will be about how a love struck Don Juan tied the apple of his eye to a desk with her shoelaces forcing me to untie her (wasting ten minutes) all the while new students coming in for the next class. And dammit, it was the after i clipped my nails! I found and scolded the boy. But that was nothing: Korean punishment at schools is no Sally meets Daisy type picnic. Later, he had to do pushups with his elbows in what I call "the fun room" with a scary looking ajoshi (older man form of address in Korean) counting the beads of sweat on the boy's back among other things.

Beware the man with the black bag!

.. because he will walk through all the subway trains and swing that bag back and forth, hitting everyone along the way. Yes friends, he is real. I call him the Bag Dad. And he's not going to let junior who is sitting, facing the window, waiting for his stop, remain unmolested.

One day I feel a big shove from behind (think: a moose butt butts into you). I look back and it's this guy with a big backpack. Seemingly, he makes contact with just about every person he can come next to. now this isn't the first time this has happened (or i would just shake it off as the odd coincidence). but it seems that people walk through many of the trains, going through crowded aisles of people already squashed to the limits, swinging that heavy backpack to and fro. The reason, is anyone's guess. The result: something akin to what you'd see on WWF , except with folding chairs in stead of Bag Dad's favorite weapon. Go get em sailor, see what's on the next train with that big bag of yours!