Schoolhouse: ROK

Information Literacy in the Internet Age

Greg Boone — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:53:08 +0000

Recently on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning program, host Kerri Miller put the question to the guests and listeners of what influence bloggers, social media, and other online information organizations have on traditional press. The two stories that drove the conversation were the WikiLeaks story and the ado stirred up by Andrew Breitbart and his BigGovernment.org [...]

Seoul, Hope, and Mustard Seeds: A Short Film on Philanthropy

Danielle Harms — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:42:45 +0000

You don’t have to be in South Korea long to notice two things: there is a large population of foreign English teachers and it does not have the best reputation. Truth be told, it is no struggle to find examples of ex-pats who show more interest in late-night drinking than day-time teaching. When you look [...]

Living Strong in Korea

Greg Boone — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:00:38 +0000

I had that dream again, the one where Lance Armstrong visits my little city in the Seoul suburbs as part of a new tour for LIVESTRONG, and for some reason, the powers that be put me in charge of giving him the bike tour of the city. It’s a strange dream for a few reasons, chiefly among them being that I’m not Korean but in fact a temporary resident of this town, here to teach English for the year and then be on my way. It starts at my tiny office-tel apartment wheeling my Surly out of the oversized walk-in closet of a living space I call home.

Gyeongbok Palace: A worthwhile stop

Danielle Harms — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:39:15 +0000

Home Again Having recently returned to the land of parking lots and fast food, bread and cheese, and friends and family, I find myself in the United States with an an abundance of both sentimentality for all things Korean and newfound time. This blend lends itself perfectly to reminiscence about the last few month’s with [...]

Boseong’s Green Tea Plantations

Danielle Harms — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:00:10 +0000

Traveling from place to place, I often marvel at the luckiness of creatures who call some of the best places the world has to offer their humble homes. A mere human couldn’t scrounge up enough of anything to land themselves the right to set up shop in Spain’s Alhambra. Yet a number of pigeons air [...]

A Home-brewer’s Guide to Makgeolli (막걸리)

Greg Boone — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:56:09 +0000

We took our first sip of makgeolli back in late September on the first night of our farming adventure with Wooriwa, pouring from enormous drums like the kind my Grandpa once used to fill up the pontoon with gas at the cabin. Since then, we have become enamored with the beverage, and perplexed by its composition. [...]

Globalizing Korea: A Rhetoric of Food

Greg Boone — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 05:02:18 +0000

Daniel Gray, a Seoul Eats food blogger, recently published an op-ed in the Korea Herald regarding the public and private efforts to export Korean culture to the West—particularly to the United States. With coverage from the New York Times, CNN, and other high profile news organizations in the US, the government seems to be doing a fair job of gaining the attention of Western eyes, and now is focusing on making Korean food America's Next Top Asian Cuisine. But these agencies certainly could be more effective in their pursuit.

Biking among the cherry blossoms

Danielle Harms — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:38:28 +0000

The timing of our trip to Gyeongju couldn’t have been better. We left on the tail end of the first week of April and a cycling challenge I am participating in called 30 Days of Biking. It was also smack in the middle of cherry blossom season. Gyeongju is a city several hours southeast of [...]

30 Days of Biking

Greg Boone — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:15:22 +0000

I recently began participating in a great online group called 30 Days of Biking. The goal, to ride your bike every day during the month of April. So far I’ve only missed one day, and it was because I was at a wedding in Incheon all day and had no time to get out on [...]

International Underground

Greg Boone — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:02:33 +0000

Greetings Loyal Readers, The real news with this update is an announcement related to another project both Danielle and I are working on called International Underground. We blogged about International Underground once before, alerting you of its existence, but now we are glad to announce it is up and running. International Underground is a multimedia [...]

What in the World is Kimchibilly?

Greg Boone — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:52:36 +0000

In 2001 when Tiger, Velvet Geena, Eddie Tarantuala, Roy, and Jack "The Knife" burst onto the Seoul club scene as the Rock Tigers. The self-described pioneers of Korean Rockabilly call their aggressive, up-tempo music, Kimchibilly. The bad throws a show each month to showcase Kimchibilly, and this month, it will bring in a Rockabilly group from Japan called "Swamp Rats" as part of the 14th Kimchibilly night at DGBD (sic) on March 27th.

Dispatch from the Classroom: First Grade

Danielle Harms — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:48:42 +0000

Don’t Pick the Flowers “Don’t pick flowers,” was the immediate response when my first grade students were asked recently to imagine that our class had been whisked away from our room in Ilsan, South Korea and plopped down on an isolated island with the challenge of governing ourselves. “Don’t pick flowers,” was among the first [...]

Perhaps The Grammar Lesson Could Wait: “Teacher he ate too many soju.”

Danielle Harms — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:14:49 +0000

Hearing amusing thoughts in the classroom is standard practice when you spend each day hanging out with kids. There’s rarely a week that goes by without hearing something that makes me scramble for a pen so I can recount it later. Maybe the heaps of holiday candy went to their heads, maybe all their witty [...]

Snow Day in Ilsan

Danielle Harms — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:02:27 +0000

After a week spent in the crunchy snow and shiver-inducing temperatures of the Midwest, my winter boots got plenty of use. When it came to packing them for my trip back to Goyang, South Korea, I nearly left them behind, thinking of the snowless streets I had left behind only days earlier. Over-packer that I [...]

What We’re Up To

Greg Boone — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:49:22 +0000

Greetings everyone, it’s been a while since you last heard from us, and even longer since you heard from me. We’ve been pretty busy getting things in order around here, on the personal side of things, we have both been inexplicably busy lately. We’re thinking about the future, and trying to get things in order [...]

Happy Thanksgiving from South Korea

Danielle Harms — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:34:53 +0000

All the students at school would like to wish you a Very Merry…Thanksgiving! I admit I’m a bit late with this sentiment, as that day of family feasting is likely fading in some people’s memories as Christmas approaches, but the kids are as cute as they were a month ago, so don’t be deterred. Of [...]

Less Bang For North Korean Bucks

Greg Boone — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:53:04 +0000

Much ado was made this week about North Korea revaluing its currency. The story first caught my eye as a headline on Twitter and, given the near lack of an economy up north I didn’t think much of it, but my curiosity heightened when I saw the Korea Times and the New York Times pick [...]

Closer Than We Think

Danielle Harms — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:15:24 +0000

Do you ever wake up in the morning, pour some milk into a bowl of cereal, and think, "Hmm, I wonder what on Earth children in South Korea eat for breakfast?" Find the responses to this query and plenty of other questions about the daily life of a student in South Korea in this video.

If You Thought You Had Heard the Last of Jagalchi, Think Again

Danielle Harms — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:14:28 +0000

Undoubtedly alive upon delivery, the shrimp we ordered for lunch retained their capacity to move, and move they did. I could list every synonym in the thesaurus for jump, wriggle, scurry, writhe, and twitch in the dictionary, but this is a moment best watched.

Shots Fired in Contested Waters

Danielle Harms — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:52:04 +0000

As Barack Obama’s scheduled visit to Seoul approaches, and bilateral talks between North Korea and the U.S. are in the works, it would seem the winds are shifting towards increased diplomacy. An incident today between North and South Korean naval bodies suggests otherwise, as the two countries exchanged gunfire for the first time in seven [...]

More poetry from the classroom

Danielle Harms — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:06:02 +0000

After some brainstorming about sensory details and exploration in the exciting world of similes, a refreshingly fun concept to teach, my 2nd grade class created these haikus together. Let’s move with the rain, God is showering at sky,* Tok tok, it’s like beans.

An Update on Swine Flu

Greg Boone — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:12:33 +0000

We were told this week by our Academic Coordinator that in the event we do close, all teachers are expected to come in on Saturdays and Sundays to make up for lost time. Rumors about a government edict closing all the schools abound but we have not heard anything official from the Government. According to [...]

Brief Encounters with Hideous Fish

Greg Boone — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:09:09 +0000

Our good friends Anna and Andre over at Seoulful Adventures just posted a great post and video that more vividly details our encounter with the notorious Hagfish. This is a fish so disgusting “[its] other name is the slime eel because their defense mechanism is to produce a mucus that turns into unbelievable quantities of [...]

Poems from Korean Children

Greg Boone — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:06:25 +0000

Greg Teacher: A Haiku Greg is my teacher. Greg Teacher is very tall. I like Greg Teacher My fifth graders collectively A Limerick About a Cat There once was a funny cat. Who was also very very fat. He went to the vet, Because he’s a pet. And now he can hunt for rat. My [...]

No Doubt About It: Something is Definitely Fishy in Busan

Danielle Harms — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:26:46 +0000

Saturday Morning Sights and Oh-My-Goodness Smells of Busan There is something surreal about emerging from the underground isolation of a subway station into the open air of a new place. Our first Saturday morning steps out of the station and onto one of Busan’s humming city streets were no exception. But this wasn’t just any [...]

We Moved!

Greg Boone — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:59:12 +0000

Congratulations, you found us! After far too long of freeloading server space from some old friends, we finally broke down and bought some web space. This will be our new home, and the home of any and all future projects upon which we endeavor. I’ve spent most of the night tinkering around with everything, changed [...]

Korean Family’s Tale of Emotional Reunion

Greg Boone — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:34:31 +0000

Lee Kyong-hee, 62, tells the story about being reunited, if briefly, with a sister she hasn’t seen since being separated at the end of the Korean War nearly 60 years ago. Lee, her mother (now 100 years old), and other siblings met with their long lost sister at Mount Kumgang in North Korea over the [...]

Jagalchi

Greg Boone — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:36:37 +0000

It writhed around for a bit in the small plastic bowl before finally dying, the way any animal might after having its head impaled and skin removed. Without hardly flinching the man grabbed another hagfish from the pile, removed the awl-like tool from the cutting board and drove it through the fish’s head as if [...]

Pusan International Film Festival

Greg Boone — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:13:45 +0000

We took a trip to Busan (or is it Pusan, you decide!) this weekend for the annual International Film Festival. We’re told it is the largest in all of Asia and in the second largest city in Korea. We’ll have more on all of it soon including details and some photos from the Jagalchi Fish [...]

A Little Housekeeping

Greg Boone — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:28:26 +0000

From time to time we shake things up and make our site a little more user-friendly or change the way we deliver you content. In the beginning we wanted to bring some fancy-looking, podcastable, and printer-friendly versions of each of our posts, and then we ran into some problems with our publishing software deciding to [...]

Chuseok

Greg Boone — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:49:02 +0000

Cafe Pascucci is one of the few places open today. A big corporate chain, Pascucci is a cozy cafe in LaFesta catering to the Western tastes many Koreans have for coffee and cafe sandwiches. It stays open for the same reason many big corporate chains stay open during major holidays back home. Chuseok is the [...]

Getting Creative

Greg Boone — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:08:45 +0000

Last month was my first with a new batch of students and classes. I am now teaching all the elementary grades we have at our hogwon. I teach a different subject to each of my classes and it is only a little frustrating. I teach two classes for each grade. First and second grade each [...]

Wooriwa: A Weekend in Pyeongtaek

Greg Boone — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:44:59 +0000

We left Goyang immediately after work bound to Jinwi station where we were promised a farming experience. So began our farming experience: three hours on public transportation, two backpacks, a couple of sweatshirts and some basic supplies, a guy named William and the promise of a “once in a lifetime experience” somewhere on the outskirts [...]

Now Available for iPhones

Greg Boone — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:40:47 +0000

Hey everyone, we added a nifty little gizmo to our webpage today that lets us make our content more accessible to all your wired readers of ours out there. Now, whenever you go to our page on your iPod touch or Iphone, Android, or blackberry browser, you should get a fancy looking mobile page. We’ve [...]

We're Back in Action

Greg Boone — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:49:08 +0000

We disappeared for a few weeks there. Not sure what happened back in St. Peter, but the server hosting our site went down and we were out of commission for a while. We’ll have more posts up as soon as we can get them out to you. While we were out I wrote some fiction [...]

We’re Back in Action

Greg Boone — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:49:08 +0000

We’re Back in Action

Greg Boone — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:49:08 +0000

Brief Encounters with Businessmen

Greg Boone — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:28:57 +0000

Part One: MOULARD PUZZLE CAFE, ILSAN — I am seated outside piecing together the last of the Starry Night puzzle’s frame. A puzzle cafe is exactly as it sounds, a cafe where you may sip a coffee of something a bit stiffer while assembling a myriad variety of puzzles. The drinks are mediocre, though the [...]

On: The Hogwon

Greg Boone — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 01:33:12 +0000

Most people outside of Korea might guess that the word “Hogwon” is the Korean word for a hog farm or the name of some kind of hog-based commodity. I’ll admit I didn’t have a clue about what a Hogwon was until I started working for one. Even now that I am working for one, I [...]

A Diamond in the Rough

Greg Boone — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:13:14 +0000

Summer vacation came and went this week and, given that we have not yet seen a pay day, we decided to explore our suburb’s parent city, Seoul. We toured the Changdeok Palace in Seoul. Rich with history, it is among the most beautiful structures in all of Seoul. It brought back memories of Beijing’s Forbidden [...]

Now Podcastable

Greg Boone — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:14:50 +0000

When most people who know what a podcast is think about podcasts they usually think of a downloadable radio show, but podcasts can have many different files embedded within their code, including PDFs. Since we’re generating a PDF “printable version” of our site anyway, we decided to make it easier for you to receive our [...]

One Man's Trash

Greg Boone — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:11:02 +0000

The trash piles on the ground floors of apartment buildings in Korea are veritable gold mines for the visiting foreigner looking to furnish a studio-size room. Everything from kitchen supplies to living room furniture, can be easily found lying on the ground left by the latest resident to move out, into fresh digs. The Urban [...]

One Man’s Trash

Greg Boone — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:11:02 +0000

Printable entries

Greg Boone — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:54:23 +0000

In the interest of making self-publishing, and making this feel less like a blog and more like an online magazine, we will be publishing a PDF version of all posts alongside the web version. Feel free to download and print or just keep them to admire the photos. Also, expect a new entry soon. Share [...]

When it Rains, it Pours

Greg Boone — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:53:04 +0000

When it rains it pours. While this old saw usually refers to a series or chain of bad events each subsequent event getting worse and worse as the event or moment in time proceeds�like when an organization suddenly sees four of its six VPs resign in quick succession, when it rains it pours�during the South [...]

Hello world!

admin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:14:17 +0000

I promise there will be a real entry here soon. I have a busy day of correcting journals written by first through third graders today, and then I’ll start blogging for real. Check back soon, Saturdayish. Share and Enjoy: