But it's the one where E-mart is. That's the closest grocery shopping to me. Well the closest major store for getting groceries. Anyway, I think we caught a 200 this morning and got to work at a little before 8 AM. The first thing I saw was the long driveway to the university with trees blooming their arses off on both sides. Fog in the background. So I took this pic:
Is that nice or what??? Almost made me forget I had to spend the whole day working there. By lunchtime it was actually warm. The warmest day of the year so far for sure. People were all over the place at the school. I don't think they were all students either. Plenty of people taking pics of the blossoms. Pictures like these...
See those blue and red lanterns? They look really great lit up at night after all but the overworked and underpaid have gone home from MNU.
And these...
The girl on the left is one of my students. Her name is Sun Ae. She was nice enough to pose for this pic under the blossoms. The book she's holding is our text. We had just finished class. Synergy 4. It's an advanced class. She's pretty good at English. Today I had another girl from Sun Ae's class ask me one of the enfuriatingly complex questions you always get from advanced classes. You know, things that nobody needs to know. She showed me two sentences: "All children under 10 fly free." and "Passengers may move about the cabin freely." Then she asked if free and freely were both used as adverbs. I said they were. Then she said, "Well then why don't we say, 'All children under 10 fly freely."? What do you say? Of course it messes up the meaning. Children flying freely brings to mind scenes of kids flapping their arms and flying anywhere they desire. And we don't use "freely" to express a price, or lack thereof. So I started to verbally hypothesize that maybe "free" is an adjective describing the flight, which is a noun. But that just ain't the case. So after arguing with myself for a while I ended up saying that there isn't any answer I could give her that would improve her English in the least. Why do Koreans use Chinese numbers to count books but Korean numbers to count papers? They just DO. That's the only reason I could give her. And it's probably the right one. But she was very dissatisfied. Advanced classes! I love them but they all seem to have these stumpers to pull out just to test the teacher. Anyway, see what I mean about the Korean peace pose? Sun Ae is doing it just like Alex was in my last entry. I have taught a lot of "show us your pictures" classes in this country and I'd say 90% of the pictures included SOMEBODY flashing the peace sign. The pic on the right is the magnolia tree in the foreground trying not to be outbloomed. Okay, it's just after 6 PM here. I've already heard 3 election trucks go by announcing the candidacy of so and so. One was number 4, (They are all given numbers and colours. Four is orange, one is green and so on. If you think about this it will tell you quite a bit about both the candidates and the electorate), one was 1 and the other was a truck for candidate number 2 with a female voice on a very loud PA on the roof of the truck begging for votes in a voice that sounded like she was on the verge of, or IN tears. #2 must not be doing well in the polls. Everywhere you look you see banners for the various candidates. Canvassers have told me several times to vote for number 6 or yellow or whatever. ME! I can't vote!
The other day I saw a big orange number 4 double sized cube van looking vehicle pull up to the E-Mart intersection. The WHOLE side of the truck opened up and a troop of middle aged ladies decked out in orange uniforms including sporty orange baseball caps resting atop their permed hair piled out like stormtroopers and began canvassing, (not to say accosting), passers-by for votes.
At the bus depot yesterday I had to elbow my way through green uniform wearing ajjumas, (married ladies), who were doing choreography to a chipmunk version of a familiar Korean national hymn and forcibly stopping people like they were Sunday grocery shoppers at Home Plus or something. There are parallels here. I mean who are they trying to appeal to with the hard sell and all these hokey tactics? Every one of them makes ME want to vote for someone else. But maybe the candidates know their electorate better than I. I'm not gonna do a negative post. I've had a good day and there is one, (and only one), good thing to come out of all this political silliness: I don't work tomorrow. Yeehaw!
I DO hope the trucks aren't out in force early tomorrow morning drumming up the last percentages of support while I'm sleeping IN on a Wednesday. Note to self: drink lots tonight so this won't be a problem.
There is ONE last thing I'd like to add before I stop posting about the cherry blossoms and springtime in Korea. Soon to be followed by complaining about the wet, muggy, hot summer in Korea. It's a question that has puzzled me for many years. I've shown you literally thousands of cherry blossoms here. There are cherry blossom trees everywhere in Korea. In fact I've been told by several students that the cherry blossom trees were an example, (one of many they tell me), of things the Japanese "borrowed" from the Koreans during colonization. But in all my time in Korea, (and in Japan for that matter), I have yet to see a CHERRY on any of these trees. Once in a long while I see a package of 30 or 40 battered, well travelled cherries on sale at E-Mart for 15 bucks or so, but I've never seen a fruit bearing tree here. Koreans don't even LIKE cherries! A flower on a cherry tree turns into a cherry, right? I know it does cuz I used to live on a property that had cherry trees. Where do the cherries go? Like ducks in Central Park. Where do they go? It's a mystery. A riddle wrapped in a conundrum smothered in enigma. I am making it my mission to find out.
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