Korea's Ginseng Chicken Soup

So during about mid-June or so I had a cold.  Sore throat and my nose kept running -- all I wanted was some chicken broth.  Like, I wasn't even concerned about actually getting noodles or vegetables in it at that point -- I just wanted chicken broth.  So I asked my co-teacher if I could find that anywhere, which, naturally, didn't quite have the answer to my question.  She knew was I was referring to after I explained how I made it but there was no way that I could buy it here.  They don't have canned goods (maybe a few but it's rare) so there is definitely no Campbell's soups for an option for dinner.  However, when I mentioned this to my co-teacher she said how once mid-July hits all the Koreans start to eat Samgyetang, which is Ginseng Korean Soup.  The theory behind eating this in mid-July is that they believe it has many nutritional benefits, so you can be replenished during the dreadfully hot days.

Of course to anyone from a Western culture, we'd feel this is a little "backwards", as we usually eat chicken soup a lot in the winter time to stay healthy and eat lots of fruit in the summer.  In general I've noticed though that, in general, Korean's health remedies are not really surrounded by fruit.  In fact, they usually will say how fruit and cold things "cool" the inner body and stomach so it isn't as good for digestion.  And I've not only heard of this through co-teachers but also my acupuncturist and I've read it as being some Indian health philosophy as well, so it must be an Asian thing.

So, as of the end of July the restaurants that serve Samgyetang are quite crazy and all the 7-11's, GS 25s, Family Marts, and any other convenient store in existence in this country are even serving bags of this soup for sale during these humid months.

Yeonghwa Middle School Pictures: Part 2

Yeonghwa Middle School Part 1: Outside

Ginkgo Tree!

Along the walk way up to the High School

What we walk through every day to get to the cafeteria building.

The yard for PE, soccer, badminton, and other sports games.

Entrance to the High School

Zinnias and Snap Dragons!

On the corner of the middle school building

Entrance to the cafeteria

In front of the middle school building -- what I see every morning

In front of the middle school

Rosemary!

The stairs that you walk up to get back to the main school building from the play yard and parking lot.

Better view of the cafeteria entrance

The city view from the outside the cafeteria.  The new gym/auditorium building is right below.

Middle school entrance

Other high school entrance

Musk Thistle! (yes they have it here too -- not just the midwest!)

4th of July in Korea

Since I'm American and this week is the week of the 4th of July, I decided to take the opportunity to do a lesson with each one of my classes to do some basic US history of why the 4th of July is celebrated in the US.

The lesson, found from the convenient website of waygook.org, starts with the simple story of Christopher Columbus and then talks about how people migrated from England years later.  The powerpoint portion ends with a discussion of what the US flag symbolizes and traditional activities for the 4th of July.  I then do a Simpsons review game with them over the material discussed.

Naturally, one would suppose that this would be an only natural thing for an American to do when teaching in an  ESL classroom in order to promote greater awareness in cultural differences.  These are things that I've done more in my morning classes so far, but not necessarily in my regular classes until now... so that means that I've only done these lessons with only myself and the students in the room and no other co-teachers.

I must say, that by doing a lesson such as this I have felt that it makes the underlying feeling that Koreans have for foreigners to be more obvious than it already is in your day to day life as a foreigner.  The truth is: Deep down, Koreans don't like foreigners.  Now, this isn't so much as a statement that would imply that all hate you and would steal from you or vandalize something (quite the contrary actually, as this is country is VERY safe in that regard -- safer than the US).  However, my point is that in the mist of these lessons where I'm constantly saying words like "independence", "freedom", "declaration of independence", etc. and then looking to who I'm talking to the only vibe that comes reflected back to me is: Freedom of what?  US politics preach it, history classes preach it, schools preach it, the news says it, etc.  But honestly - what freedom?  From an outside perspective, the US appears to be a contradiction of what they preach.  "We fight for freedom".  Okay -- WHO'S freedom?  The US invaded South Korea post WWII while the USSR invaded the North in the midst of "fighting the cold war" because Korea was no longer occupied by Japan.  Neither the USSR or the US allowed Korea it's own "freedom" to do as they wish but rather fought for them to be what THEIR country's economic philosophy was.  As a result, the country is still separated, still technically at war, and the US military is still occupied here... and I can't help but constantly get the vibe that South Koreans don't even want them here.

It's certainly not just the US, but rather just an underlying unconscious, almost, fear that they have for anybody non-Korean.  But, I suppose, you can't really blame them when every single group of foreigners that have come here through many years of their history was to invade.  In the upcoming years with the younger Koreans this would likely change -- a mixture of their developed economy at this point along with these kids being exposed to cultural diversity at such a young age could very well impact things for the better.  Yet, the underlying hurt and damage of this culture is still very much so present, unfortunately.

Insadong in Seoul

This weekend I took a trip to Seoul and went to the neighborhood Insadong. It was a really neat area directed for tourists. They had several tea shops, neat jewelry stores, eastern Asia style fans, dishes, and tons of other suveniers. Here are some pictures of the area: