I went to the Post Office today to mail a little package off to my Grandma. The people in the PO were all wearing the nicest uniforms - they looked so professional compared to the grumpy ladies at Shopper's Drug Mart back home. After asking what was in the package (which I found amusing since I could have said "an automatic weapon and some Anthrax spores" and they would have just smiled and nodded)they proceeded to rifle through a book looking for the shipping cost. A few minutes went by and I could see the confusion growing. More and more people showed up to look at the mysterious package and the equally mysterious book. Eventually an English speaking woman asked me, "Ahh, what country is Scotland in?" Hmmm, yup...that might be the problem. Apparently they have no concept of the United Kingdom or the E.U. I know this because I have to teach English geography to my kids using a map that has no France, Spain or England. We managed to get it sorted out (they understood the "UK") and they charged me a whopping $2.00 to ship my parcel. Now let's just hope it gets there.

I have a class with a kid called Jae. He is in a special class for kids who have "graduated" from Ding Ding Dang and his English is excellent. It's a fun class to teach because you can have a real conversation. Jae lived in North Carolina for a year so he not only knows the language but he knows a lot of the slang and some pop culture. I asked him to write me a composition about an interesting 10 minutes in his life. This is what I got:

An interesting thing I did today was pull off my Mom's white hairs. I curl the hairs around me finger and pull them out. She gets white hairs because she is 40. She pay me 50 won for each one. Sometimes I pull out a black hair. If I do that she - 50 won.

It took everything I had not to laugh my head off. Something tells me that Jae's mother didn't check his homework before he left for school today!

The Korean teachers had grapes at school today and I couldn't believe how they were eating them. They suck the grapes out of their skin and spit the skins into a big bowl. When I told them we ate the skins at home, they looked at me like I was a total nutjob. They also cut their doughnuts into itty-bitty pieces...with scissors.