Democracy Now! promo

Hi, all!

Ry and I are trying to promote our favorite independent news source, Democracy Now! for their 18th birthday!! :)  Interested in joining in??? Go here!

Want to check out one of THE best news sources in the world? Here you go!! 

Day 82: Just Nine More Days...

Hello, nonexistent readers!! :)

Ok, it's just over a week until I can jump back into the cesspool, er, wondrous miracle that is Facebook.

I hate to say it, but Facebook is still leagues ahead of its competitors, and it's far superior to other similar products/social networking sites...

Google+ is trying to reinvent an already established and popular product.  (Sorry, Google, but Fb's got you beat my loads here.)
LinkedIn is basically for professional contacts, though it has allowed me to strengthen my CV and connect with people I'd lost touch with years ago.
Twitter is OK, as it allows me to keep track of major headlines, but I feel there are too many limitations to make it a really communicative site/app.
Pulse is my go-to news source when I'm out and about, as I custom-designed it to give me articles from sites in which I'm interested (e.g., Al Jazeera, Talking Points Memo, Reuters, and so on). However, as soon as I want to "share" content, it prompts me to log in to either Google or Facebook.  Go figure.
Meetup is great for actually finding events and things to do and efficiently linking up with groups of people who have similar interests.  However, aside from planning events (and commenting briefly on the site once events are over), Meetup's realm is somewhat limited.
Instagram is lots of fun for photos, though my little community on their site/app is quite small, compared to my Fb group.

So, there you have it: Facebook is the best at what it does.  (Does Myspace even exist anymore??) --> A quick search revealed that yes, it does still exist.  However, it looks like an archaic labyrinthine nightmare, so no thank you.

Oh, Facebook, you irresistible corporation. You've streamlined everything: events (and protest organizing!), music, photos, external linking, contacting friends/family/colleagues... Arg.

Apologies, my swarming crowd of perusers on this site by sheer accident, but I shall now compose some haiku dedicated to Facebook...

1. Social networking
Site of unsurpassed power:
How I yearn for thee.

2. Days go so slowly
Sans mundane status updates
What will I post next?

3. I cannot blame you,
Solely reflecting our whims;
Humanity sucks. 

4. Nine more days remain
Until I am back to it,
Mindless, useless posts.

Why, oh why, must Facebook be so embedded in everything??? Why so ubiquitous?  So necessary for so many things??? Zuckerburg, you win this one.  (And, by proxy, I assume this makes NSA workers' lives a bit easier, too.)  Le sigh.  Adieu for now!! 

Day 76: A Horrifying Realization...

A tirade, if you will...

So here I am, at 9:18pm on your typical end-of-term school night... I'm looking forward to next week (vacation, sweet sweet vacation), when I'll be going to Malaysia and Indonesia with ze man... In the meantime, I've become an evil grading machine, emphasis on "evil."  I've been more serious with student and fellow teacher alike lately, and it's not gone over well.  Let me say this, in no equivocal terms:

I like: people who are competent at their jobs and strive for their best.  People who are interested in the broader world around them (and not just pop culture).  People who aim to be better each day and learn something new whenever possible.  People who put themselves out on a limb and step out of their comfort zone.  People who can teach me something.

I do not like: people who do the bare minimum and are just working for a paycheck. People who think the world revolves around them.  People who are indifferent to world events or crises.  People who feel like the world owes them something.  People who never struggle.  People who do not open their minds to new possibilities and ideas.  People who stagnate and fester.

This, of course, can easily be translated to my disdain for (or admiration of!) students.  Naturally, students who try hard and have a good attitude are usually teachers' favorites, while those who slack and do (if even!) the bare minimum are barely given a second glance by those tasked to educate (or even just tolerate) them.

However, my beef tonight is with adults.  (This is, of course, usually the case.)  Children (and I will generously extend "children" to mean anyone under the age of, oh, say, 21) are works-in-progress.  They are not bitter and jaded yet (generally), and will put up with a ridiculous amount of grown-ups' nonsense.  I both shudder at and admire my elementary-teaching colleagues who frequently use bribery or weird terminology to get their soldiers in a line.  I am barely better, of course, since I (and my school!) employ a grade-based system to se the students up for a bright future in a capitalist society...

Ahem.

Anyway, I just expect people to be better and they're not.

So my "horrifying realization" tonight (whilst searching for fun animated videos) was that the intelligent characters in animations are usually evil.  The happy-go-lucky, ignorant, cheerful, and often idiotic protagonist does very little and succeeds in the the end.   If that's life, I don't know what is...

Ok.  I shall edit this when I do not have so much vino coursing through my veins... More later (hopefully from a caffeinated, more aware Mb)!! :) 

Day 71: Smog & Insomnia...

Lately, the man and I have both been plagued with insomnia, something neither of us has ever had before!  What gives?? I used to chalk it up to stress, but now I'm seeing stories of smog from China coming over to Korea... This smog is reported to contain concentrations of heavy metals like cadmium and lead.  Lovely.  Yay, industrialization... If Americans had to put up with this, I guarantee things'd change pretty dang fast.  Oh, wait: Fracking/"Natural gas"/"Clean coal" are all in effect.  Nevermind.

Here are two articles that've got me worried.

1.) From the BBC:

2.) From The Chosun Ilbo (an English-language South Korean paper):

In the meantime, tomorrow's Friday.  And not just any Friday: ONE WEEK from winter break!!! Though it doesn't feel like it with warmish temps (10 degrees [Celsius] today!!) and no snow. Gotta love climate change... 

Day 68: On Japan (Part the Second)

So in other news, Ry & I just booked our tickets for Lunar New Year... We're going (back) to Japan!!! Last time, we hit up Fukuoka and Hiroshima.  (I was able to show my students pictures of the very city we've been studying all term!)  Now, we're off to Osaka and Kyoto!! :)  I'm sooooo excited!  :)

So (sorry to brag), here's our schedule for the next few weeks:

*Friday, December 13th: last day of classes!
*Thursday, December 19th: off to Indonesia and Malaysia!
*Tuesday, January 14th: back to school!
*Wednesday, January 29th: off to Japan!
*Sunday, February 2nd: back to Korea!
*Monday, February 3rd: back to school!

PHEW!!! So here are some shamelessly ripped-off photos from Osaka and Kyoto, since I'm now super-excited to be seeing them next month!! :) Cheers!

Oh, and one more cool thing!  I am now (apparently) subscribing to National Geographic's e-mail feed, and they have a contest entitled "Imagine If..."  Check it out!! :)

Preview:

Day 68: On Japan... (Part the First)

So in 6th* grade, we've been chipping away at John Hersey's Hiroshima all term (no small feat, considering both the subject matter and vocabulary of this daunting and misleadingly-short text)...

Its first four chapters deal with the immediate aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima on 6 August, 1945. It closely follows the lives of six hibakusha, or bomb-affected people. The last chapter was written nearly 4 decades later, when the author went back to check in on his subjects.  Crazy.

This book is high school-level for sure, so to accommodate my middle schoolers, I split the class into teams and each team did literature circle studying of one character.  The focus this term was not only on telling each of the six people's stories, but also on improving the students' writing through the Six Traits of writing.  We also studied AMAZING vocabulary words, like: immolate, laceration, rendezvous, atavistic, and convivial.  Not bad for 12-year-olds, eh? ;)

Aaaaaanyway, the main reason I chose this grade-inappropriate book was to establish some different emotions toward the Japanese.  (Turns out Japan had a pretty oppressive occupation of Korea for several decades, and many Koreans are still sore about anything Japanese to this day.)  I think it worked; the kids were generally horrified at the after-effects of the bomb, not to mention that the people bombed were innocent by international law standards.  The final writing assignment the students have this term is to argue the morality of using nuclear weapons (past, present, and future).  This is a topic I only debated in college, so it's pretty cool to be discussing this with 6th graders.

Today in class, the students had to write a 100-word free-write of anything they learned or thought about Hiroshima this term.  Our Six Traits focus was Sentence Fluency, which I struggle with as a writer myself.  Frankly, it's the hardest trait to teach (for me), so we used the following checklist:

After last week's lesson on Voice, I realized the merit of focusing on one trait each week.  It's worked really well so far, and I was proud to see my students improving their writing, piece by piece.

To further inspire the students, we read a few pages aloud that talk about a TV program called "This is Your Life," which was written about in the book.  Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a minister in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, helped a campaign for 25 young women later dubbed the "Hiroshima Maidens."  They were flown to the U.S. (free-of-charge) for plastic surgery (also paid for by donors).  On the show, Mr. Tanimoto and two of the Hiroshima Maidens were interviewed.  To Mr. Tanimoto's surprise, the Enola Gay's copilot, Captain Robert A. Lewis, was also on the show and the two met face-to-face for the first time ever.  It was intense, and even my pre-teenage students appreciated the gravity of the situation.  Here, taken from screenshots from

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are illustrations of what my students (and I) were shocked to see at school today: 

The opening of the show, "This is Your Life," aired on May 11, 1955

Host Ralph Edwards (left) introduces a stunned Reverend Tanimoto (right).

The co-pilot was shown in silhouette before he came face-to-face with Mr. Tanimoto.  

A hibakusha (left) meets the man who bombed his city (right).

The kids were good with this shocking moment... The book said that Captain Lewis (right) skipped out on this show's rehearsal and headed to a local bar.  They had to race him to the studio and pour coffee down his throat so he was presentable at the time of airing (according to the book Hiroshima).  He then recapped the famous phrase he had written in the Enola Gay's captain's log: "My God, what have we done?"  (This was the sentiment immediately after the bomb had been dropped.) 

I think the body language says it all. 

This specific scene (Captain Lewis rubbing his forehead with his hand) was mentioned in the book.  According to John Hersey, 40 million American viewers had thought Lewis was crying, when, in fact, it was more likely that he was feeling the effects of the alcohol he had recently consumed.  

Here, one of the Hiroshima Maidens gives her story (in excellent English!) in 2007.

In one more shock to poor Mr. Tanimoto, his entire family (wife and four children) was brought on the show, dressed formally in kimonos/traditional attire.  The students had just read this part in the book, too, and were guessing which child was which (since the names were given in the book).  Cool moment. 

Here, the Hiroshima Maidens board the plane back to Japan, after facing 1.5 years of plastic surgery in the United States. 

This is the same Maiden pictured above (in color in 2007), leaving for Japan after many surgeries.  

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After watching this and brainstorming a bit, the students then engaged in a 100-word free-write about Hiroshima. I need to showcase some of the work I got today, since (by and large) they're pretty great... (These are all completely unedited!)  :) 

Student 1:

Hiroshima

I’m a 32-year-old woman whose husband is dead of that nasty bomb. I do not say badly of anyone, but I need to say this: that sucking Hiroshima, damn it! Sorry ‘bout that, I’m feeling too oppressed these days; my husband is dead because of the deadly bomb in Hiroshima. My husband is a lawyer, and it was his first time to go to Hiroshima, on the morning of August 6^th, 1945. He was going there for an important meeting. When I went to Hiroshima after listening about the bomb, I was totally shocked. The city was totally devastated, and I couldn’t find my husband anywhere. Because of the bomb, I lost my family. I’ll probably curse the Americans forever. I like Americans, but I will not be able to forgive them for this one. I will not be able to live properly anymore. I’ m too miserable to do so. Today I saw a TV show, ‘Today is your life’, and saw a man, and a ton of others who survived the bomb, and I do not like it. Why do they get to live, but not my husband, why? This is too unfair, just too unfair, and I can’t do anything about it.

Student 2:

Hiroshima

        In the video that Ms Anderson showed us it didn’t finish like I predicted. I predicted that Rev. Tanimoto would have fought with the co-pilot. He must have been fuming inside to fight with him. If I was one of the survivors of Hiroshima and got a chance to go on that TV show I would wreck the whole place over and have a little chat with the co-pilot. Rev. Tanimoto was so calm than I thought.

          It was a very good idea to cancel all the commercials. It would have been so awkward if the show suddenly stopped and happy, cheerful commercials played. It would totally wreck the moment.

Student 3:

I think nuclear weapons shouldn’t have been used on Japan in World War II. Although it may be true that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused the end of World War II, it came with a truly gruesome consequence. Astonishing amounts of destruction, heat, and radiation, more than ever imagined at the time, killed an immense number of innocent citizens immediately, and destroyed most buildings beyond repair. That’s only the beginning of it. Most of the wounded died because doctors either couldn’t get to them fast enough or they didn’t have enough equipment. Also, radiation was a new sickness at the time, so many survivors who appeared to be physically fine began to show radiation sickness symptoms, which doctors didn’t exactly know how to cure. Overall, my opinion is that America shouldn’t have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and shouldn’t ever use more nuclear weapons in the future. Nor any country, in that matter. I totally disagree with the creation of nuclear weapons. Now any country rich enough could get the technology for nuclear weaponry, and have a war. There would be no winner if a full-fledged nuclear war broke out between the world. Earth wouldn’t be the planet we depend on today. It would be a nasty, radiation-filled, inhospitable sphere of remnants of humans, as polluted as a smoke-filled room. Nobody would be able to survive, and there would be no future life. Anyway, the message I’m trying to get through is that now we know how destructive nuclear weapons are, we should never use it in the future, and that we shouldn’t have used it in the past.

(Fin.)

So there you have it: a day in the life of my 6th grade English class.  (And, as an aside, most students above wrote well over the 100-word minimum! Look at that sentence fluency!)  :)


*Shout-out to my little sis, who, for some reason loathes the number 6.  This entry is chock-full of sixes, so my apologies.  ;) 

Day 61: Finally! Less than one month left!! :)

So I must admit that Facebook has several distinct advantages:

1. It helps me keep in touch with people around the world. (This is quite important, being an expat living in Asia and all...)
2. There are events I cannot access without Facebook.  (Example: I attended a group event this weekend, but couldn't RSVP without a Facebook account and had to have Ry log on and RSVP for me on his account.) 
3. It lets me know how friends and family are doing, and is generally better Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+ (despite my best efforts to find a replacement).  
4. It's much easier to post articles, events, and so forth on Fb.  (Example: My friend's doing fundraising for Movember, which he luckily linked on Google+, but I'm sure Facebook reaches a much larger audience.)  

Luckily, I officially have just about 30 days left until I can log on again!! :)  

For now, I shall entertain you with the options to visit these sites:

• My Instagram page, which can be found here!  
• Reuters news
• The Onion!!
• Democracy Now!, my favorite news source
• My friend's page for Movember... Please consider donating to help fund prostate cancer research!! :) 
• And heck, just read about Movember, since it's for a good cause!!

Finally, some photos from this weekend!  :)