Today, I played a fun game with my students. It was called “What is Teacher Aaron.”
It went like this:
ME: Am I a doctor?
CLASS: ….no.
ME: Am I a cook?
CLASS: ….no.
ME: So, what do we think is going to happen when we yell “TEACHER, HUNGRY!” or “TEACHER, SICK!”??
CLASS: err…um….gee…
(I think we made a breakthrough!)
ME: if you are sick, I will feel sorry for you. I might even put a hand on your shoulder. But I won’t make you feel better.
It was a really fun game.
Another fun game that we played this week was a writing exercise where students had to finish a story. I now present a sneak peak into the world of our Korean/English textbooks. The following story prompt appears in an intermediate textbook for middle schoolers called “Hey There 2!” (I’ve added some all-caps for emphasis):
“One Saturday morning, when I was bored at home in my bedroom, I received a message. It said: ‘CU at 2.00 next to the big tree in the park.” I thought it was strange because I didn’t recognize the number. I also didn’t know which tree, and, when I thought about it, I also didn’t know which park or which city! So I didn’t answer. It was obviously a wrong number, and I forgot about it. At about two-fifteen I heard another “beep”, and I saw that I had another text message. this time it said “I’m at the tree. Where R U?” This time I sent a reply. “Which park?” A minute later the reply came: “Finsbury!!” Incredible! My neighborhood park! I made a decision. I went to the park and looked for a big tree. I thought, “who sent this message? A boy or a girl?” Then I found a very big tree, and next to it was a girl with a cell phone in her hand. She was beautiful. But WAS IT SHE? I phoned her number and watched. Her cell phone rang. IT WAS SHE!”
This is a truly beautiful story. There are so many directions this can go. Who was the mystery woman? Some possibilities:
This story is like “Memento” and far from a mystery woman, she’s his doctor/sister/parole officer.
She’s a call girl and the main character (his name is Steven) didn’t remember the role-playing service he drunk dialed the night before.
Steven is about to be taken back to the girl’s home and diced up into little pieces.
Maybe it was the wrong number. I have a feeling, that whatever the case is, Steven is in for a big disappointment. I feel for the guy, he sounds a lot like me. Sitting in his bed at two o’clock on a Saturday “morning”? Hmmm.
I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single Saturday this summer that I woke up before noon (except for the one time in Boston when my friend locked me out of his apartment-another story); where was MY random text message from a beautiful girl looking to meet at the local park? Are you not allowed to get spontaneous solicitations under an unlimited texting plan? Should I have ordered an international phone?
I’ve been getting a lot of Korean messages on my phone, thinking they’re spam. Could it be that there’s some woman below my apartment waiting for me to come down, and I just haven’t noticed?
Can this work the other way around? Can I start randomly texting people asking them to ‘meet me at the tree?’ and see what happens?
My guess is if I ever got such a text message, it wouldn’t be a beautiful girl under the tree. There’d be a big hairy man there eating something gross like pork rinds. I bet he wouldn’t even be happy to see me.
(side note: “outside my window is a tree” is now playing on my ipod shuffle, its the lyrics from a Cream song)
Earlier this week I sent a shirt to the great clothing rack in the sky. It was bound to happen sometime in this humid climate where my clothesline sits on the balcony, close enough to get wet in heavy rain. It was a nice shirt too, but they’ve all got to go sometime. It was sad but it wasn’t a tragedy. I still have my Sydney polo shirt.
I’ve started reading a biography about Adolf Hitler. The first sentence reads: “the rise of Adolf Hitler to supreme power is one of the those events in world history which are almost totally inexplicable in any rational terms.” Isn’t writing a biography inherently a rational act? If so, what’s the point?
I would like to explicate Hitler, even if it means doing so on irrational terms. Perhaps a true biography of Hitler should simply be a picture book full of abstract shapes and swastikas? And perhaps some ponies thrown in, just for counter balance? I would ‘read’ such a book.
There’s a baby picture of Hitler in the book. It’s really creepy. Especially since his haircut apparently never changed in his entire life.
Here’s a link to the picture online: http://www.foldedspace.org/weblog/2004/01/hitlers_baby_pictures.html
Even creepier is a picture from 1914, where Hitler is identified in close-up amidst maybe tens of thousands of people, in a blurry black-and-white photo. How the hell did someone ever find Hitler in that picture? It’d be like if someone made a ‘Where’s Waldo’ the size of a city block, and you didn’t know that Waldo was even in the picture. And the picture was taken in 1914. Did some scholar pour through a photo thinking, ‘hey, maybe I’ll find Hitler in this one’? People have too much time on their hands, but don’t misunderstand; I am extremely grateful for it.
Culture Time 