Cute Poop

Hi. Sorry it's been so long since an update. When it gets so dark in the winter, I tend to hibernate and eat carbs and sleep all day. And with a full time job on top of that, who has time for blogs? But anyway, now that the darkest days of winter have passed and each day gets lighter out, I have more energy. So yeah. Don't worry, I'm still alive.

But very busy. My work switched over to the morning schedule (you know, 10-5 type of stuff, instead of 2-9), and on top of that, I have been teaching an extra class in the morning BEFORE the school opens to a 15 year old Korean student who is preparing for an interview for a visa to study in America. (Whew, that was a long sentence.) So I have to get up at 6, be at school at 7:45, teach the middle school student for 2 hours going over and over the same interview questions, then teach my regular job all day. It makes me really tired. I don't like getting up at 6. Or going to bed at 10. Or teaching for 9 hours.

So I haven't really taken any new pictures since... November. But I found one that maybe you will think is interesting.

This is a hand warmer that one of my students brought to school one day. You know, one of those ones with the liquid inside. And you click the metal button and it turns solid and gets hot? Yeah, that kind.


Maybe you're thinking, "What is it? Is it brown ice cream?" No, it's poop. And I think that's a soybean sprout sticking out of it. In Korea, poop is cute. Kids love to draw it. They like have it on their pencil cases. The like to see cartoons about poop. They just love poop. Poop is cute. In English, we don't really even have a word that we can call poop without getting a little grossed out. (Well, maybe droppings or dung, but who even says that besides people who are tracking gorillas through the jungle?). I mean, I don't even like typing the word poop. But their word for poop, 똥 (ddong), is just dandy. They can say it all day long and no one cares. Ddoong ddong ddong. I went to the park today and saw so much ddong. Oh really? that's nice. Yeah, isn't it? Anyway, what's for lunch?

It becomes a little bit of a problem when my students are writing their English diaries, because if they want to write about ddong, they look it up in their dictionary and don't really find a suitable English substitute. Apparently their dictionary doesn't even list poop, which I think is probably the closest translation. For instance, one day I was checking my 4th grade student's diary and he wrote something like:

I went to the park today with my family. There was so much duck shit on the ground.

I almost peed my pants laughing. Anyway, I am off to bed now. I have to get up and teach in 7 and a half hours. Goodnight, and I hope you are all doing well.