feldmanlarry

At 9:15, my translators for the school and guides for the day, Dr. Kyung Mi Kim and Miss Jinkyoung Lee picked me up to go for my last day at the school. I’m going to write up my experiences in the school in separate blogs when I get back as part of the analysis of the comparison between Cyprus, US, and Korean children with this same 3-day lesson. The children were again so smart and so much on task, along with being very adorable. Here are just a few pictures.

Third graders working on perimeter and area

 

Dorothy is a genius

Dorothy’s work up close (left)

 

The children were amazing both as mathematicians and as human beings. I’ll miss them.

The plan was then that my guides would take me to lunch, a tour of some highlights of Seoul, then dinner and home by 7 PM or so. As it turned out, I got home just before midnight. It was well worth the extra time.

Our first stop was for lunch and there were meatballs on the menu which was impossible to ignore after 3 days of lessons based on a story called Spaghetti and Meatballs for All. My guides are former students of Woo’s. Jinkyoung just finished her master’s in math ed and has been a Christian missionary in Kuwait. She’s looking to get certified to teach secondary math in the US so she can work as a math teacher in English abroad. Kyung Mi just finished her doctorate and is working as a Research Professor and manager of the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction at Korea University. Woo is the Director of that institute.

My guides, Jinkyoung (left) and Kyung Mi (right) with “meatballs”, actually more like what we would call swiss steak in the US

We then went to the Hyundai Department store in a very upscale area, which is like an upscale Macy’s in Manhattan, many floors and filled with expensive clothes. We went to the top floor which had several expensive restaurants. We were trying to get to a tea room there to get Potbingsoo, which is flavored ice with fruits, rice cake, and red beans on the top. The tea room had a long wait to get in so we ordered the desert take out and went to a simple coffee shop, which was probably more relaxed and quiet for talking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like the concept of the beer bank (left). Upscale Hyundai Department store where we got the red bean ice dessert (right).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dessert with fruit, flavored ice, and red beans. Kyung Mi (right), Jinkyoung, and I like it.

I think I had a dessert with red beans in it during my previous trip to the Middle East and I didn’t like it. Somehow it really worked for me this time. There’s absolutely no reason why red beans would taste good with flavored ice and fruit. Somehow it just provided a rich texture to the sweetness. I wonder if I’ve become more open minded about foods (and life in general) during this trip. Will just plain ice cream seem boring? I doubt it.

Jinkyoung had to go tutor so Kyung Mi and I hung out at the coffee shop for a couple of hours. She brought about ten articles she had published and I read the abstracts that were in English. I could also understand some of the sketches and diagrams but the rest was in Korean. Several of the articles were co-authored with Woo. In some of her research, she looked at categories for how students learn a concept like addition of fractions. Some students just knew how to compute without any idea of what they were doing, others had more rich understandings of several different types. She interviewed children and in general found that those who understood more were more efficient and deep in their knowledge.

So much of what she was doing mirrored what I do in methods and content courses for undergraduate elementary education majors. Woo and I have common lineage and it was good to see someone even younger than me working with similar ideas. She loved research and publication and unfortunately I don’t have that love myself. She also had some really interesting ideas that were new to me.

We then took a taxi to go to the Nanta show. Kyung Mi had bought tickets for me and her and Jinkyoung was still tutoring. We hung out in the Myeoung-dong area, which was filled with fashion stores and people giving out samples to try to get us to go in their store. I will bring home a mask for women’s makeup even though I don’t understand what it does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animals in the Myeoung-dong area love me even if no one else does

Maybe she should give up her Research Professor job and become a fashion model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iPad 1 for sale on the left at similar prices to the US. It’s 500,000 Won (about $450 ) for the cheapest model compared to $499 at home. The most expensive model is 994,000 Won or about $850 compared to $829. On the right are knock off watches for 5,000 Won or $4.25. Hopefully, the iPads aren’t knock offs.

The Nanta show was very unique. It was 1 hour and 40 minutes of high energy drumming and dancing with a comic cooking theme. They would cut up vegetables that would fly all over the place. They would be banging on drums that were labelled with food names while pretending to be stuck inside vats. They came up with so many variations of the theme but my favorite was when they imitated slow motion. It was definitely not a quiet show. The choreography was very precise and it was good fun.

The Nanta set before the no picture sign came on. Kyung Mi had bought us 4th row center seats

They threw these little plastic balls at us so I got a souvenir to bring home

You might think with the atrocities that Japan did to Korea from 1907-1945 that Koreans would not feel bad for the problems that Japan is having now with the earthquake, the tsunami, and the nuclear disaster. However, not a single one of the Koreans I talked to had anything but deep-felt sympathy for the Japanese people. They hated what had been done in the past and the fact that the government has not fully apologized but they realize the people are not at all to blame.

“Don’t give up, Japan. We are your neighbors” sign in the Myeong-dong area

They asked if I wanted to eat but I was still full from lunch and the red bean dessert so we took a taxi to the Namsan cable car. The cable car then took us to the foot of the Namsan tower hovering atop Seoul and visible almost everywhere.

Namsan cable car we took to get to the Namsun Tower (from Wikipedia)

Namsun Tower (from Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our night view of the Tower (left), tree made up of love cards sealed with locks (right)

Kyung Mi then offered to buy us dinner at the revolving restaurant on the top of the tower. I couldn’t say no and it was an amazing experience. We rode a special elevator higher than the observation deck. The menu was Japanese and other steaks and seafood. After choosing a main dish, we had 3 sets of choices, each between two appetizers and a dessert choice. The cost of the meal is what you would expect but probably even more.

As I told them, there were three outstanding parts to this dinner for me. One was the food, another was the night view from the revolving restaurant, and the third was the company. At times, I almost felt a bit disoriented as our table moved yet the hallways and kitchens did not move or the boundary of the windows.

Views of Seoul from the revolving restaurant on top of the Namsun Tower. The tallest tower like this is the CN Tower in Toronto but I don’t think any tower starts so high up a mountain like this one does.

We got one of the last cable cars back down the mountain to where we took the taxi before. Unfortunately, around 11 PM is not a good time for taxis at this location. It was very cold and we hung out in a shed belonging to the person in charge of the parking lot. He was staying late just for us to stay warm. We gave up on getting a taxi and Kyung Mi called her husband to “rescue” us. Just another memorable part of the stories for this day.

They left me off at the parking lot of the International House just before midnight or 14.5 hours after they had picked me up. We had gotten to know each other quite well in that time. I’ll see them again in two days for dinner the night before I go to India. Rest sounded very good after a wonderful day like today. How do you thank people for being hosts like this?