Swine Flu: Picture of the Week

Korea tends to take sickness seriously. In fact, the whole Asian world seems to be a bit paranoid when it comes to sickness. Images of Asians walking around with masks is normal. Here in Korea, it's pretty much a way of life. My students my wear cute masks on their face when it get's cold and people get sick here.

Now with the Swine Flu scare, Korea has gone over the top. Everyday, students at school go thru this line up and have to be checked by teachers. They check the temperatures and eyes. This has gone on everyday for the last few months. Schools have closed down here over this. And last semester a wave of public school teachers here in Daegu were put on quarintine for a week due to a scare. I wanted to share some of the images I see.








Also, I should have some videos comming up. One of the main reasons I've been so late with posts is because I'm backed up with pictures. Now that I have a new computer (!) it's a lot easier to post vids and pictures.

Pictures of the Week (April 22)

This week's pictures from the wonderful world of Korean weirdness come from my random walking around the city of Daegu. I think it's time for something a little different, so I might want to travel around to get pictures from different places.

First up on the list is this wonderful little shirt I found with a friend when we wandered into a cell phone assessory shop. The girl wearing the shirt seemed to be uneasy about me taking the picture, so I asked her friend to take it for me. We also explained why it was so funny to us silly Americans. I think it was more than fair considering that she was squeezing the chicken and making nosies with it.

There are a lot of keychains and cell phone charms here. This one caught my eye due to the fact that not only is it Spider-Man, but it's Spider-Man holding a bottle of Soju. For those of you who don't know, Soju is the local liquor of choice for many Koreans. The drink is synonoious with the country despite a movement to distance itself from the drink. But how could such a trinket exist? Well, the copyright laws are very fuzzy here. Many things aren't "offical" here so it's not usual to see such things.

Pictures of the Week (April 15)

I know, the Pictures of the Week segment is a little sporadic, but I try to make up for it with more than one picture. So for this week, a few random pictures from school and around town.

This first picture is another one from the morning line-up at my school. The difference here is that these kids were all caught smoking. Their punishment: make signs and stand in front of the school all morning with them. So far, the count is three days stright. These boys have to stand up every morning while all the other studends walk past them.

This is an example I decided to use in a lesson. Korea's national baseball team made the finals of the World Baseball Classic and it was a huge deal over here. They lose to their rival Japan near the end, so I decided to use this as a part of an example. The students got a giggle out of it, however, I'm sure I misspelled Ichiro's name.

The next picture is a very random and odd picture from the subway. Me and a friend were walking around and randomly spotted this rather confusing can inside. Does this mean that ANYTHING can come out if you slect the random can? Or perhaps it's just whatever they decide to load in it's slot? Perhaps something even more insane like some random thing will happen if you pick this can. I didn't spend the 500 won to find out.