Day: February 20, 2012

Chaeyon wrote some ideas for a recent debate topic. The first idea is pretty good. The second kind of trails off into nothingness. And then, at the bottom of the paper, in Korean, I found the following:

느허허허허허헣헝ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ주제어려워요

Keeping in mind that "ㅠ" is the local emoticon for tears, you could read this as "neu-heo-heo-heo-heo-heo-heong-heong-<tears>ju-je-eo-ryeo-wo-yo." I'm pretty sure the first part is just onomatopoeia for crying noise, cf. English "whaaaaaa." Then you have the <tears> emoticon, and then you have "topic is difficult."

I appreciate that this is true. Sometimes I push them pretty hard with the topics in the debate class. I like when the kids keep their sense of humor about it.

[broken link! FIXME] In other news, my dreaded PM2 cohort taught me a game today, which was fascinating. Apparently, it's mainly an adult drinking game, but kids have created an alcoholless implementation. Or maybe it was vice-versa, originally. The game is called 눈치게임 [nun-chi-ge-im]. nun-chi seems to mean something like "looks" or "signs" (as used in the expression "he showed a sign of his intention…"). ge-im is konglish – it's the word "game" in Korean pronunciation and spelling.

The game is hard to explain. It's a psych-out kind of game. It works great in a group of 10 or so, as I saw demonstrated. One person stands up, saying "one." Another stands, saying "two." A third, "three." And so on. Easy enough. But there's no rule about who is supposed to go when. And if two people happen to stand up at once, then those two lose points (or take drinks, in the drinking game) and the game starts over. If you're the last person to stand and speak, you also lose – so there's incentive not to be last. But there's incentive to not be simultaneous with anyone else, too. So…

Everyone is watching everyone else very closely. One person leaps up, "one." Another, "two." Long wait. Suddenly, two leap up, "three!" They lose. Everyone sits down. The counting starts over.

I love this game. It would make a good ice-breaker party game, obviously. Alcohol or no.

Like everything in Korea, there's an online version – see picture.