My students in the ED1 cohort had been developing an obsession with a toy called 액체괴물 [aek.che.goe.mul = liquid monster] in Korean, and typically marketed as “Slime” in the US. It’s not exactly a toy. It’s free-form goo, like runny play-dough. The kids carry their slime monsters around in buckets or tupperware containers. It’s easy to make your own at home, and many do that, apparently, but then keep the ooze like pets or something, and whip it out to play with it in the breaks between class.
The slime monsters were becoming a distraction, however. And getting on things (like the walls). They had to be banned.
The problem was that I knew, more or less, how it was pronounced, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out the Korean spelling, and I didn’t want to ask because I like to try to figure things out – I remember things better when I do that. The online English-Korean dictionaries weren’t being helpful. I finally figured it out yesterday, so now I can blog about it.
There are lots of sites with pictures of kids making and playing with slime. It’s huge. Not just in Korea, either – it’s popular in the US, too.
[daily log: walking, 7km]