Jal boatda

Midterm grades came back today, and I did very well. In fact, my score was best in the class. As is customary, this fact was announced aloud. As is also customary, I am now expected to treat the class. I will bring some tteok in tomorrow to share around.

Here's what the grade slip looks like:


After my name, separate scores are given for the individual sections of the test (from left to right: writing, speaking, listening, and reading), and then the total score.

As regular readers of the blog know, listening comprehension is my weak point, so I'm proud of my 19-out-of-20 score on that section. However, it was also widely acknowledged by students and teachers alike that the listening section was much too easy. Our teacher warned us today that the test as a whole was too easy and that the final exam would be considerably more difficult.

The original exams were not returned to us, but we were allowed to go to the teachers' room to look at them for a few minutes.

Here's what I had for lunch today:

"Bean-curd refuse stew". The English name was rather unfortunately lifted straight out of the standard Korean-English dictionary, which defines kongbiji as "bean-curd refuse; the edible residue left after the production of bean curd".

In the Chinese countryside in 2001 I watched bean curd being made. The beans are boiled and then squeezed, yielding a rich, flavorful liquid which is then congealed into tofu. What remains behind is a dry, mealy, flavorless starch with little nutritional value. I assume this is the same thing as kongbiji. The tofu-maker used it as pig food.

I thought the stew was quite tasty, though I assume that the bean-curd refuse contributed more to its texture than its flavor.

[The following paragraph and photograph added by Lance April 8, 2008:]

Today I bought two kinds of tteok at the little tteok specialty shop next door to my building: gyeongdan 경단 and shirutteok 시루떡. As it happened, the teacher also brought tteok in today, the kind that is traditionally eaten on Chuseok, because it was the subject of our lesson text. So there was a tteok feast during the midday break.

Upper left: songpyeon 송편, half-moon shaped glutinous rice balls with sweet paste filling, traditionally eaten on the harvest festival day Chuseok
Lower left: shirutteok 시루떡, layered glutinous rice cake, sweetened mung bean and sweetened red bean
Lower right: gyeongdan 경단, glutinous rice balls rolled in flavored powders (e.g. the red is cinnamon, the pale brown sesame)