I have in the past written about negative things in my experience in Korea, and not as much (especially in recent years) about positive experiences. So I thought I’d talk about a positive one, and believe it or not, it was a class discussion of the recent blackface incident on MBC TV.
Category: teaching in Korea
Sun-drying Grains Equals Causing Harm, or, Stupid Things My Employer’s Administrative Officers Say
Making beer involves extracting sugars from grain. This means you end up with a lot of grain that you have no use for, since everything tasty has been extracted, but which needs to be disposed of somehow. I’ve been happy that a friend in the building, after starting a worm farm, ended up finding my spent grain useful, since that means one less wasteful outcome for the stuff. I tend to leave the grain out for him, and he dries it in the sun. Drying stuff in the sun is so common in Korea that one expects to see it: …
TEFL Flashback Music
I’ve never had so many flashbacks to the TEFL classroom — or had such pleasant ones — as when listening to My Little Airport. I am so sorry I have no time to call you. I’ve been so busy recently and I don’t want… Good band, on top of it:
Talking Through Bigotry
Miss Jiwaku and I have an acquaintance, a Korean fellow we know, though I won’t say how we know him. (Anonymity will allow me to speak more honestly.) He is a fine sort of fellow, in general, quite professional and creative, easy enough to work with and even at times funny; she and I have learned many things from him, and I hope likewise he has learned a thing or two from us as well. However, there’s one thing that makes it hard for me to get along with him, something it’s hard to put my finger on exactly because, …
It Says Something…
Miss Jiwaku told me about a news report regarding a Canadian who had murdered his girlfriend three years ago (but had pretended she’d drowned accidentally, pursuing a tennis ball), fled the country, gotten religion, but finally returned to Korea to turn himself in. He claimed he’d murdered her because he was afraid she was going to kill him. Okay, so…? “Do you know him?” she asked, and mentioned that he’d been in Korea from 2001 until the time of the murder (in 2009), and had worked as an instructor at “a university in Jeolla Province.” I arrived in Jeolla Province …