I just saw the best Korean movie I’ve seen in years, a biopic about Park Kyung Won — the first civilian female Korean aviator — but before I talk about that, I want to tell a story which might help explain why I think so highly of the film. I have many excellent students. By excellent, I mean intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive, and compassionate. I mean hardworking and relatively critical-minded. One of my moist outstanding students — someone who’s been abroad, who’s got an excellent handle on English, who gets Western culture just that little bit better than her classmates, in …
Category: KOREA
What Have You Learned in This Class?
There was a chorus of amused laughter today when I handed out the preview for the final exam in one of my classes. The text consists of two questions: one, mandatory, and the other a choice from three possible topics. I decided to mention only the possible topics for the questions of choice, but to reveal the whole question for the mandatory one. Which, in essence, was the same as the title of this post: What have you learned in this class? This question was, of course, followed by two paragraphs of elaboration, but none of it too challenging: just …
More Mockery of Kim Jong Il? Oh Yeah!
A channel at Youtube devoted to mocking Kim Jong Il? You just know I’m subscribed now.
Take Anything You Want
This has got to be the weirdest “pro” English lesson I’ve ever seen: And this Korean dorm-made response is even weirder.
Gaaa!
So my students blew everyone away with the scenes from their plays on Friday night. Now I know why: they practiced those 2-minute scenes like mad, and neglected the remainder of their plays. Which means now they have one week to master the other 18 minutes of their plays. Oh, and one student has done that very annoying thing that some students do, and that it seems someone, every semester, does when others are depending on their participation. She’s decided to stop showing up for rehearsals, both in-class and out-of-class. Luckily, another, very talented student has agreed to cover her …
Translated From the Korean
Text messages between Lime and myself today: Lime: Honey, honey! It’s snowing! Gord: Huh? That’s not snow! That’s just white rain. It doesn’t count as snow if it melts when it hits the ground. At least, not if it melts completely. But it is getting chilly outside. By my definition, it doesn’t snow much in Korea, mind you.
Lost Nomad on Mother Abuse in Korea
Lost Nomad’s got a fascinating post up titled Spare the rod, spoil the child which examines the result of maternal over-involvement in childrens’ lives… the kids are beating on their moms. Kids are only going to be wanting more independence as time goes by, too.
Woodstock in Pyongyang
Um…
My Girlfriend’s Grade
So my girlfriend informed me that she got her grade for her residency feedback. Though it wasn’t a “bad grade”, it was lower than I expected, and I have to admit that I was quite surprised. She had some trouble when doing her hospital work during her studies, because she tended to do things her way, and some of the staff at her earlier training hospital didn’t like that. But since coming to Seoul, people have really appreciated her work. More than one time, she’s been encouraged by a Department Head to specialize in his area, because she’s doing such …
Guess What Shuffle Demons Song is in my Head?
Not only because Kevin’s link to thi post by C. Buddha, either? Today, I met Lime in Hong Ik and we had dinner — Vietnamese — and a coffee. She’s very much enjoying the Korean translation of the Jared Diamond book I got for her, and she returned the giftiness with some nice Korean CDs from Purple Records. After that, we went our separate ways, she to the hospital and I to Bucheon. I had considered taking the slow train to Bucheon, and just sitting and reading, but thought, oh, if I catch the Rapid train to Dongincheon, which stops …