Dealing with cultural differences in the classroom full of children can be bewildering, as Beth (at My Edited Journal) describes in her recent post, titled Death’s Door. In that class today I also got asked one of those “did the student really just ask that” questions. This one was worse than the others because I wasn’t sure if I needed to take any action on it or not. Luby asked if I ever thought about what it would be like to die. Do you mean what it’s like after death or the actual moment that I die? “The moment that …

Found at Simon’s ever-worthwhile Asia By Blog roundup: Scott Sommers has written an article about his perception that Taiwanese students don’t particularly want foreign teachers. There are some points in the comments section relating to the parallels in Korea, especially posts by our famous Blinger. I disagree with some of what Blinger says, such as the terribly superficial judgment on how real professors and teachers ought to dress, and I can say from experience that it seems to me professor who wear ties can, at least in some places, expect just as much ridiculous treatment from the Korean administration as …

Often it seems like you can’t get a forecast in English for Jeonju, the town where I live. A lot of online stuff uses only American military feeds, and the closest one here is in Kunsan, an hour away. But a few days ago I found this site, which offers weather information for Jeonju as well as several other major cities. I like how it breaks each day down into smaller periods and tells the chances of precipitation. Only problem is that for some reason the subpage for each city doesn’t seem to load in Firefox, so I have to …

According to the Choson Ilbo, video phones are on their way in Korea. Not a very surprising report, but it’s nice to see at least one thing from the world of SF movies and novels making its way into reality. Though I doubt it’s because it was written about in SF novels. Hmm.

There’s some good advice over at Goldbrick in Seoul about not doing drugs while you in Korea: Don’t do drugs. If you do them, don’t come to Korea and do drugs here. Wait until you’re back in Canada, or the Netherlands, San Francisco, Seattle, or wherever it is that trained you to think there are no consequences to violating drug laws. Combating drugs is a big deal to the Korean government, and picking on relatively defenseless and isolated potsmoking teachers is a lot easier than catching violent criminals. We understand that college campuses, dance clubs and gay bathhouses (not that …