Day: September 10, 2010

Caveat: Thunderstorms at Dawn

Banalities & Journaling

As was probably pretty obvious, I was feeling discouraged, last night.  I still am.  But I'll get over it.

This morning, it was thundering and pouring, rain, which de-motivated me in my plan to go into Gwangju this morning – I have some shopping I want to do, and I wanted to try to meet my friend Seungbae.  But anyway…

There is an immediacy to writing in a blog – you get my feelings of each particular moment.  I don't always try to tone down those feelings, or edit out the bad parts.  So it will swing back and forth, positive to negative to positive again.  Such is life.

I was watching Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert episodes this morning.  I particularly enjoyed Stewart's segment on the show dated Sept 9, by Wyatt Cenac, in which a Staten Island version of the SCOTUS struck down California's prop 8.  This gives hope for American values of tolerance, despite everything.

And this:  "…the greatest honor this nation can bestow:  free tee-shirts." – Stephen Colbert, in a show saluting war veterans.

Caveat: Zero of the most important things

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Hard, hard week.  I'm pretty frustrated.

The two most important things in my life right now are:  1) improve my teaching;  2) improve my Korean language ability.

I made progress in exactly zero of these two important things, this past week.

With respect to teaching:  it was a challenging week, with chaotic, misbehaving children, messed-up lesson plans, a feeling of dullness and lack of dynamism in my interactions with kids.

With respect to trying to improve my Korean:  it seemed like every time I tried to say anything in Korean, I was hyper-corrected, laughed at, mocked, or ignored.  And the Koreans wonder why we Westerners so often give up on trying to learn the language.  When you're told "you're saying that wrong" ten times in one day, when you're laughed at for trying ,when you're stared at incomprehendingly after having spent over five minutes carefully trying to craft a meaningful sentence in your head before giving it utterance, you begin to lose hope.

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