I suspected we had had a dry summer, compared to the normal Korean monsoon, but no one seemed to comment on it, so I thought it was just subjective yearning on my part for more rain.
Then on the news this morning, however, I saw a report about drought and crop damage, and I found this article from Korea Herald. So it's official – we are having a drought, after all, and it looks like Seoul has been particularly affected. It's El Niño's fault, apparently.
Yesterday I was at work until 11 pm because of a meeting. I have made a commitment to myself to try to attend all the middle-school staff meetings, which Curt has always excused me from because they are conducted entirely in Korean (unlike the elementry staff meetings, which tend to go back-and-forth). I'm doing this because I was complaining that I never know what's going on with the middle-school kids. I'm not sure attending the meetings in Korean will help that much, but I'm trying to solve my problem instead of just complaining about it.
They have a lot of meetings. I'm just speculating, here, but maybe that's linked to the middle-school staff dissatisfaction problems, somehow.
I have been feeling sorry for myself in my perennial inability to improve my Korean language skill. Of course, that's another thing I have no right to complain about. Maybe these staff meetings will help – Korean language meetings are quite difficult for me to endure. I end up feeling sympathy for my students when they're confronted with a listening task that is too far above their ability level.
[daily log: walking, 6km]