We were talking in one of my classes about their mid-term test scores at the public school, in their various subjects – not just English. Then later, I was asking them about their “dreams” – as in their lifetime ambitions. The following conversation took place (with some minor omissions for coherence).
I asked one student, “What is your dream?”
“I need money. A lot of money,” he answered. This is typical for 8th graders. And Koreans. And Korean 8th graders.
“That’s not so easy,” I reflected. “How will you get a lot of money?”
He shrugged.
“That’s difficult,” a second student offered.
The first student said, brightly, “I got very lowest score in 도덕.” [도덕 (do-deok) is mandatory ethics class, in Korean public schools.] This seemed rather cynical, or else it was a clever joke.
He thought for a minute, and the discussion moved to other students’ dreams. But then the first student interruped. “My dream. I want to be a father.”
The room was quiet for a moment. The second student said, “Oh! That’s not so difficult.”
The girls in the back of the room giggled. I decided to change the subject.
…
I went jogging in the park by the lake tonight, after work, under a rising bloody orange gibbous moon. I love to be in the park at exactly 11 pm, when they shut off the outdoor lights. It’s still plenty light enough to see – the city is all around. And they don’t close the park – people are still around. But it’s suddenly much, much darker. It’s like a sudden chord change in some dramatic music. The feel of it changes.
What I’m listening to right now.
Gus Gus, “Starlovers.” Very weird, kind of groovy song. Creepy video. [UPDATE: the creepy video linkrotted into nothingness, but the audio track is restored via a replaced youtube link.]
An utterly unrelated, random picture from my archive, just for whatever. Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, 2007.
[Daily log: walking, 5 km; running, 3 km]
