Sunday, August 28, 2005

in appreciation

Tangible gifts gratefully received from my intensive-course students and others:

1. a heavy gift bag full of goguma, or Korean sweet potatoes

2. a gift box containing the following: an obviously expensive, button-down, short-sleeve shirt; three tee shirts; a designer key chain; and a cute little cell phone ornament*

3. a large yellow poster on which everyone gave me a good-bye message

4. an impressive bouquet of roses and lilies (currently sitting in a 1.5-liter plastic bottle of water), given to me at the end of the Shakespeare performance

Gonna miss those students. Most of them, anyway.





*Grammar note: When writing out a series, one usually separates the elements of the series with a comma. Semicolons are permissible if one or more elements of the series contain commas for other reason (e.g., as separators for multiple adjectives).

Example: Under the Christmas tree he found a large, hairy, toy dog; a stuffed cat; an old, green sweater; and the Xbox for which he'd been pining.

One reference to confirm the above: here.


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1 comment:

Sperwer said...

Loved the grammar lesson. Reminded of of how I cam to quit my first job in Korea. The top dog in a local law firm asked me towrite a very complex letter for him. He then objected to my use of semicolcons to set off the individual elements in a series of phrases and independent clauses in a very long piece of legal "prose" (is that an oxymoron), and initial caps ofr the first word in each phrase (a common convention of legal writng). He was quite incensed about what he very strongly felt was my mistake - thre a right proper Korean big boss hissy fit -- and how he would be embarassed if it were sent to the client. I told him that if he thought he knew better than I how to write proper English, law division: he should go right ahead because he was wasting my time and his money; and I was resigning.