white noise

Currently laboring under a crushing headache, perhaps brought on by the cold weather. Too much static in the brain to say anything substantive. I did, however, finish Michael Breen's The Koreans and want to comment on it, and I have some unfinished Buddhism-related business stemming from a long-ago comment made by an astute reader of Dr. Vallicella's fine blog.

Tonight I taught my first lesson of "Staff English," a 6-week course we're offering to Smoo staffers who already speak English with some proficiency. By my reckoning, it was something of a disaster: a bunch of female students well beyond their college years and creeping toward that dreaded adjumma-style cattiness. Some students complained about my having put chairs in a circle instead of using the available desks. I explained that we'd be doing a lot of activities involving movement; the explanation didn't seem to pacify them. Apparently, some of the skirt-wearing students didn't like having their legs exposed. They preferred to hide behind a desk (many of our desks have shielded fronts, leaving only the ankles and feet visible to someone across from you).

While we had plenty of laughs, there also seemed to be more than the usual number of "down" moments in that class. Perhaps it was the late hour (4PM-6PM); perhaps it was the fact that the class was two hours long and the students were hungry; perhaps it was simply my teaching style. We'll see. One of the students is also my immediate supervisor; I'm sure she'll have feedback for me tomorrow. She likes me, and Koreans who like you tend to be brutally frank-- hence the interminable "lose weight!" litanies I get.

More later, when the fog clears. Probably not tonight at this rate. One thing's for sure: I'm not cooking myself dinner tonight.


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