What's Up?

Life's been cruising along lately here in the Seoul Patch, with nothing special to report on. Hard to believe it, but we're already about at the midpoint of the semester, with nine weeks gone and nine and one-half to go.

The weather has been pleasant for the last week or two with morning temps somewhere in the fifties and highs around 70, hardly a cloud in the sky. I am told the mercury will dip next week, and we're in for an early, and particularly cold, winter here on the peninsula.

Work has kept me rather busy of late, mainly the Saturday class I'm doing, since it involves creating a fifty minute lecture and a fifty minute debate class each week, with no text or materials provided by SMOE.

I've also taken to doing a completely separate lesson plan for class 2-1, the "non-academic" group of second graders who are focused on "music careers", since the regular lesson is too often so far out of their league it can't be simplified enough.

I am also working to improve the Toy Convention lesson for next month. It went pretty well last year, but the problem with it was that most interviewees only got to go through twice or maybe three times. Reason #1 for this was that the information exchange was too long and complicated. So, I'm decreasing the questions for both interviewers and interviewees (booth operators and sales reps). Reason #2 was I only had eight toys, and thus eight booths. I have found three new toys that will be good for us, I think, and am developing their respective logos and flyers. This is something I enjoy, but it's still a lot like work.

Bonus Photograph: While in Yeongdeungpo last weekend with assorted miscreants, we came upon this establishment, the Hiddink Noraebang:


For the uninitiated, Guus Hiddink is a top-notch Dutch football manager who achieved status as a white god in Korea for steering the national team here to a fourth-place finish in the 2002 World Cup.