Highlights of my Day... Friday, October 16

1. My mother use to tease my father by asking him how he got to work everyday. He was notorious for getting sidetracked, distracted, and lost. Sometimes I wonder the same exact thing about my students but it’s not how they get to work but how they get to school everyday. For the most part, my writing students are good to go but it’s my Friday speaking class that worries me. Today I walked into class and half of them didn’t know next week was midterm week, the three that were scheduled to present today we clueless about today being their day, and then two students who have been warned repeatedly for the past six weeks to bring in their student profile didn’t bring it in. No profile = no exam. No preparation = no presentation. I thought I had made myself pretty clear, for goodness sakes I even told them in Korean and on the homepage that I had specifically made for this particular course. The only way I can describe them is as drowning fish. What should be so natural to them as students apparently is brain surgery to some!

2. Begging students who latch on to my arms after class and ask for a second chance will never do it for me. Every week I remind them of this and that, and then I go and post it every week on the course homepage.

3. Just like last semester how my Tuesday morning class had me pulling my hair out, so is my Friday speaking class. And just like last semester how the proceeding class picked me up and were extra awesome to me, so is my Friday writing class.

4. Am convinced God has a good laugh every Friday when he sees me walk into my Friday speaking class. Thankfully God is good though and so he rewards me and my stretched patience with my Friday writing class.

5. Today my patience got an extra test when the class computer failed to work. I called in a tech guy but he had no luck and so I quickly went in search of a unoccupied classroom.

6. Classroom switch number one’s computer also didn’t work but thankfully classroom switch number two’s computer did.

7. Headed out to Emart to do some grocery shopping with Snickers. His father K-Gere had given us a 50,000won gift certificate and it would seem like a lot to the average person but considering how much Snickers and I eat, ya, it definitely didn’t come close to covering our grocery bill. Groceries for the week totaled a grand sum of 140,000 won, that’s about $124 CDN.

8. After three years of teaching at Dankook, one year at Eumbong, and one year at SLP, it’s safe to say that I occasionally have those uncomfortable run-ins where I don’t remember a former student’s name, let alone recognize them. Tonight I thought I had one of these moments when a young university student stopped and smiled at me. She nudged her younger brother and then nudged her mother. They all stopped and stared at me so I thought it was merely a former student I didn’t recognize, that is until the couple beside them gave the exact same reaction. Besides the couple of students’ parents I taught at Eumbong, I’ve never had adult students and so it got me thinking. Snickers and I tried to avoid the awkwardness of the moment by ducking into the next lane, only one problem though, the young girl and her brother and mother followed us. For the next five minutes or so they continued to follow us, chatting amongst themselves.

9. Finally I thought I’d be pro-active about the situation, walk by and say hello to them. “You’re the boxing couple from TV!” she blurted out. Nice. Turns out they had recognized us from the documentary we had just done with MBC.
10. Ended the evening off with an indoor picnic. We would have had a picnic outside, despite the chilly weather, but ever since that annoying live guitar-playing bar has moved into the next building, our evening air is filled with some man’s annoying voice and guitar playing. Moreover, they’ve put up this annoying loud sign that lights up the surrounding sky, killing our hopes of any kind of romantic late night candlelit picnic.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
What do you have that is so great?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
-- Theodore Roosevelt