Reed and the real world

I forget sometimes how much Reed differs from the real world. The main case that gets me into trouble is that at Reed people love to argue/debate and don't take the matter personally while doing so. In the real world, people will go to great lengths to avoid talking politics or to interrupt a conversation about politics if the conversants disagree. This has happened to me now with two different sets of English speakers in Korea. I don't ever bring up politics, but if someone else does I am (overly) happy to talk about it, and even though I have been way way less extreme or confrontational and way more concessionary about politics than I ever was at Reed, people seemed terrified that an actual fight will break out or something. Talking about politics is a taboo I never learned. The taboo is too bad, because politics is interesting and one can have good conversations even (especially) with people one disagrees with. I have been wise enough to not even touch the subjects of philosophy (which would bore people and make me seem pretentious) and religion (where my views are very offensive to most people). I miss the idle, tensionless, yet intellectually engaging debates of the Reed community.

Another difference is that in the real world people listen to popular music and not recognizing it (or other elements of popular culture) is weird, rather than a point of honor like it is at Reed and other hipstery communities.

The matter is accentuated by the fact that I differ from the Reed communities on some of their commonalities with the real world, such as drinking and going to clubs/dancing in general. These things have never appealed to me, yet it is what many people my age do for fun and look forward to doing. I had a fine time at a club last night (I would probably find clubs in the states almost as weird as clubs in Korea), but it wouldn't be my first choice for a social activity. I guess I am just weird, but I'm fine with that.

It's like I rolled a State of Nature 20!

There's a new Dungeons & Discourse cartoon! And a promise of more on the way too. I love anything where you have to be nerdy about philosophy and D&D to get the jokes. It's like it was written for me and my friends...

Update: Speaking of webcomics, XKCD was kind enough to make a metric conversion chart that was precisely the kind I have wanted in the fortnight I've been abroad.

Oh, the Interwebs

I have internet in my apartment! Yea! I was jonesing pretty badly...

(On a tangential note, blogger's spell check thinks that 'jonesing' should be 'Micronesia'. What?)

Bias

This is an excellenct article about bias in Western media in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. Once again Al Jazeera proves to have more substantive news and less propaganda than Fox...

The tables are turned

On Tuesdays I only teach three classes, but I also take one (voluntarily). There is a church here where the members are kind enough to teach Korean to English speakers for free. Learning Korean is hard. If I had to learn through immersion (Korean only) the way my students learn English I would be completely lost and hopeless. Learning through English is doable, though. I am doing alright at it; teaching myself the alphabet (see Eliot's posts about Hangul) was a good idea and allows me to sit with the people who have been going to class for a few weeks now. I still feel like an idiot though. I am so damn ignorant in this country.

Landon's first day of school

Yesterday I had my first day of classes. It was a long day: I taught 10 classes that were each 40 minutes long. Wednesdays are even longer: I teach from 9:30am until 7:45pm with short breaks for lunch and dinner. I have far fewer classes on Thursdays and my Tuesday schedule is almost empty, so it works out. Yesterday was tough, but not nearly as bad as I expected. I did my best to learn all of the kids' names, in addition to preparing for each class and getting used to the curriculum, not to mention this whole teaching thing. I actually rather like it and am pretty good at it (so far). The kids like me and know what they should be doing (even if they don't always want to do it). In the morning I teach kindergarteners, and in the afternoon I teach elementary and junior high aged kids. They are actually fairly well behaved in class, which surprised me since they were completely wild on the first day that I was observing classes. They were probably just wound up from having been on break for Christmas and New Years. My one class of teenagers is the hardest because they don't ever want to answer the questions and are generally unhappy to be there, but I know how to be strict so I kept them on task.

All of the students know more English than you would expect. The kindergarteners can write and spell in English better than most first graders in the US can. It probably helps that they start school at age 3 and that the expectations of them are high.

The teacher student relationship is far more physical in Korea than in the US. The kids are always touching me and hugging me, and a lot of the other teachers will ruffle the hair of the students, pick them up, etc. I'm still pretty uncomfortable with that, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. One kindergartener is fascinated by the fact that I have hair on my wrist and always grabs my hand to look at it, and a lot of the kids come up to me on my breaks and hug me.

I am sure I will be sick of the curriculum soon. The rough format is the same from kindergarted on up, and rereading this post I can tell that it is already influencing my thought processes, making my sentences more stilted: 'Landon Teacher writes a blog entry. He is wearing a blue shirt...'

Hopefully I will have internet in my apartment soon (I am writing this from work). I am in the process of getting an imigration card, which I need in order to get a bank account, and it makes sense to have a bank account before I set up my internet and phone accounts. I will update you more frequently when I can do so from home.

The Sound of Silence

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue towork diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.