Thursday, January 15, 2004

housekeeping redux

1. Let it be sung throughout the land that I found a Korean solution to the problem of my cold room: sleep on the floor instead of on that dense Japanese mat I have. The mat insulates me from the floor, keeping valuable heat away. Last night, more by accident than anything else, I fell asleep on the floor and under my coat. I woke up toasty warm. Traditionally, Korean winter bedding consists of two thick blankets (maybe there's a sheet in between, but not always). You snuggle in between the blankets after cranking up the floor heat, basically becoming the ham and cheese in a human croque-monsieur. And that's how I plan to sleep from now on. Screw the mat.

2. My private email is still down. Please write me via Hotmail (see blog sidebar for contact info).

3. My first major English lesson went quite well today-- actually, it was a double lesson: a mom and her daughter. The mom is my friend Jang-woong's sister. I meet a company president tomorrow (Friday) at 11AM... mainly to discuss schedule, but perhaps also to conduct a preliminary lesson. We'll see. First lessons, for me, are almost always about determining the student's level of proficiency, and finding out what they want to do/hope to achieve. It's also been my experience that company presidents are the most babyish of all the students I've had: most antsy, most likely to skip homework, most likely to whine about difficulty, most likely not to take their own English learning seriously. Maybe I've simply had bad luck with company presidents, but such has been my experience so far.

4. I doubt that South Korea will ever host a true-blue Monster Truck Rally.

And on that sad note, I take my leave of you for the evening.

_

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