An Interesting Day

Happy May Day! I didn’t realize it but today is International Labor Day. I just want to know why I didn’t have today off. Maybe it has something to do with Children’s Day which is coming up on Tuesday.

This was a less eventful day today than yesterday. All I did today was teach a class, eat lunch with two students and a professor, meet with a counselor and then I met with another professor whom I had dinner with. The class didn’t go as well as I had hoped. A few of the students told me they would like to have more opportunity to speak so I tried to give them more opportunity to speak. This meant they just spoke in Korean more. I’m not sure what to do about this situation.

I was going to have lunch with a professor whom I usually meet with on Fridays but I never received a response from him regarding my e-mail. It turned out that his response was in his drafts folder so I never received it and I thought he was busy. I was going to have lunch alone and I ran into a few students I know so we had lunch together. We tried to speak in Korean but we ended up speaking in English after all.

After lunch I went back to my office to work on things for a while before my appointment at 2pm. I wasn’t very productive during that time because I was nervous about meeting a counselor at 2pm. This was supposed to be a diagnosis of my recent emotional state. I was beginning to think I might have clinical depression but she didn’t even see the point of me meeting with a psychiatrist. She did advise me to seek counseling if this were a more ideal setting where she knew someone who wasn’t busy, didn’t charge as much money and who could speak English very well. I thought her English was good but she seemed to think it wouldn’t be good enough. In any event, after talking for an hour-and-a-half, she basically told me that she doesn’t perceive me having any major problems and that I need to develop some friendships or else I will get worse. So I guess this is a refresher course from earlier times in my life when I was “depressed” as a result of being lonely.

Meeting with another professor went well, though I found this to be very exhausting. Even though his English is good we still have difficulties communicating with each other. This makes me think it will be just as frustrating to communicate with people in Korean if I ever get anywhere near close to being able to communicate in Korean. Sometimes it seems that we are just not on the same page.

After I came home, I decided I needed to start running. So before I turned the computer on I changed my clothes and I went running. I must confess that I didn’t run the whole time but I ran part of the time as I explored this part of the city where I live. I tried to find a coffee shop where I might be able to work tomorrow but I forgot that I have some commentaries to read so I guess I will stay here until I get that done. Hopefully I will be able to go to a restaurant around here for lunch. I think at the very least I need to stop staying in my apartment all day. It is sometimes difficult choosing a restaurant to eat at alone because some places only sell food that is too much for one person to eat. Eating in a restaurant makes me feel good because ordering in Korean gives me confidence about communicating with the waiter or waitress. It also makes me feel good just to be around people. Part of me wonders if my difficulties are related to a personality change because it seems that I am becoming more and more energized as I am around people. I think I better be reading somewhere else for my research project on Monday so I can actually get something done.

That was a long tangent. After I got home from running, I tried to start working on my sermon for Sunday. I was not at all enthused about preaching earlier today. I’m still uneasy about it because it seems like most people don’t understand what I am saying. I do a lot of reading for it and I wonder if this is in vain to some degree. What often happens is that I use too many big words and too long of sentences. I am not sure that reading the sermon is helpful either.

I thought that running would give me more energy but instead it seems to have made me more tired. Perhaps this is a good thing because I’ve been having more trouble sleeping. The only thing I haven’t done yet is add more Korean words to my vocabulary list. I might just let myself have one night off so I can get some shuteye.