Is Something Wrong?

I haven’t journaled for the last two nights. I made up for one of these times the next morning but I didn’t make it up in time to do that this morning. Interestingly, it was the nights that I didn’t exercised that I missed journaling. It is ironic that excercising actually gives me energy.

I was expecting to meet a student later tonight to give him some paperwork that he needs to apply to a university in Seoul. Unfortunately, he got caught in traffic so we are going to meet on Monday. This is unfortunate since that is my research day but perhaps that will be good because I can do some reading in the library or I can just take a break at that time and come back home for a few hours.

Today was a much better day than the last few Fridays have been. I still found my conversation class to be a struggle. Personally I want to step away from the book but I think there is some value to it in helping students learn English grammar. Unfortunately, most of the students today didn’t do their homework so they had to spend a good amount of classtime doing homework. Perhaps I should’ve just moved on to the next task. I was hoping to have people compare answers. I find myself trying to pattern the way I teach after the Greek classes that I took in college and seminary. Unfortunately this is an entirely different setting since I am not speaking to students in their native language. Sometimes they end up teaching me as much about Korean as I teach them about English. The more I study Korean the more interested I become.

When I went to chapel today, I tried writing down words that the speaker used but I didn’t find this as meaningful today as I did on Sunday when I did the same thing. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the sermon was shorter, that I didn’t understand as many words or if my mood was just different. Sometimes I think it is more relaxing knowing that I can’t understand what the speaker is saying and therefore I am more relaxed because I can’t complain about something I don’t understand. At the same time, I think it would be nice to at least understand what the other person is saying.

Lunch with one of my colleagues was interesting as usual. We talked about a plethora of subjects ranging from university politics to media literacy to writing in my journal. Of course this included other subjects like church and Korean culture. He is always telling me to write, write, write.

Eventually I returned to my office to work on the recommendation forms for the student I already mentioned. I was happy to get this done in a relatively short amount of time. After that was all said and done, I tried to contact the department chair of one of the departments I belong to. Since I was told the professor’s English-speaking abilities are limited, I attempted to write the e-mail in Korean and English. One of my Korean collegues whose English far outweighs my Korean (I can’t really have a conversation in Korean) told me my Korean is great. I thought she was being sarcastic but she didn’t seem to back down when I kept telling her I am not good at Korean. I guess she is saying that I am making progress which is an important thing in learning another language. I try to send text messages in Korean as much as possible. Sometimes I text in Korean and other people text me in English. I guess this gives all of us practice, though sometimes we can have misunderstandings if I don’t understand the Korean or vice versa.

During the afternoon time, I also had another Korean colleague visit my office. He expressed interest in visiting around the same time every Friday. He showed me the memory verses he has learned in English from the Bible. I was impressed at his intonation as he quoted the verses to me.

I didn’t meet with the Korean professor that I usually have dinner with on Friday nights. This was a nice break. I am usually worn out by Friday nights and we often have difficult conversations (because of language and cultural barriers). This enabled me to come home and make some dinner. For some reason, by the time I got home I was feeling really good. I suppose it may have had something to do with getting more sleep last night. It may also be because I am doing something with children tomorrow. It seems that I thrive on doing many things. Apparently it gives me something to look forward to. I would imagine that tomorrow night I will feel the letdown that I usually feel on Friday nights.

I’m wondering whether I should continue blogging as I have been or if I should change it slightly. I would imagine it is getting boring to read about the same types of events everyday. For me, being able to put this on a blog helps me to keep on track with doing this. At the same time, I am reticent to say everything because of a fear of offending someone. I worried about that with my last post since I addressed an issue that could be quite controversial.