surprisingly frank discussion of prostitution in Korea

Go read it.  I like especially where it places blame.

MinJeong Kwak (민정곽) at KCC Switzen All That Skate (Yuna was there too)

Last night I saw Kim Yuna at the KCC Switzen "All That Skate" Ice Show.  Wifeoseyo somehow scored tickets, and it as a seriously awesome show.

I'll put up more video when I have time to post it -- I didn't get everything, because readers, I love you all, but there are times when I'd rather focus on experiencing something, than focus on recording the experience in order to share it with you.  

However, a pleasant surprise, for me, were the performances of the two other Korean skaters at the show: Hae jin Kim  is a young up-and-comer who was quite good at using her movements to tell a story - she was cute as anything - and Minjeong Kwak 민정곽 has the chops, folks.  She, too, is very expressive, and really fired the crowd up with her charisma.

She was also at the center of two of the best moments of spontaneous fun: 1. after her show, her interaction with the cameraman on skates was the beginning of a kind of a running gag where skaters had different interactions with him - avoiding him or turning their back on him, or skating in the opposite direction, etc., each time drawing a laugh from the crowd.

2. After taking her bows, she headed for the offstage exit... at the wrong end of the ice.  Cracked herself, and the audience up.  So... she's cute.  In that "tell me about your cute niece" way.  Really cute.

Steve Earle... Seriously?

I like lots of music that my snobby friends consider "cool" and I am well capable of dropping the right band names to establish my "cred" (whatever that's worth), and I totally liked Sixpence None The Richer back when they were underground.

But sometimes I'm also a sentimental old crow, and buddy, you've got a heart of stone if this song doesn't turn you into butter. It's about the only Steve Earle song I like, but I sure like it.  It's also one of the better melodies I've come across: there are tons of songs that are great, but absolutely unhummable, because the music's awesome, but the melody... isn't. (In Mumford & Sons' defense... MELODY!) And other songs are nice, but the melody's so repetitive that it'd boring to hum. (coughPianoMancough)

Anyway: a lovely melody, and heartbreaking lyrics: get goopy with me.  Steve Earle, Goodbye.

A Goldmine for Teacher Resources

Really, I should post this link once a month, just for good measure.

Jason is a former K-blogger, and KOTESOL member, now living in China.  While in Korea, he worked in Korea's public school system, and in his spare time (??? I hope he got paid for everything he did), he compiled the most extensive one-man compilation of living in Korea materials you can find.

His blog contains upwards of 300 pages worth of instructions, links, and suggestions that a first-time public school teacher might need.

It covers coteacher issues, lesson planning, survival in Korea, dealing with students, websites you should visit, books you should buy, handouts, pedagogy tips -- seriously, almost anything (a public school teacher) can think of.

Most of it's relevant for teachers at different levels, too.

So go read. Explore.  Benefit from the work Jason did.  And maybe leave a thank-you comment.

Here's the link. The work is under creative commons copyright, so give him credit, but share it widely.  Poke around his site. It's a goldmine.

Been taking things too seriously lately.

But I finished midterms today!  Wrote three huge pages, double-sided, on modernity, theoretical discussions of construction of history, narrative methods, sources of meaning, and various human interactions with dominant and peripheral cultures.

Hella fun.

My favorite articles from the first half of the semester:
Stephen Tambiah Transnationalism, Diaspora and Multiple Modernities (subscription needed to access the full articles. sorry) -- summary: though we think of diasporic communities as moving to the "developed" world and becoming assimilated, often that is not the case.  Diasporic communities find really interesting ways to connect with their homelands, with each other, with their host cultures, and with other diasporic communities, in ways that can redraw their new home landscapes.  Their flows of affinity, connection, and resources can also greatly benefit the home land, as community members abroad use their new talents connections and resources to help preserve the way of life of those who remained in their ancestral homes.  Modernity does not take the shapes we expect it to.

Isn't this a Korea blog?  Tie it in, Roboseyo!
The disaporic communities of Koreans around the world add an interesting dimension to Korea here, in the "center" of Korean culture: the worldwide network provides an interesting variety of relations with the home culture, and each inform and add life to each other.

Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everday Life -- Though dominant cultural forces are indeed impressing their will on populations and cultures outside of the main power/influence centers, those "receiving" cultures do not find themselves disenfranchised, or with their cultures suddenly co-opted, subverted, or vanished.  Rather, the technologies ideas, etc. of the dominant cultures and power centers are taken into the local cultural matrices in unique ways, and are adapted to the ways of life already practiced by people.

Isn't this a Korea blog?  Tie it in, Roboseyo!

Korean Culture Is Not Disappearing.  It's taking new forms, and it's re-forming the cultural elements that come to it, in order to fit them into the systems and ways Koreans already live.

Wheee!