just like Lucy

Another MT has passed and I am back....This one was for the Graduate Department, and let me tell you, they aint fooling around! They started out with playing silly team games that involved grabbing other people, stepping on people, hitting people and receiving all of the above from others. At first I was delighted to be on the winning team. But that only meant we had to compete more often, so screw winning. Those who survived that part were faced with the next challenge, chewing the octopus. A true problem if you still haven't gotten around to getting your tooth implants. It was in the next segment that they showed their true colors. Flocked around a bonfire the Koreans started drawing mysterious symbols into the sand. It became obvious, that the person with the least dependants, friends and neighbors would be burnt at stake by the new members as a sacrifice (to the University Founder?). I thought it advisable to go and check something. Oddly enough, I never got a chance to go back to the fire.......We will know more next week. I can only say I liked them all.

Tomorrow another MT for me.

I'm still looking for a name, by the way. Recent suggestions have included "Warhol", which I think is taken. The suggestion "Schickelgruber" I find to long, and the shorter "S'Gruber" sounds like something you use to clean the bathtub. "Limax" is certainly interesting, but I believe it's reserved for a sensation mathematicians experience during intercourse.
Come on, think!

Last night's dinner was filled with revelations. The French guy who's been hanging out at alliance is NOT, like the Koreans had told us, a French teacher from Seoul who spends his vacation talking to Students nor is he a pederast who escaped from Belgium, trying to hide here from authorities (not hard in Belgium's case, I guess). He actually is from France and a programmer and on vacation. So much for intercultural communication. Likewise, my acupuncturist is just not, as was the suspicion, a North Korean torture victim who recently escaped and who has acquired her knowledge of Oriental medicine in Pyongyang Medical Center. Just a good, normal South Korean, doing an excellent job putting needles in my head. And, by the way, I'm beginning to think that Kim Jong Il is a very great and kind leader and deserves all the support he can get and that all my previous criticism is very unjustified.

The movie I watched with my students, Chihwaseon turned out to be very instructive..... I learned terms like kiseang and sansaengnim and about the latter sowing his seed. Very instructive. Nice movie. One of 2 movies you need to see before coming to Korea, the other one is "My Wife Is A Gangster". After watching those you'll have a pretty accurate representation of Korean culture.