OSU-PNU 2006

dr. h arrived last night, but we didn't meet him until today for lunch and then again for dinner at a good turkish restaurant near the pnu campus. of course, we had a lot to talk with him about in regards to what happened at the end of last week and the future of the program. late this afternoon, he met with the dean, and it seems that the program is going to survive. at least that was the news earlier this evening. who knows? the situation may have changed since then. ;) after dinner, lisya, dr. hirvela and i went to a cozy book cafe in the basement of the o2 building, where we had both iced and hot tea and chatted about our time in pusan. dr. h had a lot of interesting questions for us about our experience that really challenged us to think about the benefit of spending this time in pusan. one of them was about how this experience has changed our teaching. in my case, i don't really see immediate evidence of how this has changed my teaching. however, when i go back to teaching esl composition this fall at osu, then it may be a bit more apparent how my teaching has changed. i found it interesting that in our discussion i admitted that i missed teaching composition. i never thought i would say that because of all the complaining i do about the preparation, grading and tutorials that are required with the comp courses; however, i realize that particularly with assessment issues, i enjoy teaching comp much more than spoken english. some of the other questions dr. h challenged us with included the things we found that were surprising or shocking. i didn't have an answer to this. i've felt very much at home since i got here, so there hasn't been too much, other than the drama at the end of last week, that's been surprising or shocking to me. another question he asked us is what we were going to miss after we leave. i think what i'll miss is the experience of living in a foreign country. life here has been exciting and i've been able to put off some things, like my dissertation, that i really shouldn't/can't when i'm in the states. in a sense, it's been a little bit like being on vacation. something else i'll miss is the students. i've found these students to be hard working and highly motivated, for the most part. in the classes i teach at osu, i don't particularly see this level of motivation, mostly i think it's because our classes fall at the bottom of the priority list with these students. they are focused more on their research and major classes rather than an esl composition course. however, the students here haven't really given me that impression, although one of the comments from last week's "secret" evaluation eluded to the fact that so much homework was keeping him/her away from his/her major classes. i'll also miss the friendships i've started with people at the church and in the fellowship group and living with the team members. that one bedroom apartment back in columbus is going to seem awfully quiet. alice and n! i'll just have to hang out in your place even more after i get back. btw, happy birthday, alice! hope you have a great day! so we're down to the last week of our stay here. i can't believe it's almost over. it almost seems surreal. with dr. h's arrival, we have designed some different activities to get him involved in our classes and with the students. lisya is having the students interview him in one of her classes. stuart and i are having him come and talk to the students about education in the u.s. the last day of class we've planned a performance show where students must prepare a skit, dialog, speech, debate, something that shows off what they learned this past month in their classes. we're combining the classes that day and having a potluck, since it'll be the last chance we have to get together. so we have some fun activities planned for the last week.