Tuesday, August 15, 2006
reflections
the first day back. i woke up at 5am. decided not to lay in bed thinking about everything in the world, so i got up, had breakfast, cleaned, unpacked and put stuff away. i went to bed last night around 11pm and slept through the night. i was a bit disoriented when i woke up. wasn't quite sure where i was. i guess i'm still trying to readjust to being home.
now that i'm home, i realize what a great experience it was to go to pusan and teach at pnu this summer. what i find interesting is how being back in my own culture is helping me to have a better understanding of my experience in pusan. for example, when i went for a run today, i noticed how the cars would yield to me. in pusan, it was the opposite, and i was curious as to why this is. i speculated that because there are fewer pedestrians in columbus than there are cars, pedestrians have the right-of-way. whereas in a place like pusan, that's densely populated and cars are quite expensive to own and maintain, there are more pedestrians. so vehicles yielding to them would cause a traffic jam. from experiencing this in my own culture, it seemed that i was able to better understand why it's done differently in the korean culture. i'll be interested to see if i notice other aspects of this culture that help me to construct meaning in the korean culture.
as i continue to process my pusan experience, it seems to me that i'm coming away from this with more understanding of the korean culture, particularly in regards to how important the issue of face is in the culture and how the fact that korea was a "closed" nation for a long time still seems to influence the culture today. i think this comes from talking with culture "experts" (a.k.a. the students) and watching the people.
now that i'm home, i realize what a great experience it was to go to pusan and teach at pnu this summer. what i find interesting is how being back in my own culture is helping me to have a better understanding of my experience in pusan. for example, when i went for a run today, i noticed how the cars would yield to me. in pusan, it was the opposite, and i was curious as to why this is. i speculated that because there are fewer pedestrians in columbus than there are cars, pedestrians have the right-of-way. whereas in a place like pusan, that's densely populated and cars are quite expensive to own and maintain, there are more pedestrians. so vehicles yielding to them would cause a traffic jam. from experiencing this in my own culture, it seemed that i was able to better understand why it's done differently in the korean culture. i'll be interested to see if i notice other aspects of this culture that help me to construct meaning in the korean culture.
as i continue to process my pusan experience, it seems to me that i'm coming away from this with more understanding of the korean culture, particularly in regards to how important the issue of face is in the culture and how the fact that korea was a "closed" nation for a long time still seems to influence the culture today. i think this comes from talking with culture "experts" (a.k.a. the students) and watching the people.
# posted by About Me @ 8:38 AM 
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I think you may have a more interesting article on the type of problem solving you had to do, particularly how you tried to integrate the technology in response to a particular issue you were facing. I couldn't hear all the podcasts but they were an interesting attempt to deal with a particular problem. Of course the most interesting part was the blog. as I may have mentioned, it was a very interting example of the many of the terms that have been floating around the blogosphere - "long tail", social networking, read/write" even though there wasn't a great deal of interaction, it was fascinating to watch this disparate group of people develop around you as an author. it has great potential in teacher training, and in life as well.
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