Adventures in Busses…

Since today was Graduation Day here at the university, I only had 2 students show up for my afternoon class. We opted to go to the coffee shop for the 2nd hour of class, which created a nice, casual atmosphere. Both students had spent some time in Canada, and we began talking about a variety of culture shock issues between Canada and Korea.

While a journey on (or near) a Korean bus has often caused me a great deal of stress, I never imagined that a Canadian bus could do the same. Busses here travel well above the speed limit, resulting in a rather precarious balancing act as it careens around a corner. Furthermore, upon aproaching a string of cars waiting at a stop light, the bus will ‘jump the queue’ and cut infront of the first car in line ~ usually well into the intersection. These are the two major complaints I have against Korean busses.

It came as a shock to me then, when one of my students said he hated Canadian busses! He hated that if the speed limit was 60 km/h, the bus never exceeded 60 km/h. He also hated that a bus would actually stop at the indicated stop line at an intersection! He said that it was frustrating, because the bus was so slow and pokey, he felt like he wouldn’t get to his destination on time! Wow. It had really, truly never occured to me that a quiet, orderly, safe, methodical transportation system could possibly prove to be frustrating for someone from a different culture. It made me realize that when it comes to Korean transportation, I’ve fallen into that horrible traveller’s trap of thinking “Oh, they only do it the way they do because they don’t know any better.” Gotta love Cultural Diversity!

Adventures in Functional Grammar…

Yup, my books have arrived and I’ve embarked on another semester of Linguistics. Today’s highlight (and I mean that literally, I’ve attacked it with a flourescent yellow wand and adorned it with a gargantuan “?“) declares:

Dependent clauses of the second type are the kinds of messages that are full clause projections from projecting processes realised by verbal groups that express saying, thinking, reporting, believing and so on. ~Using Functional Grammar. Butt, Fahey, et al. p.167

I can tell you what verbal group I’m thinking about reporting right now, and it’s certainly not fit for Moms or Sailors to read!

Perhaps I should have chosen to study Children’s Literature, Plant Destroying, or Pudding Making. Those things I think I could do well. It’s going to take me a full semester to de-code the above quote, much less apply it to the looming assignments.

However, the activities I’ve tried in the textbook so far have been fun. I’m just worried that they’re fun the same way Calculus was fun until I realized that there really was a right answer, and I couldn’t just choose the numbers that were pretty or felt right. Time (and my professor) will tell.

Enjoy your day, I’m heading back to the books.

Adventures in Odd Couples…

My morning class is quite energetic, gregarious and not the least bit shy about discussing any topic. Today, while discussing fears and phobias, we watched a few clips from a recent Fear Factor episode. The conversation then wandered onto the topic of a recently married Thai couple; The Queen of Scorpions married the King of Centepides. The Queen spent 32 days incased in a box with 3,400 scorpions, while the King spent 28 days snuggled up to 1,000 centipedes. The Queen’s wedding dress was adorned with a number of live scorpions. And here I’ve been thinking that the Fear Factor contestants are nuts for spending 2 or 3 minutes with the l’il critters.