Monday April 7th
Three funny things happened one at a time today. It felt like punches in our head. To our frustration, my classmates and I could not defend our own point of view effectively. How sorry we felt for our poor English.
The first punch was thrown at us in Rob's class. We happened to discuss Dok-do. He implied that we Koreans seemed to be rather emotional about the issue than necessary. We admitted it but still we wanted to prove that Dok-do is ours. But Explaining all those things in English was a big challenge. The long controversy got a happy ending with his remark, "Yes, Dok-do belongs to Korea, of course." We all smiled happily.
In Noel's class, he played a joke that our classroom looked like a ghetto because of a few sheets of calendar attached on the glasswall. I didn't attach them on the painted wall in order not to peel off the paint on the wall. Though we were surprised at it at first, we admitted it could look like that. That was the second punch.
The third punch was thrown in Brad's class. In the middle of talking about the particular food to eat when we got ill, Karen said that overcooked rice porridge(=누룽지죽) was really good for a cold and tasted great. When we heard that, all of my classmates automatically imagined its nutsy smell and good taste. When Brad frankly said it had only a burn taste plus water from his experience, we were all stunned.
Even though I compared those happenings to triple punch, we, in fact, liked their honest response because it meant we and the native professors felt more and more friendly and comfortable.
