My blog has been quiet for almost a month! What happened?
Work, of course. And it’s been fascinating because my teaching job has taken me out of Busan and up the Korean coast to one of the busiest industrial centres, Ulsan. Ulsan is known as “the most energetic city in Korea” in a country where every street and building buzzes like a beehive. I’m organizing an English language course for a group of automotive engineers. Their company has decided that they must be bilingual. I had just posted an article saying that the only way Korea can withstand absorption by China is to become bilingually English and Korean, when the teaching gig came into the company I work for. No connection between my post and the assignment except the actual need.
It’s an admirable goal but it is an extra task for busy engineers working long hours to perfect the casting of magnesium engine blocks to spend more hours appreciating the ways English speakers use ‘going to…’ to talk about both physical travel and future plans. For me, it’s a wonderful opportunity to get to meet some of the brilliant engineers behind Korea’s surging industrial growth. I’ve already been taken on an enthusiastic tour of one of the engine block factories and watched molten aluminum pouring into cylinder-head moulds. I’m not sure my English lessons can live up to that for excitement…
Hopefully I’ll manage to keep things exciting at work and post on the blog! To calm myself, I like to look at this image of an x-ray of a calla lily - sorry, I have no idea where it came from other than Google Images.
I love the idea of someone x-raying flowers. How delightfully un-busy that must be. And the resulting image is serene and slightly spooky in its silence. Sigh…
