My Observations

Today is the anniversary of my school's beginning or founding. Maybe this date was the first day they had classes. It's somewhat interesting to point out that this day is always a holiday in Korea for a school, when it's not in the US and as I know not in any other Western country. Spending time in Korea, you see more and more differences between Korean and Western culture. Why is this day a holiday?

First of all, let me explain that Korea has more Christians per capita than any country in East Asia except the Phillipines. Among Korean Christians there are some who could be called Sunday Christians, but there are so many who are card-carrying, seven days a week Christians. What I want to explain first is how this has affected the Korean diaspora around the world. Try this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_diaspora  I want to share a few stories about Koreans I have met while living in Korea: Once I met a young Korean who spoke English seemingly perfectly and I asked him how he learned. He replied his parents went to South American to be missionaries, and he went to an international school. Of course he was fluent in Spanish also. Later he became a pastor, married a Korean-American woman and moved back to South America to pastor a church. On another occasion same thing happened. I met another young Korean guy who spoke English very well. His parents had lived...

There's a lot of news about swine flu now. I don't  know how long it will last. Supposedly there are many cases in Korea. A teacher told me that one or more schools he works at closed last week. He had two days off. About a month ago I saw a podcast online with an interview with a teacher who'd lost his hagwon job due to swine flu. It was three months before his contract ended causing him to lose about 10 million won. Some students had quit after hearing he had swine flu. Also he was told to work after getting sick when it hadn't been determined he had the flu. I decided to find the link so you can understand better. Here it is: http://midnightrunner.mypodcast.com/ Makes me wonder if this has happened to others...have other teachers been told to leave? Have some come to Korea but not been allowed to start teaching? What about others like foreign factory workers or businesspeople?