episode three

I've been meaning to call up the local police to see what came of that background check they did on the phone number I gave them for my quasi-stalker, but my host mother has been so busy lately that I feel bad mentioning it again. On top of the sort of drama that has been normal at the school of late (things have suddenly gotten a whole lot less relaxed, which I attribute to the new principal), she's in charge of the school's paper drive to send old books and newspapers to North Korea for recycling. A paper drive for North Korea. I just wanted to repeat that because there's something very interesting about it. It seems very war-time-esque I guess, though in this case the war is sort of cold and the ally is technically the enemy.

On Thursday I have to help out in selecting two first grade students to go to the provincial English contest--my neighboring foreigner, Greg, over at Maesan Boys' agreed to help me out. The contest is going to be a discussion-style format this year, which has the teachers bewildered as how to select students for this contest, as this school has never evaluated students based on their creativity or discussion skills. I still don't know what the format will be like; they had a meeting today about it so I guess I'll figure out tomorrow. Greg agreed very kindly to help out, though he told me he intends to go see Episode 3 afterwards, so he can't hang around too late afterwards. He invited me to come. I had no idea Episode 3 would be coming to Korea this soon. I was so disappointed with Episode 1 that I didn't bother to see Episode 2, but Episode 3 actually got a good review in the New York Times, so I guess I'll be renting Episode 2 one of these nights for background. It'll be fun to see a movie in the theater again, especially if it is as good as A.O. Scott says.