New Goals

This semester's classes end on Dec.13th and exams finish a week later. I'm not going to teach this winter. When my grades have been submitted, I'm going to start studying Korean seriously again. I made a similar resolution about a year ago, but I didn't follow up on that. As a language teacher, I feel that there's something wrong with me because I haven't done a better job of learning. Oddly, the best conversations I've ever had in Korean have been with Japanese and American students of Korean. My Korean friends always say that they want to teach me or that they want me to speak Korean, but that only lasts about ten minutes, and, when they realize the limits of my vocab, they quickly switch to English. I'm going to be leaving Korea at the end of next semester, so it seems a little odd to make such an effort. I'm doing this solely for me - for my ego. Damn it. I should be able to do better. I'm not an idiot (but I sometimes feel like one).

I also want to take this last chance to travel around in Korea a little. I haven't been to Gyungju in years. I've never taken the KTX, and I've heard that it's really cool.

As well, I want to get a web domain and do some things with online material. For years, I've been fiddling around with some really basic HTML because I've been making exercises with Hot Potatoes, but I don't really understand it well, so I picked up a book called Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML. It's only 658 pages. Luckily, it has a lot of pictures and graphics.

I have a geocities homepage that I've used to organize internet resources for my students, but I'd like to design and create my own homepage from scratch.

I also want to know how to work with Moodle as an administrator (this may be a monumental task). I've been using Moodle with my classes for a couple of years, but we have a very savvy computer guy in our department who has done all the serious stuff, so I'd like to put Moodle up there and play with it a bit while he is around to help me if I really screw up. Then I can use it with my classes no matter where I go.

People that I've worked with for years always seem to think that I'm this great computer guy, but I really just know how to do a very limited number of things with the computer. I'm sure that my spotty knowledge regularly shocks my computer geek officemate.

This is going to keep me pretty busy over the winter vacation (2 months).

I also plan to stop drinking so much, eat healthier, exercise more, and try to lose about 7 kilograms. I'm the heaviest that I've ever been (97 kgs/213 lbs) and I'm not as light afoot as I used to be. I have started meditating again and want to develop a daily routine. I also have dozens of books on my shelves that are just crying out to be read.

I little lightening up of my basic life attitude might also be thrown into all of this just to make life better.