My name is Rebecca (Hello, Rebecca!)

... and I am a bad blogger. I have been a bad blogger for about two months now. I had determined to become a better blogger this glorious month of May, but events conspire against me. I owe you the brilliance of my observational and deductive (not to mention descriptive) powers as applied to the concert I was in the weekend before this past one ("Music for Dead People: a Couple of Requiems for the Discerning Listener," or at least, that's what I would have called it). I would like to tell you of the adventurous romp through Seoul that weekend became, and all the musical geekery leading up to and away from it, but there are a few things in the way.

First is the new musical production by the same company. We are putting on The Pirates of Penzance or The Slave of Duty, by Messirs Gilbert and Sullivan. We are putting it on with a full production time of one month. Those of you not Shakespearean actors may find this shocking. It is. A month to learn a 200+ page score and script in all its lovely British nuance is not a lot of time. I am the stage manager, or assistant production manager, and the dialogue-y accent person. (Personally, I prefer the call-sign Bosun - I get a whistle! - and Layman's Phonetician. Or Pygmalion. I haven't decided). So far it is ludicrously, but delightfully busy in every imaginable way. Saturday from 1 p.m to 8 or 9, and Sunday from 3 p.m to 8 or 9 is when the actors and actresses are called. Busybodies like me will stay up to two hours after that (but personally, I won't on Sundays anymore, as that soundly compromises my train-making abilities). During the week, there are notes to review and meetings to be had via Skype, some with the dreaded Management, and some with actors to do accent-y stuff.

To add to this list o' stuff, the foreign teachers under the GLE schools' umbrella are having a debate. I'm not sure why, but I do know it's about whether kids should be taught only by native English speakers. We are the con side and will argue that students should learn from both. This debate is next Wednesday. We discovered the teams and the topic today. We are supposed to occupy an hour. Luckily, one of our teammates has professed some dance experience. Nothing like a little language-education soft-shoe to loosen judges up.

In three days, I discovered an hour ago, I am supposed to give a presentation with two other Korean teachers about teaching reading . Internet... I have never taught reading. Of any kind. To anyone. It transpires that next quarter, foreign teachers will begin teaching reading at the most advanced level, but the presentation is supposed to be about teaching reading to the most basic level. This bodes ill, people. My hope is, at this moment, built on nothing less than Google's might and the search string "ESL/EFL reading pedagogy." (If you have knowledge, dear reader, which you have been keeping by in case of a rainy reading-pedagogy day, today is the day to let it shine forth!)

So really, I'm gearing up to be an even worse blogger in the near future. In the meantime, for pictorial versions of many of the stories I would tell if I were a better blogger, check out roketship.