Welcome Hannam Students!  If you are a student of Hannam, click on the links down on the left for your class needs..

 I will be teaching at a South Korean Presbyterian University this year, within their biotechnology department, working on basic English grammar and introducing them to simple English articles related to the biological sciences. 

Presbyterians believe in inerrancy, which basically means you believe the Bible is true, with God as the author, not just a conglomeration of texts written by men who were not entirely subsumed by the Spirit of God in their writing. 

Here we are, Autumn 2005, The Long Family on a rare outing, celebrating the 100th day of our new family member.  The more the merrier.  Hallelujah and Amen. 

          Greetings to all:

This website garnered its genesis in a perceived need to find a way to enhance the likelihood that I might maintain contact with my students here from South Korea and continue services to this young nation.  My mother, a high school French and English teacher, once told me that she received two distinct forms of reward from her job:  1) pecuniary compensation, after the consuetude, and 2) glad heartening of her spirits when old students, many years removed from school return to visit her at her school and home. 

Having taught more than a decade in South Korea and understanding we would probably move to The United States by the time my oldest child began middle school, I began to sense a clear paucity in the second form of compensation whereupon students would find it most inconvenient to come and find me in my humble abode in the U.S., particularly as we do not even yet know the address where we will reside. 

Hence, the need to establish a permanent online presence had me embarking upon the at once arduous but enrichening process of overcoming my entrenched aversion to computer-related activities while commencing to absorb the not inconsiderable delight which inheres in learning how to maximize one's influence on the "omnipresent, everlasting" web.

            * * * * * * * * * * * *

During my first six or seven years here in South Korea, I invested substantial time and thought writing and sending e-mails to my students, as it turns out they do not read e-mails much, and as time went on and they developed an affinity for hand phones, e-mail became ever more a thing of the past for them, in their social circles.  So be it. 

My students remain predominantly affixed to Korean language portals, unwilling to attempt navigation through English commands and tool bars.  Still, I felt a compelling need to go with English, and Yahoo seemed destined to stay, not dissolve in a puff of cyber smoke amid bankruptcy proceedings.   

My wife is sensitive to the 15-dollar monthly maintence fee for this site, but I point out that unlike other husbands who support some vice, such as going out drinking with their mates, I continue to evince no such proclivity or penchant. 

So, she concedes that this is my "hobby."  I think she will better understand after she has been teaching a few years and built up a passel of great old students who begin to visit her from time to time.   

I would love nothing more than to enact a seamless transition in my family's exodus From the Land of the Morning Calm(한국) to the Land of the Beautiful Landscapes(미국).  This seamless transition would entail a means for me to continue purveying my work, with ever greater emphasis on channels of writing and commentary:  articles, advice on English style and grammar, homestay for Korean students in our humble abode, padook development related activites, and in conjunction with my church, a Christian nonprofit ESL summer camp in Virginia or North Carolina -- the Good Lord Willing and the creeks don't rise. 

Hence the personal need to create some interface work between cultures that I could carry on in the U.S., and keep after until I subside and rise up to be with the Lord, my Maker, beyond all we know of time. 

Ultimately, I would like to come back to South Korea some day, after my children no longer need me, and start a church and do mission work somewhere, likely in North Korea, Sweden, or Norway.  I will follow the Lord at the time.  I would like to maintain some contact and work with the Korean Peninsula.

Sincerely, Nathaniel Long

         What's New?

• English Bible Study Class for Students and Interested faculty:  Thursday morning 9:00 a.m.  Drop by and Praise The Lord!
•  If there are any Hannam Students who wish to start a juggling club (동아리), please let me know. 
• We are offering another voluntary English science writings class for the fall semester, on Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 8:00.  There is no cost to students, and there is no academic credit, so we should have a great class because everyone in the class is there soley because he wants to focus and learn.
• We have a new English Bible study going on Monday nights from 8:00 p.m. at Joong Ang Presbyterian Church, nestled within HwangShil Apartments, across from Noori Apartments.  We use a children's bible to make it easier.  Free to all comers! Bone up on your English while you enjoy communion with Christians and learn more about God's Word Today!
•  We now have an English Bible study group exclusively for professors and staff at 8 a.m. every Tuesday, continuing our class from this past spring.
• Juggling:  I teach team club passing to jugglers of all stripes, drama students who intend to become performers, and current professional entertainers.
• If there are any Hannam Students who wish to start a juggling club (동아리), please let me know.   

        Work in Progress: 

• ESL Board Games, which focus on practice of Diplomacy Skills in groups of four to ten.
• The Best Questions Dialectics Text series is pretty much complete now, up through seven volumes.  I continue improving it, using the chapters in my classes, and my more avid high level students as guinea pigs cum test pilots.  That suits me fine, and grants me immeasurable liberty.  
• The series is an upper level text for South Korean English language students, aimed towards international government and business representatives, and those Korean students who intend to study at the tertiary level in the U.S.

"My Life in Korea"  Quotidian  Ad Hoc Web Log