Festival Week at Chungnam!

Every year in May, Chungnam national University celebrates its birthday with a grand festival. There are two guarantees during festival week. The first is that it's going to rain buckets the first day of the festival, and second, I'm going to teach class hungover as stink at least two of the days.

Festival week is a double-edged sword of sorts. On the positive side, hardly any students show up for class because they're either working at one of the many beer tents sponsored by their major department or drinking at said tents, so it's a very easy teaching week. Another positive thing is that, as you wander around the festival tents, you always run into students who want you to come and drink with them. This is great because a) you have fun, and b) the students are usually more talkative in class after you've joined them for a few beers.

On the negative side, as you wander around the festival you always run into students who want to drink with you. This is despite the fact that you have to teach the next day at 7 am. Of course, this leads to a 7 am lesson on gibberish as a second language because your brain and mouth become seperated somewhere in the dark the night before and don't find each other again until sometime in the late afternoon.