Dia de los dictadores
Today in conversation we continued the ongoing theme of the week, whereby various students talk about their hometown or homeland.
Now, while this normally wouldn't be terribly edifying (lucky me for getting to talk about the crap factory that is the Orange Curtain), today's was unusually so.
Why, you might ask? Because we had presentations on Belarus, Florence and ... North Korea.
For whatever reason, Prague is evidently authorized by the Great Leader as a destination for exchange students, which accounts for the apparent popularity of Czech (we were told it's popular, which evidently meant that maybe 10 people in all study it).
And we got the party line about the country. "Thanks to the People's Army," the country was liberated after the Second World War. Then she passed around some magazines about the country, most of which for whatever reason were written in Russian, but one of them was a brochure about this cabin or campsite in the mountains where the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, had been born. But it was in English, which was fortunate, since I can only sort of decipher Russian; my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet is imperfect, and even then I'm limited to roughing out the common Slavic roots based on my knowledge of Czech. I want to see if there's any way I can get a copy of that pamplet, though, since it's not your garden variety tourist brochure.
Pretty much everyone was captivated by the opportunity to not only hear about North Korea, but to actually get to ask questions about life there. Lots of questions. We spent roughly half an hour or so doing this.
And, I got to ask a very interesting question, namely what do people in North Korea thinking about America?
We're Enemy No. !.
Surprise, surprise.
I had thought about telling her that North Korea is maybe enemy No. 3 for us, since I assume the countries we're currently trying to occupy rank higher, even though I would think North Korea should also be at the top of the list, as it poses a more direct threat to U.S. territory should it keep progressing with that nuclear program.
But I opted not to, in part because it seemed undiplomatic. But I was also strongly discouraged by not quite having the vocabulary for it.
Now, while this normally wouldn't be terribly edifying (lucky me for getting to talk about the crap factory that is the Orange Curtain), today's was unusually so.
Why, you might ask? Because we had presentations on Belarus, Florence and ... North Korea.
For whatever reason, Prague is evidently authorized by the Great Leader as a destination for exchange students, which accounts for the apparent popularity of Czech (we were told it's popular, which evidently meant that maybe 10 people in all study it).
And we got the party line about the country. "Thanks to the People's Army," the country was liberated after the Second World War. Then she passed around some magazines about the country, most of which for whatever reason were written in Russian, but one of them was a brochure about this cabin or campsite in the mountains where the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, had been born. But it was in English, which was fortunate, since I can only sort of decipher Russian; my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet is imperfect, and even then I'm limited to roughing out the common Slavic roots based on my knowledge of Czech. I want to see if there's any way I can get a copy of that pamplet, though, since it's not your garden variety tourist brochure.
Pretty much everyone was captivated by the opportunity to not only hear about North Korea, but to actually get to ask questions about life there. Lots of questions. We spent roughly half an hour or so doing this.
And, I got to ask a very interesting question, namely what do people in North Korea thinking about America?
We're Enemy No. !.
Surprise, surprise.
I had thought about telling her that North Korea is maybe enemy No. 3 for us, since I assume the countries we're currently trying to occupy rank higher, even though I would think North Korea should also be at the top of the list, as it poses a more direct threat to U.S. territory should it keep progressing with that nuclear program.
But I opted not to, in part because it seemed undiplomatic. But I was also strongly discouraged by not quite having the vocabulary for it.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 14:14
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