All in

I am always an abysmal failure at documenting the workshops that I teach, but it's really the last thing on my priority list while in the teaching zone. But I was able to capture an aunt and niece team in the process of texturing a big sheet of hanji. They were both so good with their hands; an ease and pleasure to work with. Class went well, and it was a luxury to teach this workshop in two days rather than one, which I had done last year. I've never seen so many students make so many jiseung cords! Impressive.

I had a great talk over the weekend with the one person in the world who understands the challenges of doing hanji research and ambassadorship in the U.S., and she reminded me that the student/teacher relationship is often misunderstood. She said, students do not necessarily need to feel indebted for life to their teachers (this was how I grew up to understand things and it's a hard paradigm to shake) because it is also a great privilege for teachers to teach students. And that was a welcome thing to hear while in the midst of it. I was surprised and humbled by how many students came from afar to take the workshop, and by all the permutations of possibilities that exploded over the weekend in terms of what they learned, synthesized, and transformed through their personal exploration.

This was a great way for me to start the workshop season, since I had enough time and head space between demos and instruction to take notes for myself on how to improve the flow, my samples and handouts, and the effectiveness of various methods of explanation. Even though it will take me another 24 hours to recover from the effort, I'm grateful for the privilege.