Printed textbooks!!

Yesterday afternoon Dr. Yoon, the head of our new Department for Content Research and Development (or something like that), walked into our office with a bunch of textbooks. I thought nothing of it and continued to edit the printed-out pages in front of me. But Dr. Yoon called Robin, one of my Adult Textbook Office coworkers, over to the table in the corner where they talked for a few minutes. Then Robin came to get me and showed me the books laying in four neat piles on the table: the first-print copies of our Jeju Project! Robin was excited and she's seen textbooks she's helped create in print before. To say that I was excited was an understatement. I've only ever seen my writing in print in the Insight Magazine a couple times and on the news pages of the Southern Accent. And this is a little bit more official. I was kicking myself yesterday for not always carrying my camera around with me, but I brought it today and snapped a few pictures at my desk. I especially want to share them with Renee, my friend whose job I inherited when she left back to the U.S. in December. She helped the ATO with content for all three textbooks, two of the three workbooks, and did all the Jeju Island teacher's training. So without further ado, here you go, people. This is what our Jeju Project textbooks and auxiliary materials look like!

Aren't they pretty! So I was planning to also use this blog post as a way to announce that we're officially finished the Jeju Project. This afternoon MJ, the manager of my section of the office, and Dr. Yoon went to a presentation to show the government the books. They came back happy with how it went, but MJ told Robin and me later that the government officials asked for one more addition (just the latest in a long line of additions they've requested...let's not forget this project was supposed to be done at the end of December when they suddenly asked for reading passages [featured above] to be added to the textbooks and workbooks, and teacher's manuals and student guides to be created for each of the three levels). So we're not done yet. Tomorrow we'll start the (hopefully) last part of the project, adding word lists to the back of all three textbooks. Maybe by next week we'll be done. But for now, I'm just happy to see the nearly finished products in print!