I suppose some have expected more notes on culture, that up to now I admit I've been kinda lax on; or maybe thats just by MY standards. Anyway, by virtue of what I see in my classes, there is, in fact, something of an "intellectual elite" here, students who, in some cases, have gone abroad for a year or so, even as teenagers and older children, and really learned, and, yes, I have students one could only usefully classify as doorstops, but overall, quite frankly, the average is not that stunningly high among these kids. And among the younger ones, particularly the boys, you pretty much know they'd rather be anywhere else but in school. Dare I say the fact that these kids go to school 6 days a week means little or nothing, big picture, because come hell or high water, performance compromised by whatever bug they pass around, they're there. So they're there, but they aren't 100% all the time, any more than American kids are. And they're kids, anytime they *aren't* in school, is clearly the best time of all. I would also say that the overall safety of American students is less compromised by the culture itself; we in America don't have a bunch of cabbies running around, juiced up on soju all the time, and child safety seats and such things are the rule more than the exception. We also don't have NEAR the addiction to cell-phone use in America that these people do, believe it or not. As I have said before, a lot of Korean society has more to do with the image you present than any real performance, in ways we Americans will never eclipse, try as we might. Bloody sad.