Putting my cantankerous pants on one leg at a time...

Since I know this is going to be a bit of a controversial topic, I'm just going to go ahead and rant about it anyway since it's something that severely annoys me and what the hey, this is my blog anyway.

Ok, so I know that people who say this mean well, but seriously, don't bless me or offer to pray for me. If I don't share your beliefs it has no positive effect on me and in fact it's a bit insulting - it's almost like a threat sometimes and feels like you're forcing them on me, in the vein of "I'm going to do it whether you like it or not!" I know people often say it because they either don't know what else to say or do, or possibly that they genuinely believe that it works, although even as someone who respects belief in other people if not what they actually believe in I still wonder how often that situation could really be claimed to be entirely true. Maybe it's a way for them to still their own doubts. Or looking at things cynically, a way for them to relieve their own feelings of guilt about not actually wanting to do anything to help. But really, if I was a Satanist and said "the devil be with you" or "may you rot in hell as an eternal reward for your good works" I doubt people would take it as gracefully, even if I genuinely believed in Satan (or let's say Hades to try and avoid negative associations) as the creator of life and mediator of eternal justice. Even though if you're Christian you should at least know that God originally created Satan as an angel, who (like humanity) chose his own path and actually looking at it from a human perspective did pretty well out of it, becoming his own boss and owning his own Realm of Darkness compared to the other chump angels who stayed in Heaven. I'd say he's pretty happy with how his Eternal Reward is paying out. And if I said that to the average kind of person who tries to bless other people they'd be very upset.

Anyway, that digression aside, I can't fault hope and sympathy, but I can fault the hypocritical approach to respect that many religious people take, regardless of what that religion is - respect is something you have to give if you want to demand it. And sometimes I feel like people trying to bless one or pray for one who doesn't share their beliefs is kind of like a smoker blowing their second hand smoke into your face just because they want to share the lovely tar-filled joy of their habit with you. If you feel like the other person is in a hard or hopeless situation and want to lend your sympathy or even if, being honest with yourself, you are loathe to actually do anything to help, what's wrong with just saying "I'll be thinking of you" or "I'm here for you if you need to talk" or even offering to do something with them that will help distract them from their troubles for a while? Save the sanctimonious stuff for someone who will appreciate it much more or at least just say it quietly to yourself. Or at least don't act offended if you offer to pray for me and I tell you not to bother because there's no such thing as God and people only believe in him because they don't want to accept that this one life is the only chance they might have and they're probably worried that they've already blown it, but if you want to really help me you can buy me a Belgian dark hot chocolate from Holly's coffee anytime you like. You believe what you want and I'll believe what I want - I'm sure each of us is secretly pitying the other for it.

And hmm, thinking back I really should have tried to learn to say this all in Korean so the damn Evangelists downtown would stop harassing me when I'm trying to get somewhere. It's freezing cold! If I didn't want to stop and talk to you when the weather was fine why the hell would I want to do it now when it's -11 degrees??? That's not what sparked this off by the way, it's just an observation :)

And yes, this is also the same thing I feel about those stupid Facebook "repost if you support OOO" chain letter things. Sure it worked that one time when it was still a new concept but now they do nothing to help and the only thing they raise awareness for is for whatever gimmick they are running. If you want to help get off your arse and do something, even if it's just opening your wallet and donating $5.

Anyway, if this offends anyone, well you know how to close the window or unsubscribe from updates so I might as well go ahead and rub it in - suck it! ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

guhh?????

I have no idea what's happening. With anything. Primarily with my school. Today has had some ups and downs. Firstly, the drama with Friday. Friday is our school's foundation day so we have the day off. Or so I thought. This morning my co-teacher Paige told me that the Vice-Principal had decided that actually, only the students have the day off but all the teachers should come to school, so if I wanted to take the day off I'd have to use one of my leave days. Ok. *Big sigh* This was a little disappointing as I had been planning to go to Seoul and go shopping in Myeongdong while everyone else was at work and generally just revel in the relative quiet compared to the usual weekend rugby scrum. For those of you not familiar with this sporting term, it's when the players all bunch together to get the ball, except in this case instead of a group of heavily muscled men crashing into each other as they scrabble for a tiny ball, it's about two thousand people pushing and elbowing each other for a) space or b) a bargain. It's also waaaaay nastier because everyone has heels, manicured talons and/or a huge handbag to bring into the fray. Add into this the crazy religious people predicting your afterlife in hell and the couples walking arm in arm coat-hangering half the crowd and the people randomly stopping or moving much slower than anyone else and you've got one of the most frustrating shopping trips you'll ever have. A standard Saturday there is seriously worse than the New Year's sales in Sydney. *sigh* The things one does for Forever 21.

Anyway, so as Paige was apologising for giving me this awful news even though it was the VP being an arse and not her (I hadn't made a fuss about it, she was just apologising because she didn't want to be at school either and  knew what I was thinking), my other co-teacher Ms Kwon told me that the VP had also decided that since I went on the 2nd year camp last year (actually we stayed in a rather nice hotel on the coast), I shouldn't be allowed to go again THIS year and would have to instead stay at school for 3 days and deskwarm. Despite the fact that unlike most teachers, I actually WANT to go! This is because the students from Ms Kwon's homeroom 2-2 and the next class down 2-1 are some of my favourites from last year's Super Duper English club and I could also have helped (vaguely) Ms Kwon out a little. So a little disappointing, especially since I've been telling the girls in those classes that I'm going with them - one of them even told me that she was going to do nail art for me on the bus! So much for that. *Double sigh*

However, this was not the end of the matter! At lunch, the school secretary guy Mr Jeong (the teacher that does most of the actual organisational work at the school) had found out about Friday and asked me what I was doing. When I told him that both Paige and I were told we have to be at school he harrumphed a bit and said he would check. He worked his magic and lo and behold! We don't have to come in after all. Huzzah for Mr Jeong! He's a lovely man and his English is actually good enough for us to talk, and I think because I helped him fill out a form for his daughter's enrollment in some prestigious boarding school somewhere in the UAE last year he tries to look out for things like this where he could easily just not bother.

Anyway, so that was the down, then up for the morning. Keeping in tradition of ending my posts on a positive note (and I need to focus on the positive after having class 2-8 today who are keeping up their own tradition of being noisy little ratbags), I am most elated because the five students from my special English after school class who we entered in an English essay/speaking contest ALL won prizes! One of them won the top prize of extra points towards her academic record (these count towards their high school entry scores) and the others won 2nd place awards from the company that runs the competition with our Education Office. You might remember me bitching about having to check and rewrite five 1 to 2 page essays over three days on top of all my other work a while back, so I'm happy that the hard work (both mine and theirs) paid off and they did well. I actually wanted to run out and buy them a cake to celebrate but Paige pointed out that the other students might be a bit upset since we hadn't even told them about the contest so I fought the urge.

Other highlights of my week have been the consistent answers from the 1st year boys about what makes people sad - I asked them why a young girl in a picture was sad and most of them answered "because her dad/mum/baby died". It became much funnier during the next activity on giving advice with class 1-5 when I asked them what you say when you can't really give advice to fix someone's problem, and gave their own example back to them as "my dog died yesterday".  They thought that I said "dad" and also that I was serious so the whole class went quiet and looked horrified except for one boy who shouted out "OH NO! TEACHER! SORRY!"

Today a student in class 1-8 also told me that he was happy because his friend Dong-Wu is very ugly. And then another told me that his partner, Jeong-Bin, was an octopus, upon which the whole class immediately launched into their best octopus impressions.

But the funniest thing I heard today has to have been the compliment from Ms Kwon: "Your forehead is looking very wide and shiny today! It is very beautiful!" haha she's such a sweetie ^_^

Off to go blot my giant shiny forehead, over and out!

Welcome to the Korean school system...

I know it's pretty rare (and demanding) to write two posts in one day but this is a special occasion. Lots of people write or rant about how inefficient Korea is, especially the bureacracy - and there's a lot of bureacracy - so I'm not going to bother going into details about that. I'm just going to launch straight into a rant of my own.

First things first: as you may have gathered from an earlier post, things got a bit stressed last year with my old vice-principal, and all in all I was rather glad this year to find that a) he went to a new school and b) I'm no longer in the same office as the new one. I was also all happy that I only have 17 regular teaching hours, and 6 after school classes (I was expecting 8). Lesson of the day: DUHHHHHHHHHH! I should have touched wood. I should have thrown salt over my shoulder. I should have spent the entire week looking for black cats and dyeing them any other colour (purple or green for preference) and hunting down four leaf clovers. They say pride comes before a fall and although it's more like relief comes before a big kick in the pants, it's still much the case here. Because the new VP isn't just demanding.

He's.

Frickin'.

Crazy.

So yes, the old VP was a bit pushy, and wanted the school to do well (they all do), but we got on pretty well and he was pretty nice to me on the whole. My new co-teacher Paige said he was really awful to her, and last night one of my new co-workers who is also new to the school said that he'd heard the old VP was comparable to Gaddafi, so I imagine that there were a few others who also had problems with him, but really, that wasn't my problem and why he was like that to them wasn't either. I evaluate people on my own impressions and interactions with them, both for good and bad, and although there were some bad moments between me and him, things could have been a lot worse.

Well now they are. This new guy is completely and utterly committed to results, no matter how they're achieved. Not only is he likely to piss off the entire staff with this attitude, he's also likely to wipe out his entire student body because they're going to have to spend so much time studying that they aren't going to have any to do little things like eat, sleep and bathe. Last year, the Principal signed our school up for a Mentoring Program (and the attendant funding) without consulting ANY of the teachers first, which is pretty much meant to compete with the hagwon ('Academy' or tutoring) system that kids are usually stuffed into straight after school and pretty much in any spare time they might have. A Korean middle school student has it comparatively easy compared to high school students, but can still expect to have to spend a good 2 or 3 hours a day having English, Math, Science, piano, baseball, violin, taekwondo, drawing or anything else you'd care to think of lessons after school which is 8.30 - 4.30. I have seen my students walking home at night at 9.30 in the evening. Our mentoring program was designed to provide the same thing from 7 - 9 pm, but only for subjects taught at school that kids needed extra help with, and be more accessible by being cheaper than the usual hagwon fees. Good idea, right? Wrong. Because the thing about hagwons is that even though they are usually afternoon/evening classes, the teachers still usually only work a regular day (for Korea) workshift. So who teaches our mentoring program? Yep, the teachers. Which means that most of them have a work day of between 9 - 12 hours, which they obviously love.
Hooray for someone signing everyone but themselves up for extra work!

Luckily there are plenty of teachers not working insane schedules already or at least want the money more than I do who are keen for some tutoring so I don't have to do it. Which is lucky because there are three classes this year rather than one.

So we get to my gripe and why I think my VP is psychotic. He has just informed me that I'm expected to run a four hour class from 6 - 10pm (hopefully only once a week) for students to practice everything from conversation to presentations to whatever. This was not a request. What the fudge. First of all, never mind me, but what kind of ...person.... thinks that that kind of thing is going to be productive for the kids?? They're only 15 at oldest, and even though yes, they're used to studying for long hours and working hard, do you really think that making them go to a class after even a regular school day for four hours is going to do anything? It's not even going to be in their native tongue, so all they are going to end up doing is either not attending after the first couple of weeks or falling asleep. Oh and how about "what about the teacher who's going to have to teach at least 9 hours of her 14 hour working day"??????? Although I live in a pretty safe area, I also don't particularly like the idea of walking home by myself at 10pm at night.

I'm slightly pissed off. This is the whole parents winter conversation class over again. I suggested that we at least run it as two two-hour classes instead of one huge chunk, but that didn't seem to go down very well. I really don't care about the money - I'd rather have the free time - so I'm hoping that the VP will let me find someone else to do it because he doesn't really seem to understand what "refusing point blank" means, probably because it doesn't really happen in Korea. I told him that if he wants me to do it, I'm not doing it until at least the 25th of March so I can at least finish my TESOL coursework first and that was tricky enough.

Something weird is also happening with our exam preparation class intended to help students prepare for English language contests like the Ban Ki Moon essay/speech contest. But hey, it's not like the students have a choice about entering this so I guess it's only fair that I get forced to do it too. The weirdness is that apparently the head English teacher (who isn't great at classroom management and handling students to begin with, or at least in my classes anyway) really wants the students to do well, so only the absolute top students are going to be allowed in the class, but nevertheless she's putting FIRST graders in as well as seconds. Which to me just sounds stupid since there is only one test for everyone who enters with no distinction for different ages/grades but there you go. Unfortunately, Yong-Seo, one of the students who's been vetted from entering the class was one of my favourites last year as apparently he only did well in his English speaking test and bombed the rest, and one of the girls, Yeong-Ji was vetted out too because she doesn't have the right attitude or something.

Anyway, I've also just been told that I'm doing two more conversation classes, this time in 8th and 9th period on the two afternoons I had free, and since I usually get here at 8am, it looks like I'll have a few 10 hour days. I'm hoping that this means that I don't have to do the ridiculous 4 hour thing but who knows. Apparently this is also different from the 2 hour conversation class I'll have that's 1st 2nd AND 3rd year on Mondays and poor Paige has about as much idea as I do why that has to be different from the 1st year and 2nd year classes and can't just be changed so that there are three separate conversation classes, one for each grade so I can use some sort of teaching aide like a textbook and don't have to make the whole damn thing up myself. But no. So a fair prediction for the mixed Monday class is that we'll be watching a lot of movies. (I teach all of these classes by myself without a co-teacher by the way).

*sigh* Poor kids. Some of them are going to be mighty sick of seeing me every single day every week by the end of the semester.

P.S.

I forgot to add another valuable lesson learned yesterday: do NOT under any circumstances use Calvin and Hobbes cartoons with adult learners. Kids, absolutely fine and dandy - a cartoon about a fictional boy talking to a fictional tiger that is also his make-believe friend, or fighting an imaginary bubble bath monster - no problem! Teachers, not so much. I was using the same cartoons to do the rearrange and phone activity as I used with my 2nd year conversation class during the semester, which the kids loved and found really interesting. But apparently grown adults find it hard to comprehend the deep and complicated nature of Calvin and Hobbes.

This is what the conversation sounded like more or less (about the one where Calvin wants to water-bomb Hobbes)
Me: Ok, so you have to look at the pictures in each panel and move them into the right order, then call me on the number written on the back. You can check with each other to make sure you have the same phone number, but you should check to make sure your stories also make sense, because some panels look very similar. They are all about a boy who likes to pretend things, so he imagines some very interesting stories. Ok?
Teachers: OK.
*after a busy 20 minutes*
Ms Park: This cartoon does not make sense. There is no right order.
Me: Why do you say that?
Ms Chae: Because tigers do not talk.
Me: Er.. what?
Ms Park: Tigers do not talk. And here the tiger is talking to boy who wants to make joke to him.
Me: ...right. It's not real. The boy likes to imagine things, and one of the things he imagines is that the tiger is real, but really he's just a toy.
Ms Park: Then why does the tiger not eat the boy?
Me: Well, you'll notice that the tiger is also sleeping with it's knees crossed and it's fingers together, which isn't exactly normal for a tiger either. The tiger is not real.
Ms Chae: So.. the boy is imagining that the tiger is sleeping? Why?
Me: The tiger is not important! Just pretend it's a person, like his friend or his dad or his mum, that he wants to play a practical joke on.
Ms Chae: Ok. What is the meaning of tiger's words?
Me: It says "As if life isn't short enough." It just means, life is short. If you throw that, I'll kill you, so your life will be shorter.
Ms Chae: Life is short? What does that mean?
Me: It means exactly what it says. "Life is short" means "life is short". Like I said, he means, if you do that, I'll hurt you. Or "life is short, don't waste it doing something stupid"
Ms Park: But.. what does life is short mean?
Me: Ok, let's ignore it! It's not important. It's just a threat, saying if you do that, I'll hurt you. So don't.
Ms Park: So the boy imagined the tiger sleeping, then imagined that the tiger said that to him?
Me: Well... yes... but it's not important that it's the tiger. It could be anyone! It's just the tiger here because the tiger is his friend.
Ms Chae: Why did boy imagine tiger say that if he is friend?
Me: It's a joke! Let's just look at the story - don't worry about who the people are!
Ms Park: The cartoon does not make sense. Why does boy imagine tiger saying this if he wants to throw the water balloon?

......This went on for a good hour. I'm not a patient person at best, so I feel that the fact that I patiently tried to explain the cartoons for that long and only covered my face with my hands in a gesture of total despair once deserves some sort of reward, which is why I splurged and ignored my lactose intolerance for a 'Real Belgian Hot Chocolate' from Holly's Coffee that Henry introduced me to last night and completely rocked my world. Although apparently Ms Park, who I would guess is in her early 50's, likes dance music, because she chose Sneaky Sound System's "UFO" for their song to study. So yeah, less Calvin and Hobbes and more Sneaky. Must remember.