Ahhh frick frick frick

Just accidentally logged back into my Facebook through one of those stupid linked sites and reactivated my account :( If you get any notifications about stuff from me, it was an accident! Ignore it. Although now that I'm back I can't help but consider caving and just going back to the dark side O_O....

One week couldn't hurt right? It's kind of nice to know what the hell everyone is talking about. It pisses me off too that having no Facebook wouldn't be such a big thing if everyone around me wasn't such a tool for it. I miss having technologically incompetent friends around who barely know what it is :( And yes, I realise the irony of calling the rest of you 'tools' when I just considered going back to it.

That's it. Staying strong and quitting again. Seriously stupid on my part. If I don't - next time you see me I give you permission - actually no, I REQUEST that you smack me on the head and scream "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???" in my face.

Oh and just because it's cute - I found this looking for "dog food". Haha^^

Merry Wednesday Good Gentlefolk!

Apparently a middle school student died recently in Cheongju after getting into a fight with another students/other students. Has anyone else heard anything about this? My co-teacher told me about it on Tuesday, after one of her homeroom students ended up in hospital with a possible broken rib after being punched in the chest by another student and finding it hard to breathe (he turned out to be ok). I think she said it was at Seo-Gyeong Middle School but I'm not sure - she might have said Seo-Gyo or Seo-Hyeon. Which brings to mind the stabbing incident at my school last year - I can't remember if I blogged about this or not (I certainly should have if I didn't), but last year after the movie "아저씨" ("Ajosshi" or in it's English title "The Man From Nowhere") came out which features a lot of violence, apparently it became popular amongst the second year boys to mimic the stuff done in the movie. To this end, one of them brought a knife to school (I think, or he could have been using his craft knife which all students quite ridiculously have and are allowed to carry around at all times, even when they aren't using them in any subjects, to semi-disastrous results) and was mock-stabbing his classmates. And of course, ended up actually stabbing one of them, sending the stabbed student to hospital for stitches and making the student who stabbed him have a panic attack and start crying because he genuinely thought he'd killed his friend. Which I guess was quite a smart move (although involuntary) because it made it harder to punish him for it since he was already mid-nervous breakdown. And then of course there was the incident with Jin-Seon. Don't get the wrong idea, it's not always the boys - the first year girls have been in trouble for going to visit their friends at other schools and starting scrag-fights there too, where apparently the go-to move is scratching up each other's faces. *Sigh* Teenagers.

Anyway, today is my last day of regular school before my winter camps start. I'm taking tomorrow and Friday off to use up my holiday days since they don't get paid out if I don't use them, and am overjoyed at the prospect of never having to teach my Thursday and Friday classes again (a jubilation that has lasted since last week). Hooray! Today I also only had one class with my favourite 1st graders - the "super-smart" class (my co-teacher's nickname for them). But unfortunately I completely stuffed up on that one - our timetables got changed so I had them first period instead of sixth (I normally wouldn't have class until 3rd period anyway), and wouldn't you know it, but I turned my phone off last night (so losing the alarm on it) and forgot to set my clock alarm, so I didn't wake up until 8.53am, 33 minutes AFTER I was supposed to be at school and 3 minutes AFTER my first class was supposed to start. On any other day it wouldn't have mattered but of course today... *double sigh* It's official - I'm a cotton-headed ninny muggins (I've been watching "Elf" with some of my students ㅋㅋ). Luckily my co-teacher knew that I wouldn't do something like that on purpose and wasn't angry - it's also her homeroom group so they were fine.

놈놈놈 (nom nom nom, haha^^)

I guess it's really a pretty typical way of ending my school year - violence and tardiness, although it's a nice change that it's me being late for once and not my students. If it was any other class than my good class I might still have wandered in 20 minutes late, just to be a jerk and interrupt their movie, since they do it to me all the time. Anyway, I better get going with finishing stuff for my winter camps! I have 20 hours of conversation class across the first two weeks, then 10 hours of a teacher's class and 10 hours of a students' class in the third week so I'll be pretty busy. And after last year, this time I know for sure not to be stupid enough to tell the VP or Principal about the class magazine/newspaper we're making, no matter how proud I am of my students :) Oh and it's 오징어덮밥 (ojing-eo deopbap, as in the picture above), which I love, with egg and vegetable soup (계란야채국) - which I also love! - and chocolate cake for lunch because it's Wednesday, so hooray!

Oh and one last reason to be happy: Ryan also has the day off on Friday! At least I hope so - if he doesn't I'm going to turn up at his hagwon, take a kitchen knife out of my bag and sit there glaring angrily at his boss while I stroke the knife blade for the whole day. A bit of a complicated story there that I won't go into, but it basically involves his boss dicking around and telling the Korean teachers that they had Friday off, then didn't, getting angry that they assumed they did, and then telling them that they DID have the day off and he was faking it to encourage them to work harder. Hi-LAR-ious, no?

Anyway, now that he apparently DOES actually have the day off, we can do what we had planned to do which is go to Deoksan to the Reesom Spa Castle, which is a warm water theme park, and then stay at this cute pension which has a jacuzzi in the room! How awesome is that?? Ryan originally tried to book us a place that had the in-room jacuzzi outside because he knows that I like outdoor spas, but since it will be the New Year's weekend places are pretty full up, so we couldn't find one that was free and also not horrendously expensive (like more than 400 000 won). And then I'm going down to Busan to meet up with my favourite ladies, including the Cheongju posse and my KBFF II, for what I'm sure will be an amazing NYE! So it will be a very exciting three day weekend ^_^

Oh and I'm meeting one of Ryan's sisters on Sunday for an early dinner/late lunch before she heads back to Seoul on the KTX and we go back to Cheongju, so wish me luck! I'm obviously going to have to go easy the night before so I don't look like I just fell out of a tree on Sunday when I meet her, haha :p

Anyway, happy Wednesday everyone! Hope you're having a delicious lunch today, if not a brilliant day :)

Happiness is a Hobbit!

Secret geek that I am, I was incredibly excited, then pissed off, to see the trailer for "The Hobbit". Excited because it looks AMAZING! (as everyone knows it will be) and pissed off because it's not being released until the 14th of December NEXT YEAR. What the hell Peter Jackson you tubby jerk! Why would you release the trailer a year before the movie is released??? So grr on that one. For anyone less than Martin Freeman in the title role and the fabulous Sir Ian Mackellan I would refuse to see it when it came out on principle.... Mind you, a year is quite a long time - by next December I'm sure I'd have conveniently forgotten that oath :)

Of course, there are those out there who it will be frankly wasted on, like this moron.

For those not in the know, this is the meme for 'not sure if ... or ...'. E.g. "Not sure if incredibly stupid or just trolling. Stupidly."

Apparently there is a bunch of behind the scenes photos etc on Facebook if you are into that kind of thing and have either the curiousity or the Facebook to see it.

Oh and weirdest yet of the conversations I've had with my weird first year girl's class, class 1-1. For some background, this is the class who fooled me into mis-pronouncing a bunch of K-pop groups' names wrong and sometimes randomly start singing in harmony with each other when I ask them questions. Anyway, today while two students were trying to get me to 'fess up about whether I had a boyfriend or not (I fooled them into thinking I was dating Rain for a while) and ordering me to "No joking! No lies!" I had another student stroking - yes, STROKING - my jumper (which while soft is not particularly so and doesn't have a particularly interesting weave or anything) and screaming in my other ear about how she'd killed her hamster from "too much stress" and showing me how she used to pet it and cuddle it.. with both hands.. The Dead Hamster girl is also the one who gurns at me from the back of the class, so sometimes I'll look up at her and find these faces staring back at me (amongst others), often in quick succession >

Sometimes it's really hard to keep a straight face :p Today's expression was her classic 'happy pyscho' face that looked something like these guys >

If you can imagine a 12 year old girl grinning widely and miming gripping a hamster so tightly and stroking it so heavily that it dies, you'll know what my morning was like.

Anyway, only 3 sleeps until Christmas! Woohoo! Can't wait to break into the Christmas goodies my lovely parents sent me :)

Farewell Friday

Sorry for the less-than-usual-attempt at a cheery post to end the week on, but I felt like this was an issue in need of awareness. Over the last week or so there have been a lot of posts on the 1000th protest of the women mostly stolen or enticed away with the promise of factory work and all kept against their will as Comfort Women. These women are now grandmothers in their 80's and 90's and slowly dying off, but nevertheless congregate from all over Korea to stage a protest outside the Japanese Embassy once a week, every Wednesday, come rain or shine - not for the money or compensation, but just in the hope that they and what happened to them will be acknowledged and that they will hear an apology before they die. Here are the last two posts that give the best insight into their cause. Sorry about the swearing by the way.


The first is from the Ask A Korean! blog

Ask a Korean! News: 1000th Wednesday Protest, and a Comfort Woman's Story

First, a little bit of background. As many of the readers know, although the Japanese government recognized its responsibility for Imperial Japan's hand in forcibly recruiting Comfort Women, the Japanese government has not yet made any compensation out of government funds.

Some of the surviving Comfort Women in Korea -- there are only 63 of them, who are in their 80s and 90s -- protest in front of the Japanese embassy for the inadequacy of Japan's response every Wednesday. The "Wednesday Protest" to be held on this Wednesday, December 14, 2011 will be the 1000th one, after nearly 20 years of weekly gatherings since January 1992.

Dong-A Ilbo featured a story told by Ms. Kim Bok-Dong, who was recruited as a Comfort Woman at age 14. She is now 87 years old, and is the longest participant of the Wednesday Protests. The translation is below.

*                 *                 *

"Mom, how old am I this year?"

She said it has been eight years. I was 14 when I was taken, so I was 22. All my friends were married and left the town.

As I was being dragged around by the Japanese military and tortured, I completely forgot how many years have passed. One day, there was a commotion about liberation. I was in Bangkok, Thailand at the time, my last stop as a Comfort Woman. I took a boat with other women. We had almost nothing to eat on the boat, and it took us several months for me to come back home [which was Yangsan, Gyeongsangnam-do.] It must have been around October when I got home -- the rice field was golden and people were harvesting.

I got home, and my mother was cooking in the kitchen. She was shocked, because I turned so dark. For so long, I was raped by hundreds and thousands again and again -- how could a 14-year-old child be right? My mother was in shock also because instead of crying my eyes out, the first thing I asked was: how old was I? I didn't really forget -- I blocked out the time when I had to deal with the Japanese soldiers.

When I was 14, someone from the local government office was in town, saying there was not enough people to make the soldiers' uniform. He told me, "you should go too." I said, "How could I? I never learned to sew." Then he said, "you can learn there. Don't worry, they will send you back by the time you got old enough to get married." I said, "I might go if I go with my mom, but I don't want to go." Then he scared me: "It's what the Japanese government wants to do. If you don't go, your family will be in trouble." I was scared, so I went along.

So I was dragged all over Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and went through hell. At first, I had hope that I would get back home they promised that they would send me back when I'm older. So I barely hung on, counting days, but they would only take me to different countries. It's not like I could speak with them. I would tell them, "please send me home. I think I'm going to die," but the damn Japanese only laughed. Nobody listened to me, so I was practically a mute. After molesting a young child like that, I thought they would say, "sorry, you can go home now" -- but no one did. Two years passed.

Afterward, I lived without counting days. I gave up trying to figure out what day was today, what year was today. I think the pain would have broken me if I was counting the days. You have no idea when the pain would end, so you just hang on one day at a time. When the sun rises, I would think: "I'm awake." When the sun sets, "I'm still alive. It would be great if I died after I fall asleep." And then I would wake up the next morning again. The pain was unspeakable. I couldn't even imagine that it would take so long.

Ms. Kim Bok-Dong (second from the left) attends a memorial of Ms. Noh Su-Bok,
a former Comfort Women. The memorial was held at the 998th Wednesday Protest,
held in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

I hear the 1000th Wednesday Protest is coming up. I am 87 years old. All my protest buddies died off, and now there are barely 60 some odd people. I was 68 when I first joined the protest. I was a young grandmother at that time -- I could at least stand up straight. Other grandmothers had a lot of energy too, saying "we should fight." I heard that in that January cold, women's groups were getting together to protest every week to help the old Comfort Women grandmothers. I couldn't sit still, so I was took the train up from Busan, where I was living. They already had seven protests or so. I really thought, "Alright, I'm doing this. They wouldn't just sit around if a grandmother comes out like this."

I thought I had a strong resolution, but I just burst into tears in front of the Japanese embassy. I was trembling all over. All I could do was yell. I knew I had to protest, item by item, but all I could do was scream. For the crime of being a Comfort Woman, I lived in hiding outside of my hometown for 40 years, running a tiny restaurant. I have no child who calls me mother. All I could do was yell -- just come out and look at me, look at this old grandmother, after you made me unable to live like any other woman, unable to wear a wedding garb. I had no other way. I thought these bastards would come out and say, "we're sorry grandmother, we are sorry."

But the police came and put the grandmothers' on a bus. We were crying and yelling, but they just carried us out and put us down at the City Hall square. So what? We would come back. I took the train back to Busan. I even thought in the train back, "I should see this one through. If I keep showing up, wouldn't they at least say they were sorry?" I had hope. It's not about the money. If they are human, they had to apologize.

I came up for every protest. At the 50th protest, we went to the Blue House instead. We yelled at the front gate, "Mr. President, please come out, we need to get this resolved." The police took us again to the City Hall square. At first, I really thought it would be resolved soon, as long as I kept it up. I yelled at the protest, rain or snow. Yell, taken away and let go at the City Hall and go back to Busan -- and the time passed like that.

At first, we kept count. I figured around the 100th time they would hear us out -- but no. The Japanese embassy has twenty-some odd windows. When we go, they put the curtain down and block out all the windows. They don't even peek. No matter how much we chant -- "apologies and reparations" -- they put this thief-catching cameras on the gate and hide, just looking at what those grandmothers are doing. Now I am too old to yell, so I just look at the embassy, trying to see if they at least opened up the curtain a little. I can't even stand up straight anymore, but no one would listen. It doesn't matter how much we plead and protest.

Since then, I didn't count the numbers. I couldn't live like that. Now, I just let the week pass. I would realize it's Wednesday, then I attend the protest. I get home, and think another Wednesday passed. I hang on, one week at a time.

As I was dragged around for eight years, I began drinking at age 16. I would drink whiskey and gaoliangjiou when I had to deal with the Japanese, because I could not stand being clear headed. I would smoke after dealing with a Japanese soldier, because there was no other way to take care of the anger and sorrow in my young heart. Now, after each protest I sit in my room and chain-smoke. Every Wednesday, because they won't even draw their curtains no matter how much this grandmother yells.

After I came back, my mother said I should get married, since I was 22. She thought I was at a uniform factory. I had to tell her the truth. She could only say: "How would I meet my ancestors after I die? What would I say after turning my child this way?" She said that every day, then died only six years later. The doctor said her heart was full of anger.

There is a big commotion around this 1000th protest. I am just frustrated. My cataract surgery went wrong, so I can't see out of my left eye and the image is distorted out of my right eye too. I wonder if I could see at least those embassy bastards coming out and saying, "grandmother, please don't be angry any more. We're sorry," while I can still see. I couldn't even imagine that it would take so long. Being dragged around, not being able to say anything and not being able to receive any apology -- it's the same as before. I feel so helpless. I wonder if my mother felt this helpless also.

I miss my mom all of a sudden. This can't go over the 1000th time. We can't wait much longer. I am too old now.

The second is from the blog of a woman who volunteers at the House of Sharing.

Why I’m lucky to know the Halmonis

First off, I just want to say how happy I am to see the 1,000th protest photos explode on Tumblr.  Thanks to everyone who reblogged to spread the word about this issue.  It warms my heart to know that many people have gotten to hear at least a little about these courageous women.
Next, I want to write about how grateful I am to have been able to know them for the past 2.5 years as a volunteer at the House of Sharing. These women are truly remarkable.
I’ll start with an anecdote to illustrate the attitudes these women face when they go public as survivors of “comfort stations”.  On my own FB wall, an acquaintance of an acquaintance commented (one reason you should not accept just anyone’s friend request) in regards to a post I made about going to the 1,000th protest.  He wrote something along the lines that these women need to stop employing “nationalistic rituals” in order to ask for free handouts from the Japanese government and stop distracting from Korea’s more “pressing issues” (North-South relations, rise of China, etc). Of course, this guy thinks he’s an expert in East Asian diplomacy, all because he lived in Japan for a couple of years. I don’t think I need to explain any further, right?
ㅡㅡ
And then I remembered once again how amazing these women are.  Because they hear this bullshit all the time and they are STILL fighting.  I was ready to put my head through a wall after just that brief discourse on my FB wall and it wasn’t even in reference to anything that I’ve been forced to experience.  These Halmonis have to listen to people casually discuss the THOUSANDS of rapes that they survived as if it’s a nationalistic plot or should be discarded in order to promote diplomatic relations.  This is not a pawn for strategic relations, people. These are real women - over 200,000 - who were systematically raped, beaten, tortured, and killed. And they have to listen to dickheads like this guy flippantly reduce the rapes and torture that they experienced to political maneuvering.
He also made several references to them being similar to prostitutes, that they had volunteered to work in this “comfort stations” or were paid.  Let me just make two things very clear here: First, even IF you “volunteered” to work as a prostitute (how many 11-19 year old girls in 1930’s Korea would really knowingly do that??), once they are unable to voluntarily leave their “volunteering”, once they are physically forced to stay somewhere and have sex with people against their will, it is rape.  Even IF (big if), the initially went there as a volunteer, they ceased being a volunteer and became subjected to rape when they were unable to leave at their own will, unable to refuse sex at their own will, unable to avoid physical abuse and torture at their own will.  Secondly, even though most of these women never saw a dime of the money being paid (in official Japanese military coupons, by the way), being paid by your rapist does not make you a prostitute. BEING PAID BY YOUR RAPIST DOES NOT MAKE YOU A PROSTITUTE. Let me say it again - if someone rapes me and then throws $100 at me, I am not a prostitute and you are still a rapist.
And even though they face these attitudes EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY, they still fight!  That is why I’m lucky to know these women.  They teach me that women’s voices matter.  That no matter how little socio-economic power we have, if we demand to be heard, we will eventually be heard!
When they were abducted and forced into “comfort stations” they were the most vulnerable members - young, poor, uneducated females - of an already vulnerable society - Korea under forced Japanese colonial rule.  And yet they have created the longest-running human rights protest in the world.  These women have been fighting for 20 years to be goddamn heard.  And people have listened.  The US, Canada, EU, Philippines, and over 25 prefectures in Japan have passed official resolutions, urging Japan to resolve this issue.  And that is powerful people.  Old, poor, uneducated women - the most underrepresented members of our international community made people hear their voices.
Then this FB guy demanded that if I was so sure that it wasn’t a nationalistic issue, I’d better be doing everything I could do to stop it “in my own backyard” (Korea), where Korean women are suffering in the same ways, but this time, not by Japanese hands.
And here’s another reason why these women are amazing.  They do exactly that. They stand in solidarity with Korean (and now also Filipina) women who were coerced to work in the 기지촌 (US military camptowns) in Korea. They fight with these women, they understand the connection between their issue and what is happening in Korea today.  One of the 기지촌 survivors actually spoke at the 1,000th protest.  Our House of Sharing International Outreach Team will be holding a workshop today with Duraebang (a shelter for Filipina women trafficked into Korea), translated by yours truly.  More info on that event: http://www.facebook.com/events/181888128565648/
Finally, I want to say of the estimated 200,000 women who were forced to work as sex slaves in “comfort stations” during WWII, approximately 150,000 were Korean women but only 234 South Korean registered officially as survivors.
Of those 234, only 63 are still living. Japan must resolve this issue, but they are literally hoping that the issue will die away with the Halmonis.

As much as I'd love to see it or support a protest (impossible with a public school timetable), I have yet to visit the House of Sharing, but this is their website for any who are interested. It doesn't look like they'll have any English tours until the new year, but they have a calendar of events for those interested in finding out, or of course you can contact them.

On a side note, one of those bizarre conversations I just had that seem to occur quite often in Korea.
Paige (my official co-teacher who I don't actually teach with, having just gotten off the phone from another teacher): Do you have any English word puzzles?
Me: What kind of puzzles?
P: Umm like a word puzzle.
Me: Er.. I don't but I can show you the program I use to make them. (Show her)
P: Oh, I meant like word scrambles.
Me: Uh, well, no I don't have any prepared. There's no program for them because scrambles aren't really complicated enough to need them. Can the teacher not make them himself since presumably he'll know what kinds of words will be needed?
P: Well, you know it's hard because we're not native English speakers... Are you sure you don't have any?
Me: Do you mean you want me to make some?
P: ... Yes.
Me: Ok. What kind? What sort of vocabulary should it use?
P: Any kind.
Me: ... Ok, well is there any special thing this is for?
P: This is for homework for students in the holidays. Mr Jeong is putting the worksheet together.
Me: So.. what kinds of words do the rest of the worksheets use? Should it be basic vocabulary or should it be something specific like feelings, weather, etc?
P: Anything.
Me: *ㅎ-ㅎ* Ok, well is it for first year or second year or what?
P: It's for students coming to our school next year. So you can use any words.

So basically the other teacher had called her and said 'get Amy to make some crud to fill the rest of the worksheets this afternoon'. Just to give you some background, they've been making these worksheets for three weeks (I saw one of my actual co-teachers working on one and discussed it). Why this had to wait until 3.40pm on a Friday I don't know. Paige tried to make it sound vaguely less ridiculous a request than it was, but still. So I ended up making it from vocabulary from the first year textbook. Unfortunately, the other teacher also didn't specify that he needed this stuff in a certain format (a program that only exists in Korea) so it didn't go entirely smoothly. I hope he didn't need it this afternoon as we both left at 4.30 :p

Anyway, that's about it. Happy picture for the weekend though^^ Have a great one people!

Bad Manners

... and horribly demanding of me to post twice in one day, I know. But I needed to share a few tidbits from the blog Sociological Images (which I don't always agree with, but it does sometimes have some stuff worth sharing), especially after having my mind blitzed by the uphill battle that is class 1-5. As I've just bitched on Facebook, I can't say that I was particularly impressed with them today (am I ever?). It was quite telling that class started with me walking in to find one boy about halfway up the classroom facing away from me not wearing his school shirt (they all wear t-shirts underneath so he looked like he was clothed) and everyone else roaring in laughter. I told them to quiet down and for the student to sit down but he wouldn't turn around. Three of his friends proceeded to inform me that he couldn't because he was doing an "elephant" [impression] out of the fly of his pants.

Needless to say, I was not amused. I also had to escalate through the 'quiet pyramid' a few times today - they know it starts at "boys, be quiet please" to "BOYS! Quiet!" to "[name]! SHUSH!". But they were pushing me today so I had to give them that "You've gone too far and Teacher is REALLY angry now" quiet stare and go through the whole "[Daeho] Don't make me say 'shut up'. Because if I say 'shut up' it will mean that I'm very angry", shortly followed by "[Daeho], SHUT IT! I'm really angry now. Do you know WHY I'm angry?.. Class, why am I angry?" and pick on him in front of the whole class, which doesn't always work anyway when you have a class full of clowns and attention seekers. I don't actually say "shut up" unless it's in that precursive warning sentence to students very often because I feel like it's rude and probably a little unprofessional, but I do use the whole range of synonyms. Oh, and I broke my love-stick on the desk last week so I think I need a new one. Maybe I'll get a bamboo one - nice and tough, and scary looking as hell. Muahahaha :D

But anyway, so that was how I battled for my soul over the last 45 minutes. It was quite nice therefore to come back and catch up on more blogs I missed and see another lovely video that I hope you like too :)

Oh and there's also a quite interesting post there too on women in (American) politics. The clip in question featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hilary Clinton also seems to me to be kind of telling about women in comedy too, as many of you have probably heard me rant about (and are probably sick of me doing so) how much I hate women who use the 'dumb bitch' approach to comedy (namely Corinne Grant and that fatuous bimbo that replaced the brilliant Julie McCrossin on Good News Week), as I feel it demeans both women and the work that real comedians put into their routines. Anyway, watch the video, read the article, and hopefully you have time to look out the window and enjoy the sunshine! Or at least pretend that there's some lovely sunshine outside for you to enjoy if there isn't any around :)

What the frick.

Why are some of my students almost indescribably adorable and others so bad that I even doubt they have souls? Seriously, there's one in first year, Ye-Min, who's such a little b***h-face trouble-maker that I'm betting (hoping) she gets into a scrag fight with some older and much more bad-ass-er Queen B who can finally teach her that sometimes you just need to sit back and shut up. Because there's no other way she's ever going to learn it, and unfortunately it's probably only going to sink in that she's not top-dog when she gets her butt severely kicked. She actually reminds me a lot of the student last year (now in third year where I don't have to deal with her thank Jeebus) who told me to f*** off to my face twice who is now apparently shacking up with her much older boyfriend and wagging school. This is a BIG thing in Korea - keep in mind that she would be about 15 now Western age, but when she started all this, she was 14. Not only is she driving her parents and her homeroom teacher up the wall, but she's probably also effectively ruining her life since there's no way she's going to get into a good high-school or university now and she's too lazy to do anything to fix it.

Haha, sound harsh much? Well, maybe. You never know, she might wake up and decide that she wants a better life than she can have working in a booking club or all day at Lotteria for w8000 a day before it's too late. But this first year Ye-Min IS a jerk, and then some, so I stand by my prediction for her. She's also a bully, and causes so many problems with and amongst her classmates that about three weeks ago ALL of the parents of the students in her homeroom class got called into school for a meeting (and simultaneous dressing down of the students) with the first grade teachers. My second grade girls have also been complaining to me about how disrespectful the first year girls are, leading to some lunch room scuffles, and I have a feeling that Ye-Min might be one of the instigators.

Last week however, she really took the cake. I walked into class 1-7 to find all the boys hanging out the window trying to get a glimpse of the police car that had shown up at the school. None of them could tell me what had happened, and my co-teacher was equally in the dark, so I asked one of the teachers the next day at lunch (the gossip mill HQ) and apparently Ye-Min had called the police and accused one of the third year boys of sexual assault because he'd touched her breast. Yes, that's right, the police. Not a teacher, not her parents, the police. And so when they rocked up to school and into the main staffroom to investigate, with none of the teachers knowing why the hell they were there, and then walking into both Ye-Min and Ju-Seung's classes to pull them out and figure out what was wrong, you can imagine the chaos that broke out.

What had actually happened was that Ju-Seung had brushed past her at the water station in the canteen (which is a tiny confined hallway area anyway and getting water is like fighting through a rugby scrum at the best of times) and she'd thrown a hissy fit about it and then gotten even more pissed off because he hadn't noticed anything was wrong and just walked away with his friends. Now Ju-Seung is one of the nicest kids around - always polite to everyone (not just to teachers), always looks out for his friends, works hard, doubly so for subjects he's not as good at - and so of course was absolutely distraught at the allegation. Ye-Min being Ye-Min (and being a 11 or so year old Korean girl having virtually nothing to touch anyway), it was pretty clear how much basis there was to this. But of course, it was still a serious matter and it still took a while to clear up. Geesh.

So that was dramatic. Fortunately, most of my students aren't in the Ye-Min category. Of course they are all teenagers and so have their ups and downs, but they are mostly pretty well behaved. I'll have to do a post about the good students later to balance this one out :)

Less Happy but still...

So I didn't want to once again follow up a rather chirpy post with a downer yesterday, ruining my whole e-outlook for the day, but I ended up having to spend all of lunch listening to the teacher sitting next to me rant about how ungrateful we foreign teachers were. I don't know if she realised that I actually speak Korean or just didn't care, but my co-teacher knows and I think the other teacher sitting across from me definitely picked it up by the expression on my face, and they were looking a little uncomfortable by the end of lunch. Apparently this teacher had been at a school with a NEST (Native English Speaking Teacher) before, a Korean-American gyopo, and had not been left with a good impression. I don't think she had actually taught with her as this teacher is a Maths teacher, but the NEST had apparently made quite an impression on her. Obviously as the foreigner, any NEST is going to be subject to much more scrutiny than they are aware of by all the teachers in the school regardless of actual direct contact, and according to Ms Ranty, this one had been very arrogant about their status as a foreigner in Korea but because they were also Korean, this meant a lot of bitching very loudly in Korean about being forced to do stuff that teachers in America wouldn't be expected to do and calling in sick a lot. I don't know how much of it was exactly true and based on repeated behaviour or it was just once and the NEST had been a arse about it and it had stuck, but I guess that kind of thing does happen. The ranting co-teacher also had a lot to say about foreigners only wanting to teach in Japan - don't know if this was also based on the other NEST - and only picking Korea as a second choice, which kind of sounded like she thought the ones in Korea were the losers that couldn't get into the JET program. By this point I had stopped paying attention to the silly woman, but my co-teacher told me about it later and when I told her that that certainly wasn't true, especially in my case, and lots of people choose Korea because it has better working conditions (slightly) she said she would correct the other lady. Which is going to go down well I'm sure.

But it's ironic really that this teacher was so uppity about the whole thing and so prejudiced against foreigners, because she's sure to be the type that would make a big deal about knowing a foreigner if she was friends with one (unlikely) or staring at one in the street or trying to touch their hair/skin. I'm sure she's also the type that would make no effort to learn or use any English if she ever went overseas to an English speaking country, and then would rant about how racist people were there against her. Anyway, it was a bit odd. I'm assuming she did in fact know that I speak Korean as even most of the new teachers know by now, and was just on her soapbox blithely bitching away in the manner of someone brave enough to say it when they don't have to directly look at the person they're going on about and "subtly" complaining by using an example of someone else. And no, she didn't look at me once during this tirade, even though I'm sure she noticed that I was sure as hell looking at her with my "what ARE you on about you mad cow?" face a few times. Anyhoo, for the most part the other teachers are nice and realise that I don't speak during lunch much because a) I don't want to speak Korean in front of the kids, b) my Korean isn't top notch as it is so I can't really just chime into conversations like the other teachers do and c) I'm the foreigner so it's quite daunting. So I'm not going to let one person spoil my week. I hope she isn't on the 2nd grade trip though because that would be a pain in the butt.

In other news, Spring is finally yawning and emerging from its den, so the weather is getting warmer and I'm turning down my ondol heating more and more every week. The yellow gaenari (개나리) flowers - real name "Forsythia" I think, but lots of Koreans call them "Rape flower" which can be a bit weird if they ask you if you've seen them or want to go see them - are out and the cherry blossoms won't be far behind. I'm also going to a strawberry picking festival on Sunday at Sangju which should be fun and of course also strawberrilicious :) Huzzah for Spring!

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.

Only two more days to go...

Two more days of class that is, and then only three more of non-class (which I shall enjoy significantly more!) and then I'm home! Glorious, glorious home!

So this has been a bit of a sucky week, for all sorts of little reasons, but not really any big ones, and with many little happy moments to keep me uplifted and to stop it from being a REALLY sucky week.

One of these such moments was samgyetang (삼계탕, a sort of spring chicken soup where you get a whole little chicken thing in a stone hot pot stuffed with rice and cooked in a delicious soup), photo stickers and a strawberry ice-cream sundae at Love Story (a cafe) with Lara. The food was delicious of course (the samgyetang restaurant we go to ALL the time is awesome) although it was weird to get cherry tomatoes as part of the fruit in our sundae and cornflakes too, and taking sticker photos with lots and lots of glitter was an excellent way to burn off some energy between courses. Here is one of the results! Sorry for the awful webcam quality - still without a real camera. Looking at some of the features on cameras I am considering buying, I figured out that it might have actually frozen on the day of our teachers' trip since apparently "freeze-resistance" is something that Korean camera makers consider important.

Another thing that made me happy this week was newspaper that my second year kids made during our winter camp. We did activities for articles for it each day, like making up their own country (which the girls promptly decided to name after their favourite drama "Dream High"), and telling each other's fortunes, and then they had to write another 'newspapery' piece as well, so I gave them 20 minutes at the end of each two hour class to work on what they had. I'm not going to sugar-coat it, my kids aren't the most brilliant in Korea, and it wasn't anything that's going to rock the world, but I was really proud of how well they did, and how they all helped each other out to get everything done on time, and in the end I really didn't have that much editing to do to put it all together. My co-teacher Paige took some photos so everyone was in it or contributed at least two or three things, even if it was just a few sentences. So it was great, and I was really happy, and they've seemed pretty impressed with it themselves as they've picked up their copies this week.

However, I then did something really stupid - I gave our Vice-Principal and Principal each a copy, because I thought they might like to see what the kids had been doing (even though most of the kids undoubtedly have better English and the VP and P probably couldn't even read the whole thing without a dictionary). First came the VP, who grunted non-committedly and immediately pointed out that we were infringing copyright by using a picture of Kim Yuna and a movie poster. Fair enough. Then the Principal. Before he even opened it, out came the red pen, and he started nagging my co-teacher about how it didn't look professional enough because the margins were wrong (I'd basically just printed everything out back to back and then stapled it down one side). Next, flicking through it, he complained that I should have written the date on it and I hadn't put in page numbers - ok, fair enough too, shame on me for not taking a four day project seriously enough. Then came the kicker - he told us to fix it up because he wanted to distribute as a school product to show off our English program. BIG WTF moment. Never mind that half of it is something that will ONLY make sense to the people who actually went to the class, since half the articles are about an imaginary country. Oh and he complained that the puzzle page that Dae-Ho had done was too hard to do because it was too small.

Pain. In. The. Butt.

So anyway, I escaped at that point because I had a class to go to, but my poor co-teacher had to stay and listen. Actually, I guess it's karmic irony really, because earlier in the year the VP had told me that he expected me to write an English newspaper for the school and waved one from another school (that he had clearly not read himself) in my face that had turned out to not actually be written by a teacher, but by the students of a very prestigious girl's high school with a rigourous English language program, which I had docilely agreed to and then forgotten as quickly as possible, as it was a ridiculous demand and I already had been volunteered into running the Super Duper English club every week. But still. So I did a bit more editing, and sent it off to Paige, but I have no idea what she can do about the puzzle (which we don't even have an electronic copy of) so I guess she's got a busy few days ahead of her until she leaves (very thankfully I'm sure!) on her much-needed holiday.

My new 'visa'

Oh and yes, this was right after the lovely day I had on Tuesday, which constituted of my VP calling me a bitch (I think he meant to say "busy"), walking out on my flabberghasted face when I didn't respond, then telling me ten minutes later that he expects me to tutor him one on one once the new semester starts which I flatly told him he would then have to either pay me extra or take it out of my teaching hours because that's not my job. Oh and then I ended up having to cancel my afternoon class (which on the upside at least meant I got to the gym) because I spent my whole lunch break waiting at the Office of Immigration for two hours and fifteen minutes to get my visa extended. Which turned out to constitute writing on the back of my ARC (alien rego card) with a texta and covering it with sellotape. Yes, sellotape. Thankyou for justifying the 30 000 won and more than three hours getting to and waiting in your ridiculous office.

Anyway, basically, I have now learned to keep things to myself, and after a really pointless day yesterday, the silliness of sticker photos and good food with a good friend was much appreciated ^_^ Thankyou Lala chingu~~~!

Last Day of School

Firstly, I know I owe a blog on the wonderful Miss Lucy Lou's visit, but it will have to wait until I get home and upload some pics from my camera.

So just to tide you over I thought I'd put in a quick blog about something that I frequently forget to tell people about until it's too late - my apple weirdness. Anyone who knows me well will know about this, and has probably judged me for it, just a little. As my friend Coco (Chanel) says, "don't judge!"

Ok, a rundown. I have a few weird neuroses. One of them is not having dirty feet anywhere near my bed (I have yelled at people before for getting onto my bed in shoes), another is about touching the edges of pages when I read a book (thankfully I've mostly gotten over this one - I just like to run my fingers up and down the page edges as I read a book, but when I was younger I used to have a kind of OCD compulsion to touch the corner edges of every single page I read... and I read a LOT), another is that I like rubbing things against my cheek to feel how soft they are rather than use my hands (something my friend Sam CM Shin also does!) and another, the biggest, is about eating apples. Don't get me wrong, I love love LOVE the taste of apples, and some of my fondest memories are of eating roast pork with apple sauce at my Nana Hart's house for Sunday dinners (it never tasted the same anywhere else), but the feeling of eating apples or anything else really crisp like that is enough to send shudders down my spine. In fact just thinking about it is making me feel a little goosebumpy as I type.

So as you can imagine, this is something of a problem, first in a family that enjoys apples (the crisper the better) and now also in a country of crisp crunchy apples and pears that also likes to sneakily hide them in fruit salads covered in cream. My second problem is telling people about the first problem, since they invariably think I am mad, and give me a "are you serious??" look, sometimes accompanied by either mocking or incredulous laughter. I usually try to warn people about it in a non-eating situation, or at least a non-apple-eating situation so that it seems slightly less crazy and also less like I'm just being picky about the food, but sometimes I forget, with various results. Like for instance a couple of years ago while on exchange, when everyone was sitting around in the dorm kitchenette eating snacks, and someone brought out a huge apple and crunched into it before I could say anything. I flinched, hastily tried to explain, and then promptly ran away. Needless to say, they all thought I was making a really stupid and obvious excuse to leave, simply because I didn't like them, or, as one person told me later, that I had diarhorrea and was rushing to the loo.

Which brings me to lunch today. My school lunches are pretty good. I'd give a consistent 7 - 10 out of 10 every time. Everything is recognisable, we get a good variety of food, and the fruit is always fresh. However, an increasingly regular sweet course are slices of Korean pears. Like the Japanese nashi, Korean pears are kind of a cross between pear and apple, so they have the usual pear taste but are very VERY crisp and crunchy. Normally I eat with one of my co-teachers, all of whom know about my apple thing (but kindly reserve judgement), so they don't comment when I only take one small piece of pear and cut it up with my spoon, which I also hate doing, and eat it by gingerly spooning it into my mouth and chewing it with my back teeth so that I don't have to spear it with a chopstick and feel it make that awful scraping sensation, and also so it doesn't grate against my front teeth. But as today was our last day of real school and all the kids got sent home early, the teachers were the only ones having lunch at school and people were eating a bit more leisurely. Since it was the last day, we had a treat and as well as the pear, were also given  thick slices of persimmon (gam in Korean, or 감). I took a piece of each to be polite (you usually get harassed a little if you don't at least try a little of everything and then everyone talks about why you aren't eating it) and sat down between my co-teacher and a lovely admin lady named Ahn Dong-Mi who is awesome and despite speaking no English, did her best to chat to me whenever possible to keep me from being bored and to help me practice my Korean when we went on the school camping trip.

Everything was yummy as usual, and I did my usual discreet cutting and spooning when I got to the pear. However, having never eaten gam  before, I wasn't sure what to expect, and after careful poking seemed to indicate it was pretty solid, I tried to cut into it with my spoon and of course it got stuck, so in I went with a chopstick to try and extricate it. Oops. Not good. I immediately flinched and shivered in my seat and put it down straight away. The teacher sitting across from me noticed immediately and mistaking my actions for typical foreigner slapstick, suggested I try just eating it off one chopstick.

 I tried to explain why I didn't want to eat it (very badly) in Korean, and of course, once she'd figured out what I was trying to say, there was the usual incredulous look of "I can't decide which you are more of - a baby or an idiot" and then she said "you don't eat apples because they feel weird???" very loudly. Three of the teachers sitting on the other side of her heard and immediately began asking me about it and talking about how strange this was and discussing how young people's teeth are so bad these days because we eat too much sugar (none of them being over the age of 40 I'd say) and how foreigners seem to have a lot of dietary problems - there was nothing negative intended, it was just strange to them (let's face it, it's strange to everyone) and I was getting a tad embarrassed because I'm already a bit of a freak at the school for having a peanut allergy. Just when I was about to make my excuses and run away, the teacher sitting next to me piped up with "It's not strange, gam and apples have a unique texture when you eat them. My son doesn't like them either" and shut them up. If I wasn't so sure it would have freaked her out, I would have hugged her.

Ahn Dong-Mi, you are the best ^_^

Uh... really? Just... really???

I know it's the done thing (or rather was when she was the flavour of the month) to be harsh on Susan Boyle, but I really couldn't care less about her. Not necessarily in a bad way - she just registers zero interest on my radar of mildly entertaining things and has never even blipped, much like many overrated fads. Nevertheless, after opening an email from Transworld Publishers and seeing that she's already published her auto-biography, the first thing that came to mind was "Really??" What can she really have to say that is worth justifiying the death of a hundred trees to publish? "I was born unfortunately a little on the ugly side with a moderately beautiful voice (which surely would have been less lauded as beautiful had she not been so aesthetically unpleasant), was 'discovered', unsurprisingly was not ready for the fame of being thrown into the spotlight (basically as a freakshow), lost it all, had a nervous breakdown, and am now trying to ride what novelty fame I had by squeezing some last profit from the gullible few even more boring than myself that even I can't believe find me interesting". There, I said it for you Susan. Personally I agree that she was unkindly treated by the media, and it's not necessarily her fault that they seized on her and ran riot with it and she was very human and tried to go for the fame, but... really???

By the way, the Futurama episode "Attack of the Killer App" did a mean but funny take of Susan Boyle which is the only reason why her pointless excuse for the kind of book you buy someone who's so bland that you don't even know if you don't really like, but suspect you would willingly throw to the zombies because it would actually make them more interesting even caught my eye ㅋㅋㅋ



(sorry it's so low quality, it was the only clip I could find that I could embed. A higher quality clip can be found here.)