Parents Day (Nov 12)

We got to the school at 10 and found ourselves alone in our classrooms with no instructions and only a few kids. With too few kids to practice the play, no work to do and no instructions, we just hung out and played games and watched videos. Not so bad except for the fact that parents kept looking into the classroom to see their kids watching tv, sitting on the floor (chairs were gone to accommodate parents elsewhere) and basically playing while at school.

You could tell that they were expecting something different but what were we going to do? These are a bunch of 6 year olds who barely understand what you are saying, at the school on a Saturday and waiting to show their parents the play they have been preparing for a month and a half. Needless to say that they were restless, excited, and inattentive. We ended up practicing the plays a whole bunch of times when the kids showed up but even that was a challenge because the entire week was devoted to these plays and they were done with them. They just wanted them to end.

The real interesting part of the day was watching our co-teachers. This is basically an evaluation for them. If the kids to poorly and parents complain, it shines very badly upon their teaching. This is the main evaluation for the teachers so basically, they could sacrifice all learning in favor of memorizing a dumb play for a month in order to help themselves. Not to say that any teachers actually did this, but learning definitely was sacrificed.

The real crime of the situation is that the Korean teachers get paid peanuts compared to us and they do so much more work! They are working non-stop all day and even after the school closes and they make quite a bit less than us and do not have housing provided. That said, this job isn't too bad for them because their pay is not ridiculously low compared to other jobs. One of our co-workers is dating a Korean girl who makes $1400 a month working 12 hour days 6 days a week. We make $2400 for 9 hours 5 days a week (some days are way shorter). I understand that it's a societal thing, but it's just strange that in a well-developed country with a strong economy that workers reform and higher wage demands have not found their way in (though apparently they are starting to push more).

Anyway, moral of the story is that we had to go to the school for parents day, we babysat, watched the kids perform (or under perform) their plays and we walk away with money in our pockets and no worries while the Korean teachers left without any extra money and a bag full of stress.

Happy "Remember Pepero Day"

Being 11/11 and all, I think that it is important that I stop and remember the important holiday that this is. As would be expected, I have stopped to think about the troops that have/do/and will serve(d) for just causes around the world and may or may not watch "Hurt Locker" "Saving Private Ryan" or "Generation Kill" tonight to commemorate the day. However, there is a very strange holiday also going on in Korea called "Pepero Day" It is all about the tall, skinny, candy covered wafers called Peperos. The day is 11/11 because the 1's look like pepero sticks. It may be the ultimate manufactured holdiay as no one actually knows the origin other than the fact it was somewhere in the 80's or 90's and the fact that the Lotte company has a real lock on the pepero industry. There is really nothing special about it, other than you get/give copious amounts of peperos. Yes, they sound delicious like a kit kat or some other awesome treat, but the overall execution is more like a chocolate covered pretzel with half the chocolate and twice the pretzel. Sure something like that is good for one, maybe two sticks, but after 20 you realize that you have just gorged yourself on a whole lot of flavourless junk with no satisfaction but you ate it because it was there. Very frustrating situation to be in but hey, I only get one pepero day so I guess I'll buy in.

Today was a crazy day at the school. Apparently the Korean staff was all in the school until close to midnight last night making it absolutely perfect for "parents day" tomorrow when they get the "report cards" and present their english plays.

I use quotations for "parents day" because it is the title, but for "report cards"they are more descriptive of my feelings about them. Max teaches a kid that can not speak more English then the memorized responses of "Hello Teacher", "Fine thank you", and "me sticker" and who can not sit through 25 minutes of class without throwing a full out tantrum but we have been told that there are to be no negative comments, no strongly good comments, and no bad "grades" so this kid is getting a grade of "e" for excellent in 4 categories and a single "Satisfactory". It is just such crap I can't believe but that's the life of working in a Hagwan I guess.

So back to the day. We went to the regular school and up to our classes where we waited for 10 minutes until a teacher told us to go to the afternoon school where our kids would be. We did that and found the child equivalent of "the island of misfit toys from the "Frosty the Snowman" christmas movie. There was some kind of an inspection going on in the Korean kindergarten and all of the decent-good students were pulled out of our English classes and brought to the Korean school I guess to bolster the level of students at the school. This left us with the kids that have less-developed English skills or are tougher to deal with in the classrooms. The situation just felt so weird and obvious but I guess it's just to get show off the school. Anyway, we were told that we had 20 minutes to deal with the equivilant of the school prison population for 3 hours but that we could do what we want. We just played games and watched "Up" on the TV, but this inspection has been known about for weeks and they just sprung it on us in the morning. The lack of organization is very normal for the school but you never really get used to it.

Enough about the school for now, will report back after "parents day", as it apparently is an incredibly awkward and frustrating day.

Friday again already?

I don't know what happened to the week but I can't believe that it's Friday again. Maybe work is just getting easier, but that was definitely the fastest week yet. It probably has something to do with halloween happening on monday and another excursion on Wednesday. This week we went to an electronics store, tried to get the kids to listen to you while they were on optical stimulation overdrive, stick them back on the bus then go to the school and write a "report: read copy of the board" on the event. The key event of this whole 2 hour adventure is the photo op. The whole point is to get to somewhere that looks plausibly educational, stick a white teacher beside a Korean kid, smile, bear the flash, and do it again. Then take class photos, and some candid shots and event over. It is really strange, but makes for a short day so I don't mind.

I finally put a finger on how do describe the sweetness of food in Korea. I have mentioned it before, but there is a strange amount of sweet food in Korea. It is not like candy, but it is just thinks like spaghetti sauce that is sweeter than you expect. The analogy that I have come up with, is that it's like ordering a potato and getting a sweet potato instead. Except that they look the same so you never know until you bite in.

On the food note, we really need to diversify in our home cooking. We eat processed grilled cheese sandwiches, spaghetti, stir fry, and pancakes. We do however experiment a lot at school partly on purpose, partly because you never know what you are eating until you bite into it. I bit into something that I thought was noodles, turns out that it was a huge dish on tiny fried fish. The "chicken noodle soup" from the other day turned out to be boiled fish stew. The kim chi is sometimes good, sometimes basted in foot flavour. It is always an interesting Russian roulette.

We don't get paid until the 7th so we didn't want to go to Seoul until then. We wanted to go on the 12th, but it is parents day at the school on the Saturday and we have to go and do some fake teaching, help our classes do English plays, and basically show the parents how "good" the school is. (I lucked out, I got the best class in the school, Max did not). It is all crap but we will get paid OT for it so not a huge deal. After finding this out, we decided to go on the 19th but we have been invited to a co-workers wedding. She is Canadian and marrying a Korean guy. Good guy as much as I've met him. It will be a really interesting experience and a good night. Definitely worth sticking around for. Sounds like we will be going on the 26th now. So late, but it should be a good amount of time sticking around town to learn everything in town.

Few fun notes about school:

The kids love touching arm hair. I guess koreans are far less hairy than us Canadians and they won't stop rubbing your hair if you put your arm on their desk.

A kid kept trying to bombard me with kisses the other day. Turns out she kept trying to kiss my belt buckle. It was really frustrating to try and keep my eye on the other kids while trying to keep her away from me. She proceeded to kiss a lamp on the excursion later that day.

Finally, I think it's hilarious that all the Korean co-teachers are on their phones all day. They just keep them handy and text on them or leave the classroom to answer calls like it's no big deal. We have one english teacher who is also on his phone a lot but the rest keep them away. I just think it's funny.

Well I've probably bored people enough for now, will post about the weekend later.