Long weekend possible...

As much as I love working with kids, I love my own sanity a tiny bit more - as in way more not like the favorite one of twins you can't tell apart preference.

Some days it can be infuriating that they don't speak my language, despite my constant yells in their inquisitive faces of : "I'm an American, this is America, speak English!". Not true in three ways but still a handy phrase to them to know how to respond to. But by the chary of that same sentence I can see that it is in fact beneficial to me that they don't speak English. It was sorta the last day of classes for some of the kids before their winter vacation today I think, so they were extra special rambunctious.

Now I really don’t have any idea what is going on with my schedule in the next month. Nick told me that we have a five day weekend coming up, which to me is really really cool. I’m not sure if its true yet, I’m going to wait until tomorrow to find out. That way if its not true then at least I have until then to keep the hope alive. But I do know that the elementary schools are not doing regular classes for a month and my schedule will change slightly.

I was told yesterday that I had to show up at the elementary school at 9 am, so but my contract says I never have to start work until 10am so I had a little talk with the assistant director. It went well. She sat Nick and I down and tried to explain how the two days a week we teach part time at the elementary school were going to change. Now the schedule they had drawn up didn’t strike me as immediately great. It basically looked like I would show up an hour earlier and only get a basically lose an hour off my lunch break, the remainder of which lunch time I would have to get from the elementary school to the hagwon. Basically it was an extra hour or two of work two days a week. Now luckily I had good chunks of my contract memorized and patiently explained to them that they couldn’t actually make me show up for that extra time. They offered me overtime hours, but since my overtime pay works out to less than my regular hourly wage I said no. In the end I stayed firm and got them to take two classes out of those days and wrangled myself a nice 1pm-3:15pm break in the middle of the day where there was originally a 1-1:30pm break. I asked them to kindly put that agreement in writing for me. Nick thanked me for it later as he was just going to go with their original offer.

Now split shifts suck, but at least I can go to the gym during this time and therefore free up some time in the evening.

If you ever wondered if its tough to live in a country without speaking the language I propose a little experiment. Just when you go out be really disinterested in what other people say to you. Its about the same effect. Not that I am disinterested but sometimes my conversations with locals remind me of when you’re really drunk and not really catching what the other person is saying you’re just thinking about how fluorescent lights remind you of star wars. Its just kind of a feeling that overtakes me sometimes when I realize that I’m not going to spontaneously understand what they are saying and will have to just wait for them to stop talking.

Now at the same time I can understand that having people speak English in your country might be a little bothersome. The other day when Patrick and I were on the subway an old man came up and motioned to me that he wanted to sit down. I nodded and pointed at the empty seat next to me, wondering why he didn’t just sit down. Patrick and I were having a conversation, and half a stop later the old man turned to us waved his hand in a commanding way and motioned for us to be quiet. Now we were not talking loud and we were not the only ones on the subway talking by far. Patrick tried to reason with the man in Korean, but he had no interest in talking to him. It was about this time we realized he just didn’t want us talking in English, and that he really didn’t seem to like white people. I also thought about how he probably wasn’t asking to sit down before, just asking me to go away so he could sit down in peace.

Now I can respect that we are in his country and speaking a foreign language could be rude, but we were both paid to do that exact thing and we were once again not talking loudly. Now in Korean culture you are always supposed to defer to the wishes of an elder, which I usually do my best to respect. But in this case I just figured well heck, racism is racism and I’m not going to go out of my way to please him. So not only did we go back to our quiet conversation but I decided to not keep pulling in my shoulders like I always have to do in the narrow subway seats. This casual motion took a little of the old man’s shoulder room away and had the added benefit of letting my elbow jut somewhat lightly into his lower back. Somewhere near the kidneys. Surprisingly he got up and moved seats shortly afterwards, with an angry goodbye gesticulation to us. Well at least I finally answered that age old question : “when is it ok to bully an old man on the subway?” answer: “well never really, but its less unacceptable when he’s a rude racist.”
Anyway slightly earlier day at work tomorrow so goodnight all.