less updates from now on

I'm deciding on whether or not to continue this blog in a regular fashion. Will probably just update with any major events a few times a month. theres various reasons and you can email me if you want to hear them. But basically I just have other things I need to do.

Me talk pretty one day

The title from this blog comes from a David Sedaris book I read recently that chronicles some of his mishaps in trying to learn French while living in Paris. Even correcting for his self deprecatory humor I know that I have got him beat for linguistic ineptitude.

Learning Korean can be tough. Especially when you don’t put any sort of planned effort into it. It occurred to me that I am now 5 months into my stay in South Korea, almost halfway into my contract and I speak the local language like a very young very slow child. And that is being very generous.

Now anyone will tell you that the best way to learn a language is immersion. It’s a lot like swimming that way. You go to a country where no one speaks English and you have two options:
a) Get everyone to speak your language
b) Figure out the local language

Now I have obviously been failing miserably at the first one, if you look at my students as an example, so I’ve really got to start putting more into the second option. There are some easy things about Korean, especially their alphabet.

The English alphabet is a bit of a mess. Each letter has multiple sounds and there are so many silent ‘e’s and messed up sounds like ‘ph’ and the word ‘colonel’. Hangul is completely phonetic and fairly easy to pick up. Here it is in its entirety:
Of course reading and understanding are two very different things. This has been evident when I’ve ordered things off the menu at restaurants with a decent pronunciation, but was still just spinning the wheel of fate when it came to getting something I would like. When you think you have ordered spicy chicken and you get deep fried chicken patties drowning in a black sauce it sucks to have only yourself to blame.

Now I’ve tried a few different methods for learning this language; video lessons, audio lessons and interactive computer lessons. Nick invited me to take actual lessons with him with an instructor but I turned him down. I have all these modalities already available, I should master them first. Sure there are failings to some of these ‘teach yourself’ methods, but as a language teacher myself I can see that there are problems with any form of instruction.

Of course what I seem to be lacking is some real motivation. This sounds pretty bad but if I’ve been getting by on so little Korean this long there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to finish up my stay here without acquiring any more. I also wonder how useful Korean will be to me in the rest of my life, since I don’t currently plan to return here for a second year. Spending my time watching American television online and listening to English podcasts makes it very easy to avoid soaking up even nominal amounts of Korean.

But then it occurs to me that a darn good reason to learn Korean is that I am here, and so is the language. And there is probably a whole heck of a lot I’m missing out on by not being able to converse with 99% of the people I meet.

So I will resume my efforts to get my Korean to a less embarrassing level. I may even take classes. I suppose I could start turning my television on again from time to time and see if anything starts to click. I remember in my first few months here being very disappointing that I could watch an entire episode of television aimed at two year olds and not pick up a word.

Ahn Chakhee and Ji Seungyeon, the two ladies that have been trying so hard via pirated video to teach me their language. God bless them.

Kinda funny

While walking out of the elementary school today one of my 1st grade students, Maria, caught up with me and walked for a block.

She curiously asked, in a mix of Korean and English, if I was going home to Canada now.

Apparently she thought that's where I went home to every night.

Kids are adorable at any point that I'm not teaching them.

Enough about me...

There have been a lack of updates. For this I apologize. i have plenty of ideas and the same amount of time as ever but just haven't been in the right headspace.
Breakups will do that to you.
this isn't the type of blog where I publicly muse on completely personal issues (although it does unintentionally veer in that direction sometimes) so suffice to say I'll get back to blogging and away from brooding soon enough.
until then, how about you tell me how your day was?

White Day

White Day

It shouldn’t surprise me that there was yet another Korean holiday to celebrate that involves candy. After Pepero Day (chocolate stick day)nothing should surprise me

It would be too much to call this a bonafide holiday, although I’m sure the women of Korea would disagree with me. But they would probably do so in Korean, which is just water off a duck’s back to me lately (you just assume everyone is yelling ‘nice hat’ after a while). The only other country that celebrates this holiday is Japan, and in this place its basically the female equivalent of Valentine’s Day.

On Valentine ’s Day girls give chocolate to boys. One month later on White Day boys give those same girls candies and chocolates (originally marshmallows, hence the name). Moreso than even Valentine ’s Day this day was created and promoted by commercial businesses.

The general rule is that a White Day gift to a girl is supposed to be three times the value of the gift that a man received from a girl on Valentine ’s Day. Which is a pretty solid candy investment for a girl if you think about it. It’s actually a better system than back home for the guys, since we usually have so much trouble on valentines day. This way we already know what to buy, how much to spend and who to give it to- rather than the crapshoot that was 24 He-Man Valentine cards hastily addressed that I remember not getting me any action as a youngster.

Now much like Valentine’s Day there are also smaller candies that are given out to every girl just for the sake of the day. So I picked up a few bags of Hershey kisses to pass out to my female students and fellow teachers, figuring that it might be a good occasion to buy some goodwill. Nick had forgotten all about White Day so I let him have one of my bags of chocolates, since it wouldn’t be fair to have kids in the school feel left out. So with my chocolate supply at half five minutes into the day I didn’t give any to the other teachers, figuring they would take it better than six year olds (who knows a grown woman to keep a grudge?). Now obviously its not a huge deal but both Nick and Patrick gave them treats (wonder where Nick got the chocolate?) so I might be seen as a bit out of touch. Only time will tell.

Now its hard for me to give out chocolate to kids, since I believe that most of them have had plenty enough candy as it is. But I don’t want my personal beliefs on nutrition to one day turn me into some weirdo that gives out toothbrushes on Halloween so I could justify this day. Some of the boys in my classes were a little miffed that they didn’t get any candy- amazing how quickly they forgot about just one month ago when they got candy and the girls didn’t. The school handed out lollipops to everyone so there was some eveness, but the three boys in my youngest class started crying despite my gentle consolations of : ‘tough luck fatty”. So I gave them chocolates too, they seemed more than willing to accept the gender confusion in exchange for some sugar.

I also served to alienate myself a little further from the staff near the end of the day when a bunch of them were sitting around the various cakes, cookies and chocolates brought in by parents and invited me to partake. They all already know me as a ‘picky eater’(which I guess is a step sideways from the ‘health nut’ moniker I had back home) which is a bit of a big deal since food is such a social event here in Korea. Many restaurants only serve one dish with plenty of sides that everyone at the table shares in. The communal sharing of food is essential to the culture and I’m the weirdo foreigner that doesn’t participate. But there doesn’t seem to be any animosity stemming from it, just curiosity at my quirkiness.

Now if White Day was somehow centralized around the exchange of pizza (Dominos take note!) I’m positive that I would have seen nothing wrong with packing away a slice or so ('so' meaning the number 14 here).

I scream, you scream, we all scream for…

It’s sometimes tough to be teacher of the year every single day. Part of the troubles that I have may stem from the fact that I am not actually a teacher, not in the literal ‘trained to do the job’ sense of the word. Now nothing bad happened today, aside from being unexpectedly exhausted all day (and I had a class of kids call me fat-but that’s not the story I’m telling today). It was one of those mornings that I just never completely woke up and my body just decided to hang at the halfway point until the next round of sleep came rather than getting the lead out.

Luckily though it was a Monday and that meant that I could take things slow with my classes. Due to the unfortunate fact that the weekend involves two consequetive days where the kids are not at English school it is unavoidable that by the time Monday rolls around they have just plain forgot the language. It is a well documented phenomena (by me, peer review by my friend Ken pending) but seems to stress the kids out only about as much as losing a penny down a sewer grate. So everything was back to basics and the day was passing in that odd way that time is wont to do.

It was only during my last class that my kids developed any animosity towards me. Although neither of us is really to blame. I don’t have textbooks for most of my classes this term, which is alright since most of my kids haven’t been given textbooks either. It really allows me to just freestyle things in that way that all highly trained teachers like myself excel in. For this class I had picked out one of the most challenging books the school had and photocopied the pages for my students, seeing as how these are pretty much the most advanced kids at the school. Now they thought that The Case of the Missing Pie was too hard and wanted to switch to a four sentence book called Dinosaur Bones but I tried to convince them that they needed a harder book to expand their vocabulary rather than stick to stuff they knew. It would also tie into their grammar studies with their other teacher on past tense verbs and comparative adjectives.

Well obviously that last statement was going to be a show stopper, and I’m sure you can think of nothing that could eclipse such a shining sentiment in a bored child’s mind.

Of course moments after I said this they saw Nick’s class walking through the hall back into class, each of the students waving an ice-cream cone at us through the window. Nick had taken them on a ‘field trip’ down the street to the convenience store and bought them all a treat. My class understandably began petitioning me for equal treatment. I soon discovered that there are tougher things to explain to Korean kids than the English language, such as your views on positive reinforcement techniques in the classroom and the educational value of a trip to the 7-11. In the end they listened to me politely and I oringinally thought they understood that I was saying I’d be happy to give them a similar prize for good work in the classroom as they all stopped their frantic pleas. Truth is I heard them say to eachother in Korean that it was apparent that I just didn’t have any money. I sighed and let it slide, if I were in their shoes I would have wanted some ice-cream too. So in truth we both learned valuable life lessons. They learned that Nick is a way more fun teacher to have than me. And I learned how to say no to kids begging for ice-cream, which is a skill that every adult should have. I guess this is growing up.

PS just in case I never remember to update you the missing blueberry pie was in fact eaten by scraps the dog, not Tubby as the gang originally thought. You’re welcome for the closure.

Waygook Special

There is a phenomenon here in Korea that I have termed the ‘Waygook Special’, although I’m sure someone else has come up with the same clever title. Waygook is the Korean word for foreigner, and in a very homogenous culture foreigners are a bit of an oddity.

Now what is a waygook special? When a taxi takes it upon themselves to give you a scenic tour of the city and stops at all traffic lights, heads in the wrong direction then finally doubles back after hearing your incomprehensible pleas. Its when you go to a produce market and get the same feeling as walking down the midway at a carnival when carnies call you over to their games o’ skill. Its when basically things that are supposed to be inexpensive turn out to be more expensive than they should be.

I’m not implying anything about racism here, I’ve not really experienced any of that here myself. Aside from that one old man on the subway on Christmas. But its hard to take someone seriously when they look like someone used too much felt on a muppet.

I also don’t want to give you the impression that Busan is full of a dedicated ring of shysters that actively takes advantage of foreigners. That is entirely possible but I frankly haven’t done any research to that end, the makeup required for the undercover work is cost-prohibitive. I’ve come to realize that the feeling that you are being ripped off a bit comes from two possible sources:

1. What you thought was cheap really wasn’t. Korea is the second most expensive country in Asia (Japan wins!) and is not the land of 25 cent meals like my obviously born- in-the-1930s friend Ken originally thought. Alcohol is pretty cheap for instance, even in restaurants. However if you go to an Ice Bar, like my fellow teacher Nick did, and have a half dozen bottles of beer delivered to your table in a bucket of… you guessed it… ice, expect to pay about $100 cdn for that privilege. Well you pay in Won, but I’m converting to help comparison. You can get a hilarious amount of tangerines for $3, yet apples even in bulk usually average to about $1 a piece.

2. What you thought you asked for you didn’t get. The best example of this for me came last night. Ken and I frequent a certain grill house every Friday and order a dish that is basically ribs without the bones. Now last week I had been very confident, not even looking at the menu when I ordered and feeling pretty proud until we paid and found out we had ordered a different dish than we thought. Bill came to $30 instead of $24 (with drinks), not a big deal but I was a little embarrassed. Last night when we ordered I kept my pride in check and pointed at the menu to order and made absolutely sure to order the thing we wanted this time, figuring it was better to be thorough than look cool. We were very satisfied with this slightly cheaper cut of meat, not really being able to tell the difference. Which made sense when we paid because it turns out they still served us the more expensive dish. I tried to explain that was not what we ordered, not out of anger, just confusion. I didn’t know all the words to explain myself so I treated the owner to a recreation. I picked up a nearby menu and repeated the motion of pointing at the thing we asked for, first thing listed. The owner smiled, shook his head and pointed at the more expensive thing down the list. I paid with confused exasperation.

Now I don’t think the man diabolically supersized us, I think he just brought us the other dish as a favor. He just made an assumption on what we wanted and went with that. Possibly based on the fact that the dish he brought us was the one we inadvertently ordered three times before at his place. Possibly because what we had pointed at was like when you order chicken at Red Lobster and the waitress winces and says : “Tell you what, I’ll bring you something nice.” I think to the time that Ken and I ordered chicken that was so spicy the cook came out from the kitchen to personally plead with us to change our minds. We laughed him off and then went through a very painful eating experience, which eventually ended in us hiding pieces of chicken around the table so we could save face with a clean platter.

I originally viewed the Waygook Special as a bit more malevolent than it seems to me now. Now I just figure that people see me as a blind man in a bowling alley facing the wrong direction. They gently turn me around to face the pins, never even occurring to them that I wanted to aim for the Coke machine.

Lousy Immigrants

Got a visit from an immigration officer today. He came to our school and was checking the work visas of our foreign teachers. I’d really like to make it sound scary but it wasn’t. Maybe if he had been wearing dark glasses and a suit and was chewing peppermint gum he would have fit my mental image of an imigrattion officer. Hard to take a guy in a tan windbreaker all that seriously.

I was happy to answer his questions, mainly because the assistant director had to pull me out of a class to talk to him. He asked to see Nick and I’s work card (Patrick wasn’t there) he jotted some stuff on a notepad and gave Nick back his card. He told me there was a problem with mine and he’d have to speak with me alone. So he took me into one of the empty classrooms and sat me down. Once again I really wish there was some tension here to relate but between the windbreaker and me getting out of precious minutes of work made me pretty upbeat.

Turns out he didn’t have me registered to teach at the school on the paper he had, he had nick and Patrick and someone named Joshua. Who wasn’t the guy that I replaced, he was the guy before him. So it was obviously just a matter of some files that weren’t updated, and after a series of phone calls the guy made he said that it was all cleared up. He explained that they had gotten some complaints about Oxford English School and wanted to know if I had ever been asked to work illegally. I told him no, which is truthful as far as I know. I did mention that there used to be something fishy going on with the elementary schools we teach at but that I hadn’t experienced anything personally. Now he seemed pretty interested in the elementary school stuff, and asked me quite a few questions about that. I take this to mean that a) we aren’t legally allowed to work at the elementary schools in addition to our private schools or b) he just plain did not understand my English and kept trying to get me to rephrase my answers. They are both quite possible, and frankly they both concern me about as much as eachother (which is very little). I was just happy to keep talking and get out of class. I didn’t really think too much about whether I would be screwing my school over with what I was saying. I think the chances are pretty low personally, as I really didn’t add much of anything to whatever investigation they were doing. For all I know talking to me was the extent of the investigation. I have no idea who would have submitted these complaints to Oxford, probably some former employee from a while back. Once again I wish I could work up some tension over this, but it occurs to me that I don’t really care if my school gets in trouble. In any case I’m not doing anything illegal so I know that I won’t be deported.

So after 15 minutes of intense interrogation (trying to build that dramatic tension) I headed back to my class, which had just started when I left. I would have figured since the Assistant Director pulled me out of the class she would have put someone in there (herself for instance) to look after the class until I got back. But that was not to be. Twelve 7 year old kids had been left on their own for fifteen minutes with nothing to do. It was like seeing a room full of care bears on speed. They were pretty much useless for any sort of teaching after that point, it took all my wiles to convince them to sit down long enough to play a game. I also found out today that if you distractedly tell a class with decent English they can use as much as they want when referring to the increasingly popular scented handsanitizer I carry around they will take it to extremes. Its kind of fun to watch kids just slather their hands with tons of the stuff and derive unending joy from it.

Painless Monday. I'm suspicious.

First full day of classes with my new allotment of students and theres not much worth blogging about. Which is a good thing. The classes went really well and there doesn’t seem to be any big troublemakers in my new bunch yet. Although I can’t really remember if my old classes were easy when I first started them or not. Maybe they all start off easy and then slowly turn against me. Probably part of some diabolical plot that Kim Jong Il is behind. That’s the most obvious answer.

Most of the kids don’t have textbooks yet so I have really just been killing time with them. Which is actually much tougher than teaching. Killing time and not having the classes go completely bonkers on you is a fine art (studies show its finer than Dadaism). I try not to play too many games with them because I live in shaking fear of the day when they get bored of all my games.

Tomorrow is a kiss on the cheek/kick in the pants day. The kiss on the cheek is that my elementary school is still on vacation so I’m done work by noon. The kick in the pants is that before kindergarten class I have to trek across town to the elementary school to participate in a ten minute advertisement for the English program to some parents. I was told today that it will involve a three minute speech made by yours truly. The stress for these speeches is always very low since the only two people in the rooms that can understand English are my co teachers in the program. Any parents that can understand me are probably better off teaching their own kids English anyway. So its another show up in a suit, smile, and try to sound as American as possible day. A very easy task that would be no issue if it didn’t interfere with my usual morning ritual of slowly sipping my way through a gallon of coffee. Maybe I’ll just rail the grounds tomorrow if I’m in a rush.

I've come to realize something about my body, it knows when I'm bullshitting it. I am fairly health conscious when it comes to diet and I'm not the type of person that eats processed or nutritionally void stuff. Never happens. Despite the fact that it never happens I drank me a fair bit of beer last night and ate some very very fried chicken. Luckily the universe seems to have survived such a logic bending paradox, and somehow so have I.

Now I'm not saying theres anything wrong with beer and fried chicken. this is more about drawing personal lines and sticking to them. Like when you promise yourself you'll not watch television but sure enough come 9:10 you're robbing a liquor store. I just get fascinated that 'things I don't eat' somehow end up in my belly. I hired a well known strength coach to write me a workout program starting next week and told myself that step one was to start eating well again.

Now after a stressful 'almost had to leave the country' debate with my workplace and some first hand experience on why long distance relationships are tough (not just an urban legend like body odor) some comfort food and some beer with my friend seemed in order.
And today I paid a little price. I was a little sore and sickly feeling and totally bombed my workout today. I'm sure that last sentiment really strikes a tender chord with all of you- or maybe it fits in the 'why should I give a shit' portion of your fact filter. I don't know. But right now I'm just looking at how my habits affect my goals.

A big thing for me is that I know that I've got eight more months in a foreign country to try to 'get my act together' (metaphorically speaking, unless I write a one act play. which knowing me is quite likely) to some small degree. I am not feeling too stressed with life at all right now (an oddity for me) but I know that the toughest thing about baseball isn't stepping up to the plate or swinging the bat- its making sure you've got enough follow through. Okay fine I don't know anything about baseball. Its the one with the fake grass, right?

Anyway the only other significant thing to happen today was that I joined Facebook, on Ken's advise. I'm heard its an evil fact gathering diabolical machine, but as long as I enter into the relationship with that knowledge I can make sure I'm the pitcher and not the catcher.

TGINM

Thank Goodness Its Not Monday

Today was the last day of my light work week and tumultuous contract negotiations and the dust seems to have settled in my favor. My new classes of students seemed pretty well behaved today and there doesn't seem to be any huge troublemakers in the bunch. Of course this means that Nick is probably stuck with all my old monster students. and when I say monsters I don't necessarily mean 'child of satan', but they're definitely in the bloodline.

There is one class I won't be teaching anymore that I will actually miss. This is one that would actually play English games together before class because they enjoyed them so much. And some of the students were coming a long way with their speaking since I was able to keep everyone in line with no trouble. they saw me in the hall today and when they found out I wasn't going to be teaching them anymore they were actually a little bummed. Which is a little surprising since most kids seem to have the memory spans of gnats and this is the first class to ever hold on to the memory of a teacher for longer than when one leaves the room.

But its probably for the best that Nick got that class, because when I think about two of my other classes that he got he will need the relief. He looked pretty frazzled today, but then he has long hair and horn rimmed glasses so its tough to look anything but frazzled or on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. He still hasn't finished negotiating his contract and I think that he was a little stressed over how the new workweek was shaping up. I felt kind of bad for him as he was walking into a class of kids I know to be 50% evil and I was heading home. But I didn't feel like... super-bad, since I was getting out an hour and a half earlier than him. Its like watching a World Vision commercial while eating pizza.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I go into to school for the entrance ceremony for the new Kindergarten classes. It shouldn't take more than 2 hours tops and once again my duties will be to just stand there and look white. I'm not actually teaching any of the new kids so my interest level for the proceedings (which is a base of zero for school events) will probably go well into the negatives.

Day off

due to me pressing the wrong button this didn't go up yesterday as planned, my bad

Koreans are adept at brokering uneasy alliances, and such a one was reached with my contract dispute yesterday. All is resolved and the new schedule is no better and no worse than the one I was working before. I come in twenty minutes earlier and leave twenty minutes earlier. It unfortunately took almost two hours to strike that deal but most of that time for me was just spent twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the new assistant director to talk on the phone to the director. Nick had substantially more trouble with his contract, as ours have different clauses and they were trying to load at least an extra hour a day onto his back. In the end I think they reached an agreement as well, but I'll find out tomorrow.

I found out what my new kindergarten classes would be and aside from one of them being a little large I think I made out alright. I get to keep my class of favorite students, as well as the two other classes that have been at our school for a while. Nick gets three classes of all new students, some of them very very young. It seems that the school noticed how much the really young ones would stress me out and have stuck me with the older kids. Which is absolutely fine with me.
Today is a national holiday so I've had the day off work. I haven't felt especially motivated to do much (combination of factors) so its just been an easy day in with a short blog. Happy Marching Day everyone.