J.T. vs. The Korean Work Ethic

Ah, yes. Time to post again. Why has it been such a long time since my last post, one might ask themselves. In fact, that's such a reasonable question that even two, or as many as four might ask themselves. Well, precious numbers, I'll tell you; I'm being worked like a slave. And we're not talking some Roman business slave, we're talking a field slave... a field slave who got a little to friendly with the big man's daughter. Oh, it's been bad. Two of the old English teachers left this week, which meant that somebody had to pick up their schedules. Judging from the revised schedule they handed out, that was me. So, this week I basically went to work at 8 a.m., got a break for lunch, worked until 9 p.m., then went to bed. Oh, so glorious. My schedule for the coming week won't be as near-fatal, but it did seriously keep from blog updates, so I'm sorry to all who were concerned.
Besides my own personal near-death experience, I worry more about the Korea Work ethic as it relates to my student. Right now, it's summer break. You'd expect to see bright eyed young Korean boys eagerly getting all the fresh air and sunshine provided by a PC cafe and sweet young Korean girls merrily walking along, stopping only briefly to shriek at the unexpected sight of a foreigner (I actually made some little girl shriek. I was just walking along behind two girls and, I was just about ready to pass them [thus, at the point when I was closest to them], when one of the girls turned around, saw me, and said "hello." The other girl, undoubtedly confused by the sudden use of English by her friend, turned around, saw me, and shrieked like I was an axe murder or Steve Buscemi or something.).
Anyways, is this homogenous, digitized wonderland what we truly see in Korea? I'm afraid not. The reason is Korean parents have decided that the first grade of middle school isn't too early to burn your kids out on education. I mean, to prepare your children to enter college. Nearly every young student I teach should be out doing piles and piles of nothing right now, but they're crammed into a classroom for their entire "break." I told one of my students that, back home, we spent out summer breaks hanging out and doing every possible thing we could think of to get in trouble, and I think he almost cried.
I was trying to figure out how much homework to give my classes, so I asked them what other classes they were taking right now. The list was so long, it could have been my high school transcript. I asked them if they had more classes during the summer or during the school year, and they actually have more work to do during their time off! Plus, they have a bunch of summer homework from their schools. Now, I'm no veteran teacher, but I can tell that these kids are already half-fried by the time they show up in my classroom. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I give them nearly no homework. In fact, in many cases, so near is it to no homework that it actually is a complete lack of assigned homework.
I asked some of my adult students about this phenomenon, and I learned some interesting results. It turns out that educating children is the second-biggest expense for Koreans, besides housing. I thought, initially, this was because they all went to private schools. However, as it turns out, the public schools are very good, and many parents choose to send their children to them. Public schools are, of course, fee-free. So, then, where was all this expense coming from? It's coming from the egregious amount of additional classes they sign their kids up for. Think about that; they're signing them up for so many classes that the financial hardship it causes them surpasses nearly everything they have to do in life! I told my adult students that I didn't feel that the 12+ hours of school these kids do a night was worth a). the social losses or b). the financial costs. In fact, from what I've seen, the gains are minimal. After a certain point, there is such a dramatic loss of return on every hour of education given to these children. So, for their extra 60%-70% time spent and lord knows how much more money, these children are probably around 15% smarter than the Americans they go up against. That's not a good return, in my opinion. All my adult students agree, but they say that, since everybody else is going it, they have to put their kids through it, too. That's pretty much the mindset around here. Sameness is a treasured commodity.
So, I decided to wage a little war on the Korean Work Ethic. What I do in my classes is decide a reasonable amount of work for a day and, if the kids finish, I play games and generally let them goof off. As it turns out, this is the general philosophy of foreigner education around here, so it's more like I've joined an ongoing war. A war against child slavery. Or against something not quite as bad as child slavery, but still pretty bad. Worse than listening to Yanni, I'd say, and there should be people fighting that, as well.
Of course, I wish there was something I could do for the adults, as well. They are also expected to work 12+ hour days. In fact, they were all psyched because they finally got to have a 5-day workweek (instead of 6 days), but then they discovered that their companies still expected them to get the same amount of work done, dispite the fact that they were already overworked with the 6-day workweek. Then some of them come to my English classes, because the big companies give the best promotions to the workers that know English. That's lovely. Most of them don't get overtime pay, either. Basically, Korea is becoming what happens when Capitalism turns real nasty; everybody's working themselves to death and not getting paid for it. The companies don't make out to bad, what with all the free labor and all. Nothing like making a few people rich on the backs of a bunch of people just trying to get by. If you think America's bad with this, you are clueless to how much worse we could get.
Well, that's my piece for today. I've got to get to bed... I have more war to wage tomorrow. So, remember everybody, when you're bemoaning the fact that our students are scoring lower on the standardized tests, that it's just not worth it to match up. If you could trade in 90% of your childhood for another 15 I.Q. points, would you do it? I wouldn't. So stop your crying and go play some kickball.

J.T. vs. Korean Food

Well, this week has had a lot of ups and downs. In general, I'd have to say it's been a good week. As I was telling Mikey McG not too long ago, the difficulty in ordering food was starting to get to me. However, I've managed to make improvements there. I have learned places that speak just enough English to get by, so that's nice. There's a decent little sandwich shop where the owner speaks some English, and one of the regular workers at the local KFC speaks some English. That's right... KFC. One thing that I would have never expected is that the Koreans seem to love fried chicken! There must be six fried chicken restaurants on my ten minute walk from home to work. It's crazy. I have to say, though, the Colonel's original recipe has just never tasted so sweet. It's noticeably more expensive over here, and you get less food for your money, but I think the occasional trip back to those sweet Kentucky chicken farms is worth it.

On top of the love of KFC, I have learned that I will not die in Korea. The reason for this is that the Koreans also love pizza. Ah... pizza: heavenly dough with a layer of ambrosia sauce, covered with cheese prepared from milk of the teat of mother nature herself. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Anyways, I like pizza. Ordering pizza in Korea, though, is not so easy. I decided to completely forego any attempts to order delivery and decided to walk down the corner to the local pizza place, "Pizza 2001." Koreans seem to like to load the toppings on their pizza, which I'm not a huge fan of, but it's actually not too bad. They like to use corn as a pizza topping as well, which, I must say, is pretty good. I wanted a plain pepperoni pizza, though, so I knew I was in for a challenge. In a miracle that I can only explain as sweet karmic reward, the word for "pepperoni" in Korean is "pepperoni." So, I pointed to a pizza, made some hand gestures while saying "pepperoni," and hoped for the best. The woman seemed to understand, so I knew that I had just successfully ordered a pizza with only pepperoni or a pizza with every possible topping on Earth, except pepperoni. Well, luckily for me, she did understand, and I enjoyed a dinner of fresh pizza and an equally enjoyable lunch of cold pizza the next day.

Don't let all this talk about American food make you think that I haven't been sampling the local cuisine. I've found that I'm actually a big fan of Korean food. Kim-chee, the national dish, is quite delicious. This is fortunate, since it's served at virtually every meal. Most of everything else I've had is quite good, as well. Today, the whole teaching staff went to lunch at a pretty nice little restaurant. We sat on the floor by a table with three square holes. As a side note, I really wish I had bought shoes that slip on and off more easily. Since you don't wear shoes inside of many buildings, especially homes or apartments, it can be annoying if you have to go inside and outside several times. Anyways, they brought out small cages with burning embers in them and put them in the holes. Then, they brought out skewers of duck meat and put them in special little rotating holes, causing them to be deliciously slow-cooked by the hot embers. Mmmmm... that's good cooking. The whole table was covered with food, as well. At this restaurant, as well as several others, what you do it you take a leaf of lettuce or some other such vegetabley substance, put a piece of meat and whatever else you want in it, fold it up, and eat it like a little sandwich. Another thing I should mention about Korean food is, as noted with the pizza, Korean food is all about mixing lots of different flavors together. The little sandwiches were good, but the duck was so delicious that I just started eating it by itself after a while. Making the sandwiches with the chopsticks was kind of difficult, anyways. In Korea, they use metal chopsticks, which are far more difficult to use. The wooden chopsticks we love so dearly back home have a nice texture to them which helps grab on to the food. Not so with the Korean chopsticks. They're nice and smooth, causing the untrained hand to drop food all over the place. They look nice, though.

Well, that's about it for now; I have yet another class to teach this evening, beginning in just a few minutes. Tonight, however, we're saying farewell to one of the Canadian English teachers, so we'll be having another night of Korean feasting. Most excellent! Talk to you folks later.

J.T. vs. The Nasty Hangover

So, I've been to Korea for a few days now. I've observed a couple of classes, and it seems like a lot of work, but still kinda fun. I think I'll be able to handle it, but my first class is this afternoon, so we'll see. I think it'll go alright, but that may just be wishful thinking. :-p

So, the other English teachers took me out to this great place to eat on Friday. You cooked the pieces of your food in front of you, then wrapped them in lettuce to make a little breadless sandwich. It was pretty good. I also got to experience several different types of Korea alcohol. I've found that Korean beer is alright; I like it better than any beer I've had so far. One of the things we drank, however, is called Soju. This stuff is evil. I was warned ahead of time that it was going to be evil, but the warnings couldn't even begin to prepare me for it. First of all, it doesn't seem horribly strong, but it is! Oh, it gets ya drunk real fast. On top of that, it's dirt cheap. I probably drank less than five dollars of alcohol the whole night. The truly evil part, however, is the hangover. I'll get to that later, though.

So, I had a good Friday night. Some us went out to a couple of the bars that English teachers hang out at. It was good fun. I got the see "highlights" of the Indians/Yankees game. It was both nice to see some clips and depressing to watch the Indians get beat in the face by the Yankees. Even from across the world, I still hate you, Yankees! Anyways, we went to another bar, danced a bit, then came on home. One of the teachers who was with us was from another school, and he spoke seemingly good Korean. Having him around definitely helped with cab driver and such.

So, my Saturday is pretty boring, since I spent the whole day in my room recovering from my Friday. I was amazed at how bad the hangover was; I've been far more drunk in my life, but that was the worst hangover I've ever had by at least a factor of 10. Seriously. So, my Saturday was watching whatever I could understand on T.V. and sitting around in my room. Sunday was a bit more productive (I took a walk, used the internet, etc.), but not that entertaining to write about. So, that's my weekend.

As of now, I'm killing some time before my first class. I'm teaching some little Korean chillins how to write stuff. Specifically, I'm teaching them about the magical world of writing about senses! Ooooooo, I hear you say to yourself. Oh, yes. We'll see how it goes. Unfortunately, writing is one of the less-entertaining things to teach, so I hope I can figure out how to spice it up a bit. Suggestions are, of course, welcome. Well, that's it for me. Catch ya later.

J.T. vs. The 35 hour day

Well, I’ve successfully made it to Korea from the glorious state of Ohio. I figure that’s as good a time as any to start a new blog. I know I promised everybody I’d try, so I’ll do my best to keep it fairly updated.

Yesterday morning I got up, threw my last couple of things into my suitcases and backpack, and headed out to good old Port Columbus. I was a bit cranky from not getting much sleep; I spent that night visiting the Factors (Happy Birthday, Ben!), double-checking my suitcases, cleaning up my room, etc. Mom and Pop took me to the airport and Dad met me there to say goodbye. I accidentally went to the wrong terminal, because it’s the terminal I usually go to. *shrugs* The security woman looked at me like I was an idiot, but what are ya gonna do? I successfully did get on the plane and headed off for my connection in Atlanta, then on to Korea.

On the flight to Korea, there was a screen that showed some T.V. programming and a few movies. When it wasn’t showing those, though, it showed the flight information. It also had a little graphic showing the flight path. I hate flying for a long time, so I was especially irritated when I realized that the flight path from Georgia to Korea went back and passes the Ohio border. I hate it when that stuff happens. It was alright, though. The flight was mostly just very dull. There were three movies, and I watched two of them. One was “Fever Pitch,” and it was alright. The other was a Korean movie, I think. It was subtitled. It reminded me very much of the Chinese movie I’ve seen, especially that it was mostly quite depressing. There were two kids with severe Cancer, and they both took turns almost dying a lot. Both of them ended up dying, but one was just brought back by the doctors. The other one might have actually died once before, as well, and been brought back by a Tarzan-man with his magic canteen water, but I’m not really sure; the directors left that question unanswered. Other than the movies, I watched some video clips, mostly of “Norm,” on my computer until the battery gave out. I tried to sleep, but it was hard when I was sitting by several obnoxious kids and the only woman on the plane who wanted her window shade open. I didn’t sleep much on the plane at all.

Well, I finally got there. I had to go through immigration twice because I didn’t have the right forms the first time. I exchanged by money, then proceeded to wander aimlessly looking for my cabby. Another cabby tried to get me to ride with him, but I stood firm in the fact that I had no clue where I was going, so he probably couldn’t take me there. I (miraculously) found my cabby and we started the trip to Daejeon. He spoke very little English, so when things seemed like they were going wrong I was completely left in the dark. I think we got lost once. Also, when we got close, the person I was supposed to meet to let me into my apartment and such wasn’t answering her phone. I thought that was probably the case when he looked annoyed and had to make about a dozen phone calls, but I wasn’t sure until we did finally get a hold of the person and she told me that her phone was acting up.

The woman I met was one of the bosses at the school where I’m teaching. She showed me around briefly, introduced me to a couple of the other teachers living in my building, and took off. It was about 10 o’ clock p.m. I realized that, with the extra 11 hours of flight, this was my very first 35 hour day. I also realized that wasn’t cool. So, I unpacked a bit and hit the sack. I was pleased that my bed wasn’t as small as the director of the school told me it would be, but I was also irritated because that means the sheets I bought won’t fit. Well, they won’t fit right, at least. The happiness to have a sizable bed won out, though, and I drifted off to sleep.

I got up today earlier than I needed to, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. My bed is very comfortable, but only really if you’re sleeping on you back. If not, it’s way too firm. I had turned in my sleep, since I normally sleep on my side, and I woke up with no arm. Well, it felt that way, at least. It was so numb that it took about a minute just to get to the part where it feels heavy and starts to hurt. It hurt for about and hour or more, actually. Anyways, so I straightened up my room a bit and watched some T.V. There is some American programming, so I was lucky. And there’s CNN! It’s CNN international, so it’s a little different, but close enough J I watched some CNN, the end of the Mets/Nationals game, and an episode of “That 70’s show” I happened upon, then I took a shower. This was a lovely experience, since I don’t have a shower, per se. What I do have is a tiled bathroom and a shower head. That’s right, if you shower in Korea, you do so right in the middle of your bathroom, and it just runs down a drain in the corner. I promptly broke the showerhead holding clamp, because I’m cool like that. It was quite a different experience. Afterwards, of course, your bathroom is wet for half of the day. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to dry it down, or something… Eh, I’ll figure it out.

I walked with one of the school teachers to the school. She’s named Erin Perrie, and she’s from the northern wonder that is Canada. She showed me how to get to the school, and we talked about her experiences and such (which, for anybody who knows me, knows that means I was too busy talking to remember how to get to the school). We met up with Jeff, another of the Canadian school teachers, and went off to lunch. I had so good Korean food that I can’t pronounce. Erin ordered it for me. It’s the stuff you get that had the fried egg on top… Eh, I can’t remember. Anyways, I enjoyed it.

That’s it for now. I have class observations and such this afternoon, so I’ll have that to write later. Until then, I’m doing great and I hope all you peeps back in the States are doing well, too. Later!