Seoul, Korea - September 17, 2003
Well, whatever excitement I had upon arrival back to Korea is now gone. I'm a bit bored of this place once again. Seven more months and a little less than US$5,000 in credit card debt to get rid of. If I wasn't in debt, and had that amount in the bank instead, I'd be half-tempted to get out of here. As it is, I have the situation that I have, so I must endure with it.
My job.. hmm.. have I said much about my job? I teach English on the Internet. I have a webcam, a headset, and web-books which are online. I can draw on the pages and have all kinds of extra added features to play with. The job itself isn't too bad, and the hours aren't bad either. In addition, I get my own studio apartment with the gig. I can't think of a few things to complain about.
However, that being said, work isn't that much fun. The day does actually drag on. We teach for 20 minutes then have a 5-minute break, but the breaks go on too fast. Also, talking to the students is too boring. They always have the same problems. Basically, they don't want to talk and they just enrolled in a language class which means they'll have to talk to learn anything. They generally try to speak the most minimum possible. This seems like no big deal, and while optimism and dealing with it was fine for quite some time. At this time, I just don't feel like dealing with it. I'm sick of thinking up new questions to answer over and over and over, new ones every lesson, just so they can answer 'no' or 'yes' or 'i don't know' or whatever other one or two word answer comes out of their head. Very few if any have inclination to practice or use their English.
Another general observation I noticed today outside of work which applies to work as well. Some of the smarter students are capable of saying 'what?' at times, many are incapable of even saying that without reading it from the webbook. Anyhow, many of them just say 'what?' for no reason, and I noticed this today in general. Everywhere people are saying 'what?' in Korean to everyone else, and they have to repeat it several times until the other ones finally gets it. I noticed this as a technician was telling one of my kids in Korean to turn up his microphone. I also noticed it in the store as one person was buying something. Later I went to order pizza and watched the same thing happen between the pizza workers. During that time while I was waiting for my pizza, the TV was on, and I noticed it came up several times on some game show in Korea. So, in short, I've learned that not listening to questions properly isn't actually a function of teaching English and their vocabularly not being strong enough, but its actually a part of being Korean.
As to my day-to-day life in Korea these days. Its fairly boring. I'm in a part of the city that isn't too close to anything interesting. In addition, I finish work fairly late at 10:40pm at night. So that makes it much too late to go out or to meet anyone. So I find myself instead going home, getting online, or watching movies online, and then sleeping up until I go to work the next day. This current lifestyle isn't working for me, as its too isolating and too boring. However, that being said, I still will probably continue my workplace as for one, its a big bonus at the end of the contract, and two I need the money. Three, I haven't used any of my 10 days of vacation yet - of which I can only take 5 days at a time, and four that I really need to clear up my credit card debt before I can even consider or think of any other choices or options. So, it looks like I'll have to make deal with the situation I'm in, and just keep working at it. SEVEN MORE MONTHS TO GO!!
Next Journal Entry in Korea:
October 5, 2003
You can email me at:
Wintermoon2@yahoo.com