KLB - Pay Day!
Bonnie from the agency e-mailed me today about a couple of things. First the good part, my pay statement:
S T A T E M E N T
Name : Shawn Matthews
Account # : Hana Bank 462-910069-49207
Date of Payment: February 8, 2004
-Salary Amount W3,520,000 (Korean Won)
-Income Tax : -116,160 (3.3%)
-Residential Tax -11,616 (10% of Income Tax)
-Transportation : +50,000
Total : W3,442,224 (Korean Won)
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It was a hard month, mostly because of my assistant, but it was really worth it. That equals $3,225 net by today's exchange rate for a month's work. I think I'd have to make at least $4,250 in the states to bring home that much in a month - if not more. I wish I could have that scehedule every month (minus Cathy!).
Now the bad part. Included in her e-mail was a letter responding to mine. I had written her to let her know I would continue to work there for the second half of the year (remember I have an option to quit after 6 months in my contract). I didn't say anything at all about the grievences I experienced in the past 5 months, either. To my disgust, I got this back:
Thanks for making the decision to stay at the same school, however, I feel
that I have few things to be changed in keeping our classes successfully.
1. You are sitting on your chair during class. I want you to check students
to check if they are following you well and writting things down correctly.
2. You are reading newspapers or books sometime during class.
3. You are the main teacher and you are responsible for 100% teaching during
class. I am little worried about Cathy's involvement in leading activities.
4. I expect more preparation for the class.
5. Teachers are usually get the school at least 15 minutes to 30 minutes
prior to the first class. I know you are coming from the distance but that's
why I made additional tranportation arrangement.
I truly know that you really like children and amazingly good with them, and
I really appreciate that. However, my position cannot hold the things to be
fixed to make our class go on for a long time.
It would be wonderful to have you keep the contract for another sememster in
accepting my suggestion just because students love you in class. But at the
same time, I need to keep the quality of learning and class that I promised
to school, students and parents.
In summary, I would like to keep you at the same school with some changes or
I need to replace this position from the next semester. Maybe the whole thing is caused from the long distance but it was your decision to work at that school and my decision to work with you.
Please tell me what you think by mail sometime this weekend since I won't be
available this week at all. It will be so much work to replace and train
somebody new again but I am paying you the highest pay rate than everybody
else but I am having problems.
As I read this, I wasn't sure whether to be angry or to laugh out loud (after all I was still giddy about the pay statement.)
Obviously Cathy's main function (besides annoying me) is to spy and report back to Bonnie. I am not sure how I will reply to the e-mail, but it will probably be a simple, polite "resignation letter" - that I've decided not to work there after all. Not because her demands are unreasonable, but because I hate working with someone in the room who reports everything I do to my boss.
For now, here is my side of things briefly:
1. You are sitting on your chair during class. I want you to check students
to check if they are following you well and writting things down correctly.
I have no idea where this is coming from because I rarely sit down. Sometimes, after the long trek to work (90 mins with no seat) and teaching 2 hours per class, I did sit down when the kids were working independently. My legs were tired! However, since most of my class has been phonics and speaking, 90-95% of the time I was on my feet. You have to be.
2. You are reading newspapers or books sometime during class.
I've already gone through this. When the kids were taking tests or busy I would glance at the newspaper or a book - mostly during breaks. I personally find nothing wrong with this, but I did stop doing so because of Cathy's reaction. Obviously Cathy had reported it already to Bonnie. Sheesh! Anyway the verb should be past tense ("were").
3. You are the main teacher and you are responsible for 100% teaching during
class. I am little worried about Cathy's involvement in leading activities.
Nobody ever told me exactly what Cathy's role is. Once in a great while she teaches a game by explaining directions in Korean. She never teaches lessons - ever. So, again, I don't know what this is about unless it's because Cathy complained about having to teach games sometimes? - or perhaps a student told their parent how fun Cathy teacher is? Who knows but it's ridiculous.
4. I expect more preparation for the class.
This is typical. I get paid by the hour to teach and don't get paid when I miss class, but I'm expected to go in on my time for free. Simple solution: pay me an extra hour or two each week for preparation time. Or at least give me a day off with pay now and again.
5. Teachers are usually get the school at least 15 minutes to 30 minutes
prior to the first class. I know you are coming from the distance but that's
why I made additional tranportation arrangement.
The additional arrangement she's referring to is the 50,000 won transportation bonus. It costs me almost double that. It still takes me 80-90 minutes every day to go to work, same to get back. That's a lot and I refuse to leave any earlier than 90 minutes before I work. I get there 5-10 minutes early on average. I think Cathy is capable of greeting the kids as they come through the door. What else does she have to do besides spy on me?
Well, I let that out. Thanks for reading. Now it's back to counting my moola and playing Prince of Persia. As Julie said, I have to calm down and relax awhile before I respond to that e-mail. My first reaction was to write back 5 of my own requests, including even higher pay (just to be funny) and a new assistant, a ride to work, etc..
I truly know that you really like children and amazingly good with them, and
I really appreciate that.
She should have just left it at that...now for her "it will be so much work to replace and train somebody new again"...wait until that new person works awhile with Cathy. And the poor kids. They really enjoyed my class because I make learning fun. Maybe they will get lucky and the next teacher will be good at teaching and also at work-place politics, being able to balance the two. I'm good at teaching, I've realized, but I've long known I can't tolerate a lot of the BS involved with it.
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written by shawn matthews
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KLB - Slow Days on the Blog
I'm back, sorry for the delay. I woke up in the middle of the night on Wednesday with a bad fever. It knocked me out. By morning I was shivering and sweating and it felt like a truck ran over my body. Because of how quickly it came on, I thought maybe I had food poisoning - but I didn't really feel sick to my stomach. I just had a bad fever. Man, that's the worst feeling. I kept poor Julie awake half the night. In my delirium I started ranting about all the poor people who suffer in the world and how I am such a selfish person, and then I felt guilty about my family and on and on. Phew.
All in all I missed work for two days. That's a lot in Korea - but I had Julie call so she could explain in Korean just how sick I was and to add legitimacy to it (doesn't it always feel like you're lying when you call in sick even if you aren't?) Cathy took it well. The fever actually broke on Friday morning but I was too weak to travel the long trek. Plus I probably wouldn't have been able to make it through the day. I ended up feeling weak and run down until yesterday. Now, luckily, I feel great again!
Today is Tuesday. In Korea this week is So-lar, the Chinese New Year, and we have the week off. We were going to go out to a rented house in the country but we had to cancel. I guess we're not going to be doing much as far as travelling because Julie actually has to work one day on Friday (isn't that ridiculous?). It doesn't bother me that we're not doing anything as I'm just happy to be healthy. It's amazing how quickly you can go from feeling fine to feeling like you want to die to feeling normal again. Having a fever makes you appreciate your health more.
I've downloaded, burned and tested the following games for my Xbox:
Mercenaries
Tiger Woods 2005
Prince of Persia - The Warrior Within
SSX 3 (Snowboarding)
Rocky
Rocky Legends
X-Men Legends
Fable
Star Wars KOTOR 2
The Incredibles
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 2
Kingdom Under Fire - The Crusaders
Ninja Gaiden
Dungeon and Dragons Heroes
Lord of the Rings - The Third Age
I can't believe it either. With DSL, E-donkey and Azureus (Bit Torrent) I got all these games within about a week. The problem I had before with them not working was because of the burning speed (you should burn them at the slowest speed possible).
I don't feel as guilty for copying games in Korea as much as I would if I lived back home. Here almost every game is over $50 because of taxes, whereas in America I could get most of them for half that. I would like to actually buy Rocky and Rocky Legends to support the maker, Ubisoft, and I promised myself I will if I see the games here. As you know, I'm a huge fan of Rocky 1 (not the sequels) and being able to train with Mickey (the chicken chase is hiliarious) and see recreated scenes from the movie, etc., is very enjoyable for me. Also, they ingeniusly icorporated the inspirational theme music "Going the Distance," which comes on just before you're about to either get knocked yourself or knock down your opponent. If you don't remember, that's the music that comes on when Rocky goes down in the 14th round against Apollo Creed, when Micky tells him to, "Stay down! Stay down!" - a quick shot to Adrian in the back as Rocky claws his way back up - ("Apollo can't believe it!")- and it's pure movie magic. That's possible the greatest scene every created in film.
Anyway, as you can see I have my hands full with all these games. My favorites so far besides Rocky are Mercenaries and Ninja Gaiden, but I haven't really had a chance to play the others much.
Another reason I haven't been blogging so much, besides the fever and now having so many games, is because I sold my camera. It's not as fun blogging with no photos. I can almost see potential readers clicking to my site and clicking away - turned off by the seeming sea of text, unknowing what a rich resource of pics lay in the archives.
I kind of regret selling it because it's not as easy to get a new camera as I planned it to be. I just have no idea what model to get and how much I should spend -whether I should get a decent one for now or hold off and get one with good video functions down the road. After buying the laptop, DVD drive, and now the Xbox I feel guilty buying anything else too. I guess it's psychological - seeing that I spent the same amount on the Xbox as I got from selling the camera and the same amount on the laptop + drive that I got from selling the PC. I haven't actually spent anything extra yet - plus the Xbox games have been free. Still, for some reason, I just feel buying a camera at this point is going over the top. Weird, isn't it?
Just in case - if any of you are going to be coming to Korea soon and have the means to pick up a camera for me from the states (they are much cheaper than here) and would let me pay you for it when you arrive, send me an e-mail. It would be nice to be able to post pics again.
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written by shawn matthews
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