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4/15/2005
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KLB - Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire?
It was quite an unceremonious end to Cathy's run as assistant today. We didn't tell the kids anything until the last minute of each class, a time when the only thing on their minds was jetting out the door. At the end of the day, I struggled for words. It was an awkward moment. She put her hand on my shoulder and said she really likes me and despite our difference she will miss me a lot, especially my sense of humor. "You, too Cathy. Good luck." And that was that. Basically, I felt nothing. Good riddens!
But, it appears I may be out of the frying pan and into the fire. Her replacement, Ally, started yesterday.
"You must be the new assistant," I said.
"New co-teacher," she interjected. "I am your co-teacher."
"Yeah, whatever," I should have said. "Can you run down and make copies of my middle finger? I have a lot of people I want to give them too lately. You can have the first copy."
She wandered around the classroom all day today, just like Cathy used to do. And she pissed me off, just like Cathy used to do. Especially during my third class, Class C. I had to check the kids' notebooks and I gave out an activity sheet to keep the runts occupied - a basic worksheet where they cut out labled household items and glue them in the respective rooms. I figured I'd let them finish before teaching the vocabulary, so I sat at my desk watching them, the first time I sat down all day.
"The kids don't know the words, Shawn," said Ally. "They don't know anything. What is the point of this? You have to teach the words."
After dealing with Cathy for so long, this almost caused me a heart attack. Already she's trying to tell me what I should be doing! I sighed and bit my lip. "Today is Friday. They've done a good job all week. I'm letting them relax and do this activity and I will teach them the words when they've finished. They're also pretty smart kids and I taught them phonics so they can read." Why do I have to explain this to her? Does she really see herself as a co-teacher?
"Oh, I see. I'm sorry."
During one of my breaks I went down to the office for a cup of coffee. As usual, despite saying hello in Korean, everyone in the office ignored me. They are such a warm bunch. Later I heard the vice principal complained that I forgot to sign out once last week. Is there a place where I can complain that he's a dick?
After school, as I was making a new seating chart for next week, Ally pulled up a chair next to my desk and started drilling me about my lesson plans for next week. "What will you be doing? What pages exactly? I have to know. Do you have a plan for theme day? What will you do? We have to make a plan. It's Earth Day this month. Bonnie said you have to do an Earth Day plan and blah blah blah," Oh my god, just go away!
She then handed me a syllabus that Bonnie put together. Bonnie said I should follow it exactly from now on. The funny thing is it includes a whole "new" daily phonics plan. What, she finally realizes phonics is important? I've been doing this the past 8 months!
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday I can't use a book and have to do these themes and whatnot, yet, as usual, no materials have been provided. Once again, I'm not making materials in my spare time. (This is a part time job, in case you haven't been following, that provides a full time E-2 visa but pays by the class). I've been through this again and again. I'm especially not volunteering after this petty BS of combining classes this week whilst cutting my pay. And it's not as if Bonnie's not making money off this program. We have 60 kids. The tuition is 200,000 won per month. That's $12,000 in revenue every month with pretty much no overhead (no busses, kids have to buy the books, etc, etc). And this is only 1 of 8 school programs she runs. So what's with the pettiness?
Then I found out we have yet two more students starting on Monday. It used to be that kids could only join at the beginning of a semester. Now every few days it seems I have new kids. I say nothing, of course. I know it's all about money now. Still, would it hurt anyone to thank me for doing a good job and attracting so many new students? Hah! Right! Remember, they had a foreign-teacher program there before us that failed after a few months because the kids weren't learning anything. Here I am going on 8 months and seems to me I must be doing something right. Or am I? I really have no idea. This situation would make a fantastic episode of The Twilight Zone.
Actually I'm at my wit's end with all the BS. I don't know how I made it this long. I'm going to put in a month's notice on Monday and look into other options. Maybe I can get Julie doing what Bonnie does. That's certainly the better side of the stick, I would say.
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written by shawn matthews
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4/13/2005
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KLB - Half Day
There was a little mixup with payment for our internet connection. Turns out they weren't automatically debiting Julies account the last few months as we assumed, and so they cut off our connection yesterday. We called up and they gave us an account number to pay from the post office (you can pay most bills at the post office). After work today, I went down and forked over the dough. Now this is amazing. By the time I got home, 10 minutes later, the connection was back on.
I had a half day at work today and will have the same tomorrow. Turns out the school is taking the kids on a trip again, but as usual a few kids stay behind for whatever reason so I have to teach them. Now I wouldn't mind this if I had all 4 classes, but Bonnie decided to combine all these remainder kids into 2 classes. So, today I taught from 1 until 3 o'clock, two classes full of kids from different levels. Same thing tomorrow. Of course, I don't get paid for the missed classes either - though I'm absolutely certain Bonnie will get the same payment - and I have to travel 90 minutes one way just to basically baby sit, since I can't go ahead with my usual lessons. Oh, and I heard another complaint from Bonnie, who came in yet again last week to watch me, that our kids speak Korean too much. Yeah, of course they do. They're 8 - 10 years old (in the class she watched) and sit in groups for 50 minutes. It's a miracle they don't speak Korean more than what little they do each day. I swear I'm about ready to flip Bonnie the bird too.
I guess she said some other things too but Cathy, seeing me turn red, quickly changed the subject. Just as well. These kind of comments get to me because I have never worked so hard to teach English before and have never been so effective, yet I never get any positive feedback from Bonnie or the school (luckily I do from the parents sometimes) - just petty, irksome complaints.
Well, the sun is out and I'm home early. Now that I've finished A Civil Action, it's time to pick up a new book, so I'm going across the street to Rodamco Department Store.
Speaking of books, I've got a big stack I want to unload. No use keeping around books you're never going to read again. Any suggestions as to what I should do with them? I was thinking of selling them to a used bookstore, but for what little they're likely to give me, I may as well give them to a library or something.
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written by shawn matthews
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4/11/2005
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KLB - iPod Mini
Yesterday Julie and I went to Yongsan, the electronics shopping district, and she picked herself up a shiny new 4 GB iPod mini. She'd been planning to get one ever since Apple slashed the prices down to $200.
Now, I recently read in Time magazine that Apple controls 60% of the market share for mp3 players. You wouldn't know it if you live in Korea, that's for sure. I've personally never seen a single Korean using one. Still, I expected them to be readily available at Space 9, the new, huge electronics building connected to Yongsan station. Wrong. Though there were zillions of mp3 players for sale, hardly anyone carried iPods, especially the iPod minis - or so it seemed.
Julie started asking salesmen at random if they had them. It was weird. Some of the clerks said no outright and seemed almost offended we even asked. One guy, an arrogant asshole, reluctantly pulled one out of hiding, but immediately and vehemently pitched the iRiver as a better product. The guy wouldn't shut up. He almost had her convinced, but I kept telling her he was acting suspicious and to stick with the iPod which she came for. When she told him she had to think more about it, he actually scolded her for wasting his time. "If you leave right now after all the effort I made, that will be so rude." We shrugged and walked off. Later, out of desperation, Julie almost went back to him to buy the iPod. I wouldn't let her, though, after the asinine way he left things.
Such a friendly place that Yongsan market is. As we walked by a couple of other rude, aggressive salesmen, one of the jerks told Julie in demeaning Korean, "There are so many Korean guys - why you with a foreigner?" and started laughing. When Julie told me what he said, I was so pissed off I turned to him and stuck my middle finger in his face. He dropped his head and looked away, fortunately. I realized this probably wasn't a smart move on my part - what, with all my recent posting about not fighting. Damn, that made me angry though. What a way to make a sale, you idiot.
Finally we found a nice guy, more friendly and helpful than in-your-face, "Buy! Buy! Buy!" He calmly explained the reason behind the iPod anomaly. With all the price cutting Apple has done recently, there's little profit incentive for the salespeople. He told us straight out his profit on the mini would be just $10. That's why everyone is pushing other brands and not displaying Apple, though they still carry them because foreigners always insist on iPods. I have no proof to his claim, but it seems a reasonable explanation. He was such a nice guy and so polite to us both that we ended up buying the case and battery charger too. To our surprise he charged us $10 less for these accessories than the iRiver-pusher had quoted. I'll probably pick an iPod there up myself soon. I figured I may as well wait and test out Julie's first. So far we both really like it, though it's a little awkward having to use it through iTunes.
Well, time to go to the health club. Believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to working out.
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written by shawn matthews
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KLB - Shopping When You're Hungry
My mother always said don't go shopping when you're hungry. Sure enough, she was right. Famished, I went to Walmart the other night and decided upon making a western dinner: fried chicken, asparagus, mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh rolls.
I've never seen gravy here and was shocked to find it at Walmart, two lone cans of Campbell's Chicken Gravy sitting inconspicuously on the bottom of the soup shelf. That's what gave me to idea to make the dinner, actually. Then I decided I wanted premium butter - well, non-Korean butter anyway - for the potatoes and rolls, so I picked up a small tub of Australian Bega for a whopping $8. The can of asparagus was also expensive.
I got everything for dinner but kept throwing pricey western things in the cart and ended up with hardly any groceries and a bill for $50. I should have just bought a sandwich.
Anyway, I started getting excited about the meal. Julie's never eaten a chicken dinner of this style in her life, something that if my grandfather found out would probably cause him a coughing spasm and severe chest pain (in addition to being a master chef, he's 80 and smokes 4 packs/day). It even surprised me. Wait until she tries mashed potatoes and gravy and toasted rolls and butter and asparagus!
So, I made the dinner. You might guess where this is going. Julie, though she tried her best to indulge my enthusiasm, really didn't enjoy the meal. At first this bugged me. How can she not love this food? I felt let down. Then I remembered the first time I ate Korean food, kimchi chigae (kimchi soup), and how strange it was to me and the pressure I was under to express enjoyment and gratitude. I understood how she felt. I was also frustrated myself with the chicken dinner. It was good, but it didn't taste nearly as scrumptious as I had longfully anticipated.
Like Julie said later, all the butter and gravy with the mashed potatoes and rolls and the greasy chicken felt too thick and heavy. I agreed. It did seem too much. My stomach hurt right after from the shock of it all. "Do Americans eat like this every day?" Julie wondered. I thought back to my life before Korea - long before kimchi and rice - to when I ate meat and potatoes or some type of fast-food crap every day. "Yes, unfortunately we do. And I can't remember how I could have, now that I think about it."
Of course this wasn't the first time I realized my taste in food has severely changed (for the better I must say). When I went home two years ago I found myself laboring to eat the big meals my grandfather prepared every night like clockwork - always some thick kind of meat, ham, steak, hamburger, chicken and then, of course, potatoes and bread and butter - butter, always butter, and/ or gravy on everything. Having gotten stuck there for some months after breaking my arm and being unable to return to Korea - I slowly found myself re-adapting to that diet (not to mention gaining weight), but I still longed for simple Korean dishes.
Sometimes I would venture downtown, precariously driving my 5-speed Honda Civic one-handed down icy streets, to the Korean store and get some groceries to cook. While my mother enjoyed most of what I prepared - especially mandu guk (dumpling soup), my grandfather would have none of it, and seemed to take serious offense at the offer. He would let us eat and then cook something for himself. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks, I'm afraid," he would repeatedly say.
Well, as I was saying, the chicken dinner failed miserably and I won't be eating the likes of it again, probably, until I go home. Now, don't get me wrong - I still enjoy a good pizza and the occasional burger and steak. But for the most part I'm happy with my Korean diet of rice, soups and vegetables.
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written by shawn matthews
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