This week

This week was the departure of Jeff.  His departure menat that there would be one less whitey, therefore menaing that I am now representing one quater of the the English speaking foreignes in this town.  He left on Tuesday so we (all the whiteys) met up to say a farewell to him on Monday.  At first I was led to believe that we would be going out for a meal, which would then be followed by a couple of drinks.  However he was delayed at work and such, so we did not in fact go out until 9pm.  This was less than perfect for me.  I generally have no interest in a late night when I have work the next day, but I thought I would make an exception this time.  I kept a handle on the amount I was drinking unlike my companions, I could accept being tired at work, but not drunk or hungover.  The night lasted until about 2 am, but it was follwed by almost an hourt of faffing about as I gathered various items from Jeff's place that he was otherwise going to be leaving behind.  Although pretty tired when I got to bed that night, I was pretty happy.  I had obtained a variety of cooking implements and dishes, but most importantly of all I had got my hands on a blender, which now allows me to make soup :-D

The next day at work was not very difficult at all, due to the fact that the students in the 6th grade were taking a country wide exams.  So it was probably the perfect day to follow a late night. I only had the one class.

Thursday

Thursday was abysmal in the morning as ever. However rather than the standard crap that I have to go through with my co-teacher, it was a different ste of events. This would be our last class before the summer holiday, therefore she wanted to allow the kids to just play games and watch movies.  I am by no means adverse to this.  However having taught in my school for seven months I have finally got a feel of what the kids like generally.  She had brought some word games for the kids to play, where they had to arrange scarbble like tiles into words.  Now that's all well and good, but the kids I teach on a thirsday morning are generally, not able to do such activities.  Also they have a tendency to lose focus easily (most probably because they never see any discipline).  Therefore when she produced them for the first lesson, I knew they would go down like a lead balloon, but she never listens to me, so I didn't even try.

It took a good two minutes before they had scattered them all over the floor and another set had succesfully made a sort of mosaic, nice but completely missing the point.  In an effort to regaing some control she then wrote a bunch of words up on the board, which the students could then recreate.  However that move therefore removed the very point of giving them the letters, because they just copied the words and then gave up.  They had no interest in it.  Finally having given up on that she moved to have me put on a movie.  I knew exactly what would happen next, they would indulge her for a short period and then the majority would get bored, while a small percentage tried in vain to hear the film over their companions acting out loudly.

It happened just as I had predicted.  Now it may sound a little like I was just waiting for this to happen and had had no intent in averting it.  However at the start of the day, she told me her intent...rather than ahead of time so I could properly prepare.  But still I had a go I created some games that I know the kids would at least mildly enjoy and it would tug at their competetivness.  Plus it would also still practise some English.  Yet my ideas were shot down, by the 'all knowing all crap' co-teacher.  Therefore rather than argue I just sat back and watched chaos ensue.

She actually made it worse though, perhaps 20 minutes into Harry Potter she decided that she didn't want to watch it and instead put on another film, that of course finally turned off the final behaving kids because they had been removed from the film they were actually trying to follow.

Well all of the above for Thursday occurred in just two lessons, that being with the 3rd grade.  I still had another two more lessons to get through with her.  These next lessons being with the 4th grade.  There would be more kids to keep a handle of.  I just hoped that she would at least have learnt from her mistakes in the first two lessons and leave her word game alone and just let me present the games I had put togetehr. However I was of course proven wrong.

She started by telling the kids there would be no lesson, which they all cheered to, then she brought out the word game, to which most students looked at blankly as if she had just told a big fat lie, because to them, no lesson means, no speaking English.  So just as before the letters quickly dissappeared to the floor and the kids started to go psycotic.  To try and restore order she went ot her back-up, a film.  Yet for some reason she chose Harry Potter again, a film which we had already seen the beginning of and she had rejected part way through. At this point I entirely gave up on any for of logic making it's way into her head.  So I just grabbed some Uno cards and went to the back of the room and try to attract as many of the kids who didn;t want to watch the film as I could.  This worked ro some degree, those who wanted to watch the film could and those that didn't could play with me.

However this only successfully worked for half of the lesson and for the second half it descended into chaos and by this point I had sort of died inside and I just settled playing with the kids until the bell rang.

After school I brought in some ramen and icecream for my 6th graders so that we could just have something to eat, relax and talk. It is by far my favourite class and I am willing to shell out for something a bit different to sort of thank them for being my saving grace on a Thursday afternoon.

Friday

This day was fairly easy int he morning as it normally is, however the afternoon held a few suprises.  The first being that my 5th graders actually turned up and in force.  But of cousre they didn't actually want to do any work, but I saw it through.

No, thing that was a 'suprise' or so to speak and pissed me off was what my co-teacher had to say in the last minutes of my working day.  I had packed up my room and locked up too.  I was just about to leave to get my bus, when my standard co-teacher told me that there would be a staff trip on the following Tuesday and if I wanyed to come I would have to tell them there and then without any further knowledge.  I deemed this ridiculous and bargained a day in which to consider it.  So I left at that point, I had my shoes on and my foot out the door, when she caught up with me again and told me that I needed to let the school I would be doing my summer camp at know what I would need and what book I wanted use.  Except that I should told them by yesterday.  But because she had forgotten to tell me it was basically now my problem.  So I left school in a fairly fould mood.

I, thankfully had already sorted out my summer camp problems, but the fact that she did not tell me until it was too late is the thing that pissed me off.

Saturday

It is Saturday now, I have not done a great deal today, but one thing I did do was come to a conclusion about whether I wanted to go on the staff trip.  I have decided that I do not.  Although I can just about stand a mela with my co-workers a full two days without any form of control in my life for that time.  There are various factors that I had to weigh but my overall findings were that I would spend most of my time being ignored.  Now I am not saying that I dislike the staff at all in fact they are generally very nice people.  But I do not think it would be good for my netal health to suffer through two solid days of very little human interaction and any that was given to me would likely be forced.  Well that's that, I'm up to date.  I have a little holiday coming up following this Tuesday, so maybe there will be more ranting on my blog.

*One Final Note* Although I may rant a lot about Korea and Koreans, it is generally because my experiences are generally not all that good.  However I know other people that enjoy their time here much more significantly I do.  I do not hate it here, but I do not have nearly as much of a good time as they do.