Finished teaching, but

My last day at ECC was Monday. You know that. I've since had a couple of days off in Seoul before travelling to Vietnam. Right now I'm in Da Nang in a pretty nice hotel with a private beach, in-pool bar and resident Filippino pop stars.

Since I finished I've been unable to shake off the teaching shackles. Perhaps I just exude peadagogy. First, on Wednesday I had a good long chat with my coworker's Korean girlfriend and talk got to the improvement of her (already pretty conversationally flawless) English. Then, in Hanoi, I was sitting on a bench in a park having just finished my book when a couple of Vietnamese girls came up and announced that they were learning English. Apparently it's a hobby of theirs to approach westerners in parks with questions about English. I had 4 hours to kill before my bus of hell departed - I was happy to be Michael teacher again.

Then, that evening upon finally boarding the aforementioned bus, I was at it again. I was the last to board and there was only one seat left. I was sat next to a German girl, who, being ein Deutscher you'd correctly assume could speak English almost fluently, but she insisted on my acting as corrector. Then we tried speaking German and it was just embarrassing. Then, as the night turned into morning the aircon stopped working and everybody got very irate.

Anyway, Filippinos are serenading me, away I go.

Vagina

I'm a fan of kimbaps, rice and stuff rolled up in a seaweed sheet: this has already been established. My favourite variety is tuna, or in Korean, 'chamchi'. Written down it looks like this: 참치. The Korean symbol for the phoneme 'ch', you can probably work out, is the one that resembles the pi symbol with a hat on. The Korean symbol for the sound 'j' is the same but without the hat, and obviously 'ch' and 'j' have a similar phonetical resonance.

Now. I talk to my kids about food all the time, so kimbaps are frequently discussed. And to my incomprehesion, a couple of times my response to the question 'what's your favourite kimbap?' has elicited giggling. What? Tuna? What's funny about tuna? Then one kid was kind enough to spell it out to me: the Korean slang word 'jamji' means... that's right, vagina. Yes, I've unwittingly confessed to eight year olds that I enjoy eating vaginas.

One class went sick on it. Really sick. I walked into class one day to find this on the board:

The on the second picture you can also see 'jjijji', translatable into English as 'boobies'. I think those are meant to be nipples.

I'll be home in ten days. Ooh.

Saying goodbye

At time this job has been damn near untenable. The way the school is run coupled with some indescribably asinine co-workers has driven me on a daily basis to at least a slight deviation from the usual blithe equilibrium I maintain. At worst I've been moderately indignated. Hey, I don't get that angry. The kids, however, have made this year worth doing. Except when they punch me in the balls, then I do get pretty shouty. Some have a bigger place in my heart than others, but I'll miss them all.

Every day I teach a class of geniuses, genuine future world leaders. They're batshit crazy, but they're brilliant. This is a video of Sunny saying goodbye to me today.

Teachers' Day

Today is teachers' day. How good is that?

I received several gifts including: shower gel, hand lotion, assorted vitamins, bubble bath (strange for a country devoid of baths) a mug.. with a lid, candy, several flowers and cards and, best of all, a W50,000 department store voucher.

And of course I left resenting the kids that didn't get me anything. Cheapskates. 

My haul

Naming Kids

When I signed up for this year I did some research into the hagwon education system. By research I mean I read some blogs similar to this one. One thing that stuck out was the fact that these teachers were at regular intervals given the opportunity to give their students English nicknames. Great, I thought, and began drawing up a mental list of potential names. I'll admit this first list contained names such as Bing, Michael Jr and Bjork. 

When I arrived it was mid-term so no new kids were immediately forthcoming. Several months later, though, still nothing. The teacher that started at the same time as me, Sean, had by this point bestowed names on around twenty kids, and didn't hesitate in reminding everybody of this fact. Hourly. So at the end of February the new batch of kindergarten babies started and I assumed there'd be swathes of Korean 6 year olds for me to anglicise the shit out of. Nope. Not one. 

I came close a couple of times. Another teacher taught a brand new afternoon class once - eight kids, named them all - then the very next lesson the schedule changed and I took over. I had a kid come up to me and say "my name's JK," as in the initials of his Korean name Jin Kyung or something. I told him balls to that, you're Kurt. His mother was having none of it, so JK's still JK. Another kid turned up, excited about getting an English nickname, a feeling shared by me, and we settled on Leslie, after my dad. He liked it, and went home with it all over his books. Next day he came in with stickers covering the name I'd given him. His mother had renamed him Leo, because it was more Catholic. Gah. What about Pope Leslie?

This never happens to other bastard teachers. Sean even named a kid Bowie and it stuck. Bowie! Which, to be fair though, is unspeakably awesome. 

Institutionalised Alcoholism

I saw in the English expat magazine recently an advert for a teacher recruitment website. It listed the features and benefits they offered, and showed a picture of a large group of westerners who may or may not have been recruited through the site, in a bar, downing shots.

Now, in my opinion that's a bit wrong. You wouldn't advertise any other job with a picture of your current employees getting trashed. It's not professional. It's certainly true, though, that a lot of teachers view their year in Korea as a paid jolly, seeing nothing wrong in spending unconscionable amounts of time and money on hedonistic pursuits.

Now, like most people, I enjoy a few drinks - but not during the week, at least not excessively. I know of teachers who've rolled in in the morning, unshowered, wearing clothes from the night before, having had little or no sleep, smelling of soju. I can't fathom how this can be done: teaching dozens of screaming under sixes with a hangover? No thanks. I've done it before, in previous jobs, jobs where I can sit behind a checkout or answer phones for eight hours, jobs where I don't have to use my brain, but not when I'm working with kids - it's not fair to them, or to their parents who've paid hundreds of thousands of won to send their kids to our hagwon.

And it reflects badly on other teachers. And I had to get that off my chest.

Last Video

A video that shows why Jasmine's so adorable.

I have no idea why she's laughing.

Goodbye Cambridge 1

Having been given our new, savagely mangled and extended schedule for the next four months, lectured on how our school is going to shit and it's nobody's fault but ours, and braced ourselves for the mess that will be the first day of the new school year tomorrow, we, we being all the teachers, both Korean and foreign, are feeling a bit deflated. One Korean teacher even quit. With immediate effect. (That means more sub classes for the rest of us. Mmmmmmmm.)

More on that though once it's up and running, or at least up and floundering. Now is a time for reflection on the last eight months. My sadly disbanded homeroom class, Cambridge 1, have all been sent off to elementary school. Most, as I said, are coming back for afternoon classes as of tomorrow, but I won't get to teach them. Bastard Chris teacher will, and he's not displaying the relevant emotions, namely those akin to finding an oasis in a desert of piss: relief and tempered joy. 

When I first arrived here I wasn't their biggest fans. They were loud and uncontrollable, they spoke far too much Korean, and they didn't seem to take to me either. Gradually, though, as we progressed through the neverendingly repetitive Wake Up series of English books, preceded by a daily phonics lesson, I fell in love with them. Here's a tribute.

Eunice

Eunice, loud, bossy, uncompromising, was the early leader of the class as far as I could see. She had been placed, wrongly, in the more advanced MIT class but moved down to Cambridge when she couldn't cope. At first I thought she was a bit bored with the work, but as time progressed realised she was just lazy, and a lot of her potential wasn't reached because she failed to put in anywhere near enough effort. Her tests may have needed improvement, but when she wrote 'I love you teacher' on every page, how can you hate her? While her spelling and writing remained on a low improvement arc, her speaking ability, already pretty good, was getting ever better, and... 

Most memorable moment: When I found out we were going to perform a play for graduation, there was only one lead. Eunice, as the mean Princess Miserella, a role that could've been written for her, was awesome. It's a shame she's quit ECC outright now, she'll never be back.

Nathan

Nathan was quiet and a bit dim last summer; now, he's a bit less dim and a bit more of a troublemaker. He's a troublemaker in that he actively looks to start fights with anyone close to him - it's not a mischievous thing, I think he likes causing controversy. It started to become a real problem around the beginning of the year, and I really began to dislike the kid. To give him credit though, after some repetitive but stern words from me and the manager he sorted it out. Plus I've never seen anybody so happy to receive a Christmas present - as you can see from the picture, it was a god damn triangle.

Most memorable moment: Trying to work out the answer to 8 plus 5. The video to which is here.

Eric

Eric was the smartest kid in the class and he undoubtedly needed to be learning at a higher level, but did he ever know it. Often suffering from big fish in a small pond syndrome, (if that's a thing, it might be) he was regularly dismissive of his classmates' abilities while striving to show his own relative superior knowledge at every given opportunity, which meant everyone else ended up resenting and ostracising him. It was only through the resurgence of another student (see below) that he ended up showing more humility and, later, having more fun. Still, an excellent student to have in the class for obvious reasons, also on Valentines' day he gave me some soap. And I mean good soap.

Most memorable moment: Setting me Korean homework off his own back, then giving me a sticker when I got eveything right.

Paulie

Paulie began life under my tenure as a rowdy, sulky, spoilt bitch. He's good friends with Jack and together they wrought havoc on my early lessons. Paulie was the brains of the operation, if not in his grades, his ability to sense an opportunity to create mischief was inspired. Even his name - initially just Paul but suffixed with an -ie in line with his Korean surname, Lee, to differentiate from the Paul in Cambridge 2 - conjures up images of Italian American gangsters. Paulie's misbehaviour, though, was refined. He was able to mastermind great crimes, such as calling the teacher 'poo poo gas' or stealing Nathan's eraser, with sincere affection. Paulie was probably the second most affectionate student in the class, playful and constantly declarative of his love for his students and teachers. He endeared himself to me equally with his affection and his already well developed sense of cunning. He's damn photogenic too.

Most memorable moment: When, through his silver tongue and powers of persuasion, he managed to take 70% of all the big, famous 'soccer player stickers' I had sent from England from other kids throughout the kindergarten.

Jack

The other half of the Paulie and Jack crime duo, Jack was less affectionate and more thuggish, the brawn to Paulie's brains, but still, he had his moments. After my last lesson, totally out of character, I received a crumpled piece of A4 paper, upon which was scrawled: To Michael Teacher. I like you. So, I like you. From Jack. Jack's feelings are usually kept under wraps, so this was a nice surprise. He was sporadic in his classwork: at times he really couldn't be bothered, at others he'd come from nowhere to win the spelling game (where points are awarded for letters) with words like "fishbowls" or "playgrounds." His final exam marks weren't the best, though, so I hope he can cope with the step up to elementary school. He's there with Paulie, so he will at least have a partner in crime.

Most memorable moment: Bit of a crude one, but memorable. One day in October he shat himself. He carried himself quite well afterwards.

Heather

Heather left ECC just before Christmas to go to America, though she came back for the graduation last weekend. Heather was a great student: smart, loveable, friendly, but quiet and hardworking. Around November, Heather was involved in a bit of a love triangle, or possibly square or pentagon. Paulie and Jack were both became a bit besotted with her. Eric had always been friends with her as she'd been one of the smarter ones in the group and Eric could relate, but those nascent kindergarten feelings of love both seemed to hit Paulie and Jack at once, and soon they were falling over themselves to offer her erasers, pencils, their hand in marriage. Eric, the fouth corner of the square, then became a bit jealous and turned his envy towards the two boys in the forms of intellectual superiority. Paulie and Jack responded with primal insults and it got a bit dirty. The pentagon... or even pyramid, I suppose, is formed by Jasmine, who at some point declared her love for everybody. Strangely, though, when Heather left, everybody stated coldly that she meant nothing to them and they hated her. Still, there were emotional hugs all round when she came back at graduation. Fickle kids.

Most memorable moment: Paulie and Jack devoting themselves to her on her last day, Heather blithely lapping up the attention.

Sarah

Sarah, I think it's fair to say was the weakest student in the class. Over the course of the eight months I taught her, there were only minimal improvements in speaking, reading and writing, whereas everybody else made middling to astounding gains. In spite of this, though, in our open lesson, where the parents came to watch me teach them about a subject we'd practiced for a month and the point was to memorise and enunciate clearly your section of the lesson script in the right order, she was exemplary. Despite underwhelming in rehearsals, she did brilliantly in the class play too. She tried hard most of the time, but you could tell things went over her head a lot of the time, and with kids like Eric in the class, I couldn't help her as much as she needed without disadvantaging the others. I'll miss her though, especially since she inexplicably quit with one week of lessons to go, and I wasn't able to say goodbye.

Most memorable moment: Revelling in rare praise after on open day I singled her out as the star performer, and showered her with stickers and candy.

 

Jasmine

So we come to the gem of a student that every teacher dreams of: Jasmine is very clever, funny, interesting, adorable, well behaved and affectionate to the point of stalkerish. She's unique and I will unabashedly admit that she's my favourite student by a mile. When I arrived at ECC in July, she was very quiet and spent most of the lessons in a world of her own or half asleep, her head on the desk, not participating in the lesson. This lethargy and apparent slow-wittedness (as mentioned on here before, she was once stabbed in the face with a pencil and didn't flinch) led the foreign teachers to facetiously speculate that she was perpetually high. After the first couple of months, though, she started to come out of her shell. I started teaching them phonics and Jasmine was suddenly putting her hand up in class. Her spelling improved no end. She'd come out with priceless one-liners or tangential anecdotes about her dreams, or tangerines. She told everybody on a ten-minutely basis how much she loved them, swooning all the while. When Heather left in December she stepped up and assumed the position of dominant female and set about catching up Eric. By the time of the final exams, she was top of the Cambridge class academically, even beating half the students in the class that had been learning English for two years. I still say that Eric's the smarter kid, but grades-wise Jas was just pipping him. 

Most memorable moment: So many, but number one was when she came in one day and told me about her boyfriend from tae kwon do class. "He kissed me... on the lips!" (giggle) (swoon) "And then here.. and here.. and all over. Mmmmm." Bear in mind she was born in 2002. Don't be alarmed though, I'm pretty sure that's all that's happened. She's referred to Paulie as her boyfriend since, and as mentioned above, declared love for everybody, including me. She lists her dream occupation as mother. She's going to break some hearts, that one.

Bye, you adorable little bastards!

Nobody likes a quitter

Today is Sunday, and we've just been noraebanging for the past couple of hours. Which means lots of soju and shouting along to such classics as Wuthering Heights and Careless Whisper. Have to teach in the morning. Ow.

A week last Tuesday a new girl arrived at ECC to replace Rachel, the Teessider who went home this week. She'd been in contact with our co-worker and her fellow Canadian Laura for months, and she'd talked to everyone else on facebook prior to coming, so we expected her to slot into the ECC way nicely. On the Wednesday, the day after she arrived, I was out with a friend when Laura had a phone call from the new girl's mum, saying she'd had a bit of a freakout and could they go and see her.

She was staying in the same love motel as I did the first couple of nights, in Suyu, so a couple of guys went down to see her. They knocked, there was no answer, they went home. Apparently she was asleep - at half past 9? The next night we persuaded her to come to see us in Eunhaeng Sageori for some galbi, but she barely ate anything, didn't drink, and generally looked pretty fed up and it was more than clear then that she wasn't going be around much longer. We called our school's manager to tell her what was going on and the next day a replacement was actively sought.

Sure enough, she didn't stay. We invited her out at the weekend but she declined. We invited her out for dinner during the week - nope. She's made it clear that she hates Korea and wants to get back to Canada as soon as possible... and the reason for this? It's "too foreign" here. It's hard to get into her head to know what she must be thinking. I mean, If I'd decided to quit after two days here, my friends would ridicule me, I wouldn't be able to look my family in the eye, it'd just be embarrassing. Not only that but this contract termination means she has to pay for her flights, out and back, which is more than £1000. If she'd worked even for a month she'd have broken even. I can't fathom the mindlessness of deciding to live on the other side of the world for a year when you blatently don't want to. Yeah, if I sound a little bitter, here's the reason: we have to sub her classes until a replacement can be recruited. Which could be a while.

She's been teaching here since last Tuesday and will do tomorrow, we assume, but her flight is on Tuesday. The atmosphere in the office slightly sour, and obviously so. Like I say, if she'd stayed for a month not only would she be fine financially, a new teacher could be recruited, we'd be happy, and she might even have had a good time. But that won't happen when you lock yourself in your room at the weekend eating low fat Pringles, doing laundry and weeping. Which is what happened this weekend.

Let's hope the new new person isn't such a disastrously weak human being.

Math(s), pyjamas, stabbings, Snikcers

Now. This video may make me look like a bad teacher. I'm not, really. But I do find this kid hilarious. I used to teach maths every Tuesday and Thursday with my kindergarten (technically I don't now because my schedule changes from Tuesday). And I say teach, I mean I give them books and they generally get on with it. When they need help though I'll help them, and this guy needs lots of help. This was a pretty simple problem, so I wanted him to get it without any help. He got the previous answer without much trouble. This is his attempt to work out eight plus five.

If you want to know what else has happened, read on. On Friday we had the annual summer pyjama day. Pyjama day is a day, well, a morning, when everyone wears pyjamas and plays games and stuff. I mean in our school, not the whole of Korea. It was quite fun, if a tiny bit weird. Not as weird as the birthday celebrations the school puts on though. I'll talk about them whenever we have the next one. This was a game.The girl with the balloon on the left is Jasmine. She's one of my favourite students because she appears to be stoned out of her tree 24/7. High as a kite. Last week another girl got angry at something, and apparently unimpressed with Jasmine's imperturbably chilled out nature, attacked her with a pencil. Missed her eye by about half a centimetre and left a clear graphite mark. Was Jasmine bothered? Was she balls. Having dealt with the offender I asked Jas if she was OK, and was met with a nonchalent smile and a wistful 'mmmmmmm', and she got on with whatever she was doing. If only they were all like that. Hmm. Oh yeah, right at the end of that video, that's Jasmine saying 'I love you!" presumably to her own hands.

The kid on the right is Noah, who, to quote a colleague, is "a total badass who's already cooler than I'll ever be" and he's probably spot on. He's already a hit with the ladies, and his shirts are just awesome.

And finally, this is the greatest pencil case ever. :D

Cat

I was all alone in the staff room on my lunch break today when two Korean teachers came in and told me they needed my help. They asked me whether I was good with animals. Perplexed, I was led to the boys bathroom where a stray cat was hiding under the sink, scowling at all who dared approach. OK, so we had to get it out, but the first thing that I had to ask was how... HOW it got there. We're on the top floor of a seven storey building. Six floors in English money. The only ways up are by lift, which would've necessitated someone working on the same floor as me pressing the button for the top floor and sharing the small space with the mangy feline, which didn't happen, or the stairs. Can you imagine a cat climbing seven flights of stairs? Err. Mysterious.

So, the attempted removal. I will make clear now that I hate cats. I don't trust them, with their accusing eyes and constant licking. I made it clear that if I had to grab it and it scratched me, even a bit, I wasn't to be blamed if it was defenestrated. This one didn't trust me either, especially when the failed attempts to coax it out resulted in my suggestion to spray it with water. I thought it would run out of the door when hit with the cold shower. It didn't though. It only enmeshed itself in the pipes under the sink and made it clear it wasn't going to move. So, after more and more people attempted to speak to it and/or prod it with sticks, the door was locked and this deterrent sign applied: Which is just awesome. And incidentally, it wasn't 'a big cat.' It was a cat-sized cat. That sign implied it was a cougar.

What I described above happened at noon. When I left at 6 the cat was in the same inextricable position in the pipes. Ow. I'll bring you cat updates through the night if necessary. Unless it disappears first, or dies. It'll probably die.

Is there a KSPCA?

Video

I'd forgotten that I made this video a couple of weeks ago. This is the class of brainboxes I have every afternoon. In order of appearance: crazy Mark, super-smart Kelvin, shy Jackie, moody Jenny and Clara, for whom I can't come up with an apt adjective. They're so much fun, and they work hard too, usually. I sometimes have to use my ninja tae kwon do moves on Mark but he gets on. On Monday Kelvin was teaching me about the American revolutionary war. I mean come on! You're Korean and you're nine! He couldn't grasp the fact that I was pro-William Howe, and called George Washington a pussy. But what are you going to do?
Video:

Settled

Since my last post, some things have happened. Today, I bought a fan. I have an air conditioner, but it's positioned around the corner and at the furthest point from my bed, and is aimed down the side of the fridge. I also started teaching properly, but more on that later. I cooked my first meal on my gas dual hob. Unfortunately, it was no gastronomic masterpiece. Here is what happened: there was some food on my shelves when I arrived. I assumed, since the previous occupant had moved out the day I moved in, that this was for eating. No. It was off. Some of it went off in 2006. I only found this out after I'd returned from the Korean Tesco - Home Plus - for basics. Bread, beer and Frosties. So I arrived home, expecting to cook up something tasty, like noodlesoup or stuff, and was confronted with a feast of expired food, and... Spam. I hadn't eaten all day. I made Spamghetti.

I did, luckily, buy some hot sauce, though. Hot sauce makes everything edible.



Last night, the six ESL teachers at our school met at the local meeting place, a 24 hour convenience store on the main street, with the intention of going for something to eat. We didn't, in the end. We just had soju, and went to noraebang. Noraebang is Korean karaoke, only you hire a cosy room just for you and your friends, and soju is a little green bottle of hate. More on both at a later date.

Teaching. I've had two full days of classes now. Mixed bag. I have a class in the morning - twice in a row - who try my patience like nobody has tried my patience before. They are shits, the lots of them. They're either fighting, running around, shouting at each other in Korean and talking back to me, or the other extreme, lying prostrate and motionless on the floor or crying. They're by far the worst. Every other class has its redeeming features. I have the pleasure of talking with some ridiculously advanced 5 year olds twice a day, and a class of mischievous but extremely intelligent and focussed-when-they-need-to-be elementary school dudes, who I have to say are my favourites. Or as they'd say: favorites. I can't get them to spell the correct way. They laugh at how I say tomato too. Curse the North American dominance of the ESL business. It's 50/50 at our school incidentally (although the other two Englishers are a Liverpudlian and a Teessider. Poor kids. They already look confused..)

We've not had the sun here for a few days, and the smoggy-ish blanket of cloud enveloping the city is making for humidity akin to that of a sauna that has just won the award for being the most humid sauna in Sweden. Muggy. Tomorrow I'm going to go exploring. I have my tube map, I have my Oyster card-type-thing, and I have a Palinesque sense of adventure. I'm going searching for a three-holed adaptor plug!

Hi Seoul

I'm in Seoul. I'm currently stealing wifi, which is a positive, but - this is the negative - I have no power, so I'm squeezing every drop of energy goodness from the laptop's battery. Quick typing... I'm having trouble finding a Korean-UK conversion plug. I may have to wait until the weekend to get to downtown Seoul where western goods are plenty.

Odd that I should start the blog with such a trite thing, as in the just-over-48 hours that I've been here I've done more than I could have managed into a week anywhere else.

First impressions. Seoul is good. Seoul is humid, very humid. People are many. If you like lights, you will like Seoul. No stars here. First two nights I stayed in a motel in Suyu. Pretty shoddy, but, paradoxically, came with a 42" plasma screen TV. Today I moved into my proper apartment in Junggye, which is also shoddy, but it's mine, and it has everything I could need: toaster, sink, cupboards, shower nozzle, leather chair, hobs, air con, mezzanine floor with bed, 'fridge-freezer, a door, toilet, window, table, smaller table, non-functioning television, and a hammer. Yep. In a month somebody in a better apartment is leaving, so I can move to their place. Quick note on Koren hotel TV. Channel 89 appears to show soft core pornography, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can literally watch jiggling breasts and a hairy bobbing man ass while you eat your breakfast, which, as a novelty is fun, but.. thinking long term it's probably best that I'm out of that place.

Work is fine, so far. I had been observing lessons, but today I was asked to teach my first class alone. I say class, it was in fact one girl, in for her first ever lesson at our hogwon, who'd lived in Surrey for the last few years and was as a result pretty fluent in conversational English. Because I had to do what the book said, we talked abut Harley Davidsons. Mmm. That was fun. When I take my first kindergarten class tomorrow, that, I'm guessing, will be far more challenging. But bring on the hyperactive 5 year olds. I'm ready.

As I type, a cockroach has just scuttled over the floor and under my chair. I got him with a can of HITE, one arm of what appears to be a duopoly of Korean lagers, along with CASS: 'sound of vitality'. That is the tagline. Hite's, 'Clean, crisp and fresh,' is far less quoteable.

My co-workers are all cool. No psychos. I replaced hirsute Floridian Chris. They are mostly American and Canadian, and one girl is from Middlesbrough. Another guy from blighty is arriving in Korea tomorrow. He was supposed to be on the same flight as me. Simiar visa problems apparently.

I have more to say, and photos to post, but two things are hindring me. Battery life and time. It's midnight here and I haven't had the best of sleeps since arriving. Come back to find out how Michaelteacher gets on with the kindies. That is, providing I can find a UK plug adaptor somewhere in this country.