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Published: June 21st 2011
Pool King
The excitement is palpable.Dear Blog Readers,
Exam fever has hit the schools of Boeun. The stress of the inevitable pressure is etched on the faces of my students in the form of acne. My third grade boys and my high school girls have got practice exams throughout the week and I’ve been conducting the English speaking test with my first and second graders. Initially I was worried that my speaking test would fall into the trap of having the students regurgitate nonsense from an already predominantly nonsensical textbook.
The speaking test that my co-teacher and I wrote had some pretty common expressions from the textbook as well as some material from the lessons I’d been teaching. We had some absolute gems from the students though:
Me: Do you like English?
Student: No.
Me: How many meals do you eat every day?
Plump student: 10.
Me: What makes you happy?
Student: Nothing.
Me: What makes you sad?
Student: Mother dies.
Me: How do you come to school?
Student: I’m 13 years old.
Me: How long does it take to come to school?
Student: Seven fifteen o’clock.
Me: What do you want to be when you are
Drinks
Whiskey and coke early doors. older?
Student: I want to be 15 years old.
The last one was particularly brilliant. I felt sorry for one first grader. After hoards of trembling, nervous and petrified looking students coming in one after the other, this one student came in clutching his stomach. I asked if he was ok. He said he needed the toilet desperately and told me to hurry up!
On the way back home one of my tiny first graders had stopped at the traffic lights. He had one of his friends on the back of his bike and he was giving him a “croggy”. (Now, I have since realised that “croggy” is not universal. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have stretched too far out of Dunnington, York, England. I remember having a really funny conversation with Betty, Stephanie and Laura about this after we went for some food but can’t remember what their names for a “croggy” were. Please comment on this blog to refresh my memory! I think one of you called it a “backy”! ) Anyway, his friend on the back was about twice his size so the student says, “Simon Teacher. He is very fat. I am very
Pool Queen
Betty preparing for a pool onslaught. small. I JUST CAN’T STAND IT ANY LONGER!” It was absolutely hilarious. He said it with such gusto. I think he should be an actor when he’s older…or 15 years old.
We’ve been baffled by the Korean sense of time and logic this week because of two very notable occasions. The first one was on Sunday morning. Sunday is a weekend and it is also the day of rest. Restee? There is no such word in Korean. At 7am. That’s right, 07:00, 7 in the morning, on a Sunday. We are awoken to the almost idyllic sound of a pneumatic drill and heavy duty machinery tearing up the road outside our apartment. I felt like telling them to go and finish off the road they’d started tearing up outside my school ten months ago before starting a new project!
The second event happened on Wednesday night. It was 11pm. That’s right, 23:00, 11 at night, on a school night! Outside our apartment is a car horn. It isn’t just beeping the odd soju drunken fool stumbling down the streets singing an Arirang. No, it’s a car horn on continuous. Like a broken record, it just carried on for
Pool in the basement
Chris looks on ominously. about half an hour. You’d get the odd twenty second moment of silence where the owner changed key and carried on with it. What baffled us even more was that we were stood on our balcony looking out at the culprits and there was not a single person who had joined us to stare or shout at this hooligan. Not one person in either our block or the block opposite us had even ventured out to see what the problem was. This was the most bizarre thing. We began to question our sanity and whether it was just us who could ‘hear’ this deafening noise. Either we’ve gone mental or we are surrounded by the world’s deepest sleepers.
A lot of you ask about how Laura is doing. She’s fine and having just as good a time as I am. She has, however, one day of the week which she dreads. It’s Monday. It’s partly because it’s the start of the week unsurprisingly, but a larger portion is because she teaches at one of her rural schools. Her co-teacher there is a creepy old man and I want to tell you about some of his antics because, in hindsight,
Remarks
Phew, nobody left us any remarks. we’ll look back at this blog and remember him, “Ah, do you remember…yes…what a prick.” with a raised smile on our faces hopefully.
Where shall we begin? We won’t name and shame him on here so we’ll just call him Mr Chay. Oh wait, that is his real name. Oh well. He tries to use Laura to practice his English but he does it in a really creepy way.
Firstly, like turning up at her normal school completely unannounced because he wants to do a lesson on Harry Potter even though he, and the kids, have no idea who Harry Potter is. Laura asked her Korean co-teachers at her normal school if this was a cultural difference she was missing. They said no. He was just being weird. Secondly, Laura’s reading a book on her Kindle. Mr Chay comes and sits right next to her peering over her shoulder reading the book with her.
Thirdly, in the classroom, Laura will ask the students what they did at the weekend. They’re elementary school students so she’s only wanting, “I played football.” or “I studied English.” Instead, Mr Chay tells them to answer in Korean to him so that
Gatu
Gatu on the prowl. he can practice his translating skills to tell Laura what they did at the weekend, “At the weekend, Minsu went to the banks of Songni river to cook samgyeopsal whilst perusing her magazine and passing the time with idle chit-chat with close friends and family in the picturesque surroundings,” for example. He also fills out the elementary school textbook whilst Laura is teaching it on the computer so that the students can just copy the answers down as he gets a kick from the sound effect telling him he’s managed to complete the simple past tense for play.
Fourthly, Laura’s not fluent in Korean but she’s not the complete oblivious idiot that Mr Chay takes her for when “translating” back to the students what Laura has just said. For example, when teaching about family members, Mr Chay doesn’t believe Laura when she tells him that we don’t specify whether our grandmother is from our mother or fathers side of the family. In Korean, they do. So Mr Chay tells the students in Korean that we do specify by saying, “our paternal grandmother” or “our maternal grandmother”. Another example being when he asked Laura what it is called when you
Giselle
Giselle being cheeky. Gatu hot on her tail. pull out plants which are harmful in the garden, Laura replied with, “We call it weeding.” Mr Chay doesn’t believe it. He tells the students, “They call it demolishing the plants.”
Lastly, and this is the icing on the cake which has resulted in this week's rant, is his attempt to get Laura to privately tutor a middle school student. He begins with, what Laura instantly twigged as being a leading question to something bigger, "Do you like samgyeopsal?" Well, who doesn't? He later asks, "Will you teach a middle school student privately?" It is illegal for any native English teacher with an E-2 visa to privately tutor anybody. Laura tells him this and thought that would be that. Oh no. Not for Mr Chay. "No, not for money, for samgyeopsal." As though this would be a perfectly acceptable situation. Laura kindly refused this most generous offer. Mr Chay then goes and gets the principal of the school to come and 'chat' with Laura via Mr Chay to try and convince her that this would be viable, and perfectly legal, option. After refusing again on the grounds that she's not a complete idiot, the atmosphere was frosty to say
The bins!
They've found them! the least. A frosty atmosphere on a hot and humid day in Korea.
I’d like to leave you with this nugget of gold that was shown to me by my third graders last week. This man is called Choi Hong Man. Man by name. Man by nature. He’s a pride of Korea. He stands at a paltry 2.18m and weighs 25st. As a result of these statistics, when he was at school and asked by an Native English Teacher what he wanted to be when he was old, he replied with “erm…a kick-boxer”. Good choice. However, Hung Man wasn’t finished there, “…and I want to be a singer.” Don’t believe me? It gets more ridiculous. His face is so ugly that it makes onions cry. The Korean’s haven’t let him off lightly either. He’s dating a supermodel (unbelievable) and they have teamed up to create a band, aptly titled, ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Still don’t believe this lunacy? Here’s a YouTube video for you to
enjoy.
Tink and Laura
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DAD
non-member comment
Croggy
comes from' Crossbar' i.e.to sit legs either side or female like side saddle on the crossbar of a man's bike(ladies bikes don't have crossbars)