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Published: March 5th 2010
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The traditional village Let's first start discussing my current teaching situation, because while I've talked quite often about my weekend adventures I haven't talked nearly as much about lecturing; of which I spend the vast majority of my time. Teaching started off great, but I have quickly found that I am no longer valued like I once thought. At the end of the day the Hagwon (English private school) is a business, and in Korea, everything is shallow, superficial, and appearance-based. I mean, for example, I would say at least 50% of the population has undergone at least one plastic surgical procedure; albeit mostly a minor double-eye lied fix. Still however, most of my Korean co-teachers have asked me, or discussed something about their face or bodies they want to change. Even more, every single item of food you buy comes nicely wrapped in a box with a bow; every car you see on the road is beautifully washed and no more than 2 years old. This is all to say that Korea is a perception based country that resides in the superficial, and not in the deep or practical nature that most North Americans are accostomed to, or at least a little. I'm
in no way saying this is wrong, but simply a different cultural reality that is foreign to me. So while at the beginning I thought I was a valued team member, its simply not the case. My over-controlling boss, who in an Orwellian fashion fixed every classroom with a snazzy CCTV camera, has me working 6 straight classes every day followed by two 10 minute phone conversations to students at home. This leaves me with absolutely zero time to prepare any sort of quality lecture so I'm forced to just 'wing it'. This both frustrates me because of the sheer amount of classroom time, as well as the fact I'm not really anything more than a fill in who goes through the predetermined cirriculum. It 'looks' good that i teach so many classes; it 'looks' good that we have a snazzy voice recorder to record phone calls; it 'looks' good that we have a neat program where kids can record their homework and then the grade automatically generates and sends a text message to their parents. It 'looks' good that our hagwon is open 80% of the national holidays. But thats all any of this is. It's perception. Our programs
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Patrick picked up a BB gun at the store. hahaha are riddled with holes and glitches;both the staff and students hate that we are open during holidays (imagine coming to private academy on one of your countries few holidays), and that's just it. Our school is a business with money as its chief concern, and our director wants to appear great and hard working, but it's all simply a superficial mask to hide all the problems and ineffeciences.
Anyways, enough of the venting! Last weekend was fantastic. A bunch of us went to Andong on Saturday and Gumi on Sunday. Andong was about a one hour bus ride outside Daegu. It's famous for a traditional village complete with thatched roofs and clay furniture. The small village is dug into the side of a mountain and you scale it as you walk down the road. It was extremely peaceful, refreshing, and educational to see how Koreans once lived.
Sunday we went to Gumi and went mountaineering again. While the mountain is definitely the most 'touristy' one I've been to, it's touristy for a reason. It's beautiful. About half way up there is this beautiful waterfall that empties into this naturally made gratto which will be awesome in the summer.
To the summit is about 1000 meters, so slightly higher than the hike a few weeks ago. The highlight of the climb was a small detour that we took into a cave. We had to scale the side of the mountain which, I have to admit, felt very dangerous. There were some ropes to help us up and down, and a small chain, but if any of us slipped, we'd probably go right under the chain and off the rocky cliff. Once we turned the corner and got our breath back, we were in front of this expansive cave with a Buddhist shrine built into this natural cubby area. It was gorgeous. There was incense burning, candles going, and vast statues. It was quite a site seeing old women and men undergoing this trek with every piece of hiking gear imaginable, and once arrving at this cave shrine, taking it all off, and praying and bowing numerous times. After an ardous climb to the top, we came across a huge temple again built into, or I should say on top of the mountain. This temple is literally within the clouds and was breathtaking. Their views, when not cloudy, look out
over Gumi city. Talk about a cleansing experience. It is so nice after a long week in the city to get out into the country and climb some of these gorgeous mountains Korea has to offer. Anyways, thats it! I believe we are going ATV'ing somewhere next weekend. I'll keep ya'll posted. Enjoy the weekend!
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Vanessa Lupton
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One of the Pastors that I work with has a son who is teaching in China and he has said pretty much the same things that you have regarding the schools. He told his mom ( my boss) that he often just feels like the " pretty white boy" because most of the teachers in his school have already taught the kids english, but the parents don't think that the chinese teachers know the language well enough so he is pretty much there to make the parents feel better. He ended up switching to work with the after school programs that his school offers because he feels that he's able to give more to the kids that way.