A Much Needed Wednesday

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Boy, oh, boy… just shy of one total month living in South Korea and things have stayed at about the same craziness level. I actually thought I’d have a nice and easy week, not have some of my classes because my school is preparing for an arts festival that will happen Friday and Saturday. As is the norm, what I thought would be, never really is. Cass, on the other hand, has enrolled in the ‘School of Hard Knocks’ and has hit a bit of a wall.

I would have had to teach a mere Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday until I discovered this is ‘open class’ celebration or something along those lines, which added on a two entire afternoons of observations and debriefing meetings that following. Tuesday, the dress rehearsal of festival lasted half as long as expected and half of my classes showed up along with a rescheduled staff meeting I had to attend. All in all, I put in another full week’s worth of work.

Cass on the other hand, did that much, and then some. Her school situation is hardly that of mine. Her co-teacher often seems bothered by her duties, the school’s office is far behind on many required things (such as money!), and has been having difficulties with some classes. My co-teacher, Mr. Kim, and I are nearly always together when I’m teaching, for discipline issues and Korean explanations. Cass’ co-teacher is also a head teacher and is with the third grade, always. Each homeroom teacher accompanies their class to her English class… usually. Of late, the students just show up without a teacher, allowing the students to take advantage of the lack of communication with their English teacher, i.e. our sweet little sugar muffin. This also adds to the lack of cohesion in teaching and just plain makes things harder. I’ve had some training in these regards which is itself hit or miss, but to make matters worse, Cass hasn’t. She even videotaped them during one of the lessons so that I would believe her, it’s crazy. It is all very frustrating for her and tough for me to hear. It has gotten better and she is tackling these problems by talking to the right people, so I just keep giving her ideas and encouragement.

Along those same lines, not only did she have to deal with kids attempting to throw chairs across her room, kids punching the heck out of each other (which happens in my school and nothing is said so I’ve concluded to turn a blind eye), her classroom teacher hitting the students with some type of switch or cane or something, she also had to sit through the open classes. These open classes are an interesting concept, they are like district inservices that happen all the time, literally, all the time. Teachers in my school not only have these for their own staff, but the ones this week were for lots of people, like numbers in the fifties! Again, they watch, and following them they critique your performance. Luckily, the first open class was taught by our friend we met last Friday, Reagan, who did a wonderful job.

With all these things happening, though, don’t be worried. Fear not, my friends, I have some of the greatest news I could send your way… I found a sport coat that actually fits me. I’m stylin’ I’m not one to lie about that, a funny story. After Reagan’s lesson and roast, Mr. Kim took Cass and I to our bank to get some numbers switched, or something. Our blind faith in this man is quite large, thankfully he has come through huge for us. (programming note… Cass’ teacher is absent from this story) We had some time to kill and were wandering around the market, somehow I mentioned that he always looks so good, the style here is great. Before I could even get those words out of my mouth he finished our errand, swept us into his car, took us to a discount suit shop twenty minutes away in Wonju, and had me picking out a nice jacket. After several gestures from Kim to the salesman indicating the size of my shoulders and a few laughs, he magically disappeared for a few minutes and came back with sweet silver jacket that fit like a glove. “Your size Korean is 120!” A sleeve lengthening later, and I’m in business, practically a local.

To illustrate the amusement of the situation, we went next door to a good outdoor shop I believe to be the Korean version of, Marmot since they had a small section in the back. It was a great gear shop, but everything was too small for me. Kim, again with the gestures, pointed at me. The salesman at this shop didn’t even answer, he immediately laughed and instantly pointed at the Marmot section which had ‘American sizes.’ But I got a jacket, and that is the moral of the story.

Of course, we then can’t leave Wonju without eating the famous local cuisine, Soon- dae (like Sunday with an oo sound). The best way to describe it is meat flavored spaghetti stuffed into a sausage casing, cooked, cut up and served with a kind of salty marinara sauce. I’m not going to lie, they were super good. Of course, we enjoyed the Soju, took in the Korean World Series (Doosan Bears verses the SK Waverens!?) and that was just what the doctor ordered.

I’ve been attending the staff meetings at the principals request, which is kind of funny, since what I understand at the staff meetings is nothing. It brings me to a funny point, we all go to boring meetings about stuff we already know, even in the U.S., and end up spacing out. I think I’ve figured out how to hit a couple REM stages with my eyes completely open. Every time I am attending one of these fun filled, action packed, edge of your seat meetings, I turn into a ghost. No, really, I can see everything that is going on, but am a non-entity; no one talks to me since they can’t, I can’t really offer to help since explaining things takes about seven times longer than actually doing the job, so it seems that no one really acknowledges my existence, but I’m there, much like Mr. Scrooge on his journey in the ‘Christmas Carol.’ I have had that thought a lot.

The school festival this morning was awesome. It was more like a variety show where every class had something to do, a dance, music, play, etc, as well as specialty acts, too. It took almost three hours. There was a lot of dance, clubbing, music with routines, one of the sixth grade teachers even busted out some breakdancing with his class. There were also many traditional songs, and everone had different costumes, the little ones were the cutest. The were sitting so nice the whole time, not ripping their costumes to shreds or anything like you would think. It was wild; this is the second time I’m just blown away at the talent of the kids in this school, and the teachers, as well. The whole lot of them play piano, sing, play the recorder, all kinds of stuff.

Anyways, I hope everyone has an awesome Halloween! I always liked the creativity of this holiday, or maybe just the candy, I never can tell. And by the way, Mr. Kim heard I was looking for an old guitar to pass some downtime, and... bam... the next day there was a dusty old thing sitting in his backseat (program note, Cass' co-teacher had nothing to do with anything throughout this blog)! Viva Daylight Savings!! I'm just throwing up some random pics I thought I'd share, enjoy. We’ll talk soon!

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Comments

[Brian Hagman]

Wicker- Looks like you and Cassie are enjoying yourselves. I'm sure the food and the culture have taken some time getting use to but it seems like you are making the most of it. Nice work with the blog. Keep up with the hard work! Hags