The Beginning of the End.

Ashi. If one more thing about my winter schedule changes, I'm more than likely going to fly into a homicidal rage. At the moment, I'm still taking shit as it comes. I was told my teachers' classes were to be conversation-based -- design a subject to be discussed and discuss it. For ninety minutes. Fine. Whatever. No one wants to actually speak English, but I will find a way to force these (adult) people to do it for an hour and a half straight. And I'm fairly certain that I did. But I had just finished this, and was preparing to go in and do my last English camp class, when a call came into the office for me.

Apparently, the nameless person on the other line thinks it will be good if I show the other teachers Powerpoint presentations about how I teach the students.

Fucking... what? What does that even mean? I thought these were English classes, which I guess you can kind of argue I'm somewhat qualified to be teaching, but this is starting to sound like teacher training -- in fact, that's what the woman called it. First of all, I'm dead certain these actually qualified Korean teachers are not going to take kindly to me trying to tell them how to teach. And secondly, they fucking well shouldn't either. I'm so new at this it's not even funny -- I don't have a degree, I don't have any formal training and I don't know jack shit about the Korean education system, compared to them. Also, it's less than twenty four hours before I'm supposed to start teaching these classes -- if you wanted something that goddamn specific, you shouldn't have left the topic field as "open" on the paperwork.

This is insane. Actually insane. Everyone warns and warns and warns that you have to, have to learn to go with the flow if you're going to survive in the Korean education system. And I think I really have come a long way in that department. But less than twenty four hours notice is a fucking deal breaker, as far as I'm concerned. I'm taking in my original lesson plan tomorrow. I'll also take in what we did in class today to show them if they want to see it, and I'll be happy to talk about the various things I've noticed work best for getting the boys to speak and whatnot, but I'm not doing any fucking Powerpoint presentation -- that's for sure. I don't know what the obsession with Powerpoint is anyway. And I'm not even going to attempt to tell these teachers anything about their own profession.

Jesus.

Other than that, it's been a good day. I had my first conversation in Korean with a random ajusshi on the street today. I think I did pretty well. I was able to understand and answer his questions regarding my name, where I'm from, where I live, how long I have been in Korea, if I am an English teacher, where I teach, that I only speak very little Korean, and that yes, it is really cold. There were a few sentences that completely bypassed my comprehension level at this given point in time, but overall, I'm pretty proud of myself.

The boys were brilliant today. I'm sad to see camp end. There may be a "to be continued" to that, though.... I think Coteacher is plotting against me from home on her vacation. But I'll wait until I have more details on that to discuss it. For now, I'm relying on the god-like status of the VP and his word being final (that word being that today was the end of English camp).

One mild success for Sungsengnim today -- there will be five boys in next year's classes who no longer say that their assignments are "finishee".

And I was actually able to get into some more high level stuff with my "low" level class today, regarding the structure of asking and answering questions, and how there is no other plural form of "you" in English. It's good to feel like I'm actually teaching something, for once.

And now, I present the comics:





by: Casanova, aka Sanguk.





by: ADHD, aka Joonyup.




by: Little Man, aka Taesoon.





by: Irritated Older Boy, aka Byunghyun.







And my absolute favorite, "Love in the Desert" by: Deadpan, aka Sungjik.