Goodbye to the Scholarship Class

This week was the last class of the death-march "Scholarship" class. This class is called "scholarship" for no discernible reason - the kids in it spoke almost no English and really had no desire to learn it. They are all two-year certificate kids and none of them will need a bit of English once they graduate.

Then there's the fact that this class is a four-week, three hour a day job. That's pedagogically sound!

Still, the kids were all friendly and on the last day we reviewed for the final, watched a movie, and I bought a couple of pizzas. Then we took a group shot with the half of the class that showed up.

The girl right behind me to the right had a crush on me (she was teased mercilessly by her classmates about that). Now she goes off to one more English class, before graduation, and some other teacher to have a crush on. ;-)

Anyway, good kids considering the horrible schedule BPU put them through.

False Economy at BPU

So, deep in the bowels of our office-building is a small reprographics office which contains one Canon copier and one Duplo machine. And a new, and not so swift copy-dude (the previous one was sharp as a tack and fast). The "rules" are that under 30 copies are to be made on the copier and over 30 copies are to be made on the duplo machine. This applies as a "per page" rule, and not in terms of total copies.

So if I make 31 copies of a certain page it goes on the Duplo machine, but if I make 29 copies of a 20 page document it goes on the copier.

This has to do with some economy of scale thing that I am too doltish too understand, because I don't get that last example.

Today the copier was down and someone came in to make 12 copies of 5 pages. The copy-dude refused because the copier was broken.

The instructor kept making the point that she needed the handouts for her class.

The copy-dude kept making the point that he could not make them because the copier was broken and the job didn't require 30 copies of each page.

I thought the obvious thing, "ok, ask him to make 30 copies." But then again I thought the copy dude might go mad if she pulled such an obvious switcheroo/fraud on him.

But after 3 fruitless minutes of argument, my solution came to her mind. "Alright," she said, "I need 30 copies of this." And she jammed the papers at him.

He beamed. Not only was he not mad at her, he saw this as a victory for the rules.

So he made the 12 copies (60 pages) that she needed, and then went on to make 18 copies (90) pages that were immediately binned.

Somewhere, in Brazil, a rain-forest wept.

and wept harder when I asked for 30 copies of 10 pages of stuff for which I really only needed 15 copies.

Bizarre to me... the copy dude couldn't see past the number 30 and so, all day, reams of paper were copied to and then tossed out.

Slow Blogging Week and my Teaching Schedule

ME AND MY STUDENTS

I wasn't very attentive to my blogging as this was finals week here in Korea and all my students were in rare "ohmygodyoumeanIwillgetGRADEDforthis?" form....

As though the previous 14 weeks never happened and the syllabus had been written in Greek. My office mates are receiving the same kind of response, my favorite so far being the woman disputing an absence in week six (now 9 weeks ago) by saying, "remember, I was wearing a red sweater and red hat?"

I received about 100 emails, which all had to be graded, and since I gave participation credit for visits to my office hours I had about 40 office hour visits. All in one week and that in contrast to the 4 or so that I had for the previous 14 weeks. Students, if they're the future of the planet, we may just be doomed.

SCHEDULE

My schedule for summer is working its way into a better thing. I have been moved “up” to the English Learning Center and will be teaching an immersion class five days a week for three weeks. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be a bit of a drag.. a class at nine and then another one at one, but that’s a small price to pay. It will give me a chance to get my administrative work done while in my office. On the other three days I will get a chance to go to the gym and work out. The happy days of weight-loss by application of soju are just about over, so it’s time to pull the next card out of the deck.

Later in the semester I will be part of the “teacher training” program. This program gives local teachers who need to teach in English as part of their classes a chance to learn from us (supposedly the pros). I will be teaching reading and writing, which couldn’t be better if I had been allowed to create my own schedule. This should look good on my resume, either for Seoul next year or for the United States the year after.

There are several large empty blocks in my schedule and I note, with horror, that there are two kidz academies still out there. I hope these twain shall never meet (Note - I have already been give one week of kiddies to cover for an instructor who will be on vacation. Crap!).

I will also say that I had underestimated the amount of work that goes into class preparation. Teaching is still one of the easier gigs in the world, but my idea that it was just sauntering into the class and doing a bit of the old “Dead Poet's Society" shtick? That was a bad idea.

UPDATE ON ELBONICS

It looks like he OAF will NOT have to have elbow surgery which is splendid news. She does need to keep the cast on for another week, which bummed her out, but that’s very little time if everything turns out ok.

We plan to do a cheesy video this evening, so clear your internet-viewing schedule for that thrill-ride.

Food Porn

Friday morning BPU had it's culinary arts show. The theme was food of the world and I stopped by to take a few snapshots. The presentation was remarkable from the enormous breadcastle on entry,



to the simplest anju laid out just so.




And the "decorated crab" (about to attack part of Tokyo, if I read the remainder of the layout correctly).



There was also the excellently hideous as some kind of turkey thing was turned into a chihuahua who had lost a bitch-fight with a blowtorch



And, of course, as inexplicable as anything, the need for every public display of talent in Korea - the mighty diorama!



And two fish who were pining for the fiords..

Rounding Up the Week..

I've been an uncertain blogespondant this week. With the OAF landing and the first five-day work week in a few, I've been kind of busy.

I'll start with that photo over there on the left. This is courtesy of Koreabeat. It is a picture one of many low-income elderly couples, who were too poor throughout their lives to afford a wedding ceremony. So this week, in Seoul, they were given free wedding ceremonies. Couples had to be at least 65 and married for at least 20 years. Weddings in Korea are expensive and have a lot of mandatory "procedures" and these folks couldn't swing it.

Nice photo!

As to me, Monday was "Senior English Test Day" at BPU. BPU claims that all it's graduates can speak English, so at the end of their tour, graduates must take the test that proves it.

That the test is 5 minutes long (that is our upper limit) and contains such questions as, "what is your name?" is irrelevant. I did my time and it was ok. The Korean professor I was working with was a good guy, and he completely stone-faced the one or two students who tried to ask him about the questions I was asking in English. The unspoken rule of this test is, of course, you absolutely cannot fail someone and I was lucky enough to be working with Korean students who, despite being clearly scared, could work out reasonable answers.

A couple of the kids were even gamers. We asked them a question like, "what sports are absolutely horrific?" Not a single one knew the word "horrific," but about three of them figured out that all they needed to do was fit a sport into their answer ("I find soccer horrific.") and they'd be good.

Other English Profs had the students being fed answers by the Korean profs, and at least one English Prof failed multiple students. An unwise approach, and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on that. Some English Profs (EP from now on) here are unable to lose the model in their heads of English in musty halls contained in brick buildings covered with ivy. This is NOT what the Korean education system is about. The English requirement is largely a symbolic one (this result is a tangle of Korea's conflicted interest in English, it's focus on test scores as rubric for achievment, and the fact that Korea does not target those students who need English, rather it tries the shotgun approach).

Anyway, all my kids passed and it made me so happy that on Thursday I tried to teach my students some things. This resulted in my re-working my blackboard style.. mostly successfully... and that will be the topic of my next post..

.... after I take a quick shower.

In beer and soju!

WTF? Flashbacks Already? Mentor....

Part of the induction process at BPU is that you get a “mentor” whose job is to chaperone you through the difficult parts of acculturation and help you figure out the administrative and practical steps of teaching at BPU. My mentor was Philip the Great. He was, unfortunately, greatly absent when I landed. He was off on vacation, if you can call getting married a vacation. I think of it along the same lines as I think of that classic old Dead Kennedy’s song “Holiday in Cambodia.” But that’s just me.

On my third day, or so, in town, I received a message from the BPU office that my mentor was looking for me and wanted to have lunch with me. This message arrived at about 11:45 so, even if it was precipitate, it was timely. We went out to a lunch during which we discussed very little of work, and a very great deal about expatriates. Phillip’s wife, who was a Russian teacher, and not coincidentally Russian, showed up partway through and completely silenced the group of Russian students next to us (Global BPU baby) by speaking to them in their native tongue. Like me, they presume on their own incognitology.

The Mentor had a car and this was the best thing ever. We ran to several stores and purchased a crap-load of needed things. A pillow, for instance, and another comforter in case the swine at BPU felt like stranding me again in some cold, unheated place. The comforter purchase was interesting. The comforters were in piles and I chose the one that had the fewest emasculating cartoon figures on it. As we walked away with it, a store clerk buzzed up to us. Any store of any size in Korea has more store clerks than you can shake a pointed stick at. It’s a service economy (premised, I think, on extremely low wages) and I have already taken to not shaving and having my iPod plugged into my ears every time I go into anything larger than the corner store. Otherwise, I am pestered nearly unto justified homicide. Anyway, this clerk was nearly overflowing in Korean and we stood, for about 5 minutes, at the escalator unhappily not communicating with each other. We wayguk decided just to go and check out, and the clerk retreated, obviously unhappy. Phillip noted that and decided to call a friend who spoke Korean and could, over the phone, translate. It, apparently, all boiled down to this.

1) Korean beddings are only sold in complete sets
2) Unless the clerk wraps the individual piece in a large bag BEFORE you get to the register.

It seemed fairly nonsensical, but after the wrapping the clerk was happy we had done it the right way and I was happy to get out of the store with another comforter. About a week later, walking randomly around Daejeon I discovered at least 3 small stores that sold comforters individually and for about 2/3 the price.

Mentor also took me to the “old” downtown by the river, which included a traditional Koran market of alleys and umbrellas. Particularly to one alley in which you could purchase “traditional” US items that seemed to have come over the barbed wire fence at US army bases in Korea. This was a hodge-podge of weird things. US candy, canned food, even an 8-pak of Vaseline in plastic. This latter item gave me pause to wonder what exactly the US army thinks its men are doing in Korea. Either getting very chafed, having lots of children, or using unsafe lubricants.

We also picked up a case of bottled water and a few other heavy things.

After this useful bit of shopping I was dropped off home. About 45 seconds after I collapsed into my icy-cold room, there was a pounding on the door. My Mentor stood outside with my “training” manual. He said goodbye and then said, “Oh, they’ll give you an evaluation sheet on my mentoring. Give me high marks.”

I never saw him again and when I got the evaluation sheet I saw that he had basically done nothing he was supposed to do. I had no idea where my classes were, the layout of the two campuses, how to get copies made, how grading went, well.. anything.

Still, I had food, clean water, and a nice warm comforter.

I gave him an excellent evaluation. ;-)

Rocks in they Chinese Heads, Marbles in they Mouths..

Play along.. you'll like it!

It is "midterm" time. Midterm time is the only chance we have to grade our students on how good their English is. We do this by sitting down, one-on-one with each student, and asking them between 4 and 8 questions.

Which I do to my class of Chinese students. This is a bit complicated in this class, as I have 36 Chinese, one Korean, and one Vietnamese student in this class. I am told that makes 38, in total. And I have 180 minutes to test them all. Which is slightly less than 5 minutes per student. So I extend my class hours (undoubtedly against the rules) and fit them all in and await the kind of communication nightmares that will ensue.

In the event, I discover that most of them speak quite decent English. They are Sophmores, so they've had a year of college-level English, and many of them also had some quite good training back in China. I had some startling conversations (and suspect the Guoanbu is now after me) and all this makes me ask myself the question, why won't the Tibet-Oppressing, girl-baby exposing, commie abortionists talk in class?

I need to ponder on this, since I'm sure this kind of issue will pop up again...

oh well.. for now it's off to find the copy boy....

Twice a Week Wonders

My writing class continues to be the best thing ever. All three women were there tonight with nearly final drafts of their papers. These were 4 pages, 5 pages and nearly 7. The seven page paper came from the student who had never written anything longer than two pages! Last week we had to go over plagiarism because of her writing (well, re-typing), and she actually came up after class and apologized for “letting me down.” I was flabbergasted and said, “no, no, no, this is exactly what this class is for – you didn’t let me down, you gave me a chance to teach.” Then she didn’t show up for the next class and I thought, “way to go idjit, you chased a good student out!”

But she emailed me yesterday and showed up today with her epic paper

As I looked over her paper and switched from the printed out to the page she had written on lined paper I became suspicious she had slid back on the plagiarism thing. I raised the issue gently.

She said, “oh no, I used the ‘close the book’ and write the ideas trick that we discussed last week.”

I reread her work and it just flowed, and in really nice structure and high-level vocabulary; a sneaking suspicion came over me. I told her it seemed she wrote better away from the computer and that I thought her handwriting was good enough that she could do that til the final version.

She said she had looked at her writing and noticed the same thing. With her left hand she described a line from her head, past her shoulder and down to her right hand. She said, “It flows when I write.”

So not only have we solved the plagiarism problem, but I think we’ve got the way she should write. I remember when I used to do that, legal pad, double-spaced, edit in the blank lines and then to the computer. I’d try that now, but my handwriting has deteriorated so badly that it would not be possible. Aaah.. deterioration.. the ongoing story of my life. ;-)

Anyway, all three students were beaming (and rightly so) by the end of the class and the ringleader said (pointing to another student), “Last week we talked after class, we would like to take this class again if you are teaching it again.” She paused.

I allowed as how it looked like it would be me.

She hunched over a little like she was pulling up a shawl, “Well, what we thought was, if there were no…..” Here she paused and made a gesture like she was shooing dogs or unruly children away, “strangers in the class, we could talk more.”

I laughed inside, because that was pretty Korean. The new students would be “strangers” and would only intrude. I said I had a plan for a split-level class, but that if there were a lot of new students they would have to be taught just as well. I puzzled over what “talking more” meant - it could be more high-level conversational practice (since the conversational classes tend to be very low level) or it could mean talking more about the topics before we write. Or it could mean something else I didn’t think of. I said, “Ok, that will be your last assignment next week, write me a description of what you would like to do if there were a second semester Academic Writing class.”

So if I get these ladies back, at least they will have done the class outline for me. ;-)

LSD baby… LSD!

It's a Good Day When

1) You forget what day it is and you plan out the next TWO days of classes.

2) The Linksys network in one building of BPU is fully on and you file your income taxes E-lectronically

3) You also Limewire down about 15 new songs.

4) Full updates of system, iPod, and Adobe through the same network..

If there had only been more time I'd be up to my (insert body part here - so to speak) in gnarly porn.

As it is, I'll take it.

And tonight I meet with the Tourism Ph.D. who may want to work with me on the conference.

so far, so good...

Upgrades

UPGRADE #1 - The OAF has received a contract offer from an Hagwon here in South-Central. If she decides to visit the hood, she will be making a princely 2.3 mil (a direct result of the stupid immigration laws that Korea implemented but, hey, we'll take it!). Some details need to be figured out, but it looks likely that she will reverse that trip her ancestors made, yo so many years ago, across the land bridge (historical evidence indicates they were essentially kicked out). And land here. Excellent!

UPGRADE #2 - It seems likely (possible?) that I will get kicked up to a partly administrative gig here. There are a couple of organizational positions coming open and they need someone who has

a) A Masters (and this excludes more people than you would think)
b) Decent people skills (eye-contact while speaking, ability to control drool, excuses self to go to the bathroom)
c) Decent verbal skills (you'd think that any "English Instructor" would have these. Not so.)

The jobs would only get about a 10% raise, but they would also look oh so nifty on my resume when I return.

So.. it looks like this. If I get one of these jobs I will stay in Daejeon for that second year. If I don't, I will either return to the US (unlikely at this moment) or move up to Seoul for my second year.

I'm comfortable with any of these options right now.. so the next thing to do is get the OAF settled in and then see how the rest of this stuff plays out.

Next week midterms begin.. and since they mean brief chats with each student, they include no preparation. It's like another vacation!

Friday becomes Freeday

It was a lovely day in Daejeon. I had gone to bed a bit late last night –Social Club Night- but Thumper was there as well, so he didn’t wake up quite as early as normal, nor did he do his “midnight confessions.” I was a bit shaggy when I woke up. I only had three beers at the SC, but they were 500cc which are, I think, bigger than pints?

But I wandered up to work and quickly Questia’d a bit more of the book I will be reviewing. I now have about .25 of the short stories (three to read tonight) and since I also figured out how to use the English floor of the BPU Library, I have “Traditional Korea A Cultural History.” It should be a good reading weekend. I went up to a restaurant where all the partiers from last night were going. Good thing I left early as it turned into a soju-shot party. I’m too old for that, I’m afraid. Still, shot the shit with a bunch of instructors and had a US quality grilled cheese sammich and US quality coffee. This cafe was opened by the wife of an instructor and I think she might make a mint. No other Korean has noticed that there are about 100 rich (relatively speaking) foreigners all trapped in one building. This is classically Korean. Most Koreans could no more imagine the inside of the head of a non-Korea than they could turn themselves inside out and crap gold bricks. They don’t see potential markets because, well, to be honest, since nothing is better than Kimchi, why serve anything else? It is a version of the general Korean marketing problem – inability to understand that others might have other things they like.. The proprietress has figured this out and the place has some hours where it does gangbuster business. It also makes some very western cakes and cookies and that seems to have caught on with students (she is two blocks down the main road from the University Gate). I predict success. She’ll see me at least two times a week just because she has real coffee.

After that, I thought I’d head up to the Uni. My classes had been cancelled for some kind of Freshman Athletic Event and I thought I’d see if my Japanese Studies students were on the field, winning glory (The pics you see here are from that event). I’d run in the morning, so my legs were a bit creaky, but I found the students and spent the next three hours watching bizarre Korean team-building exercises. In the “race with a bowl of water” the Japanese Studies team busted out in the early stages. One of the guys in my class, Wolf, ran like.. well a wolf and handed the JS team the “come from behind” lead in the second stage. Sadly, he then handed off to some guy who promptly surrendered the lead and then.. it was unclear.. handed off to another runner (a woman in my class) and the two either got tangled up, or she just plain corkscrewed in. She got up and finished her lap, but the spill meant the team finished second to last. Still, not last, so although it was sad that an accident occurred, some other team became the nerds.

The “track” was just chalk lines on one of those malignant dirt-n-spit soccer pitches and although the woman tried to walk off the abrasion on her arm, the team leader just about screamed the scratched woman’s head off. There was no way the team leader was letting the abrasion lay untreated and the non-fallen comrade was dragged off to the medical tent for some thorough cleaning, spraying with life-icide, and a rather impressive bandage. Can’t have the tuition paying kiddies expiring in their first terms!

Then there was a soccer game. It was a mind-numbing nil-nil tie at the half, but the All-Whites woke up in the second half and scored twice directly after halftime. Then it went all mind-numbing again. I don’t think I’ll ever completely enjoy watching soccer unless they legalize flamethrowers and ninja stars. I’ll also be needing completely nude cheerleaders.

Wandered back down home, where I sit with a delicious Soju cocktail (yeah, it’s past 5) contemplating a trip to the PC Bang to post this thing and do some preliminary sucking up to Education in Asia about possible photo opportunities in the future.

The other thing that happened last night, was I saw the flat I want next term. My Scotts friend is leaving and he had me up to take a look at his room. It is just up the road. It is top floor(!) and in the back. And it has three times the storage this joint has. Even better? All utilities are assessed at 60K won per month. The place is smaller (one bedroom as opposed to living room and bedroom) and only has the electric cooking top, but everything else is golden. The bed is also a nice double so if OAF ever shows up she won’t have to sleep on the floor. I have to figure out how to make sure I get this place. There’s some knob-polishing in my future, that’s for sure. ;-)

What Teaching? Teaching What?

DPP (D. Pucaaiaiaiai! Pilipina) asks about education.

Just like in the US, not so very much.

But since I nearly ran off with DPP to smuggle guano to the Solomon Islands (Alas, a handsome Anglo named Bruce Geer stole her away with his manly and direct glance. These things happen. It turned out for the best as I have the OAF and DPP now lives in her cluttered office amongst half-eaten candies, dog-eared books, and two book-eared dogs.) I thought I might start on about that.

Since I’m always going on about something.

The commitment to “learning” English is stated but not real.

While I teach a “conversational” class, the final the students take to assess their ‘conversational’ skills will be 100% written. A deaf mute could pass these tests.

I was talking to my coordinator about the fact that they have given us a textbook which presents us with 7 “exercises” to do in 90 minutes. In 75 minutes, actually, since a 15 minute break is given. So assume 5 minutes for taking roll, announcements, getting the chairs shifted, and so forth, we have 10 minutes per exercise to include explanation of the task, modeling (most of the books are big on modeling), and then the actual exercise.

This is unattainable in even the most frenetic forced lockstep. So, you assign some as homework and hope it gets done. When I had this conversation with my director he shrugged (this is his response, similar to the program director’s sigh and faraway unfocused stare) and said, “it happens every term. They assign us a certain amount of chapters and by the midterm we are far behind.” But the next semester they give us the same number of chapters. Since most of the courses are curved I suppose that none of this matters, 10-20% will get A’s and the rest will follow below. I’m not teaching at a prestigious university. But no one is learning conversational English here.

I have noted the number of Koreans one can see, in Seoul, on the underground reading a book in English. And not just any book, frequently books of some heft, both physically and in the canon. I’ve seen Dickens, Shakespeare, Wuthering Heights, you name it. But any attempt to speak with these readers would be futile. They can’t speak more than a few words of English, and certainly couldn’t construct a spoken sentence under any circumstances. The Korean educational approach to instruction is one of the many reasons this is so.

Most Koreans don’t see this as a problem. Korean men in the United States are sometimes referred to as “hi-bye” men because of their lack of fluency. Kim Seong-kon, writing in the Korea Herald notes that the problem really is that the goal of Korean education is to pass tests. Kim refers students to US institutions and says that the institutions are always amazed at the high TOEFL and GRE scores of Korean applicants. He says, “Indeed, who could be better-trained than Korean students when it comes to choosing the right answer on an exam sheet? Due to the notorious college entrance exam that decides one’s future, Korean students begin training to choose the right answer as early as elementary school. Kim goes on to note that the second “amazement” these institutions get is when the Korean students arrive in the US and are not able to speak English.” Kim says that he has to walk these people through an understanding that test-taking and speaking ability are essentially uncoupled in Korea. While in the United States tests are supposed to measure, and even increase, knowledge, in Korea the tests are supposed to measure, well, test-taking ability.

And so it is that, somewhere in there, the little kids on the street who can speak limited, but pretty accentless English, become the college Freshmen who are entirely unfamiliar with English. 12 years of education has done its job and rendered these students entirely mute.

Society is pleased.

And I get paid, so it’s ALL good.

Back In The Saddle Again

Aaah.. it doesn’t take much getting better to feel better. Got up this morning, did my normal morning things and headed up to my Computer Science class for which I was massively unprepared. Got there early so I could buy the student book that I had lost but, alas, the bookstore was out of it. Still, they said they would have it by the time I got out of my first class and I took that as a good omen. Even better, as usual half of my Computer Science class had gone missing. This always makes it more fun to teach as with a handful of students I get a better vibe (better kibun?) and I can spend more time with the ones who really aren’t getting it. Class went splendidly and I talked to the kid who spent high-school in Ohio. Asked him how bored he was and if he would help the kid who is flushing down the drain (despite showing up – he will get his 20% for attendance!). Also asked if he would consider helping me (for pay) when I get around to Ms. Kim Yong-Ik. He said sure on the first (in fact was also proposing it as a way to blunt his boredom) and maybe on the second – he wants to make sure he can actually help me. So that all was splendid.

Walking in to all of this I passed the Pink Courtesy Women who swarm over the campus each morning. They clean, move desks, and do weeding in big waves of Ajummassivity. Here they are weeding. Some morning I need to film them at their tasks.

Went to the bookstore and the book was in. Went to the Post Office and paid my bills; 85K which is not as bad as it could have been and still leaves me well within my projected budget for this month.

Headed over to the cafeteria for my healthy Korean lunch and pondered that eternal question. If you’re having Kimchi rice, why do you also need a bowl of Kimchi? Shouldn’t you also then need a bowl of rice?

Although I study the tricksy Koreans daily, I fear I will never understand them.

Then off to my JS3 Class (Should have some pics of that tomorrow) and they never fail to entertain me. They are quite rambunctious, but also respectful and good learners. They and the CS class have cottoned to the “full sentence” and “how to make a sentence out of the question you are asked” trick and even compete with each other to make more complicated ones. It’s my class of retarded Chinese students that still concerns me.

Then back to the office for an hour of palaver with the LSM (Leaving Scotts Man) and a timeous departure to academic writing. Always a fun class and I’m starting to get the sense that one of these women is smarter than I am.

Not possible, of course, based on the fact that she’s a chick. Still, she’s smart.

Then back home. It’s Social Club night, but that has already begun and I haven’t headed up. Just not feeling it tonight and LSM and a few other key folks don’t plan to show up.

Today even the weather cooperated. It was sunny and mild and I enjoyed my walk home. Even at 8:30 this evening, it was playing relatively nice.

Yesterday afternoon, as I walked home under a nearly entirely clear sky, the Korean heavens mysteriously opened up and pelted me with icy rain. This country, for good or bad, seems to pile on.

Tomorrow is glorious Friday (and 8.333333% of the way through my contract. Not that I’m counting) and on the weekend I have some writing to do, but will also take whichever day is clear to head to Expo Park for a photostravaganza of globally ubiquitous hubbed nature.

Cause I’m down with Korea. It’s like it’s sparkling, or something!

Finally, the last picture shows two of the three cigarette receptacles that lie within ten feet of the door to my CS class. Let’s just say that Korea isn’t going to go for any of that pansy “25 feet from a door” smoking prohibition thing.

Cause they’re ultra-manly.

It’s a good thing they drink their coffee adulterated with all kinds of nasty shit (sickly creams, sugar, artificial flavors). If they drank their coffee black they’d probably rule the world (by what I call the “Starbucks Coefficient” which is that numerical relationship between the ongoing fruitification of US Coffee and our descent from a world power into buffoonery – I suppose there is also a “George Bush Coefficient” in there, but the trend began long before his monkey ass jumped on and accelerated it).

And, now, having written the longest parenthetical ever, I retire, gracefully, from the fray.

Is it I, or were there a lot of commas in that last sentence?

Random Photos

This is what I call "The Waiting Room" because if you fall down on it, you will probably have to visit the doctor. It is the soccer pitch and I was told that the last person who slid on it (playing softball, actually) was at the hospital the next day with an entirely infected leg. I thought this might be a story, but I watched a soccer game and there was absolutely no tackling and even the goalie never went to the ground attempting a save. The dirt is a combination of yellow-dust (from China), spit, and whatever else garbage blows around on it. I walk around it. ;-)

In the back is one of our pink buildings.


My Computer Science Class hard at work



I assigned a warmup exercise, boys against girls and the boys immediately went into this huddle. It didn't help them at all, as the women crushed them using a more relaxed Monkey-Style Learn-Fu.

A Stuffed Nose in the Champagne Room?

Today was about, finally, getting a slight illness. A month in without more than a hint of illness – well, minus one slightly runny (in two senses) Saturday.

It may be about to be ruint.

They added a perfectly round Canadian woman (with hair that would do the Predator proud) to our office and she is teaching the kiddies. The kiddies, other than being a rich field for the alleged white pedophiles who Korea believe stalk Korea relentlessly, are also an incubatory experiment. As in every country, when young kids get together, with their developing immune systems and varied bacteria and virii, many interesting diseases shoot through the classroom. Miss Canada is our disease vector to that broth of disease. Effing Canadians, they really mess everything up, eh hoser?

I have slight premonitory feelings in the throat and nose that I am attempting to drown in Soju.

Unrelated, I discover that I am missing (which probably really means “I lost”) the student book for my morning class. Perversely, this may result in a better class for them, as I have combed very carefully through the workbook and teacher’s manual to make sure I’m on track, and it has resulted in what must surely be my most detailed lesson plan. I sincerely hope it has something to do with what is in their textbooks. ;-)

If I do bust through this disease by tomorrow night, a beautiful thing might develop. My Friday class has been cancelled for an MT (and if I never explain that, please remind me to do so - it is a critical collegiate rite of passage here and has some bacchanalian aspects that are interesting.. or at least cause too much drinking and hooking up) and so I might be able to go to this killer presentation at Seoul University that, LO and BEHOLD, has something to do with my interest in marketing and Korea, and marketing Korea…

The cancelled class, in combination with the conference in Seoul, seems to be one of those “pssst… hey buddy… over here..” moments. Except I probably won’t get mugged or laid by someone in the alley that is Seoul University. If I’m feeling half decent tomorrow I will get details on the conference and shoot up to Seoul on Friday morning (Thursday to that half of the world that is eternally behind the Korean Wave).

I’m feeling that academic thing again.

Heck, it’s worth that trip if only because the bullet trains in Korea (and probably most of the rest of the first world) reveal how lame AMTRAK is, no matter how much I like it.

Also.. I’ve got all my instructional sound-files on the iPod and am beginning to love iTunes, which I previously hated. It’s still a sack of shit about rights protection and burning CDs.. but I’ve finally started making logical playlists and.. DUH.. they make life quite convenient. I always forget.. Apple is about making things stylish and easy for incompetents such as myself..

But now I have a playlist for each class and when my boy Adam gets me the bone-speaker-thingie I will have:

a) an in-class tool much smaller and more convenient than the other instructors who are lugging little boom-boxes around, and

b) A home stereo to .. you know… to help ease the transition from a sex act to a grade…

You feel me…

I know you feel me.

Would you like a relaxing glass of Champagne?

Or an A+?

Hang ul and ALLA these other Korean Speakers

Korean language lessons began today and, as it turns out, it is a language I’m not familiar with. This made learning it surprisingly difficult and even simple things such as speaking fluently did not go easily. In fact, did not go at all.

One amusing thing was the instructor, a Korean who speaks almost no English, looked at the class (about 30 people maybe) muttered “too many” (which is half of the words he has in English) and rushed off to his Division office. In about 3 minutes he returned and the class was divided into two. I idly wondered if an itinerant Wayguk could do this with his 2IM English class full of 37 heathen Chinese, but alas, I imagine not.

As I looked at the first lesson I saw a series of classroom scenarios on the handout. I thought, “how nice, he’s tailored his class for our needs.” I thought this because, despite what some of my skeptical, even angry, friends believe, I care about human links (this is not a reference to any kind of food product), human efforts, all of warm sweating humanity, really. Then, of course, I realized the swine started with these particular scenarios so we would know what he was saying when he ordered us around like human puppets, we dancing on his infernal strings to the demented music echoing in his head.

Here was a teacher I could respect.

Class went well, though his written hangul is INCREDIBLY sloppy which makes spelling complicated. The study group is thinking about hiring a Korean tutor to

a) check our pronunciation
b) make sure the spelling we pick up off the board is in the realm of the real.

Then it was off to the office to swap lies with J, my amusing but oddly unfocused office-mate. He’s 32 and trying to figure out what it is he wants to do with his life, so we get along. Did I say he’s oddly unfocused? I can’t remember, he’s rubbing off on me.

He took me around the corner for a Kimchi dish with rice and an egg. It was the first restaurant meal I’d had in a while and it was brilliant. He helped me with some food pronunciations, and I think I’ll venture out a bit more once the paycheck lands.

I also got my camera-battery charger today. At 70 bucks it was a complete rip-off, but there’s a photo trip to some mountain this Sunday and I want to get up and out. I was going to go to Expo Park today, but I am told it is not worth the trip. I need to get some household supplies anyway, so I may just put this off til Saturday. Worth the trip or not, I should check it out just to day I did.

Two Week Summary(?)

Can there be a 2 week summary?

If so, here’s mine. I really like Korea although parts of it are messy and silly. It is impossible, at this moment, to disentangle how much I might like Korea from how much I am relieved to be out of the Bay Area and out of the soul-sucking marketing job. I suppose that relationship will be far clearer in long retrospect. And, of course, even having been in Korea twice before I am in the honeymoon period.

But BPU is agreeably disorganized and I am well suited for that. The students are, at worst, inattentive and the good ones are nearly fawning. Also, Korean students at college age are still much more like high-schoolers. They, almost unanimously, live at home with the exception being the older men, some of whom have done their military service. I haven’t paid much attention to this distinction, but I think I will in the future. Just to see what the service seems to do to personalities. There is no shortage of horror stories about military service here and that should play out in how they act in class. God knows, the women are still in cocoons. That's spooky. But the mix of high-school and college is quite amusing.

The housing is adequate, except for the thumper who lives above me (and I should say he has been peepless for two consecutive nights). It did not surprise me that, at the last 901 club he sat down and immediately knocked his bottle of beer onto the table. Nor did it surprise me that the waitress was over with a rag before he even moved. I think he is one of those characters who just doesn’t see effects, or can’t empathize (in the non weepy sense) with others.

The view from the housing is great. Smoggy neon and hills rendered artificially distant by haze. I don’t mind this at all and if I make up my mind to stay here for another year I will quickly purchase an air-purifier and start loading the place up with plants. O2 is my friend.

The neighborhood is noisy (part of which I defeated with my window treatments), but it is noisy in the way that a city on the hustle is noisy. Shit is being knocked down willy-nilly and new shit succeeds it. It is the classic human delusion that progress can be made and it is fun to live in a city laboring under that delusion.

The time alone, to think, is the grandest thing of all. I have a phone on my table. I went to the trouble of picking it up and, lo and behold, it has a dial tone. Blessedly, it does not ring. I have no idea what the phone number is, so I can’t give it out. It is in all ways the “parfit” phone.
I haven’t even begun to learn the language or head up to Seoul (or even to the local temples) and that should add a whole new level of fun to the game. It looks like the OAF will be here sooner than planned and I imagine this will come at the perfect time since I am starting to feel vestigial twitches of “where my peeps at?”

In two weeks, I imagine, I will wish all the Korean brutes exterminated and be drinking weepy beers with other disaffected expatriates. For the moment, however, Korea is what I expected and perhaps a bit better.

So tomorrow? A drunken Ajeoshi (is that redundant?) should attack me on the street.

Today was good. Had the whole morning off but opted to go in to watch on of the semi-directors teach. Just to see if I was in the ballpark. As it turns out, I very much am and that was reassuring indeed.

Then, as I was chatting with office-mates and getting some copying together (in some ways the most difficult part of this job is the endless copying) the word came in that my Alien Registration Card had landed and I was off to the bank to get set up there. It wasn’t the bank I wanted, but it will do. I may go back later and change banks. Came back to finish the copying and put some stuff together for my evening class, Academic Writing.

Man, is that the best class ever. I had heard all kinds of scary things about different levels and expectations. When I got there were only four women sitting there, which means no matter how different their skills were, it would be no problem to teach. launched into a lecture about the writing process and all the bullshit came back. I could talk about how to write for weeks. Unfortunately I had to wedge in some time for them to actually write. ;-)

I was a bit worried about one older woman – she had a mask and gloves on and wouldn’t answer much – I had her pegged for an evil ajumma (because, you know, after two weeks here I know everything). But as I gave them some pair work to do she became increasingly animated and when I had them do a writing sample she started writing happily away. I collected the writing samples and they were better writers than most of our ESL students were at Swamp Valley College. I was happy to see that not one of them went off on the “I kept my baby” track (Which I noted/named at my old college when I noticed that if I used abortion as a paper topic at least three single-mothers would completely ignore the actual question and go on some rant about how they had kept their baby and therefore women who get abortions should be killed)

And with only four students I’m going to be able to really work with them. On the spot I decided this was a case for a portfolio, and I sent them away with a short homework assignment.

think I’ll do a bit of work from the workbook (because it has silly tests and crosswords), and give at least one test on that (Koreans love tests) but most of the work will be in assignment and then rewrite. I have no idea why BPU gave me this awesome class, but I am properly thankful. ;-)

I’ve just graded my four (4!!!) papers and the “ajumma” is a wildly fluid writer. Long, loping sentences, when she makes a mistake she self-identifies and fixes them. My heart, it swells mightily; just the way the oversized heart of a fat man would right before it exploded.

More Whiskey Tango Foxtrottery

On my way to one of my classes I walked up with a teacher working another section of the same class. He’s a fine old Scottish reprobate who liked me well enough to try to find some kind of Scottish blood in the surname Montgomery. As we walked up the 103 stairs (Yes I counted, and I’m dreading this when the monsoon/hot season comes) he complained about the steps but, looking up to the skirted coeds who were easily escaping us, said, “but you can’t complain when you’re following such fine young lassies.”

We also compared syllabi and were interested to find that my syllabus and his, for the exact same class, were, well, quite dissimilar. Mine had quizzes, his didn’t. Mine was curved, his wasn’t (oh.. sorry.. that was later in the men’s room).

Today I caught up with the uber-director and asked him what was up. He told me to go ask Clerical Employee #1 for the “real” syllabus. I thought this odd, since she deals with the College courses and these were University courses (Tech Voc versus Evergreen Courses, essentially). I went and she told me to go to the University as she had nothing to do with it.

While I was talking to her about the syllabus problem another instructor came in and said, “wait, the syllabus is wrong?” Turns out her mentee (and some day I must write down how charming and feckless MY mentor was) was teaching the same class. The correct syllabus was pulled and it was not the one that either of us had.

Another trip to the uber-director. He did the look over my shoulder to the long-distance and sigh thing. “Ah, Clerical Employee #1 is normally so good with this.” Just at that moment the other instructor came in. He looked over her shoulder and sighed, “Clerical Employee #1 is normally so good with this.” The other instructor looked at him and said, “Clerical Employee #1?” He sighed again. “Clerical Employee #1.” She said, “Clerical Employee #1 has nothing to do with this, it’s a University course.” This occasioned a particularly pained sigh.

The other instructor said, “I noticed something else, on the schedule this is a 1.5 hour course, but on the folder you give to the instructors it is a 2 hour class.” The uber-director must have been, just over our shoulders, trying to see Japan by now. “Oh, well, you should always go by the folder, the schedule doesn’t really mean anything.”

At that moment I realized that CC type colleges are alike the world over. For the entire time I worked at SVC we could never turn out an accurate schedule. Just before I left we turned out one with extra holidays, three different academic schedules, and three different websites for registration. If Genius the world over holds hands a feels a spark of recognition, at this moment of shared clumsiness I felt, at least, a shared desire to find a bar, cliff, or rope.

The uber-director, in closing, thanked me for discovering this and chasing it down, but as he looked over my shoulder and sighed, I knew he wished that he was very far away and that I was very fucking dead.

Another day brilliant day at BPU.

PS.. the weather was good.

One Step Closer to Snapping like a Rotted Twig in a Drought!

Well, baffled at any rate...

Came in this morning to my desk to discover that over the weekend my computer had disappeared. How very odd. So the first minutes of the day were spent lugging a computer from the "bad" desk to the "good" desk. Then it was jibber-jabber with some other instructors and a half-hearted attempt to look at the material I was presenting today.

I will say this - working from a canned curriculum is very easy. I even managed to, barely, get the 7 sections in that I wanted to do. But the pair work was nearly impossible to judge, since the room is small and the noise is vast.

Oh well..

Tomorrow I have to gather various body parts of the written language and pray for enough lightening to power them up into some sort of syllabus for my Academic Writing class. Shouldn't be onerous, but new ground so who knows..

So Now That I Know it All.... ;-)

Second day of teaching went better, although my class is now up to 37 students which makes group work absolutely cacophonous. I can’t whine about this, since I hated instructors in the States who complained about their “workload.”

Some people never do have a real job. Lucky sods.

There were mix-ups in student scheduling that had to be dealt with afterwards. I discovered, to my intense joy, that there is a wireless network in that building so I was able to upload some changes I’m making to my websites. I think I need to designate one as my official website for business/education/marketing uses and the other as my play site. So a few things will be coming along to Spunangel.

Then, more hassling with class planning. They promise me that the Academic Writing class will likely be small and completely up to my discretion as to content and grading. All a bunch of “blah, blah, blah” that sounded to me like, “sex for grades.” ;-) Well, in the hands on one less trustworthy than I. In any case, I’ll need to think about this one over the weekend. Tomorrow I meet two new classes with the lesson-plan adjustments learned in the first one. Should go better.

Didn’t get out in time to do any of the shopping I wanted to. The effing Canon website is OUT of the battery chargers for my camera. Perfectly understandable as no on uses the Digital Rebel these days.

On the way home I stopped at the GS 25 Mart and it was out of its little crab sammiches! What to do? What to do? Everything else looked so very… Korean. I took a chance on a small triangular wedge of something green. I figured it was small enough to finish, even if it was bad. Lo and behold, when I got to the counter it was knocked down from 700 Won to 500 Won because it was late in the day. Koreans frequently do this to a foodstuff they deem better served fresh. Even the large grocery stores start discounting meat on the first day.. the later you shop, the better the deal you get. And it was delicious! The suspicious green was, of course, seaweed. But the inside was rice and some kind of savory (maybe meat-based?) sauce/stew. The seaweed gave the thing just the right amount of bite, so now I have another “safe” thing to buy. Well, of course, they probably stuff these things with everything from rice and beans to rice and fermented Skunk belly-button. My luck to get the best one first, and the next one will be between the Skunk belly-button and the pepper-sauced e-coli paste. As I think about it, those last two would be 900 Won each, because they would be reputed to have special healing powers (In a Nietschzean kind of way).

Still, it was a win.

I had been planning to eat in the school cafeteria, but as I had left my wallet at home, I only had about 1,400 Won in change in my pockets. Turned out ok though. I didn’t have to use my AK.

A U-Curve on the Road of Life..

I made it through the first week here. This is largely due to the fact that I no longer trust the tapwater. The first two times I was here I was unaware that it was unsafe. The unsafetiness (Yeah, that’s a word buddy. I’m an English Instructor, I’d know) was not communicated to me by my BKF, though his wolfish laughter each time I drank tapwater would have been a signal to me if I wasn’t so consistently drunk, tired, or sick.

I sometimes forget that Korea is in some ways a very third-world, first world country. They did all this shite since 1950 and that’s commendable work in a short time frame. But if the new government is looking for something to do? It might work on the water.

Then there’s my impending suicide.

As I look through the “training manual” (which, so far has helped me in exactly no situation) I discover that from the minute I landed in Korea I’ve been on an inevitable and precipitous slide towards the brink (I actually have no idea what that last phrase means, but it sounds good so I’ll let it stand). The bad news is that, given the time frame that this graphic presents, there is no chance I will be able to purchase any kind of automatic weapon. The good news, I suppose, is that this means my fat ass won’t have to climb any kind of tower to find killshots. If I have to be a depressed lunatic I’d just as soon be a lazy one.

This is where Korea has brought me.

The rest of you?

I have no idea. I suspect you have all lost your houses in the great crash of ’08. Hard to say.

None of you email me and many of you are clearly afraid of the reality of that graphic, since you duck out of IM as soon as I log on…

Bastards!

Off to research gun ownership laws in the Land of the Morning Calm.

P.S. My decline into suicidal rage has been hastened this morning by the news I still don't have an office key.

SJCC Reprographics, you rocked..

Just a few signs that this may not be the most organized unit in the Army fighting for the eventual victory of the English language (just before Chinese swallows it whole).

1) I get up early to check out my classroom and, heeding the map which helpfully notes that the Woosong Tower is either building N or Q depending on what class you teach. I head to the tower where I discover that my first class, scheduled in Q-301, is therefore to be taught somewhere in the middle of the on-campus Post Office. This can't be, but I wander in slightly larger concentric circles and discover it must be. OK, I figure, I'll head over the WLI building and get this straightened out.

2) The packet I have received for my first class (the one in the PO) was mysteriously absent a syllabus. I head over to the syllabus office where the nice woman tells me there isn't a syllabus and there isn't about to be one and I should really just leave because I'm in the way. OK, I figure, I'll head over to the Director's office and get this straightened out.

I head to his office and ask him if I need to write my own syllabus for this class. He says, "no, just go up to the syllabus office and pick it up." I tell him my story and he asks if the nice lady said when the syllabus would show up. I reply that she seemed to be saying, never. He looks off into the middle distance, bemused. "That's odd, I just off the phone talking to her about his, she really shouldn't have told you that." Turns out this is a "new" class with a new textbook and the department was supposed to create a syllabus but apparently hasn't. This is interesting and there's nothing I can do. I grabbed an old (electronic at least) syllabus and mark "Draft" all over it and adjust what I can.

3) Then I ask the director about where the mysterious "Q" building is? I tell him that it is marked as the Woosong Tower and he looks at the map and asks, "where did you get this map from?" I respond that I tore it out of the orientation manual that he himself gave me at orientation. Once again he looks off into the middle distance. "Well, that's wrong." He pulls me over to a window and points to the Q building which is right across the street, but nowhere near its position on the map. Good enough. I've got that.

4) Then I go to get my office key. The office man grabs every single key he has (in an unsorted pile on the top of his desk) and heads up to the 7th floor where he tries them all individually. None of them fit. I wonder if I might mention that keys could be.. oh.. marked in some manner? But I know better. Finally, he sighs, pulls his master key and lets me in. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to lock up when I leave.

5) But it's ok. I fix the paper jam in the printer and print out the syllabus and a page of "In English We Think" $500 bills (I'll explain that later). I also have a two-sided assignment that I'm going to give the students while I conduct brief one-on-one interviews to assess them all. I head down to 'reprographics' and it is a small room in the basement with one B&W copying machine. It is also locked tight. When I go upstairs to inquire they say, "oh he's working off-site this morning."

On the first day of classes? Surely you might guess someone would need copying done on that day? But no, the inscrutable Korean mind does not see it that way and so a steady stream of professors wander into the office, lone sad copies in hand, and hear the news, "come back later."

So I shall. I sit and cultivate an asian attitude of resigned patience. And build grudges. Oh yes, I build grudges! ;-)