Mid terms

Mid terms are coming up the first week of October. The head of the Englishee dept. wants me to finish chapters 7-9 for the upcoming tests. This would not be that big of a deal except we started classes the last week of August, and have had field trips, listening tests and the Chuseok holiday in that time.

The first week of Classes I sat out almost every class. Normally we have two months to get this much done, allowing at least two weeks per chapter. I have only had my Tuesday and Wednesday classes twice this whole time and will only have them once more before the exam. It normally takes at least two classes for the high level students to finish a chapter, but I only have 3 classes for three chapters. What really sucks a donkey dick is that Tuesday and Wednesday are the low level students.

And I mean low level. Basically kids with a full on retard for Englishee. I am talking about writing letters backwards, kids that cannot count to ten, or say the Alphabet and answer questions like:

"What is your favorite color?"

With "Ball!"

Our school gets special funding because of these kids. Hell, our high level students can barely read. Our low level students literally have the lowest test scores in the whole entire province. If I can get them to utter a single word in English, it is cause for celebration. If they can answer a question using two words or more, they are immediately escorted from class and moved up into the mid level classes.

After the mid terms we will have almost three entire months to finish the next three chapters before the end of the year finals. I asked if we could push the tests back a week or two, but the answer was no.

Well whatever, its not like actually teaching the classes would have any affect on their test scores anyway. Most of them will probably get their name wrong on the test.

Earthquake!

Today man schools are having fire and earthquake drills. The siren has been going off at my school for a good ten minutes and the only students outside are a PE class that was already out on the soccer field.

It does not really matter anyway, the fucking school will probably come down like a deck of cards if there ever was a reasonably strong earthquake. In the area I work in they have been building like crazy, or more accurately crazily building. Back in America when we built buildings, we had certain standards for safety that are not even close to following here.

For a large building to survive an Earthquake you need a good foundation, with several feet of hard compacted gravel for it to sit on, and large footings to keep the damn thing from tipping over in an earthquake. They just build these things straight on top of mud. There is no compacting, there is no ground prep, they just pour the concrete right on top of the bare earth. The footings are tiny, and would not be acceptable for a 2 story house in the states. Anyone who has ever played in mud knows that when you start to vibrate, or shake it, it liquefies. That is not a good thing to build straight on top of.

You also need strong, straight support columns, to hold up the floors above you, and large deep pilings to keep the building from shaking off the foundation. But then again that costs money. These things are going to snap like twigs if this building ever shakes and the six floors above me are going to come straight down on top of me. Standing in a doorway, or under my desk wont stop several hundred tons of concrete from crushing the life out of me. Consider this a 3X3X3 foot (roughly one meter) cube of concrete weighs around 4,800lbs or around 2400kg for the rest of the world. I can guarantee that unless you are on the top floor of your building, there is more than that above your head.

Not only that, my school is already showing stress cracks in all the hallways, and sloping in the classrooms. They fill in the cracks with caulk every once in a while, but they keep growing. I know that if my school ever gets hit with a big earthquake this thing is just going to crumble.

Playing hooky

Monday night the wife and I started to feel ill, and Tuesday morning i still felt nauseous and had a headache as did my wife. I decided to use one of my 14 sick days and stay home, she chose to go into work, because her co-teacher was going to be gone, and she was the only person who could lead her camp (how responsible of her!).

I called my co-teacher and told her I was not coming in, and pulled the blanket back over my head. I got up a while later, and had tea while playing GTA4.

So I spent the day with the kids, forcing them to help me learn Spanish (so we can go back to Europe to teach next year), but mostly played GTA4 on my xbox.

Today I am back in the classroom, I have a throbbing headache (I bet you thought I was gonna say hard on, you pervs!). I am playing Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs on the Big screen TV, and writing my blog. Soon I will have to start teaching them the pointless conversations they made me write for these "camps".

On Monday the VP complained that my conversations were too advanced for some of the students. I told her that if they were any more simple that they would not be practical. Remember these were her Ideas and topics.

She wanted to know if the kids would be able to use the conversations in real situations. I said yes, but not for 5-10 years in the future, when they would no longer remember them. Then I started rambling about how we need to teach them conversations more applicable to their lives, because little Sujin was not going to be checking into a hotel anytime soon, at least not in English, and if she was checking into a hotel around here it would only be for a couple hours and not days.

These kids do not need to learn how to make plane reservations, or check into a hospital, they will be living at home until they are 30, their parents will take care of everything for them. If they ever leave the country at all, it wont be until after they graduate college, or have a family of their own.

The whole thing is pretty much pointless, but it only lasts 3 hours and then I get to watch Entourage for the rest of the afternoon. So today I will be pointlessly teaching Hojun how to open a checking account in America, and I will do it with a smile on my face.

Dave is the king of douchebagistan, and all the mods are his loyal douchebagistany subjects.