English Lessons

As I have already stated countless times, I don't really do lesson plans. The school I work for has mandated materials that are all covered in CD-ROM. It has lessons in grammar, reading, speaking and listening with audio and video tracks all performed by Native English Speakers.

Even though there seems to be a high production value in the materials, they are of course are rife with spelling and grammar mistakes, and the odd Englishee such as "I have never written or gotten a letter since last year."

All the dialogue is terribly boring, performed by ugly actors with droning monotone voices. There is absolutely no effort being made to capture the interest of the students who pretty much zone out when I play the videos. It takes a herculean effort just to pay attention.

In the chapter we are doing right now I noticed some writing on one of the actors T-Shirts. This is what it said:



It was worn by one of the Native English Speakers. I guess someone has a sense of humor.

Languagee barrier

My wife and I went to a tiny hardware store in our town to buy some duct tape. Of course the people in the store did not speak English, but since I did not see any of the silver miracle tool lying about I asked "Tape?" Keeping things simple seems to help communication.

She had no idea what I was talking about. My wife who has been diligently studying Korean, busted out her much greater lexicon of the local language. "Tape-oo?"

The woman in the store resorted to the typical Korean method of trying to talk to us in Korean until we some how become magically fluent in their stupid language. Then I noticed behind the counter a roll of green duct tape, to which I pointed to immediately cutting short whatever epic poem or rant on the stupidity of foreigners she was spouting.

Ah! she said, "Tape-uh"

Of course. Tape-uh. Obviously the Korean word for tape is completely indistinguishable from the English word tape. How could she possibly know what the fuck we were talking about when we said Tape-oo? That is completely phonically different from Tape-uh. How could we possibly expect her to make the gigantic leap from tape or tape-oo to tape-uh. Ridiculous!



This was not the first time something like that happened either. One time when we first got here, we were trying to find the bus that went to "Home plus". So I asked the driver "Home plus?" to which I received a blank stare. Know I knew he should know what home plus was. There is a gigantic fucking sign over the building and it is clearly visible from the subway. There is no way a bus driver would not know about it. I said it slower. I enunciated. Still nothing but confusion. Then another passenger, one somewhat familiar with the English language chimed in.

"Home prus-oo"

"Ahh! Home prus-oo Nehye!" It turns out he did indeed know Home Prus-oo, but never heard of anything like Home plus. Even though there is no "oo" at the end of the "Plus" on the sign.

Really. Really Korea? How could a race of people be unable to make such a simple leap from tape to tape-uh? From home plus to home prus-oo? If a Korean came to the USA and asked me "Bus-uh?" or "Bus-oo?" or "Bus-ee?" sure two blocks take a right. I would be able to make the connection. "Warmart-oo?" sure, its over there. Is it a lack of imagination, or just a game of annoy the foreigner? Or what?

Give me fucking break, you boners.

Teaching Englishee in Korea! Phiting!

My school is ponying up 80,000 won for me to take a "Teaching Englishee in Korea" class. I will take the classes through the method of "Internet based lecture though" .

It will be taught by a guy who was "English teacher for global company such as Korean Air, Doosan Infracore, COTI and etc."

I will be learning lessons such as:

"Comparing, Korea VS. foreign country" I expect to learn that Korea, of course is best and sparkling.

"Understanding Korean School" I have to admit, I do not understand Korean school, be it one school or many school...

And last but not least "What is 'TEACHER' in Korea" yes, what is TEACHER? Does the Korean hive mindset mean there is but one singular teacher? Are we all one great entity working together? This must be the philosophy aspect of the course.

I have to hand it to the guy though, horrendous spelling and grammar mistakes aside, he is conning my school out of 80 bucks, which at least shows some balls.

Does anyone else have to take theses bullshit classes?

Going to the doctor

If a Korean so much as skins their knee, they go to the doctor. If they have a runny nose, quick to the doctor. They expect you to do the same as well.

"You da seek."

"Yeah, I am a little under the weather."

"What did da doctor say?"

"I did not go to the doctor."

Stunned silence...

In America, we know that there is not much a doctor can do for you, if you have the flu, or a cold, or bruised your knee on a coffee table. Except of course bury you in soul crushing debt for the rest of your life.

I have been sick for almost a week now. I have, as my wife puts it "Man Flu" which means that I am sick, and not paying as much attention to her, therefore I am being annoying on purpose. I have not been to a doctor yet, because A: there is no cure for a cold or flu. B: Korean doctors are about as capable as a blind one armed juggler. and #3: Its not AIDS, cancer, or a broken arm, which are things that doctors (probably not korean doctors) can actually help you with.

The head of the Englishee dept. is intensely concerned. She is insisting on taking me to a doctor tomorrow. I will probably be pretty much better tomorrow so I told her sure, just to get her off my back. Plus I might get to skip a class or two, which will make the whole thing worth it.

Hopefully now she will stop asking me if I have diarrhea every 15 minutes.

New co-teachers

My wife is lucky. She has been going through a slew of bizarre new co-teachers. I did not get any sensi-purse wielding crybabies, or giggling man-children. I did not get female versions of "Mr. Toad" or anything. All I got were three new co-teachers this year, two men and a woman. They all seem perfectly stable, and are all dreadfully normal and/or boring.

The female is a temporary teacher with the personality of a soggy loaf of bread. She sits in the back of the classroom and stares off into space until I call on her to translate something. And when I do, she looks shocked and confused, and may or may not spit out an accurate translation of what I say. We might share one or two words in between classes, about what subjects need to be covered, but mostly we just ignore each other.

The male teachers both speak excellent Englishee, one of them lived in Indiana for several years, has two or three doctorates, and taught at a University in Indiana. He is waiting for a job at one of the better Universities in the area and only took this job to make ends meet until then.

The other male has not lived abroad, but speaks really well, especially for someone who has lived in the sticks of Korea all his life. He has been teaching there for 13 years and came to our school because he wanted to teach in a bigger city, where the quality of the students would be higher. He is very disappointed, since my school is in an industrial area, and the students are poor we have one of the lowest ranking schools in the city.

My head teacher is even more disappointed in the bunch than I am. Not because of a lack of ability, but rather a surplus. She wanted the new Englishee teachers to work for her, and do her bidding, but since the dudes are incredibly over-qualified to teach they have both been made heads of other departments. So once again poor Mrs. Lee has only the temporary teacher to act as her slave, and temporary teachers don't have to show up until their first class starts and leave when the last one ends. She gets her at the most 6 hrs a day, so I am the only one left to do her dirty work. Unfortunately I just play dumb until she does whatever it is she wants me to do, until she does it herself.

Some people get all the luck.

Bad students

During one of my third grade classes my co-teacher called on a pair of students to read a simple dialogue, in Englishee. The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books. My co-teacher told them to read the dialogue in Korean. The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books.

I told them what to say. My co-teacher told them what to say. The students around them, tried to help them, but still they looked totally confused, and stayed mute. I told them to sit down and practice, I would call on them again later. I was annoyed, the class seemed to prefer talking in Korean to practicing the dialogue, I was use to this by now, but for some reason decided to make an example out of this pair. I called on the other students to do the dialogue, and no matter how terribly they did it, I gave them candy.

We practiced another dialogue; I told the students that they would perform it. I told them exactly what to say. I gave them 5 minutes to work on it in pairs. I then called on them to read the dialogue.

The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books. My co-teacher told them to read the dialogue in Korean. The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books.

This time I was angly. “You are in Englishee Class!” I yelled. “When I tell you to practice a dialogue in English, you better practice the fucking dialogue!” I told the students to sit down and practice the dialogue, I that I would call on them each time until they got it right. They sat down, faces red with embarrassment.

I called on more students and gave them candy. I wrote the next dialogue on a white board, I yelled at the entire class to practice the dialogue. I called on the same pair of students, and they did the blank stare routine again. “How the hell are you not getting this?” I yelled. “I wrote it down, I told you exactly what to say! Its only two sentences!” I warned them that I would call on them every fucking class until they finally figured out how to practice the dialogue. I had my co-teacher translate into less angry Korean, so there would be no misunderstanding. Then I dismissed the class.

After the class both my co-teacher and I stood there shaking our heads. “What the hell is their problem?” I asked him. “Could I have made myself any clearer about practicing the fucking dialogue?”

“Oh don’t brame self.” He told me. “Out of the entire plovence they score da rowest. Our schoor getting special funding for da student. Da plincipar say don’t feel bad if dey no rean anything, dey retarded.”

“Why the hell did you wait until now to tell me that?” Because now I feel like a real asshole.

Too busy

I am a busy boy. I have not had much time these days to write, so suck it up. The geniuses at my school decided that I will give out stickers to all the kids who memorize a couple lines of Englishee every week.

“ Does Rabbit have long tail?”

“No, it has a short tail.”

“Do you know what Animal has a long nose?”

“Hmmm. I see, an Elephant has a long nose.”

That is this weeks phrase memorization disaster. I corrected the one in my classroom, but there are another 20 located throughout the school. I don't have the time or inclination to fix them all.

They will collect the stickers for prize of cash money. So now every break in between classes and during lunch I am inundated by a dozen by miniature sticker collectors.

After classes are over at 3:00, I use to have an hour and a half of free time. Now I have after school classes until 5:30. It will be nice to get the extra money, except that my co-teacher said I would not get it until the end of the term, which totally sucks.

I tried planning lessons, and give the students activities to do, but they showed zero interest in them so now I am writing while they watch “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “The Simpsons”. So in between breaking up fistfights, and confiscating cell phones I have a little time to write some shit.

Lesson Planning

Since this is my first year teaching in Korea, I really have no idea how things work here. No one has said anything about lesson plans, classes, or what the fuck I am suppose to be doing every day. So I have spent the past month on facebook, talking shit about my co-teachers on this blog, and masturbating.

Recently I heard a nasty rumor that classes are actually suppose to start next Tuesday, Monday being a national holiday. I asked the head of the Englishee dept about it. She confirmed the Rumor.

"Well do you want lesson plans from me then?" Last year she wanted lesson plans from me, lesson plans which would be filed and ignored. They did not notice that for the last 2 months of the term I was either not turning in lesson plans, or turning the same ones in, over and over again.

"Yes"

"OK, What sections do you want me to teach?" We have a book and a CD ROM for our classes that are pretty much our classroom bible. We teach from the book and the CD and absolutely nothing else. I really don't know what we need the lesson plan for, since we just go through the book word, for word in the proper order.

"I dont know, I have to tark to odder teacher." We have three non-native, new Englishee teachers this year.

"OK, where are they?"

"They not come in today."

"But classes start on Tuesday."

"Yes"

"And you want lesson plans today?"

"Yes"

"Do you see the problem here?"

Being the head Englishee teacher she made an executive decision and told me the sections she wanted me to plan for.

Another slight problem is that I do not know how many classes there are, when they are, and how often they are. all I know is there are 3 grades, so I decide just to make one plan for each grade. I worked on them for an hour or so, then turned them in.

"Oh, these no good."

"Why?" She never had a problem with my plans before, and I pretty much copied in pasted them to make the new ones.

"We not use these books this year. Distlict have us use arr new book." That seemed like it might have been a good little piece of information to share with me.

"OK..." I was a little annoyed that I had used up almost an hour of facebook time for nothing. This job is so fucking hard! "Can I have the new book then?"

"We don't have yet."

"But classes start on Tuesday."

"Yes."

"And you want lesson plans today."

"Yes."

"But we don't have the books to plan the lessons."

"Yes."

"Do you see the problem here?"

Luckily there was one copy of the new books in the office, which I now claim as my own. So I spent another 15 minutes or so, adjusting the lesson plans for the new books. I am not going to bother showing them to her this time, I have facebooking to do.

You dont want to see me get angly!

Since the end of my vacation I have overlooked one exam and helped move some furniture. Today the head of the Englishee dept. asked me to move some poster boards and boxes of art supplies to the other three Englishee only classrooms. She wanted me to arrange the garish yellow plastic boxes "Beautifurry" in the new classroom cabinets.

Then she sent 3 students to help me move all the shit to the classrooms, so I could arrange them "Beautifurry".I had every intent to arrange them "Beautifurry". All I had to do was separate the boxes and poster-boards so the students could carry them up to the individual floors. So I did not have to even lift anything. Once the boxes were in the classrooms, I would shove them "Beautifurry" into the cabinets.

Unfortunately all the classrooms were locked, so I had to return to the office to retrieve the key.

"All the classrooms are locked, I cant arrange the boxes."

"Did you arrange the boxes beutifurry?" Asked miss lee, completely misunderstanding what I just said.

"No, all the classrooms are locked." I said slower.

"Can you enter the crasslooms?" maybe she thought that I could somehow enter the locked classrooms by alternate means, perhaps through an open window on the fifth floor?

"No, they are all locked." I said again, confused by how this could still be misunderstood.

"Oh, do you need the key?" Sound reasoning by Mrs. Lee.

"Yes, all the classrooms are locked." I tried to really drive the point home that time, by speaking even slower and exaggerating the enunciation.

"Do you have the key for your crassloom?"

"Yes." I felt stupid, I did not even try to use my classroom key on the lock. Boy oh boy how dumb could I get, but I thought it might be a good idea to pose the following question. Just in case. "Does my key work on the locks?"

"No, you need diffelent key."

"?????"

Mrs. Lee then retrieved the key from the VP and gave it to me. As I turned to head up to the classrooms to "Allainge beutifurry" I felt her tiny hand grasp the sleeve of my jacket.

"I wollied" she said.

Worried that I would not arranging beautifully I assumed.

"I wollied that you angly."

"About what?" I asked utterly confused.

"Englishee teachers, sometime do odd jobs. We move fulnitule and odd job. I wolly that you dont rike." She said, concerned that all this strenuous labor was getting to me.

"I dont care" I replied. All I had to do was put some boxes in cabinets, it would take at the most maybe 15 minutes, then I would be sitting in front of my computer again, messing around on the internets.

"You dont care?" she asked confused. She must have thought that if I was pushed too hard that I might just up and quit. You just pushed me too hard Mrs. Lee! I could not take all the hard work!

"Really its fine. I dont mind."

Seemingly satisfied, she let me go on my merry way. I returned about 15 minutes later and returned the key to her. About an hour or so later Mrs. Lee came over and sheepishly asked me to help her out once again. She asked me to perform the daunting task of adding test results from two forms together onto another form. There were ten whole columns to add together, she wanted to know if I could perform such a herculean task!

I steadied my nerves and firmed my resolve. Then set my mind to completing the task. Less than 5 minutes later I placed the completed form on Mrs. Lee's desk, and asked her if she needed anything else, to which she replied "no".

Boy I don't if I can last much longer at such a difficult job!

Back to work

My two week vacation has unfortunately ended. The days went by far too fast, I miss doing nothing at home, now that I am once again doing nothing at work.

The new school year does not start until march, but we still have a couple weeks of class left. I have no Idea what I am suppose to be doing, since we have finished our workbooks and the 3rd year students are graduating. They have once again shut the heat off in my classroom so I can no longer watch movies and TV shows, being under the watchful eye of the Vice Principal once more.

Before my vacation they asked me to write some proposals on improving English, which i did not do. I do not really believe they are serious about improving English, or willing to do anything I suggest. The head of the English dept. asked me about it today, and I told her that I should stop doing lessons from the book, and just do conversations and activities with the students. Of course I already knew that would be unacceptable. I just said that, so she would not ask for any proposals in writing to give to the Principal and Vice Principal, on the off chance that they listened to me, it would mean more work for her and the other co-teachers.

Unfortunately she just asked me for my "prepared materials" it turns out that she has to present them to the Principal and Vice Principal, in say...five minutes. She had all fucking morning to tell me this, but at 5 to 11:00am she told me to give her my proposals. I am not surprised, I kind of expected this. Well I typed some shit out real fast, I proposed no more textbook teaching for me during classes, and bullshit after school classes where I would not have to do anything. Less work + more money = improved Englishee.

Over the break they installed motion sensitive "dialogue boxes" in the hallways of the school. Whenever you walk by one of these machines they start shouting phrases in English at you. How having random englishee phrases shouted at the students will improve English is beyond my comprehension, I am sure they will be vandalized, disabled or ignored by students after a couple of weeks.

Well that's all I have for now, time to watch movies while they have their big stupid meeting in some other classroom.

Dammit google!

Like many teachers, I use the internets in my classroom. When students, or co-teachers do not know a vocabulary word, and I cannot explain it with exaggerated gestures or in smaller words, I google it. Unfortunately you never know what you are going to get when you use a google search.

For example. No one knew what pale yellow was. They understood yellow, but you throw pale in front of the word, and it is utter confusion! Pale? How can it be teacher? Well I throw it into a google search and bam! Pictures of pale yellow.
No problem, pictures of flowers and bed sheets and swatches. It was fine. Then I did Aqua. A word they have never heard before.

"What is Aqua, Teacher?"

"Let me show you!"

"Ohhhhh!"



I guess aqua is the color of hot wet sex, with razors!

Then I did a section on going to a bakery. Bread, its harmless, completely unsexy, it should be fine. Right?

"Class do you know what a loaf is?"

"No!"

"Here, I will show you."

Nice google, real classy.

OK class, how about the post office? There cant be anything bad at the post office...Can there?

"Teacher, what stamp?"

"Let me google that for you!"

"You see, this lovely young lady has a stamp..."

Two down, three to go.

I just finished the second camp session. I have 3 more groups to go over the next two weeks. Then I go on vacation. Unfortunately, my wife has already had her vacation, so I will just be home with the kids while she is at work.

We originally wanted to go to Thailand on our winter break, like so many other teachers have done. These freezing cold temps, snow and ice are not things my wife particularly enjoys or remotely tolerates.

When we first got to Korea it was sunny and warm, and she loved it. She said every day "This is so much better than back home, maybe we should stay for two years, instead of one!" I smiled and nodded, knowing what was around the corner. She also knew, but my wife lives in the present, her thoughts and opinions changing day to day, moment to moment. To my wife, right now she sees the cold, snow and ice as how Korea will be for the rest of our contracts. In her mind she says "I am miserable now, therefore I will be miserable for the rest of the year."

I tend to take the long view. I don't judge things on how they are at the present moment, I judge by how they have been in the past, and may be in the future. I know that spring is around the corner. In two short months the temperatures will rise, the trees will grow leaves and my wife will not be as miserable.

The cold does not bother me as much as my wife. I was born and raised in the north, since I have lived in the lower 48 for the last 14 years and become "Sissyfied" by the mild winters, I enjoy snow, and like having it again. I do not enjoy freezing my balls off, but I realize it is only temporary.

I do not know however, how i will react to the suffocating humidity that summer will bring. I have never lived in such conditions, where I am from I have experienced over 40 days straight of pure rain in the summer, but with temps rarely rising above 60-70 degrees the humidity did not matter. On the north west coast, if it rained more than 3 to 5 times in the summer, it was considered "wet" with the temps hovering around 80-90 degrees. We would experience a few days of high humidity, but generally it was cooler after a rain.

So right now, with my wife absolutely hating Korea, and my nervously awaiting the upcoming summer, we are hedging our bets. We have applied to teach Englishee in Spain next year. Lovely Spain, where last year in Andalusia it snowed for the first time in 50 years, where it rarely rains and maybe two or 3 months out of the year temps drop below 70 degrees. I don't speak a lick of Spanish, but my wife is pretty good, and my kids ( who have been in Spanish immersion schools in the US, and lived in Spain) speak it well enough to attend public school.

Winter camp, round two

I am doing 3 weeks of camp divided up among the five1st grader classes (7th grade equivalent). I have each group for 3 days of fun filled...being talked at. I just finished the first group so today we are starting the 1-2 group.

It has been so boring at school, with the camps being over at noon. It would not be so bad, except after my camp is over, they automatically shut off the heat in my classroom. In my classroom I can watch TV shows or movies or porn. OK maybe not porn, but I am all alone, with a large screen TV and I can do pretty much whatever I want.

With no heat in the classroom, I am forced to pack up my shit, and go to the Teachers office, where they feel sorry for me being bored, so they try to think of things for me to do all day. They don't seem to understand that I prefer being bored to actually doing shit.

It has been decided by the principal that he wants to focus on improving the Englishee of the students at our school. I have been given 4 assignments to write proposals for improving said Englishee.

1. Ways to improve Englishee in general. The ideas of the head teacher and principal include a read board to be ignored by students at the entrance of the building. Posting signs in Englishee by the stairwells, to be ignored by students. Making me write proposals to be ignored by the head teacher and principal that might actually improve Englishee.

2. Develop a method of testing the students Englishee speaking ability. They want me to judge how well each student speaks Englishee and grade them accordingly. That should encourage the students who have a harder time speaking, by telling them what a shitty job they are doing. That should give them the confidence they need to keep trying!

3. Newsletter. At the beginning of the year they told me they wanted a newsletter in Englishee. They told me to choose the students from an Englishee conversation class that we would have in the mornings. They chose the students for that class. The students showed up one time. Yeah that is not happening..

4. Dialogue awards. I will be giving students stickers when they practice talking with me, at the end of the year the students with the most stickers get a prize. That is actually not a half bad idea, except I know I am going to be forgetting to hand out the stickers, and I am pretty sure some of the kids might cheat by buying identical stickers.

Well I have 3 weeks to think about this, meaning I will actually write these proposals the day before they demand to see them. Good ideas need to marinate.

Winter Camps of doom

This is a hoodie one of the kids in my camp was wearing today. I love how it combines an icon for pornographic imagery with drug abuse. You could get kicked out of school for wearing this in America.

I wonder if, after church, his parents went shopping and saw this and were like "How cute! Da bunny eat da funny callot, he have browtie too, ha ha ha hirarirus! and Hojin he rook so cute in it."

Last night I was watching a travel show, and the host had a beenie that he wore all the time with a big fucking pot leaf on it. The Korean censorship board had no clue that this guy was promoting drug use on national TV.

I would love to point it some of the fucked up things the kids are wearing out to my co-teachers, but I don't want to get the kids in trouble, and they probably would not think it was nearly as funny as I do.

Yesterday it was a girl wearing a t-shirt that said "Retirement it help" It was not as funny as the blunt smoking playboy bunny, but it did make me wonder why a 13 year old was planning on retiring, and why it would help?

This is a picture one of my students drew of me during a class, instead of paying attention. I cant blame her though, that class is borrring!

I have to follow a text book and CD rom, both rife with mistakes and awkward Englishee phrases. It is boring and totally irrelevant to my students lives.

My students don't care if Yeppie messed up Sujin's garden. They would rather eat Yeppie than apologize to Sujin in Englishee. In fact they would just like to eat Yeppie even if Yeppie did not mess up the Garden.

Today was the last day of class for my Kids, except they all have to come to Englishee conversation class for the next two weeks. They also have to take two tests on the entire textbook over Winter vacation. They are pissed, and I think its hilarious. I feel sorry for them, I do, but it was soo funny to see the looks on their faces as my Co-teachers announced the annihilation of their winter Vacations.

Today we had our end of the year ceremony and there was Tok and radishes in brine in the teachers lounge. My Vp game me a heaping plate of Tok covered in some sort of bean dust, and a nice tall cup of radish and brine water. I politely accepted the offering, even though eating tok is like eating rubber covered with chalk. They all started jabbing their chopsticks and dipping their cups in the big bowl radish pickles. They slurped and smacked their lips loudly, enjoying the salty, backwashy goodness. Gee I wonder how swine flue got spread around so much in this country?

Later I dumped out my cup in the sink, while the tok sat like lead in my belly.I probably will be constipated for the next month. Thanks everyone!

Worst Christmas Vacation EVAR!

My Vice principle must hate children. Winter camps were canceled, but because of the administration and their new attendance policy over Vacation for ESL teachers, the VP instated the mandatory Englishee conversation classes.

Today we had a new announcement. Not only do the Kids have to come to school and practice Englishee for 3 hours a day for 3 weeks of their vacation, they will also have to take a test on what they learned. Twice.

That's right they have two tests that they will be graded on over the "Winter Break". How are classes and two tests a break? I really could not tell you.

Although it really sucks for the kids, I could not help but laugh at their disbelief and crying over the news. I could not imagine having to do this shit over my Christmas break! Oh wait, I have to teach the classes. I probably have to come up with the test as well. I will probably also become the most hated person in the school, since I will be associated with the pain and misery of these classes.

Well I guess it sucks to me as well.

Dave is a cunt.

My vice principle

When I first started work, my Vice Principle had me sit down with her and enjoy a snack of tea and tok. She then started to tell me what to expect of the Korean children at our school in broken English. She told me to not be offended by the children because they like to touch each other, and will probably want to get their filthy swine flue ridden hands all over me. That really did not turn out to be true. The only time one of the kids have touched me is when one little girl poked me in the belly. I guess she wanted to see if I giggled like the Pillsbury dough boy.

She then told me to be very careful about touching the kids. I really did not think that was a problem. I have no desire to touch these kids at all.

"You be vely calfur about the touchee."

"Oh I dont think that will be a problem." I have no desire to touch children, I dont even hug the ones I got at home. I just wave at them from across the room, that's good parenting.

"In the news, I saw a teacher get fired. He touch a gilr on hip."

"Wow, he only touched her on the hip?" That seemed pretty harsh to get fired for just an accidental hip touching.

"Yes it vely big scandal, he get filed onry fol touchee on hip."

"That is terrible, I will be very careful about that." I said, now scared out of my mind about even brushing up against a child.

"Yes, he chase her, he ran aftel her vedy faah and he touch her hip."

So the dude actually ran down a terrified 13 year old, so he could rub his jinro soaked hands on the poor child's hips. Ok, maybe the dude should be fired.

I was more than a little insulted that my VP, who had known me all of 3 days, thought there was a chance that I might be running down her students and touching their hips. I know I might be a filthy foreigner, but it falls within the realm of common sense not to molest my students. You don't shit where you eat.

Of course other schools are fair game.

Dave is a filthy hip touching foreigner, and all the mods at the ESL cafe have a hip touching fetish as well.

Riddle me this?

My head Englishee Teacher wanted me to prepare an "Englishee Kiz" for the Pop song contest on Monday. I needed to "come up with" 20 riddles and "humorous" and "challenging" questions to ask the students for "prize of Snack".

"Fine" I said, "no problem", apparently forgetting what country I lived in and who I worked for. Like every time my head teacher wants me to do anything, she prints out a million copies of past examples she prepared. When she says "come up with" she means use these ones she prepared. When she says "humorous" she means not funny at all. When she says "challenging" she means make it so fucking easy that a retarded person with no English language ability should have no problem answering the question.

But being the stupid foreigner I am, I spent hours yesterday, in fact more time than I had ever spent on anything I have done here preparing for this quiz, inbetween updating my facebook of course. I probably spent two whole hours looking for funny riddles and dumbing them down for the kids.

I turned my first draft in. She did not even read them and told me they were too challenging. How do I know she did not read them, because I asked her which ones were too challenging, then she actually read them. And decided half of them were OK. She wanted me to switch out the too difficult ones with these, and I use the term loosely "riddles".

These are not edited.
1. Monkey like this fruit, it is long and yellow. Can you guess the answer?

How about this brain buster?

2. This Alphabet comes before D.
3. I am yellow. Mouse like me a lot. I am made from milk. Sometimes I smell bad. People like to eat me inside a hamburger or sandwich.

Here are the riddles that were too difficult.

1. A farmer carries a sack of grain to the barn, and his son carries two sacks. The farmer is carrying more weight than his son, why?
2. A young thief was caught and sentenced to death. The king let him choose how he would die. What would be the best way?
3. If a plane crashes on the border of North and South Korea, in which country should they bury the survivors?

Here is one that my Head teacher still cannot figure out.

A farmer had 17 sheep, and all but 9 died. How many are left?

A couple of those are pretty hard, but there are more than a few kids in my classes who excel at English, and I believe they could figure them out. But whatever in Kim chi Land you do as the Kim chi tells you.

Dave is a bastard. The ESL cafe is where good ideas go to die. All the mods are little kim chi dicks.

Dave is a piece of shit

As you know by now, I was banned from the ESL cafe. I have not applied for a new account, nor do I plan to. I rarely visit the sight anymore, I am trying to boycott it altogether, but like a crack addict I keep going back. I still visit the site, read the posts impotently wanting to comment. I sit bathed in my monitor's warm glow, gently weeping at what was once a beautiful thing.

As I said before, Dave can suck my dick. I am not bitter of course, I just like to hold grudges.

So far my classes have been sucking today, I dont know if it because it is monday or what. My students have no energy or interest in any of the materials today, I dont really blame them, this shit is boring.

I have to teach boring pointless dialogue out of a shitty textbook for every class. I dont have the freedom a lot of other Englishee teachers have, we cant play games, create new materials, or watch videos in any of my classes. We have to get through a certain amount of material every class, no excuses no free time.

This year is almost finished though. We are on the last chapter with two weeks to go. I am going to make sure that next year will not be the same. I have to use the materials in the CD and textbook, but I am going to change it all. I will be creating new power points to replace the shitty CD material.

I had planned on doing this over winter break. Since they canceled my break (no desk warming for me), and actually want me to work (shudder) I am not sure when I will have time to do this. Especially since I dont know how to use power point.

So I probably wont do anything. But it is fun to pretend.

HA HA!

As I have said before, the big thing going around right now is a bunch of whining NET's started complaining about having to work during the Christmas and summer breaks because their Principles and Vice Principles were dicks. At my school they told me I would not have to come to school for most of break as I only had to teach six four hour days of camp.

I rejoiced at this and I was happy, until some assholes passed down the new rule. They want to unfairly force us to honor our contracts! The nerve! I have to go to school every day, and put in 8 hours before I can leave! I cant believe how unfair this is!

Now this would not be funny, except they just canceled all my camps. When I heard this, I was like "Awesome! no work during break!" But it was not to be! What my VP decided in her infinite wisdom, is that we will not have the voluntary fun Engilshee camps, where we play games, watch movies, and do arts and crafts. Instead we need to have structured, mandatory Englishee conversation courses no games, no movies, no youtube videos, only dialogue memorization. Because I know how much I would have loved to spend my winter vacations in a classroom memorizing dialogues instead of, oh I don't know...HAVING FUN!

That is not the funny part though. The funniest part is that they are making my co-teacher and the head of the Englishee dept. come in too. They have to spend their entire vacations at work! Not only do they have to come in, they have to stay the whole 8 hours, HAHAHAHAH!!!

Something else that is funny is my wife is in the same program too, and her school was going to do the same thing until they figured out that they would have to pay her co-teacher to come in as well, and they didn't have the budget for it!

I bet the administration is going to get a shitload of complaints from all the Korean Teachers being forced to babysit us over their vacations! My co-teachers sure are pissed at this "it is not...Ideal" as they say.