New Job

I started my new job yesterday. Lets just say, it was interesting. The day started out with me getting totally lost on my way to work, I google mapped it the night before, but unfortunately it has been renamed and a new school has been built since google maps last updated. I showed up half an hour late, but all my boss had to say was "Well, at least you are here."

I should have taken that as a sign.

I spent the day just shadowing other teachers as they had the students, ages ranging from 8-19 do "work" of putting matching colors and shapes in separate containers. It seemed easy enough, so they left me alone with a barely functioning autistic/retarded kid who likes to wear shoes about 6 sizes too big and run wildly around the classroom, randomly knocking shit over. Well we sat down, and a co-teacher gave me gummy candies to entice him to do his "work". Unfortunately, his work turned out to be to very frustrating to him, so he immediately proceeded to claw the shit out of my arm.

The rest of the morning was uneventful. Unless you count when the jolly retard with the cart full of toy janitorial equipment was trying to tell me about his favorite toys.

"this is my mumble custom-toy owiol"

"What?"

"I said, this my mumble cust-my owwl" He tried again, getting really frustrated.

"uhhhhhh.....OK" Said I.

"Your custom toy?" Supplied another teacher.

"this is my mumble stom-um told"

"Well that is great!" I said, hoping to end this train wreck of a conversation.

"this is my mumble ustom-oy told" Not wanting to leave until his point was made clear.

"Your custodial?" Someone guessed.

"Yeah, that's what said!" He said, aghast at our stupidity.

"Well say "Janitorial" next time!" Said the other teacher.

After lunch we went to the afternoon kids. That is when the two most terrifying kids in the whole school show up. Of all the kids, 8-19 the two most terrifying are a pair of Autistic kids, 8 and 9 years old, both under 4 feet tall, and rail thin.

I thought to my self "This is the worst you got?"and then I tried to get one to pick up a toy he threw. All hell broke lose as he tried to devour my hand, and my arm was once again clawed to shit. I had a pretty tough time, and another teacher ran in and we restrained the kid, and got him back to his seat, saying the hell with the toy he threw. Then the other kid melted down, and the 3'5", 60+ lbs kid took fully four teachers to restrain the snapping, clawing, twisting ball of animal like fury.

All in all, not a terrible first day of work.

Adultry

I am an Adulterer. I have cheated on my wife many, many times.

There are many types of Adultery. There is heterosexual adultery, homosexual adultery, adultery with prostitutes or ex-sex. Any of these types of Adultery would be preferable to my wife than the type I do.

DVD Adultery.

One of the reasons we have been married for over 13 years is we have similar tastes. We both have dry sarcastic senses of humor, matching political and religious views so when one of us finds a TV show or movie they like, the other usually likes it too. And when you like something, and are in a committed relationship you its always best to enjoy something you both like together.

Everyone knows that its more fun to watch a movie or TV show with someone else, but what if the other person does not have the time to watch the movie or TV show? What if you really want to know what is going to happen in the next episode? What if work and family get in the way of you finding out what happens to Bill and Sookie? What if you have been waiting what seems like forever to see "Kick Ass?"

The temptation is overwhelming. I have the files downloaded on my computer, I have hours and hours of free time at work, and there is only so many things you can do on facebook to while away the time. It gets hard to resist.

I try to distract my hunger with shows that only I like, we both like the Daily show, so I cant watch that, but only I like Colbert which is almost as good. But that only satisfies me for so long (since the bastard goes on vacation like every other month). So then I watch some other show she doesn't like (We have "safe" shows. I like "Rescue me" but the wife doesn't, she watched all the episodes of "Dead like me", "Six feet under" and "Grey's anatomy" which I just never got into) but then I finish watching all the current episodes.

Finally I succumb. I scratch that itch, and it feels sooooooooo goooooood. Then as the credits roll, the guilt washes over. I have committed a cardinal sin (in married life) , I have cheated on my spouse.

Sure I can "Fake it" and watch it again with her, but its never as good as the first time. You already have heard the Jokes, you know the plot twists, the surprises, the scary moments, you know who survives and who dies. And you feel horrible for knowing, but mostly you feel bored for watching it again. And guilty. And maybe a little hungry. So you go to the kitchen to get a snack. Right during the suspenseful part. And that's the tell. That is where you fucked up.

Accusations fly

"You already watched this!"

"No I didn't!"

"Oh my god! You are a terrible liar! You did! You did watch it!"

"I'm so sorry, I just couldn't take it any longer...I have ...needs"

"I cant beleive you would do this to me...to us...Have you been watching anything else?"

"No, it was just this one time, I swear."

"Your lying!"

"OK, OK, I watched a few episodes of "Vampire diaries" but I swear i did not enjoy it" another lie, sadly I enjoy all vampire based teenage dramas. Really. I don't know what is wrong with me.

Of course we fight, and it comes out in the fight that she has been watching "Weeds" at work. So then we both make up and swear never to never do it again.

But it is only a matter of time. New episodes of "Dexter" are starting.

Second week at work

On my way to work this morning my wife told me "Have a nice day at work, Sucker!"

Why am at work, unlike my shiftless wife? She decided to use one of her 14 or so unused sick days to stay home with the offsprung on their final day in Kimchiland. They are flying back to the good old US of A-holes to get their edumcations at our fine pubic schools where I am also got my edumacation.

People think that Korean public schools are really great, and they are for teaching math and science, but not much else. In America, most students know that their are 50 states in the USA, they may only be able to name around three of them including their home state (New York, and California being the other two) less if they live in either New York or California. Some might be able to name Hawaii and Alaska because they are both located south of California in the middle of the ocean near the Mexican boarder, yet for some reason only one is tropical, where the other suffers from a sub arctic climate...odd.

And people on the news always complain that 99% of Americans cannot find Afghanistan or Iraq on a map of the middle east, but most of my students did not even know where Australia is, and it is a fucking continent (Oceania assholes, go ahead and google that bitch. And yeah I know its New Zealand, Indonesia and a bunch of islands too, but Australia is the main land mass, you nit picking sons of bitches.).

I know that math and science are very important, but I think learning about the world around you, peoples and cultures are also pretty damn important too.

When my students did not know where Canada and the US were, I figured that they must spend their entire geography and social studies classes focusing on Korea and its people and history, which most Koreans think is pretty fucking important.

So I asked my students how many provinces were in Korea, which I knew there were 9 (I swear I did at the time, but may or may not have just looked it up on Wikipedia) but my students had no idea. The students and my co-teacher also had no idea what the population of Korea was 49,773,145 (they thought it was way more), and when I showed them on the board their population, compared to the US 310,118,000 (also may or may not be recently googled) after slowly counting all the zeros out loud (I mean what is that? Why cant they look at 1,000 and say "one thousand"? or 1,000,000 and say "a million" what is with the complete lack of number recognition?), they gasped in amazement that there were so few Koreans compared to Americans. I did not want to even tell them how many Chinese or Indians there are, for one thing it would have taken the rest of the class for them to count all the zeros.

I thought that they might have a little more knowledge about where they live than American students, but not really. So I have no idea what these kids are learning for 10 hours a day at public school and 8 hours after school, but it sure aint about the world they live in.

Or how to count by tens.

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!

Just when I get totally fed up...

I find out I am only teaching one class today. Normally on Tuesdays, like Monday and Friday I have 3 classes (heavy workload). My morning class was canceled, and my co-teacher says that the last class of the day is canceled as well. So that leaves one class right after lunch.

We are teaching the reading section of our textbooks for that one class today, and I don't do the reading part, so I am just riding shotgun in the class. All I am going to do is maybe read a few sections, ask a couple of questions, and stand there with a bored look on my face as my co-teacher translates everything into Korean.

Its a rough life. I have to put up with a lot of bull shit at this job, but it is the easiest fucking gig I have ever had.

My co-teacher even has it rougher. The poor lady is a temporary teacher, so she shows up 5 minutes before her first class starts (yesterday about 10 am, today around 9:30) and leaves when the last class is over (yesterday about 3pm, today the same probably). She still gets her hour lunch, so that makes such a long day more tolerable, but still such harsh conditions!

Its funny how the adminstration throws a shit fit if we leave early or don't come to school when there are no classes, but the a native Korean teacher can come and go as they please. Although she is plenty pissed that she has to come to two weeks of my conversation classes, she probably had a vacation planned! LOL!

Pop song contest

What the fuck is up with this job. It is literally the easiest job I have ever had in my life. For example my job today is to look up english pop songs to show the class. I have all day to find 3 songs, one old pop song (Michael Jackson's smooth criminal), a Christmas song ( jingle bell rock), and a new pop song (I am still trying to choose one). Thats my job. Thats all I have to do. No classes yesterday, today, Monday or Tuesday.

At the most some days I will work four hours, usually its just 3 hours. Working for the school, I get paid less than at a some schools, but for only working 3 to 4 hours a day, with a month of paid vacation, sick days and such, who cares. I can deal with what 1 to 2 hundred dollars less a month for the lack of stress, and easiness of the work.

Looking up pop songs, are you fucking kidding me? I get paid for this?

I am not as clever as I thought I was.

I got to the bus stop this morning about the same time I always do, but I guess I just missed my bus. I had to wait for over 10 minutes for the next one.

The buses were right on top of each other again, so I figured if the first one was full, I would just wait for the next one and ride in comfort and style. Well at least not get gang dry humped.

By choose the later bus, I think I got just as gang dry-humped if not more. I had briefly considered waiting it out for the next bus, but it was due in 5 minutes which means up to 10+minutes. As it was I barely got to school on time.

Its not like anyone notices anyway, since I have been banished to the dark recesses of the school Engrish lab.