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.

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?

And so it begins...again.

Time for another day of camp. Yesterday we did at a restaurant, at a bank, and at the airport. On today's menu we have at a store, on vacation and cooking! Exciting stuff. There is nothing kids like more than pointless memorization of boring ass conversations!

ROK on!

Dave and the ESL cafe MODs are douche bags. I dont have time for anything more creative right now. Sorry if I let anyone down.

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!

Too much bitching

So it came down from the head office yesterday, I will be going to work for the entire winter break. To many NETs were bragging on ESL cafe (fuck you dave) that they did not have to desk warm, because like me they only had six camps or so, and cool VPs and Principles who would not force them to stay.

So the unlucky ones, who had to desk warm, or teach camps the entire time started bitching to their reps, and their VPs, who then bitched to the provincial office, who then decided to crack down on us lucky few.

I cant wait to see how this plays out though, at my wifes school they had to cancel a couple weeks of her camps because they did not have the budget to send another teacher to school with her! She is going to have to stay home and report on her activities or something.

I hope thats how it goes with me too, then I can say I have be doing something intangible like lesson planning. If not, I guess I will be running around the school, risky business style. Unless they turn off the heat...