It’s camp time again

As the semester heads into its last third, we’re nearing English camp season again. I’ve been through one camp already, and this one looks like it’s going to be as troublesome as the last one. The only good thing about this camp is that I know about it much earlier before vacation season than I did in the winter. The positives seem to end there.

In the winter, I worked at my school for two weeks from 9 am to noon, had lunch and lesson planned with the other teachers, and was out of the building at no later than 2 pm. SMOE had the great idea to lengthen camps to a minimum of three weeks for the summer, which is the shorter of the two breaks in Korea. This time around, my school has decided to lend me to another school in the district, which isn’t a big deal in itself. The gripes come in the camp setup.

The camp hours are from 9 am to 4 pm — essentially what I work now — except they’re chock full of classes. The camp contract, which I haven’t signed and makes me angrier each time I read it, states I will teach seven (7) 50-minute classes with 10-minute breaks after each lesson. I’ve been counting this over and over in my head to make sure I have it right: on top of almost doubling my normal teaching time, I have no lunch period. I’m not a fan of that.

In addition to the ridiculous working hours, the contract says I would have to work the two Saturdays during the camp. My co-teacher explained the first Saturday is for the kids to go ice skating (in the middle of the summer?) and the second Saturday is for closing ceremonies. About three weeks ago, I was essentially forced to go on a hike with some students from my school on a Saturday. This wasn’t a friendly hiking Saturday, either: a cold rain drizzled from the gray skies all day. I chatted with the kids throughout the day, but I’m sure the educational (not to mention the diminished entertainment) value was minimal. It was basically babysitting for a couple hours on a mountain, and I’m envisioning the same thing for this ice skating trip — another waste of a Saturday.

If that weren’t enough, I still have to work another week at my own school to fulfill SMOE’s three-week requirement, even though I work more than three weeks’ worth of hours (including those dreaded Saturdays) during the first session

Now I’m poring over the camp contract and my SMOE contract to check the legality of this harebrained scheme, and I’ve finally noticed how disingenuous the contracts are. In Article 8 of the SMOE contract, which talks about working hours, the first point says, “Employee shall work eight (8) hours per day for five (5) calendar days per week from Monday to Friday and shall not work on Saturdays, Sundays and any national Holidays of the Republic of Korea.” Not more than two inches down the page in the fourth point of the same article, it states, “The head of work place may require Employee to work overtime in addition to normal workdays and work hours. In this case, overtime pay will be provided.” Basically, they can have free reign over our hours as long as we’re paid our 20,000 won per overtime hour.

While it doesn’t surprise me at all, these business practices are some of the major issues that are driving me away from Korea. The living is easy here — once you take dealing with Koreans on a “professional” level out of the way. It’s very possible that if absolutely nothing pans out while I’m in the States in the next six months, I could be back here, but the time away from the mess that is Korean bureaucracy should help the transition back to Korea if it comes to that.

In the meantime, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I have to worry about surviving tomorrow’s camp contract discussion without making anyone cry.

Transience

The sun sets over Seoul, as seen from Olympic Park.

As the end of May approaches, I’m rounding the three-quarter mark of my teaching contract. The end of this go-around is visible on the horizon, and it’s the popular water-cooler — actually more likely patio table — topic of the moment. Are you staying? Are you going? What’s next?

It’s decision time around the city, and Korea continues to impress me with its professionalism. My co-teacher breached the topic of renewing with this gem: “Are you satisfied with your job?” Clearly that’s the only criterion we use to decide whether we should dedicate another year of our lives to this country. In addition, this conversation happened yesterday, and the deadline for my decision is tomorrow. If my math is correct, that gives me two days to choose. Awesome.

Two days for a life-changing decision. That pretty much summarizes life as an English teacher in Korea: as adventurous and challenging as it may be, it all comes and goes very quickly. Nine months ago, I arrived as a wide-eyed American, but it feels like the pages of the calendar have just flown off the wall. The evanescence of this experience, however, goes beyond the time that passes.

This experience is as much about the people as it is the place. Ever since orientation, when I was quarantined for a week with 200 other foreigners, I’ve basically survived with this group of friends. Now with the questions, we all realize the adventure will soon drastically change for everyone. A large portion of this group is headed in different directions, and it’s over,  just like that.

We’ve all been through this at least twice before: high school and college. I had essentially the same friends from second grade through graduation — 11 years — and then I had to move on and start over. The cycle repeated itself in college but instead in a five-year period. Now I’m in Korea, where the lifespan of an English teacher — and its consequent friendships — is all too often only one year.

Tomorrow I decide whether this one year in Korea is enough for me. I think the easy decision is to avoid the unknown and re-sign, but the thought of giving one more year to this venture isn’t one that inspires joy in me — especially without a handful of my newest and closest friends. They’re leaving as quickly as they appeared, and I could very well do the same thing.

Stay tuned.

Apparently children are important

The Lotus Lantern Festival kicked off a string of four Korean holidays in 2+ weeks.

In general traditional Korean gratuity, we’ve observed four holidays in the past 2.5 weeks. The festivities started with the celebration of Buddha’s birthday. The birth of the Prince Siddhartha Gautama is noted as the eighth day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar, which falls this year on May 2.

Buddhism comprises a large portion of the Korean religious population (although the majority of the country is secular), so this is a very important holiday to the country. In Seoul, lotus lanterns hang across the city for weeks leading up to the actual holiday. The celebrations culminate at the Lotus Lantern Festival, held in downtown Seoul. The festival stretched from the metropolitan center, Jongno-gu, to the traditional — and usually tourist-infested — district, Insadong. Events included lantern-making, traditional performance and a lantern parade.

The parade featured brightly-lit floats and throngs of citizens carrying lanterns shaped like, well, lotus flowers. The parade led into Jogyesa temple, home to the largest Buddha shrine in Seoul. Countless strings of lanterns created a multicolored ceiling outside the temple — a nice alternative to the starless skies of Seoul. This entire evening reeked of photo-ops, and it was fantastic:

Three days after Buddha’s birthday (and the continuation of a five-day weekend, which is another post in itself) on May 5 was Children’s Day. The premise for this holiday still seems vague to me, but the origins of Korean Children’s Day trace back to a children’s writer in the early 20th century,  BangJeong-hwan (방정환). He created the Korean word for child — 어린 — and promoted the idea of respecting children as individuals rather than treating them as property belonging to the parents. To celebrate this holiday, parents often take their kids to zoos, museums or outdoor festivals strewn about the city in various parks.

A little girl stares off into the distance at Children's Grand Park.

These kids, who to this point, I’m sure, have contributed little to society, seem to have a more important holiday than the two that came in the next week and a half: Parents’ Day and Teachers’ Day. Without parents these kids wouldn’t be here. (Don’t give me that “They are the future” spiel. What have they done for me lately?) Without dedicated educators like myself (lolz), these kids are going nowhere.

On a more serious note, Children’s Day seems much more fun, while Parents’ Day and Teachers’ Day seemed much more subtle. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have the day off during the latter two days. I didn’t come out empty-handed, though. I got two half days, and on Teachers’ Day, I got a couple bookmarks and some vitamins. It wasn’t exactly the most prolific haul, but I’m not a big gift person anyway.

It’s been rather uneventful (or too eventful depending on how you define “event”) couple of weeks, but a trip to Busan is on this weekend’s docket as is another annual celebration of me, er, my birthday. It should be nothing short of a mess.

Just in case I disappear for another long stint, you can always check my Twitter feed and Flickr photostream for more frequent updates on my life.

Yes, I’m still alive

Ultimate has consumed my life for the past two months.

I come and I go. It’s an unfortunate cycle really. There are times when I’m everywhere, and there are times I completely disappear from the radar. The past 1.5 months (wow, it’s clearly been way too long) have been rather eventful, and I’ve been nowhere near updating about it.

I spent most of the weekends in January and February in a go out-sleep-play frisbee-go out cycle in preparation for Dream Cup in March. This tournament took me to Japan for a weekend, where I saw the bright lights of Tokyo, the pristine snowcap of Mt. Fuji and a handful of small-time Yakuza. Japan is ridiculously expensive. In a four-day weekend, I spent nearly $500 USD. I spent about that much in two weeks in Vietnam. That being said, however, I’ve added Tokyo to my short list of cities in which I can really see myself living. (Chicago rounds out that list.)

After Dream Cup, I spent many evenings — weeknights and weekends — catching up with friends in Seoul. This may or may not have led to multiple benders lasting three or more days. It probably wasn’t the most effective way to pass the time, but sometimes I can’t say “no” to an invitation for trouble. It’s especially hard when it involves warm weather and drinks on a patio.

Throughout this mayhem, I was also preparing for this past weekend’s party of a tournament on Jeju-Do, an island to the southwest of the Korean peninsula. We played our games on some of the practice fields for the 2002 World Cup in ideal 70-degree weather. Clearly I spent as much time as possible without a shirt. It was glorious.

The school life remains rather stable, but I can feel the stresses of Korea building once again. My co-teacher and I rarely see eye-to-eye on things, and unlike my previous co-teacher, she doesn’t seem to be on my side since she’s new to the job and working by the book. It’s nothing serious, but the many nuisances continue to add up. I’m still undecided whether I’m going to re-sign for another year, but we still have a little time to make that choice.

Unless an offer comes along that blows my mind, I can’t foresee myself moving out of Korea in the near future. Outside of school, I live a pretty stress-free life. All in all, with balmier weather and good friends all around, life is pretty good.

I suck at blogging

One of my third-grade students who is clearly hard at work.

I’m now in the second week of a new school year here in Seoul. (The school year starts in March and ends in February.) Usually moving to the next grade was just another chapter in the same book of our childhood education. As a teacher in Korea, each year is like a different book written by a new author. Very little is the same from year to year.

I was the only teacher in my school who ended the last school year and knew his position for the next school year. Most of the teachers are teaching different grades now than they did last year. Teachers apply for certain positions, and then the higher-ups (the principals and vice-principals) place the teachers in their position without much rhyme or reason, it seems.

The results are drastic changes from the previous year. For example, of the six sixth-grade homeroom teachers, two taught second grade, one taught first grade and one was the P.E. teacher. I previously had three co-teachers (one for third and sixth grade, one for fourth grade, and one for fifth grade), but now I have four co-teachers — three of whom were homeroom teachers last year. Two of those three had never taught English before.

I don’t understand why the teachers get shifted around so much; in fact, teachers can only teach at a school for five years before they’re transferred to another school. (Again, they apply for a district in Seoul and hope for the best.) I’m no pedagogy expert, but it would seem that the teaching styles in first and sixth grades would be quite different and that keeping someone who has continual experience in the same grade would be more beneficial.

It’s been quite a transition period to say the least. I’m adjusting to the three new co-teaching styles — which right now means I run the classes to show the Korean teachers how we’ve done things and have them become more or less involved as they see necessary. It’s hard for them because the kids already know who I am from last year.

For the most part, things are going pretty well. It’s a similar dynamic to when I started six months ago, but now the roles are reversed. There are bumpy moments here and there, but the new teachers and I are smoothing those out pretty well. There’s always one exception, though, and it happens to be the most important of the new teachers — my official co-teacher who is responsible for me.

She might be one of the most awkward people I’ve ever met, and she’s extremely disorganized on top of that. My other three co-teachers have been prepared for their respective classes with me, so the lesson planning between us have been quick and to the point. With this other co-teacher, though, things are always a mess.

I don’t know what else she does (fifth-grade English is the only class she teaches), but she doesn’t prep during the three hours we have after school. Yesterday, I had to stay 20 minutes after I was supposed to be leaving so that we could sort things out — only to have her try and change them this morning. She over-thinks everything and consequently becomes a nervous wreck about it.

Her presence in the classroom is rather ambiguous as well. I’m not sure where she wants to be in the teaching balance between us, and I’m indifferent to whether she wants to do less or be more in control. She just needs to decide on what kind of role she wants to have so we can teach more effectively and not bore/confuse the kids.

The school year and half of the faculty might be new, but the struggles are still the same. I’m sure they’ll pan out, just as they did last year. As the saying goes, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Angry people make me angry

We’re wrapping up the first week of my staycation here in Seoul, and I haven’t made as much progress in the things I had planned for the week. I’ve still had a good week, though. While I wouldn’t mind traveling some exotic country, it’s nice not constantly having to catch buses and taxis and generally running around a new place cluelessly. Sometimes normal is fine by me.

Tuesday included a trip to Yeouido, an island in the Han River and home to the Korean Stock Exchange and TV/radio broadcasting conglomerate MBC, which earns it the occasional nickname “Seoul’s Manhattan.” I spent most of Wednesday cleaning and organizing my stuff in preparation for moving out of my apartment and ended the evening with a couple drinks. Thursday’s rather impulsive plan included buying a new phone from Yongsan and a long night of debauchery — one that had me arriving home a half hour before the girlfriend had to wake up for work.

It’s been pretty much a ho-hum week, but one event from last night reminded me why American G.I.s have such a terrible reputation here. We were our in Itaewon, which is essentially ex-pat and G.I. central since the neighborhood is literally around the corner from the U.S. army base. At the club, one of my friends — who is half-Chinese, half-Korean, wholly-Canadian and quite single — began chatting with a girl, one who had previously been schmoozing with a G.I. The army man took exception to my friend’s drawing the girl’s attention away from him and delivered an alcohol-fueled diatribe that included calling my friend a “kimchi-eating motherfucker” and boasting about how much the U.S. army has done for his “people.” For goodness’ sake, he’s stationed in South Korea, which is a cakewalk compared to the desert where the forecast is hot with a chance of raining mortars.

Other than the meathead mindset that leads to his solving problems with fights, the G.I.’s ridiculous sense of entitlement and self-importance is the number one reason people — Koreans and foreigners alike — dislike G.I.s. There are even bars that deny admittance to G.I.s because trouble often follows them in the door. I understand it’s completely unfair to paint all soldiers with the same brush, but I’ve seen so many situations where the soldiers expect things to fall in their favor simply because they serve in the U.S. military — like when the idiot at the club decided that we should be the ones to leave as if he and his boys owned the place.

The U.S. military as an entity already gets plenty of bad press from the likes of Guantanamo, Lynndie England, and a couple of wars in the Middle East, so the singular actions of these testosterone-driven brutes are just adding to America’s negative image. It’s a sad situation of a few ruining it for everyone, but it’s especially true for a conservative (and — truth be told — judgmental) nation like Korea.

I’m not complaining

After coming back from Vietnam, I returned to my normal post as English teacher at my elementary school. “Normal,” though, isn’t the proper word to describe the last two weeks of the school year. The kids had been on winter vacation for six weeks before being forced to return to wrap up the school year. I had spent the same six weeks bouncing between Thailand, Winter Camp and Vietnam. None of us were ready to be in school.

The students, suffering from mental lag from the break, had no inclinations for paying attention — especially the sixth graders who had already checked out before break. I was out of significant lessons to teach, and all that was left were games. The two weeks (including two full days with not a single class for me and a full week of half-days) passed rather innocuously, and here I am on vacation again. This time it’s their “spring vacation,” despite what the 23-degree (I still work in Fahrenheit) weather says.

I’ll be spending this week organizing my stuff to move into a new apartment — one that I still have to find. I plan on doing some local sightseeing (i.e. playing with the camera) as well, but this weather might be a deterrent. Next week, if everything goes to plan, I’ll be touring around Korea, seeing what this country has to offer. It’ll be me (and someone else, in theory) and Lonely Planet Korea.

After this little spurt, it will have been 10 weeks or so since I’ve taught a serious class, but even the first week back won’t be a return to normalcy since it’s the first week of the new school year. I’ll be adjusting to new students, new co-teachers (teachers change positions every year and school every five years) and new class rules. I’m excited to see how these new classes turn out, but I’m slightly nervous about having to learn my co-teachers’ tendencies all over again. I was starting to get used to my last set of co-teachers.

I don’t see how all this commotion can be good for the educational system, but I’m sure the students and teachers are all conditioned to the change. I suppose I should be, too, since I’ve already experienced a few too many unexpected changes. They always turn out okay, though, and I expect nothing else from this school year.

Welcome to Korea, pt. 2

“Korean organization” ranks right up there with “War on Terror,” “reality TV” and “good morning” as some of the biggest oxymorons, and that’s the kind of (dis)organization with which I deal on a daily basis. I accept it as a part of Korean society, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less annoying. Of course, this source of the anger behind this little diatribe is the dreaded winter camp. I’ve actually known my camp dates for a little more than three weeks now and even have some winter break plans organized. The dates of the camp, however, all pretty much all I’ve known — until last week.

The school continues to test my patience as they decided last week (or at least that was when they informed me) to hold a school camp instead of having me work for the district camp — the same school camp that wouldn’t fit in the budget three weeks ago. This camp will comprise 60 students from first to sixth grade, grouped by ability into four classes. It all sounds like standard fare, but we’re in Korea where nothing is standard fare.

Because the higher-ups decided so suddenly to have an English camp for our school, they weren’t able to to find any other native-speaking English teachers. It gets even better: they told me that after trying to put the burden of finding help on me. Everyone I know in Korea is an English teacher — meaning they’re all doing the same thing I’m doing. The talent pool is a bit shallow during that time of year and on this short of notice.

Yesterday the teacher directing the camp asked me to help her with the student interviews by which we’ll separate them into their classes. Of course, I told her it wouldn’t be a problem to figure out a time to do that, especially since camp isn’t for another four weeks. Monday turned to Tuesday, when it became a problem: we have to find a time to do all 60 interviews this week because the camp’s orientation is next Tuesday. This is especially fantastic because I had already re-scheduled a class into the remaining free time I had this week, which was already limited because of the supposedly nine-hour workshop I have on Wednesday — and learned about on Monday.

I don’t know where the breakdown in communication occurs; however, a lack of communication would imply there was information to pass along to me. As with the original dates (and location, even) of the camp, there was absolutely nothing my co-teacher could tell me because there was nothing to know. For a country that seems like its brains should be hard-wired to logic and reasoning (since its educational system excels in math and the sciences), Korea doesn’t seem to be able to keep its days straight.

Even though I know it won’t come anytime soon, all I want is a little more notice and organization. Korean inefficiency will continue to boggle my mind.

A Social Experiment in Economics

One of the biggest reasons I chose to teach English in Korea over other countries was that I would be able to save a significant amount of money in a relatively short amount of time. Without having to pay for housing, gas, and other monthly nuisances here in Korea, I estimated I would bank at least 60 percent of my paycheck each month. Even inadvertently, I had saved about that much (which, however, resulted in the counter-productive purchases of a 22-inch LCD monitor, a DSLR camera, and a round-trip ticket for a weekend in Taipei) but now that the Korean won has fallen faster than Sarah Palin’s approval rating with turkeys, I need to be more critical of my expenditures.

Again, it’s all about setting goals: I’ve decided to put myself on a strict budget. I believe I can live comfortably in Seoul for 600,000 won per month. All it takes is finding some new things to do instead of carousing two nights each weekend in a bar or nightclub. My personal pledge to see something new every weekend helps with this as well; I can’t wake up at 2 pm with a throbbing headache and expect to make sightseeing a priority over drinking water and sleeping more.

After receiving my monthly paycheck, I’ll take out the 600,000 in cash and live from that. The more interesting experiment comes in its first run-through this month: I spent 420,000 won booking a flight to Taipei for an ultimate frisbee tournament, leaving me with 180,000 won for essentially a month. Ignoring the exchange rate^[1], think that anything that would cost $1 in the States costs roughly 1,000 won here; I have the spending power of about $180.

Obviously the nightlife will be a bit tamer (I was getting a bit jaded toward the bar scene, anyway), but it’s the little things that will need to be reined in to make this work — mainly my insatiable desire for snacks. I constantly eat, even when I’m not hungry and especially when I’m bored. The stops at 7-11 on the way to school will have to be reduced, and I’ll have to fight off my constant urge to devour street food every time I see it. Chicken on a stick is hard to resist.

While this might be a bit extreme and I might be able to talk myself into ignoring the cost of the plane ticket as an outlier that shouldn’t be figured into my monthly budget, it’ll be interesting to see whether I can do this. I have a reputation to be a free-wheeling playboy with my excess savings, so I’ll have to learn to be more disciplined — especially since I’ve *knock on wood* bought all the tech gadgets I’ll need for this leg of the journey. Maybe the occasional lens will set me back a bit, but in theory, I’ll have more than enough for that.

I’ll probably disappear off the social map for a while (except for my inexpensive “See a New Thing Each Week” tour), but I’ll have more time to be productive for myself and maybe tick some other things off my “To Learn/Do” list. Saving some money and actually doing new things isn’t all too bad.

See you in the black.

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^[1] At the time of this post, $1 USD equaled 1,456 Korean won. When I arrived in Korea, I exchanged $1 USD for 1,050 won, which means I’ve lost nearly one third of my paycheck in the three months I’ve been here. Because of the Korean economy’s instability, I constantly check xe.com to add a sprinkle of depression to my day.

Welcome to Korea

Today is November 11, and the winter break begins December 24. In Korea, the school year is the opposite of Western nations: the school year starts in March and ends in December (except for a seemingly random two-weeks in February during which the sixth graders take exams and graduate to middle school). As a result, the winter break is the longer of the two holidays.

While having essentially 2.5 months off in Asia sounds fantastic, it’s not such a dreamy gig for the native-speaking English teachers, or NSETs. While some principals let the NSET have the entire break off, most English teachers will have to do some sort of winter camp. The duration of these camps vary from district to district and even from school to school, depending on who organizes these camps. Camps can last from two weeks to five weeks, but often the point is moot. During the time there isn’t a camp, many schools require the teacher to come into the office and do literally nothing. There may be only one other teacher in the school at the same time.

We NSETs working for the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education have 21 paid vacation days in our contracts, which they prefer for us to use during these long breaks. My problem, though, is the complete lack of communication from the district down to my school to me. I was told, in early October by my liaison teacher, that the school doesn’t have money in its budget to run a camp, that the district usually does one each year, and the district would have these dates set sometime in late October to early November. I was also told by a less official source — my English co-teacher — that I wouldn’t have to come into school during the days without camp, but that decision is usually left to the principal.

Today is November 11, and the winter break begins December 24 — and I still have no word from anyone on whether I have to work a district camp or whether I have to come into school during the off days. Even though this camp is an annual event, the district hasn’t figured out if or when it’s going to happen, yet. As a result, I will summarize my winter break plans with the following word:

Umm.

I can only watch flight prices continue to rise as I’m stuck in this red-tape limbo. I can’t even begin to plan my trip since I don’t even know how much time I have off. Two weeks? Three weeks? Five weeks? If push comes to shove, I will decide my two weeks’ worth of vacation dates, and the district can have a camp without me. This is Korean efficiency at its finest.