::A Geek in Korea::

Today was the first day I began telling students that the school was closing. I handed out the schools official announcement, and while I couldn’t read it all, it mentioned something about how another branch of the school, a location I used to work at before I moved, would be offering classes.  I don’t think they mentioned the real reason we were closing, but it was a start. I think they offered new times at another location because several of the classes had purchased new books, but they never got a chance to complete them, so the students and parents had complained.

As recently as three weeks ago they were in denying the school would close, so they never let on things were changing. The teachers went on the assumption that someone would let us know when something so radical would occur.  We taught books with the expectation that we had a whole year to finish them.  Ultimately, it’s not my problem anymore.

I  announced to the class that sometime this week would be our last class, and that we wouldn’t be returning from out break. Most of the students got a puzzled "Why?" look on their face that the paper didn’t really explain, but without fail, every student that had failed their previous test or hadn’t done well in my class cheered at the announcement. It’s not like this is the only school that exists. By closing the school it’s not like they wouldn’t be forced to go study elsewhere. The students that wanted to be at the school and did well were saddened by the news.

The last class for everyone will be a snack party with games. Drinks will be my treat for all the kids. BYOS (Bring your own snacks) of course.

Anyway, the drama never ends. We were paid in cash today, which leads me to believe that the shady dealings at my school continue. I’m glad I’m getting out from under this cloud of legal uncertainty and trying to find a more reputable employer that can give me assurances up front about their obligations. I had two more interviews today at local schools. Both of them went into the "improbable that I would ever work there" file, but we sat through their hard sell.

It’s a confidence booster to go into a school and be able to make demands, but walk away looking for a better deal while having the directors call daily. I’ve got five or more schools that are interested in hiring me at the moment (knock on wood), and I’m still weighing my options. The pressure tactic tried by my soon to be previous employer seems quaint now that I’ve begun exploring the market. There are so many bad schools that will fall over themselves for a qualified teacher, but I don’t want to end up regretting my choice.

This is a fairly huge decision, as we are looking for an apartment to put a large down payment on in a good location. A large deposit means we won’t pay monthly rent. This leads to savings in the long run. We’ll need to consider logistics, commuting, schools in the area, location of public transportation, shopping…basically everything. We have a week or so to find a place and move.

Then once we get settled in, we’ll go to the United States for two weeks on vacation (Mid-July). This will be my wife’s first trip to the United States. Plan your time off accordingly. Once we fly back, I’ll start at whatever school I’ve chosen and most likely do a summer camp and afternoon classes, just like old times, saving up money once again for an eventual vacation next year when my contract will run out at whatever place I sign at. Right now I’ve got enough stress dealing with my job and house that to even begin to contemplate what the United States will be like in a few weeks like seems like a far of delusion.

It’s crunch time.

At this point, only a select number of people know the school is closing. The teachers were told only last week, and the vast majority of students have no clue. The management is doing an utterly shitty thing by not telling people like they promised. The impression I get is that my manager is seriously considering walking out of the school on Friday, our last day, not telling anyone, and locking the doors. When the students arrive after what should be our week vacation and find the doors locked, that’s when they’d find out.

He’s told us that we should wait for him to give us a letter explaining why the school is closing before we tell anyone, but since he hasn’t given us the letter yet, I’ll begin telling some of my students tomorrow that their last class with me is this week. I will not hurt my students with feelings of abandonment just because my manager doesn’t want to get yelled at by irate parents. I really like all of my students at this school and would love to bring every single one with me to another location if possible. We aren’t closing because we aren’t profitable, but because of tax evasion and legal problems. This isn’t the students fault in the slightest, and there is no reason to give them a hard time.

One of the student’s family live in my apartment building, and the mother rode up the elevator with my wife. The woman didn’t have a clue what was going on, so my wife mentioned we’d be moving soon. The woman asked why, so my wife gave her the details. It seems that just a week ago that parents had been asking for additional "grammar intensive" classes to be added to the schedule and our manager had promised they would be added soon. This had to be a lie, as everyone in management knew the school was closing by this point. This is why I don’t trust them to do the right thing and tell the parents.

Some of the adult students found out and got teary eyed when told by other students. We’ve been studying with some of them for years. One of the teachers has been at the school for five years now, so when she says she’s going back to South Africa for good, people were in shock at the finality of it all. One of the higher level students was told and went into total denial. When we all confirmed that the school was closing, he assumed we were all joking. The girl that lives in my apartment put her head down and cried for ten minutes in my class and was inconsolable when I talked to her about what was wrong. Her paper was soaked through with tears.

I haven’t told my students yet because when they know it’s all over, things really get crazy. No one studies, we only play games, and nothing gets accomplished. I’ll tell them all at the end of their second to last class, and let the last class be a party. I’ll bring in party stuff on the last day to celebrate all their hard work. No reason to waste three days instead of one. I’m getting paid to teach, and I want to do the best I can for them in the week I have left. No tests, no report cards, nothing but some fun as we try to finish out their chapter in the book.

My discipline system of stars and stamps that lead to prizes is slowly breaking down. I used to give five stickers out to a student before they earned a stamp. The stamps collected could be redeemed at the office for small educational toys or school supplies. My last award for doing a World Cup themed puzzle was five stamps, which is five times what I usually give out. I tell all the students reaping the awards to cash in this week, for obvious reasons, but no one has figured it out yet. They just think I’ve gone insane and they are lucky and will wait until the last possible moment.

I’ve had a hard time fighting the apathy that sets in knowing you are going to leave a job and the responsibilities and promises you’ve made to students no longer matter so much. One of the students was telling me about how she’ll be going to the United States soon after studying with me, and I thought it sucked that I wouldn’t get to wish her farewell. I’m sure it’s going to absolutely heartbreaking to start telling my classes tomorrow.

One of my coworkers found a website that strikes me as incredibly niche. It’s called The Yangpa, and it’s an The Onion style parody "fake news" website. However, it’s not just any Onion parody. This is a Korean themed Onion style news. Things like this make it seem like there are people writing such incredibly obscure material that it’s just for me and the few hundreds of people that can appreciate it.

"The Onion" I think of more as a template for humor than humor itself these days. There are several dozen news style formats they use for great comedic effect, with a few great jokes spread out over an issue. It’s clear that there is comedy in the news, but today the world seems like such a parody of reality that the over the top Onion style reporting seems dull in comparison to what’s really happening in the world. I used to read each Onion online issue religiously, even going as far as buying and reading a few of their collected article books. Sometime around the time they started going for the pay content business model for premium content, my interest in the style of humor they were using simply got old. Perhaps it was the rise in the Daily Show with Jon Stewart that stole the The Onion’s biting political thunder, but I rarely read The Onion on my own volition anymore.

Regardless of the parent material, The Yangpa is still running in virgin territory. I haven’t read humorous articles about Korean style news and pop culture this funny ever. Part of the reason that this sort of humor, to me, works so well is that a lot of the Koreans I know don’t have an ironic bone in their body. Their humor is gag laden and occasionally absurd, but heavy use of irony to undercut their point isn’t something I’ve been able to detect with my Korean language skills at the moment. I’m sure it exists, but it isn’t mainstream. (Perhaps North Korean propaganda counts?)

The Yangpa takes submissions. No one that’s read The Onion and has lived in this country as long as I have would have a problem coming up with articles to submit. I’ve written Onion style stuff before for the forums, and once you get an idea and the proper "format", the humor really just flows. The Onion’s style is more of a template for jokes than anything else. Like a word processor’s "wizard", finding the right quirk of Korean life, thinking of some jokes, and fitting that into an Onion style parody of life isn’t that hard. Having it work as a ironic criticism of the culture you are examining sets it apart from "just another website".

Making it consistently funny like The Yangpa has managed so far takes skill. I’ll continue giving it a read and start thinking of something to submit when I have some more free time.

So, my constant badgering about purchasing a Nintendo handheld to my friends has finally caused someone to cave in. Really, who could resist the Lite anyway? He bought it specifically to play Tetris DS and challenged me to a throwdown once he got online with the console. This isn’t the first time we’ve thrown down the digital Tetris gauntlets. He’s kicked my ass at Tetrinet more than a few times.

I think my undoing is that I always spread myself across about three to four different DS games a month. The library of games to play is so huge, and I don’t like to have my gaming skills grow stale playing something too much. My friend only owns one other game in addition to Tetris, and that’s Brain Training. Tetris DS was out of my rotation for the last few weeks while I worked off my New Super Mario Brother’s obsession.

I haven’t been keeping sharp like I should have on anticipation of him purchasing a DS. He had given me fair warning. I had purchased several online titles and had managed to get online a few months ago, but I haven’t made regular DS online play a habit. I’ve been busy playing Nexus Wars anyway. I’d occasionally get online to play a game or two, but never really felt the satisfaction of sticking an "I" tetrimino in a perfect slot for a Tetris. However, I got the chance to play some good rounds today.

It seems that my friend and I both have our strengths. He dominated me at "standard" tetris mode, easily beating me the majority of our games. I fared much better at the unique "Push" mode created for the dual screen. It’s not that I am better, it’s just that I just have slightly more experience at the moment and was able to capitalize on his inexperience. I’m sure that once he gets as good as he is in the standard mode I’ll stand no chance again.

Now that I’ve managed to get New Super Mario Brother’s out of my system, I might go back to improving at Tetris for a rematch. It’s awesome to have someone to play online against once again. Everyone else, I’d advise you to pick up a DS lite, or a used DS phat and get in on the action when possible. Check my friend’s code page to see if I end up with any other Nintendo DS WiFi games that you can challenge me at.

Growing up in southwestern Ohio affords many opportunities for a young man such as myself. Had I ever decided to go "cow tipping", or reenact a seen from "Children of the Corn", all I needed to do was visit my neighbors. I was surrounded by farm land in nearly every direction. One thing it didn’t afford me was the chance to eat fish on a regular basis. I can remember only a handful of times I ever ate fish before coming to Korea.

In the summer, my grandfather would go fishing in Michigan and bring back an excessive amount of frozen croppies, affectionally called "crappies" by the family.  You could say he was a "crappy fisherman."( Har Har). Anyway, while my family owned a stocked lake in Indiana (which we bought from this same grandfather), we cooked fish from it very rarely from what I recall. Usually because the fish were much too small and bone filled to justify the time it took to clean them. This is probably a good thing, as my grandfather used pesticides on his property, including adding clorine to the lake wather and an occasional spraying of DDT for killing insects, (and everything else for that matter).

The only other time I can remember enjoying fish is when the family went deep sea fishing in Alaska for Halibut. This was the only time I went fishing where people armed themselves for self protection from the fish. The shiphands carried guns on their boat because a flapping halibut is large enough to injure people  as it struggles for freedom on the deck of a ship. I caught a fish, as well as my father (I think), and we had it frozen and vacuumed sealed and sent back to our house in Ohio to enjoy later. This was sometime in elementary school.

After that, I can remember no time where I ate fish on a regular basis until I came to Korea. No fish sticks. No "McFish" sandwiches. No trips to Red Lobster or even Long John Silvers fast food restaurants. Nothing from the sea entered my diet without strong protest. I have no idea why. Perhaps it was an abundance of cows in the area that drove beef prices too low to justify buying fish. Perhaps it was the fact that any "fresh fish" had to spend a few days to simply reach Ohio to begin the process of consumption. Whatever the reason, I ate no fish for a long time.

My adversion to fish and other creatures grew. When I arrived in Korea, the smell of fish or anything remotely "fishy" would cause me to gag reflexively. Eating seaweed was beyond my ability. Impossible.

Five years is a long time to live in a culture that eats as much seafood as Korea does. If I hadn’t eventually started eating some fish, I probably would have gotten sick of eating pork and gone crazy, or even vegetarian. While I have adapted my diet to include fish, I’m not an extremely brave eater. For example, I’ve only eaten raw fish once and I found it completely lackluster. I have no idea why anyone would eat a meal of nothing but raw fish.

One thing that raw fish doesn’t have that makes my normal fish eating experience a normally harrowing adventure is bones. The raw fish I had was served without bones, while all fried fish tends to be served whole, with bones.  It’s also very likely the head is still attached, mouth agape, seemingly questioning you as if to say, "Why?"

 I’ve grown used to the fish heads, but the bones still give me problems. When presented with a new fish, I never know how to approach getting the most meat without ending up with something that looks like it was picked apart by Edward Scissorhands.Usually I need as much assistance eating fish as the children in the restaurant do, picking apart the different sections and trying my best to remove the bones.

For some reason, the prospect of accidentally swallowing and choking on a fish bones terrifies me. I examine fish so carefully that I spend more time picking it apart than eating. I’m not sure why fish bones terrify me. I can order fried chicken in this country that is so strangely cut it looks like it was thrown in a trapped door of the Cube. Knowing how to each a piece of fried chicken was something I grew up doing, but fish remains a mystery.

Seems my school has gone and gotten itself in trouble. I’ve got to find a new job once again, and every single source of help matters. I’m currently looking for work in the city of Daejeon, specifically the Dunsan-dong area, but this isn’t written in stone. I would be willing to work outside of this area if offered a good deal. Anyone with good job prospects in the city of Daejeon should leave contact information and or job information in this thread.

Here is what I am looking for:

• I would prefer part time work (~+/-20 hours). I would be willing to work mornings or early afternoons. I don’t want to work late every evening.
• Salary is negotiable, but needs to be competitive.
• Housing, while not required, would be helpful if provided. I am married. No one room apartments. I have my own apartment in Daejeon.
• Needs to be a tax paying, legitimate school with no immigration or visa problems.
• Health Insurance through the school, or paying for half of my own private health insurance.

I enjoy teaching elementary school students and middle school most. I will teach the occasional adults class if needed. I can provide a resume for any serious job offers that people might have via email.

I’ll be leaving the current job at the end of next week with a release letter (June 23rd). I don’t need leave the country to start at a new school due to my marriage visa. I have one month before I need to move out of my apartment (July 14th). I have a college offer on the table, but any serious offer will be considered equally based on the criteria I listed above.

Anyone with any inside knowledge of a good job that will be opening up should share their information.  Any help would be appreciated.
(Yes, I know about Dave’s ESL.)

I’ve been using a storybook for the entire term that has started to wear thin. Without new ways to present the same material, my students start to get bored with reading the same book repeatedly for practice. This is where review games can be helpful in presenting old material in new ways. Today I played a new game called "Storybook Jenga" that I invented. The kids loved it, and were trying to reads pages in books they had told me they didn’t want to read anymore.

To play, you need a set of Jenga blocks. On each block, number them. In a standard set of Jenga, you get 54 blocks, so this will work for any story book that is 54 pages or less. It’s best of the numbers aren’t visible when pulling blocks the majority of the time, but it’s crucial. Number the blocks, then play a normal game of Jenga. Whenever a student pulls out a block to place on the top, he finds the number and reads it aloud. This is the page in the storybook they must read in front of the class. Sometimes they get pages with pictures on them. Sometimes they get  extra long text. It’s all luck, and since they can choose which blocks to pull, the students don’t complain about what they end up reading.

When I started playing the game, I didn’t have a suitable punishment for knocking down the blocks. In my first class the students suggested running up and down the steps of the school a certain number of times. I added things like jumping jacks and running around the classroom when it rained. However, one of the teachers suggested that instead of a physically straining sort of challenge, I should make them read three pages of my choosing instead. I thought this was an excellent idea, and will amend my future games to include this rule. This keeps the game more quiet and more educational.

The teachers at my school thought it was a good game, and they played it with their children. We had to share the blocks today because we only have one set. I’m happy when people can use my ideas to teach in a fun way.

This is, by far, one of the craziest days I’ve spent in Korea since my arrival. It started at the lovely time of 3:00 AM, when I woke up for the first of many times this morning. We had to catch a 6:20 AM KTX high speed train to Seoul because my wife was going to the American Embassy for her Non-immigration visa. We plan to visit the States together sometime this summer, so we needed to get a visa to begin the process of buying tickets and whatnot. Today was the culmination of about a month or more of paperwork and several months of waiting for tax documents to be provided by her school. Any problems we encountered today would only add to our problems later if we tried to do the same thing, so the flawless execution of paperwork, arrival, and procedure that needed to be followed at the embassy occupied both of our minds and prevented us from sleeping.

We arrived nearly an hour before her scheduled interview. Once the line started to move, they could interview a large number of people per hour. The line wrapped around the huge building, but it didn’t take long for her to get inside. We had prepared our own paperwork, but the couple behind us had used an agent. The agent never arrived with their paperwork in time.

I wasn’t allowed inside to help, but she described the inside of the embassy as a long bank style number queue with different zones and "dings" alerting people as to where to go at a certain time. I waited outside nervously. The Kyobo bookstore in the embassy district wasn’t yet open, so I sat on a bench and read my book. An hour or so later she left, visa to be delivered to our home in Daejeon. Success!

As we were coming back to Daejeon before work, exhausted from our trip to Seoul, I got the call I had been waiting for about work. We had found out, in the course of our visa work, that there were paperwork irregularities with our school and what our contract said was supposed to be happening. It was confirmed when a teacher at our school, when trying to get a marriage visa, got interviewed in a special "interrogation" room. He had to sign paperwork detailing his coworkers and what he knew about the situation. There was a raid on our school the next day in which I had to prove legal residency. Things were not peachy keen at our school. It involved all the teachers at the school, and it was simply a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop to see how serious things were going to get.

The shoe "dropped" today, and we’ve been told the school is closing at the end of the month, or even sooner. We’ve been given two days to consider a new contract offer at another branch of the school. This is after asking questions for months about our legal status and school’s future, they decide to tell us what’s going on two days before the decisions need to be made. Typical of the school and administration in general. No one knows anything until everything needs to happen.

We’ve got to go interview at the main branch campus within the week. We all have job offers standing at the school, and they’d even pay for visa runs to Japan (which I no longer require due to my "married" status). But without seeing the contract beforehand, any realistic expectation that anyone was going to go to the school and sign a contract immediately seems extremely foolish. I’m going to hear their best offer, consider my options, and then decide what I’m going to do. No pressure for me, as I can stay in the country while looking for work, unlike some of my coworkers.

One of the teachers, spending time with his family after his wedding, had paid for substitutes for his classes. The substitutes all came from the main branch campus that now wants to hire us. The teachers I work with spent the day getting information and rumors out of the substitute. All the people I’ve met from the campus seem like very nice people, and he was no exception. He told us what he knew. We were the last people to know about our school’s situation, and our boss was the very last of all. He found out only after another foreign teacher called and demanded information and left a note for him.

It’s hard to stay motivated to stay on topic in class when you know it’s only two weeks before you’ll be looking for work, and will likely never see any of the students you worked with for a year or more to improve their English. The students still haven’t been told, so they think the end of the month simply means that we have a normal vacation. I think they were surprised when I let them play a game for part of the class today. I’ll definitely tell my students next week so they have a chance to say goodbye. After work today, the teachers went out for a beer and we talked about our thoughts about work.

Now, as I write this, there are people screaming outside my apartment building. Korea is playing Togo, and has just tied up the score at 1:1 after a Togo player was issued a Red Card. There are fireworks and people yelling. Everyone in the country is probably watching, except my wife, who got sick from the stress of preparing the American visa paperwork and the early morning run to Seoul and is now resting in bed.

One of the teachers I work with has a kindergarten class before mine. The level I teach while he teaches kindergarten is what he does for the rest of the day. As such, we’ve developed a fairly reliable system where he figures out something to do in the kindergarten, and I think of something to do in my class. Then, when we change classes, we fill each other in on what we did, how it went, and general tips on making the class go smoother. This means that we both only have to prepare one lesson, and it’s always had the benefit of a trial run before we start the class. This helps everything operate in the easiest environment.

Today, I made up a game for my class, which I later shared with the other teacher. I found some dice, then labeled twelve different parts of the body. Each body part had a corresponding number. I wrote the parts and their labels on the board next to the number, then handed out a paper with the parts marked on a "Robot" I made out of word processing text boxes on the computer. The students then had to "label" the parts as they rolled the die and got the corresponding number. The first person to get their robot completed got a prize, as did the student that did the best job coloring. This kept my students well entertained.

The other teacher prepared the "Cup Monster" lesson from our kindergarten books. He found cups, marked them with five dashes equally positioned to aid in cutting for each student, then prepared a sample monster. He cut the paper cup, colored limbs and a head, then glued them onto the cup. The result was a "Cup Monster" the kids could make in class. I had already done this lesson at a previous school, so I helped him with some of the details, but he was the one that found  the cups and made the lesson work.

After those two classes are taken care of, I’m half way finished with my day. I have only one more lesson to prepare for other classes I have, as both classes study the same material. This means that on my busiest day I am only preparing materials for half my classes. The difference between four separate lessons and two well plotted and planned lessons is enormous. Everyone in the room can feel the difference when we go through a well planned lesson. The less time I have to work on each individual class, and the more time I can plan for classes as whole, the better for everyone. We designed our schedules to work this way, and it’s made a huge difference in my teaching at this school compared to my last.

One of the interesting things about getting married is the reactions you get running into people that didn’t know. For example, when I am walking around with my wife and she runs into someone she used to work with, or someone she hasn’t seen in a long time, I’ll frequently be left out of the conversational loop as they catch up. I don’t mind this, as I have terrible facial recognition skills and trying to recall people or be reintroduced takes too much time. I’d rather just get filled on the details later and see if my listening skills have improved by hearing their conversation.

While I’m standing around, eventually the person will ask, "Hey, so who is this guy walking around with you? Your boyfriend?"

This has happened four or five times in the past week. My wife got asked if I was her boyfriend after she asked me advice on some shoes she was trying on. I got asked if she was my friend after I got my haircut and shampoo at my salon. I got hit on in a bar by some drunk woman that didn’t know we were a couple when I had sat next to my wife the whole night. One of our apartment neighbors didn’t know we were married either. Whenever I meet new people they tend to be a little surprised when I introduce us.

It happened at a wedding I attended with foreigners as well. It’s not just Korean people that are surprised.

Rarely has someone guessed we are married if they didn’t already know. It’s not like we are an unlikely couple in any way I can discern. We both speak English and Korean to each other, she calls me the Korean equivalent of "Honey" or "Sweetheart" when we are out. Of course, that’s because people like to use titles here instead of names whenever possible. It’s not a disgustingly cute thing in this case, but it is rather common with married and unmarried couples.

We both wear wedding rings all the time. We usually hold hands when walking around. Short of wearing matching clothing at all times (WHICH PEOPLE DO HERE! GAH!), there is nothing more we can do to scream, "We are a couple! Really!"

We are thinking of getting a sign or something.