A Lookout

Today marks the first day of my third semester of teaching in Korea; I am officially half-way though my contract. Although I have been here over six months, I actually began teaching 26 weeks ago. It's strange how it feels so long, and yet no time at all. I am already a veteran teacher, and new teachers are coming in droves as our branch expands like crazy. At the same time, I feel so new. This half marker symbolizes nothing, yet it technically is the beginning of the back nine, the walk back to the lodge and the locker room. They say once you're over the hill it's all downhill. I beg to differ, and the view is nice.

where you be?

you may have noticed ive been absent lately. not for a lack of wanting to share my life with you, but because ive been wrapped up with the details of ordinary, everyday happenings. things such as:

students wearing masks,


bridges,


fishing villages,



rice growing on hillsides,


beaches,


rock formations,


temples on mountaintops,

views,

more bridges,

koreans,

big cities,

karaoke,


hats,


palaces,


and a few people i just happened to bump into.

its all been very mundane and normal, you know, the tedious bits of life that pop up when you are busy worrying about more important things. ill try not to let it happen again, although you know how these things can show up out of nowhere.

I am the genie of the ramp

Although most of my students have a pretty good grasp of the English language both in comprehension and pronounciation, there are certian sounds with which they have extreme difficulty. It is a matter of letters and sounds not existing in Korean in the same way that they do in English. For example, the 'z' sound does not exist. Therefore, although I am teaching "The Ear, the Eye and the Arm", it happens to be set in JIMBABWE. Also, in Korean, the 'l' and 'r' sounds are not distinguished from each other, which today created the title of this post.

I find it adorable, especially on the kids I think are pretty darn cute to begin with. For the literature class there is one student that gets so excited about Jimbabwe that I have neglected to correct him even once. My low-level class is filled with more "herro"s and "rearry?"s than the Team America movie.

Last week I was told by a non-teacher that me not helping them with their pronounciation is borderline unethical; the other teachers know that this is called getting my kicks in where I can. I'll tell them eventually. Like the last day of class. At the end.

The Gods are Smiling

What did I see today when I dragged my weary, crying, broken body through the doors for the teachers' lounge after lunch? Not one but TWO brand new positively gleaming printer/copiers installed where the mammoth beast of an old one used to be. They smell like new cars only better.

Camping

Today I hit a wall. Although figurative in nature, it was tall and thick and painful as hell, so, as walls go, I suppose it was a pretty significant one. You see, since New Year's day I have been working intensives, which means an extra class each day, bringing my in-class teaching time to nine hours per day, my required time at work to ten hours per day, and my actual time at work or preparing for it to somewhere around eleven. Any sane person could see that the wall was there, looming, in the distance. I was just hoping it would take a bit longer to catch up to me.

Since I have come to Korea I have been able to notice when I need a break from normal life and the Korean mindset. Little things start to chip away at my generally upbeat and foreign-experience loving attitude. Petty stuff becomes increasingly annoying, like how there is a separate light for north, south, east, and west-bound traffic, making each wait at a stoplight take twice as long, or how the concept of an orderly line does not exist and being cut is a daily occurrence. Usually a day at the beach or a mountain or even another city helps restore my sanity and allows me not to become a full-out fire-breathing monster where my students' cries of "Teacher, teacher!" are the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard and the thought of explaining the meaning of 'surplus' even one more time makes me positively retch.

This caged, crazed feeling has been creeping up on me over the course of the intensives period. I have been unable to escape to the hills (or anywhere) because by the time Saturday morning rolls around I am too exhausted to do more than curl into the fetal position and twitch. It's really quite ugly. Now, I know that I really don't have it that bad; I know that many people have it much worse, are working longer hours for less pay, doing something that they utterly despise. I chose to work this extra class for just one month and I know that the light at the end of the tunnel is the big overtime paycheck at the end.

Knowing this, however, did not stop me from having strangely gratifying fantasies of baseball bats and profane music a la Office Space as I was elbow-deep in the toner-stained innards of the office copy machine yet again today. I swear, the failure alert beep will haunt my dreams for years to come. (I actually heard one co-worker chant "no whammies, no whammies, no whammies" as he inserted his test, only to have it come out in 298365475 pieces twenty minutes later) I have come to loathe the face of the copy machine repair guy because I'm pretty sure that I know how to do his job better than he does. If you ever have questions about the intricate details of a Rocio 2075 I'm definitely your girl.

At any rate, today, after hearing the failure alert beep for the seventy-sixth time, after pulling reams of shredded, unusable paper from each of twenty-nine malfunctioning locations, after toiling for fourty-four minutes with no success multiplied by the six or more weeks that the machine has been tormenting us the only thing that kept me from walking straight out of that office and into my bed for a much-needed nap is the delicious internal debate raised by Office Space. Would I be the guy from the movie who actually steals the printer, or the one who has to be pried off, bare fists still flailing, only to escape his friends' well-meaning grasp to get in a few last vindictive blows? It's not a tough call, but at this point it may be the only thing that will get me through the next eight working days.

But, hey, you know what else is intense?