LATENIGHT - KOREA

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Hard at work.

Here's an action shot for this week. I've still only been teaching elementary classes as the middle students won't start back for another couple of weeks or so. It makes for a nice, short day. This has been further combined with the rumours of crackdowns in our area on illegal hagwon activities. We've even had a couple of inspectors around although I don't think it was a surprise visit or anything. In preparation, our schedule has been peeled back to 6pm until 10pm (which is as late as hagwon classes are permitted to be taught under law).

I think this has a lot to do with that story I mentioned last year that said our area was one of two districts, north of the Han River, that have been slated for development. Last year when these crackdowns occurred, the government only targeted the popular Kangnam area of Seoul. Since then, there has been a bit of a push to convince people to move to locations like Nowon instead, by increasing property tax rates in Kangnam and placing other real estate related restrictions.

Who knows. In another year or two, this place could be a posh, bustling, urban centre.

A small request: The newspaper asked me to put together a year-end collection of cartoons. I've got a bunch picked out, but I am hoping that anyone who has stayed current with the cartoons I've posted on my other site would follow the link over and offer some feedback. Which cartoons do you think would best fit a year-end feature? Much like this blog, there's a comment feature on the cartoon gallery so please drop a line.

Saturday, November 22, 2003

Apartments in Jungye

Boy... time really flies. It seems like the week just gets started and you're already halfway through it. I've been getting a new timetable almost every week for the last two months but the consistent thing is that my Wednesdays are shorter and so are my Fridays. In fact, on Friday I am down to two classes and they are "club activities" meaning that I don't have to teach anything, just plan activities. In some ways, these require a lot more prep since I can't follow a lesson plan in the text and the classes are doubled together so that I get two dozen students in each; but I have canon of activities I can call on to keep them busy. We've made menus for fictional English restaurants, written stories one sentence at a time and then passing them on conveyor belt style for the next sentence-- and we've made our own trivia games.

The other result of time passing so quickly is that it's contract time again. I'll be sitting down sometime soon with our manager. Neither of us want any changes to my contract (he already gave me a raise voluntarily a few months ago). My biggest concern is with airline tickets and vacation. Since I already live in Korea and don't even need to leave the country to get a visa (you only do that if you change schools), the school might have tried to get rid of that part of the contract. My fears were mostly abated last week though. When our staff went out, one of the things the manager asked me was when I was planning to take my vacation next year. Looks like we're on the same page all around.

I am thinking that one more year would be ideal. Age is creeping up (I'm entering my thirties) and I need to concentrate on getting some things accomplished (like building my house in Canada). One more year isn't going to make me any more ancient and the savings I can make should see me through most of the relocation back to Canada. Hmm... I need to buy a car too. I am hoping for a jeep but it seems that North American companies only deal with S.U.V.s these days. Most of the actual "jeep" models seem to have disappeared off the internet sites for dealers. Can anybody think of one that I am not aware of? The jeep that I really like, here, is the Daewoo Korando, but with Daewoo's bankruptcy and purchase by GM, I think that their dealerships were scaled back in Canada and that would mean no service if I shipped one over.

Ugh! Wait. I'm looking through the GM Daewoo site now and I don't see a Korando listed. Is there anybody in the world making jeeps?

Saturday, November 15, 2003

Nighttime photo

Here's just a little photo of the streets at night to tide folks over until I get time to do a proper entry. The highlights of the week were a staff function (seafood and norabang) on Tuesday and a rather long haul night on the town for me Friday night.

Saturday's damage includes a hangover and a heavily damaged wallet. It was Friday night, so after work I headed to Sincheon to meet with a friend of mine (Brian, a fellow veteran of Haltown). That part went well. He and his girlfriend met me for beer. The oddest thing happened at the bar however. We picked a place called the Texas because it served Molson and it'd been a while since I had one of those. The department store next door only seems to have had them in stock for a week before they disappeared. Brian noticed the cap on mine was slightly different but I didn't pay it any attention, until I took my first swig. They gave me a bottle of water. Someone recapped it, I guess. How this happened, I have no idea and the waitress never really answered me about it. All in all, it was very strange.

Now had I ended it there, I would have been fine. But silly ol' me never knows when to quit. I cabbed it solo to Itaewon... and that's just something I have to learn not to do. Not only did I splurge too much cash on latenight bars. How I get myself home safely on nights like these is anyone's guess (especially considering I don't speak fluent Korean even when sober). Invariably, I feel pretty bloody stupid the next day.

Anyway. I keep promising I will never do that again... but after two or three months of people suggesting I give up my hermitage and go out more often, I forget why it is that I stay home most of the time and I get the inspiration to cab it downtown. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I had someone to go out drinking with. After about the twentieth drink, the words, "I have a credit card!" still flow seamlessly to my lips, so you'd think I'd be pretty popular.

At any rate: the next person who suggests that I go out and unwind more often is either coming with me or getting a sock in the jaw.

Saturday, November 08, 2003

Outside Busan Harbour

Not having any middle school classes cuts my prep time down to next to nil, so this week was mostly just a "go in and teach" type week. I have a pretty much standard format for my elementary classes, and I've been through all their material before. Better yet, I have lots of great students who stay focused on the material, and any troublemakers I have are known to me and closely under my eye. They've picked up the sense of when too much is too much and while they can be noisy and difficult, they tend to self-police themselves with only a look from me to say enough is enough.

Then there's the "new" class. They're grade six students, on the verge of becoming middle school monsters, who study a science-enriched program at our school. I've never had a student warn me before but that's what happened with these guys. One of my past students is in that class and stopped me in the hallway on Tuesday. "Teacher, you will be very tired on Thursday. Seventeen students. Bad students. Very bad." For the next two days I kept my ears open and sure enough, I knew a few of the kids in that class. He wasn't exaggerating.

It's mostly the size of the class that bother me though. Our school has been deterring elementary students from signing on, so those classes have stayed small. They're growing again now, but slowly. The goal for middle school classes is to have twenty to thirty students in each-- and that's a problem. Have you ever had a conversation with twenty people at once? How about if they don't speak English?

I suspect we'll see some changes in the near future. I just heard word down the grapevine that our big, new program might not be having its desired effects. A couple of months ago, we switched over to specializing in preparations for entrance exams into Specialized Foreign High Schools. They're a kind of ambiguous collection of entities which are supposed to emulate Western high schools. How they do this is a mystery to me, but I'll report back if I hear anything concrete. Nobody tells me much at school but I don't think they know either. People just see the word "foreign" and either associate with quality or crime, depending on the syntax.

Foreign high schools surfaced as a result of two problems. First, there is a general dissatisfaction with the Korean public school system, so schools that market themselves as "foreign" are quite popular (whether their curriculum is foreign or not). Also, in most business surveys for ex-pats, one of the reasons that Korea is considered a hardship post is the lack of proper schools for foreign children. A businessperson who brings their kids into the Korean school system is basically giving up on ever having them attend a good university outside of Korea. That's bad for luring foreign companies to Korea. Initially, these schools catered to the ex-pat kids almost exclusively, but there was a huge demand by native Koreans to access the schools-- especially since it would allow better chances to attend overseas universities. As a result of the pressure, entrance requirements for citizenship were relaxed and now everyone wants into them.

Our problem? We have about two hundred students who are taking these foreign high school preparatory courses and in whom we are investing heavily in. The first round of exams was this week and only *four* were successful in getting accepted. Additional testing will be done one Nov. 11, and maybe that's when the bulk of acceptances will be issued... but so far, I don't quite know what to make of it.

Exams
This certainly was the big week for exams, though... and not just for foreign highschools. The Korean CSAT exams were written this week-- the results of which are used quite heavily by Korean universities in deciding acceptance. It's a stressful time and leads to students committing suicide each year. Poor results on the exam will prevent high school students from getting into a big name university. That in turn prevents them from gaining employment in big companies when they finish. How important are they? According to the Korea Herald, air traffic in Korea was grounded for two hours to prevent the noise from distracting students writing the exam.

The stress of the time is also being aggravated by the declining faith in public schools. Not only do students feel less prepared for the exam (which is completely unlike the memorization tests they get in school), but also, colleges are growing less inclined to value marks from Korean high schools, choosing instead to gauge students' abilities with the CSAT weighing more heavily, the quality and standards of which are more easily controlled. One trend that the Chosun Ilbo mentions is how some high school students are taking a year off just to study for the CSAT at private institutes which they feel prepare them better for the exam than their high schools do.

It all seems rather frustrating. Korean students go to school six days a week and then feel that they can't rely on their education having any substance or practical worth. To compensate, they pay large amounts of money to private hagwons where "the real teaching" is supposed to be done. The government doesn't like being reminded of the failings of their education system though. I remember a story last year where they were thinking of lengthening the school year to prevent students from going to private institutes over their "vacations". Unless they fix the public schools, that's not going to stop kids from going to hagwons... it just means they have to spend more wasted time in class and then go to the hagwons for their education until later at night.

In the end, I have students in elementary school who spend 13 hours a day in class, 6 days a week. If they don't succeed at getting into a popular middle school, they can't go to a desirable high school. If you can't get into a desirable high school, you can't get into a big name university. If you don't get into a big name university, you can't get the job you want. Fall out of the system at anytime after grade five... and you're screwed for life.

On the tube back home...
Fifth Estate reporter, Brian McKenna, has a new feature entitled "Korea: The Unfinished War" which will be airing this week on TVO back in Canada. It runs four hours solid on Sunday night, and then re-airs one hour each night, Monday through Thursday, at 10pm. I have no idea if you folks back home in the Maritimes can see this or not. Maybe it only runs in Upper Canada. I suppose anyone with illegal direct-to-home satellite (95% of the population, give or take) will be able to catch it.

The special is supposed to be rather unflattering of the United States-- mostly examining instances of excessive force being used on certain occasions during the war. Expect the words "No Geun Ri" to feature heavily. The story quotes McKenna as saying, "It's more crucial than ever for Canadian journalists to dig behind the headlines on stories involving the United States." I guess that's the neighbourly thing to do when the airwaves south of you have been strangled by propaganda and disinformation but I can help but seeing it as akin to tipping over an outhouse. Don't set the V.C.R. for me, but watch it if you like; there could be some cool footage of F-86 Sabres or MiG-15s duking it out.

Saturday, November 01, 2003

Out for a walk, All Hallow's Eve.

Happy Hallowe'en

Halloween has actually come and gone now for me but I know most of you back in North America are probably just getting ready to put on your bed sheets and witch's hats for a night on the town... you lucky devils. Not much happens here for Hallowe'en. I had three classes today and spent each of them telling ghost stories to the kids. The exceptionally bright class got a crash course in geometric architecture and a couple tarot card stories. That girl I mentioned in the last post, whose T-shirt featured the Kaballah, turned out to know more about the stuff than I suspected. I no longer think that her purchase of that T-shirt was entirely a random happening.

It also turned out that she was one of two students I had who had actually seen ghosts. She was the witness to the chunya gweeshim, Korea's maiden ghost, which she ran into on a trip to a local lake with her family. She was quite close too. Usually, the maiden ghost's face is obscured by her long hair hanging down in front. This student of mine actually caught her with her hair parted enough to look into crimson eyes, with blood red tears on her cheeks, as she floated over a river. *Insert chill*. The other student had been at a motel and ran in to use the restroom. When she stood at the sink, she looked down and was confronted by a tiny, young girl who stared at her silently with a pale white face. She ran out immediately.

If that keeps you awake at night, you'll have an idea how I've felt for a long time. I'm still having sleeping troubles. It seems like I am only tired when I have work to do, and when morning comes (with my work finished), I just lie in bed and can't get to sleep until noon or later. Then I'm up again a few hours after that. This week was a bit easier with school though. In total, I had nine classes! My elementary classes were cancelled, first for tests and then because they've already filled their quota of classes for the month. Normally, they'd just keep coming to class but I suspect that it might have something to do with the intentional neglect the elementary department has been getting for months now. At one point, they were refusing new students. That eventually changed and new ones came in, but now I have to wonder if this isn't some other kind of flip flop in policy. Next week is the opposite however. My middle school classes are getting into final preparations for November testing and since they do that with Korean teachers, I am getting most of my middle school classes dropped. I am picking up some extra "pre-middle school" (grade 6) classes but that's fine by me since I know half the students in them from before. It looks like a good schedule.

In the end...
Wednesday night was a treat. I managed to swing a night off work and take in an exciting local event. Linkin Park played Olympic Park in Seoul, Wednesday night as part of the Asian leg of their Meteora tour. Tickets were 88,000 Won-- or about $100 CAD. The concert was great although the stadium was only about half full. Various organizational methods made it seem like a full house though-- if that counts. My only regret is that with security checks taking so long, I checked my digital camera. As soon as I had, security realized that there was no way they would get everyone inside in time for the concert and started skipping the pat downs. I could have gotten some great pictures and maybe even video. Once inside, I noticed lots of people filming away. Security tried to stop it but it was no use.

Korean band, Pia, opened and they too had a great sound and played a short but rawkin' set. Also, there was another singer who opened with three songs, and seemed to be a friend of the band, but no one seems to have caught his name. Linkin Park mentioned him as "J.B" but beyond that I couldn't guess who he was. He played a couple of solo rock ballads and then engaged the crowd with a version of A-HA's "Take On Me" on electric guitar which, surprisingly, a lot of the audience knew the words too. He fell once on stage but recovered well (Chester from Linkin Park ran out and gave him a confidence restoring noogie on that one).

The biggest applause was saved for mixer Joe Han, who is Korean-American though he never said a single word to the crowd all night. Actually, I got the impression he was rather bitter, but the band assured everyone that he was "very happy to be here".

The next big concert is Limp Bizkit to which I've been informed we already have tickets to. Getting another night off work might be impossible but who knows...