Children's Day/Teachers' Day

There are a number of days celebrating groups of people in May, including Children's Day on May 5th and Teachers' Day on the 15th. Children's Day is a national holiday, so we get the day off. Not so with Teachers' Day. We had a party on the 4th for the kids. Last year I got them all little gifts to butter them up for Teachers' Day, and I got quite a few gifts then, and the year before, when I just had generous students (or rather, students with generous mothers).

This year I totally forgot about my own holiday, but luckily I was feeling nice and got them all little gifts anyway. I bought a huge supply of Simpsons mechanical pencils and pens, along with stickers and little notebooks and such. Not one kid, not a single kid, even the good ones, said thank you. Unbelievable. I even shouted "You're welcome" to one class as they left, but those little bastards just filed out as usual, ignoring me. I think it might be because I let them choose their gifts this year. Last year I gave each kid a different gift with a name tag on it (which of course made them all dislike their gifts and want to trade in for another one). I figured if I got more than I needed this year and let them choose, most kids would end up with something they liked. But instead of being grateful for the choice, they just concentrated on fighting over who chose first and who got what someone else wanted, as kids are wont to do. The whole experience was not worth my forty bucks.

Wendy, Louie, Flora


Normally I wouldn't include a picture in which two of the three kids were looking away, but Louie looks so comically haggard.


Becky, Sarah (asker of infinite questions), Sherry, Julie, Helen, Daniel


and John. John's really funny, but he can't speak English for shit, even compared to the low level English the others speak.




Major, Alex, Carlo, Julie, Amy


Olivia, Edwin



Chris (in the back, looks just like Asian Toby Maguire), Alex, Corey (back), Steven



Jane, Kelly


James, I think that's Leo back there, Chris, Alex


My gifts did not improve my gift-gettery for Teachers' Day. It was a pretty abysmal catch, actually. Even some of my students who have given me gifts at every occasion didn't get me anything. But I did get a few nice things.

One of the Alexes got me a skin care kit, Julie got me some chocolates, Andrew's mom brought in ice cream sandwiches for the class and gave me a carnation candle, Daniel's mom made me a carnation pen (carnations are the traditional gift for this holiday), and Danny's mom (always reliable for a good gift) sent over a box of three roll cakes. I'm actually cursing the roll cakes, though. I'm trying to lower my sugar intake, so cake is about the last thing I need. I brought one of them in to work to share with everyone, and I might bring another. I'm slowly working through the first one on my own.

Taiwan

Well, I didn't make it to Taiwan, as I was supposed to do this long weekend. I was so busy planning for other things, like my student aid for school, student visa, and my next vacation, that finding transportation to the airport kind of got put on the back burner.

My initial plan was to get a bus right to the airport, but apparently only one bus goes from Ulsan in the morning, and it was already full, probably had been for a few days. My second option was to take a bus to the Seoul Express Bus Terminal, then take the subway, or if I really needed to hurry, a taxi to the airport. But with Buddha's birthday traffic, the trip took six hours, and I didn't get to Seoul until an hour before my flight. I had estimated the subway trip to be about 90 minutes, and a taxi ride probably close to an hour with traffic. So I had to go to a PC room to contact the hotel on Skype. I got charged for a full night for canceling the day of. I won't know what's going to happen with my flight payment until tomorrow when the travel agency opens. I'm hoping I can just reschedule the flight and go for a slightly longer trip in August, after my contract ends.

Anyway, a friend of mine was hanging out in Seoul, so I saw him for a while, and we had some Japanese pub food and chicken on a stick. Later I found a cheapish motel for the night, and went shopping the next day before heading home. I went to Insadong and saw a bunch of art exhibits and looked at/bought traditional Korean stuff. Then I hopped on the subway to get to the bus station and head home. A rain that has been forecast to last at least ten days started just as I got on the bus. Today I saw How to Train Your Dragon in 3D. So it was a pretty decent weekend, except for incurring fees.


Here are pictures from one of the exhibits. I felt weird taking pictures of people's paintings, but other people were taking pictures of these shoes, so I figured I'd share. Here's the website:

http://www.ibluedot.co.kr/1/index.asp














On my way out, a parade was beginning, as part of the Traditional Ceremonies Reenactment deal that was going on. There were some tea ceremony setups, too, but I didn't see those.

Le Weekend

This weekend I went to Home Plus for some canned food and stopped at the park on the way back. I was watching some families by one of the ponds and realized I was sitting like twenty feet from a friend of mine. So I went over and we continued watching the pond together. This family was trying to get a baseball out of the water, which Sam told me had been purposely thrown in by the like ten-year-old daughter (what a bitch, we both said). The baseball was no more than three or four feet away from the shore, but the dad was trying to get it in the most retarded ways ever. He was using this kids' bat to try and reach it, but it was too far out, so he started trying to move the stagnant water in a way that created some minor current to push the ball toward him, but that wasn't very effective. The whole time I'm looking at one of his sons, who's wearing sandals with no socks--really, just one sandal--and I'm thinking, why the hell doesn't he just walk in and get it? I knew why, though. The water had some yellow dust in it that we get from China every spring, and Koreans are obsessive about anything being dirty, or getting dirty. Even though there is a footwashing station nearby (really? In a park?), they still wouldn't sully themselves for a ball.

The father finally got sort of savvy and changed his current method to bring the ball in from the side, and it eventually worked, except that he just kept moving the water, even when the ball got into reach with the bat itself. When they finally got the ball I saw him still doing the same batting of the water, and I found out why that kid only had one sandal on. I bet his sister had thrown that in the water, too.

We watched similar things happen three or four other times, too, with other baseballs and soccer balls. One guy was really smart and used the life preserver to get his ball when he lost it nearer the middle of the pond, and another one just waited on the little bridge for the water to push his soccer ball to within reach of him. That took several minutes. The life preserver method would have been faster, but he didn't think of it.

And then of course there were the obligatory family photo ops. On any given day you can count hundreds of people at the park with huge professional cameras and tripods, taking all sorts of ridiculous photos. Today there was a really cute family with the mother wearing a dress that looked like it was made with a quilt, and a toddling daughter with a matching dress, and they both had these bright green shoes on. The walked back and forth across the bridge as the father took pictures. I joked that any father would take up photography just to be able to stay 50 feet away from his family for the whole day.

In Class

This week one of my classes came back from six weeks off, during which time they were studying for a middle school midterm exams, which is a major deal. Even the elementary school midterm requires the kids to study for a few hours a day for several weeks. The middle school kids have to take time off from learning just to study full time for this thing.

I asked the kids how they did (only two of them at this point; not sure where the other two are), and the girl said she didn't want to tell me her score. I asked if she did badly, and she said well, her rank in the school was pretty good--third out of like 2-300 students--but she was disappointed with her score. I figured it was one of those tests where everyone does badly, and on the bell curve, the highest scores are still abysmal. So I said, was it below 70, and she laughed and figured that it would be okay to tell me. She got a 95. PerCENT? I asked incredulously. Yeah, she said. I told her to loosen up.

Yesterday a kid came into class and said, don't ask me for my homework. I asked why, and he said his mom got to it (this is Gyu-ho, a kid whose home life seems, from what he tells me, somewhat tragic, possibly bordering on what would qualify him to be removed from home in the States). I asked what happened and he said he got a test back with a bad grade and his mom ripped up a couple of his notebooks and his math books and told him, there, study like that. I asked why the hell she did that, and he elaborated that she screamed at him that she spends a bunch of money for him to get A's, so he can get into a good high school, and he doesn't do it. I asked him what his grade was and he said a B. I told him that his mom is psycho and to tell her I said to take a chill pill.

Finally, today one of my cute little first graders said, I eat ice cream, but I'm still hot! Then I laughed, and he milked it for a while. He said the same thing again, except with ten ice creams, then, When I'm hot at home, I put off my shirt. It's okay to do it at home, because no one sees. The tiny kids in this class speak better than the majority of the rest of my classes. It's kind of silly and sad.