Kids these days

First and foremost and most important. I would like to remind everyone reading our blog, Gwangju is 4 hours away from North Korea and we have our own airport. I'm not sure if the news is over there, I don't want anyone to worry at all. North Korea did fire on an island off of Seoul that does belong to South Korea (kinda near the spot in the Yellow Sea where the incident was last year). However, this is NOT an attack on mainland South Korea, nor is it a declaration of war. Don't get too alarmed please. We are fine and people do not seem overly worried.

Second, I went to do my Korean homework today and realized that when we were going over the workbook stuff in class on Monday I had already done more than half of it. So what I had thought would take more forever (pages 112-123, minus 118 and 119 in our workbook) actually didn't take much time. YAY. On that note, Korean class seems to be going ok. It's hard because apparently the first half was supposed to focus more on reading than it did and our teacher this time around is getting a little thrown by our low reading level. I'm getting to be alright with reading and, when I'm not semi-incoherent because I have a cold, I'm one of the better readers in the class. Though, keeping in mind that one reads with a French/Australian accent, one doesn't speak English or Korean, and the last has a 7 month gap between taking 1-1 and 1-2, I'm not sure if that's saying much. In addition, I've been sick the past few days, so any happy thoughts I had had about my reading ability died pretty quickly as my coherency when I have a cold is interesting.

Before anyone asks, yes, we do get sick days. 3 sick days. So I'm saving them in case I get the flu and can't physically get out of bed for 3 days (because that has happened). Plus, we don't have subs so it's hard on the school when a teacher is sick. One of the Korean teachers came in last week with a fever, and there's been a small cold going around. It makes for an interesting class "And a noun is *coughcoughcoughcoughcough*"

So, I'm updating, in part to say, yes, we're fine, and in part as a safe-ish place to rant a bit. Now, I know that it's not only the kids here, but also in America, so I'm forced to think it may be a generational thing, but the lack of respect for the teacher is ridiculous. I don't want anyone reading this who may be thinking of teaching in Korea to get scared off by this, and I certainly don't mean anything negative towards our school or the kids in generally. Also, I'm the first to admit that I don't really remember that much of elementary school but I don't really remember this many kids being so disrespectful to the teacher. It wasn't until I hit High School that I became brave enough, and pretentious enough, to even think about correcting a teacher on something beyond a small spelling mistake or copying error. But I've had kids tell me flat out that I'm wrong when I say something as simple as "a verb is an action word" now it wasn't that statement that was disputed, but something along those lines. It wasn't even a "Sandy taught us different" which I have gotten a little of and I do understand. Or a "but my parents said..." which, again, I understand. It was just flat out, we don't like you therefore you are wrong. It was a bit jarring. Also, even the more disrespectful students that I remember, you don't go through your teacher's papers or desk. Hide board markers, sure, they're kids, but to actually come into my classroom and find my desk a complete mess because the kids were looking for the attendance sheet I was angry.

It's also a bit hard for me that I have one or two students in each class that make it impossible to teach the rest of the class. This is not in every class. I have a decent understanding with the majority of my classes. And don't get me wrong, I do love teaching, this hasn't changed that. Though it has reassured me that I want to stick to a High School elective (Latin). But the fact that one student can so de-rail the entire class from the back of the room. It's a bit surprising how much power one or two students can hold. Complaining aside, I'm still glad to be here. Most of the kids are cool, getting mobbed by grade 3 girls (Britton's class mostly) before school is always amusing. They're hilariously pushy. And they think that when Hannah and I don't get coffee together we're fighting. It's cute.

Over the weekend we had a Thanksgiving dinner, complete with a huge turkey, at Britton's apartment. It was fun, even though I had to leave early because of that sick thing I mentioned. I'm going to go cleaning crazy over this coming weekend because I'm starting to spazz about the mess in my apartment (and really, it's not that bad for someone who is not me). I'm also bringing Lysol wipes into work tomorrow (if I remember) because I got moved to a different computer and the keyboard and mouse are both GROSS. I typed with my fingernails so I didn't have to touch it too much. Ew. Again, that's probably just me. That's all I can think of, I need to sleep because of Korean class in the morning.

~Lyn