Too Much Work

I've been ridiculously busy the last few weeks which is why you have not seen a new post for a while. When I do get free time, my brain is too fried to focus on writing anything that is somewhat comprehensible. I'm even having a hard time focusing now, but I have a few funny stories that I feel need to get written down before I forget them.

The reason for my exhaustion comes from a winter intensive schedule that has me teaching, at times, ten classes within a twelve hour period. While I do have breaks, they aren't nearly long enough to do anything significant. I could go on for a while about my feelings about this and other cultural differences involving the workplace and work ethics, but that will just piss me off and set my week off on the wrong foot. I'm dealing with the tough schedule fairly well and actually enjoy most of my classes, especially the extra ones. I'm teaching an essay class in which I'm the only teacher (that means I don't share time with a Korean teacher), and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with some of the brightest students in the academy. Also, this schedule is only for the month of January; when it's over I'll go back to working no more than seven classes within a six hour time frame. Not a bad deal.

One of the girls I teach managed to point out four separate physical imperfections within two class periods. First, I walked into class and was told, "Teacher, you're fat." This kind of thing is not uncommon in the classroom. The young ones have no qualms with tearing you apart. Later in class, she was calling me a name in Korean which I assumed was something insulting and came to find out later that she was pointing out my double-chin. As if this wasn't already enough to ruin my self-esteem, the next day, as I was helping her with a written assignment, she stopped me mid-sentence to say as she touched the crown of my head, "Teacher, no hair." Immediately afterwards, she grabbed my unusually thick eyebrows and pulled on them. Not only do these kids see me as a fat slob with a double-chin, they also point out my balding scalp and bushy eyebrows. The funny thing is I've lost weight since I've been here. I've gotten used to these comments and can only laugh when they're said. All I can say in my defense is that everything is relative. Compared to a lot of Koreans, I'm a little more round and bald, but for white man standards, I'm pretty average. Because I have a little more tact than many people here, you won't see me making fun of size issues in the gym locker room...

Another one of my students had me completely weak with laughter the other day. He came into class late and began a test immediately. While he was diligently working away, I noticed a strange patch on his jeans. When I moved to read it, I found it to say, "Too drunk to fuck." I asked him if he knew what that meant, and he just gave me an honest stare that told me he had no clue. I had to show other teachers. When I passed one of my supervisors, I showed her expecting her to give some sort of punishment or tongue-lashing, but she just laughed instead. Had this been written in Korean, I'm sure he would have been in major trouble, but inappropriate English words and phrases just don't bear the same meaning here. I've talked about this a little before; people often wear clothes with English words or phrases on them without a clue about what they might mean (I'm sure the Chinese symbols tattooed on more than half of all American women's backs make total sense though). This kid had absolutely no clue that his patch meant that he was too intoxicated on alcohol to engage in sexual intercourse. I wasn't going to be the one to tell him either.