Ay's and Ye's

Today has had it's minor frustrations, thats for sure.

(Plus yesterday I found out that the real reason why my other boss did not show is because he was hungover. I just knew he was lying).

One of my two2one students, who is always a brat, stepped up the routine and was simply impossible. He would not get his text book out of his bag (he often does this), and when he did, he started to tear the pages. He then got another book from a different class out and began to read it. When I took the other book off him, he threw a temper tantrum, refusing to even open his text book (which, I hasten to add, I specifically chose as it is far more stimulating than the other books available and I hoped that it would capture his interest for more than 5 min) and began tearing round the class room. This time I did not have the patience for it, and concious that this was impinging on the study time for the other student, I chose to ignore him completely.

"fine" I said. "sit there and do nothing."

I began working through the book with the other student. 10 min into it, he began flicking through the text book, looking at the pictures until he finally found the page we were looking at. I still continued to ignore him. After 30 min of study, I spent the last 10 min playing cards with the other student, and did not invite him to join us, knowing that he loves to play cards. When class was over, I rewarded the other student with a dollar (dollars equal real money to spend on snacks and sweets), right in front of him.

Call me cruel, but without sending him to the Boss for a beating (no exhaggeration), there is no discipling him. However, my reaction to today's little performance may have had an effect. Let's see what happens next Monday...

A couple of days ago I received a Burgandy jumper from my grandparents as a christmas present. Today I had been wearing it with pride (and a large amount of gratefulness as the school has no heating and is therefore freezing cold) when to my annoyance, I caught the jumper on the edge of the blackboard, and ripped a hole in the seam. To make matters worse, I have no needle and thread, so it will be a while before I can get round to mending it. One of my colleagues promised that she will bring a needle and thread in for me tomorrow; I hope she doesn't forget!!!

Another thing that really, really gets on my tits, is the American spellings and expressions that i have to use. Everytime I see an american spelling or expression eg ax vs axe, favor vs favour, cotton candy vs candy floss, I have to pause, take a deep breath,remind myself that the US is the biggest and most influencial English speaking county, swallow the temptation to scream, and carry on.

It can be so frustrating being the only person from England in the whole of Gunsan (though Paula is from Southern Ireland, which is better than nothing). The vast majority of the foreign teacher community (all 25 or so of us) are Canadian and tend to stick together. So, in short, I am surrounded by Yey's and Ay's ( Koreans and Canadian's respectively).

Paula and I have often spent many a private moment venting our frustration over this to each other, as we both understand what its like. In fact we were having one of our sessions on the way to school, only to be almost knocked over whilst crossing at the, er, crossing in the street. This pretty normal in Korea. The lights are not the rule, it seems, they are just a guideline. Red equals "IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO STOP". Green equates to " TEAR DOWN THE STREET AT 50 MPH AND HONK EVERYONE ELSE TO GET OUT OF YOUR WAY BEFORE YOU CAUSE AN ACCIDENT".

Paula and I started swearing in our disgust, then started laughing.
"there's a point system here in Korea, did you not know?" I remarked. "80 points if you hit a European or Australian, 90 if you hit a Canadian, and 100 if you knock down an American" I informed Paula, who was in stitches by this point.

(This is in-keeping with Koreans purposely walking into you as if you dont exist. These days I dont dive out of the way, I let them smack into me, or make them dodge when they realise that I aint gonna move).

Well, you have to laugh, or else you cry.