A taste of the divinely absurd: Making plans in Korea

This isn't so much about making plans as it is about how plans are made here.

Today is a perfect example of what I'm talking about here. A little background information first:

I am starting an English Club for kids to come practice their English with me. This will be the first of its kind at Unsong Middle School. I have to admit that I got the idea from my good friend Jared (thanks dude). My aims are a far cry from the strict boring regime of traditional Korean learning. While I whole-heartedly love academia and the pursuit of learning, language is best acquired out of actual interest and experience. So my aims for this class are to have activities based around the inherent need to communicate with me to understand what is going on. Sounds pretty damn basic I know, but let me digress for just a sec. When I was in Spanish language school in Guatemala I would sit and have a conversation with my teacher for the first forty-five minutes or so of class solely in Spanish. Pablo did most of the talking. Did I understand 100% of what he was saying? Hell no. But I got the gist of what was going on in the conversation. It was all in context. In the process I picked up new words, expressions, and learned a lot about Guatemala and it's culture. Back to Korea - so by engaging these kids in activity-based learning outside of textbooks, like craft time, games, even watching a short cartoon here and there I think I can teach these kids a few things outside of "I'm fine and you?" Participation is voluntary and the life of this club revolves around student interest so I'll see how it goes . . . and it starts, to my surprise, tomorrow. Yes I had no idea. A little warning might be nice. I asked my assigned co-teacher (who I now officially avoid for all things information) three weeks ago when this would be starting and then once a week since then. "I don't know but I will tell you when I do know. I think you do not have to worry about it right now."

I asked her again today. She said to me, "Do you want to start it next week or tomorrow?"

"Next week," I replied considering I've not done any planning for it yet thinking that I would get a warning. I'm also in the middle of hammering out next week's lessons as well. She comes back ten minutes later.

"Your club will start tomorrow."

Arrrrggh, really? You gotta be kidding me. All this time and . . . yeah. Oh and this happened just before this:

Same co-teacher, "Today you will start an EOZ (English Only Zone) conversation class with students during lunch. At 1:10 (leaves me a whole 30 min for lunchee) students will be with you in the EOZ for conversation or any questions they may have."

I wouldn't have beef with this normally BUT: my actual class time was bumped up to 21 hrs this (school) year from the meager 15 last year. My contract states that I only have 22 hrs a week maximum of teaching time while also stating that I get an hour lunch. But perhaps I REALLY wouldn't mind so much if it was brought up to me in a more, hmmm CIVIL way? I like teaching. I like these kids 99% of the time. The good comes with the bad of course but for the most part I like that I'm a part of their education, wether or not they give a rats ass about English. There are a fair number that do. In my time here I've seen a few more students gain some interest in English and I don't think its because of the mind melting dialogues that they practice in other English classes. So of course I'm going to do this EOZ thing. I haven't much choice. Besides I generally spend my time in the cafeteria eating in silence as everyone else around me either; A) eats in silence as well (weird) or B) talks and talks and I have no idea of whats being said. So I'll scarf my food and scurry off to help some students out for sure. But I'd like to know ahead of time about this thanks.

So I'm running again. I'm entering races again. I'm starting off slow for once. Instead of the coveted half marathons I'm doing 10k's. But I'm making good time. I beat my only 10k time by three minutes this weekend! This is only after two months of training from ground zero. The one I did in the Tetons was after 5 months of running. But there were a lot of lessons learned in that run. ANYWAYS I'm signed up for two more coming up shortly and the training is pretty important to me.

~I haven't seen the back end of this blog in sometime.  For whatever reason I never posted this.  So here we go!  The original date on this was 3/24/2009.  Today is Halloween of 2012.  My how time flies.