So I made it through the second week of work here in Gangneung. Just barely. I am talking down to the wire. Friday at about 9:00 I started feeling the cold I'd been fighting all week actually getting WORSE! On the walk home after my shift ended at 9:30 I was coughing so hard I got the spits. You know the spits. When you almost puke but all that comes out is a little bit of spit. Then I got to my room and cranked the heat. It was 21, the hottest it gets in my place, I had my winter coat on and my hood up, I was in bed under the blankets and I was still cold. Every time I moved I got the full body tingles. I'm sure I had a ridiculous fever. So Friday night was a bit boring for me. Just coughing my ass off and trying to get warm.
I really hate when you've been coughing for like three days and then the coughing reaches its high point right when your body reaches it's low point. I had sore coughing muscles. Lung muscles? Whatever muscles we use to cough were just screaming at me as I hacked for hours. It just sucked! I was desperate so I tried something I had heard about on the interweb. I put some Vicks Vaporub on my feet and then put my socks on. Then got under the covers in my bed and tried to get some sleep. I slept the crap outta Friday night! lol New place, new job, new schedule, new bed, new everything and on top of that a cold. I wasn't getting much sleep last week. I basically slept in till after 1 o'clock. I got a package delivered to my door otherwise I might have slept longer. I woke up twice Friday night coughing, which I had heard wouldn't happen, but on the other hand the tingles were gone, so the fever was gone, and I feel much better today. Hardly coughing at all. My coughing muscles are still sore but they're on the mend too. I've only eaten one meal today but don't feel the least bit hungry. That's a bonus!
I honestly expected a cold. Every single time I work a job like this in Korea with many students, the colds come. There's no getting around them. And I have just under 150 new friends here. So the germs are many and varied. It was a bit more dramatic than I had expected but luckily I didn't miss any work. So now Friday night and most of Saturday wasted sleeping, and/or lounging around the house playing stupid life-wasting games like Simpsons Tapped Out or Crossy Roads, I get outta bed and make some pork chops, potatoes and green beans. Delicious! After the meal I felt almost completely healed! It was almost miraculous!
A guy doesn't want to feel TOO healthy, so now I'm drinking some greyhounds and doing what I reckon a lot of people are doing these days: listening to David Bowie tunes. He is one of those guys who probably wouldn't come up if I were asked for my favourite musician list, but if I had some way of measuring the influence of those artists on my life, I think he should appear on that list. Not so much because his work was superior to so many other artists, which it was, but just because I had the good fortune of having my formative years coincide with his most productive years. There's just no escaping that. Almost all of his big songs conjure up some memories for me. Not all totally good, but all interconnected parts of some really, REALLY good times.
I stand, or rather sit at my computer, corrected. I just got up to go to the hwa jang shil, and the temp. in my place showed 22 degrees on the thermostat. That might not seem hot to many of you but you need to understand Korean heating. Most places have what they call Undol heat. It's floor heating that uses water. I have my socks on now to keep my feet COOL. Feet sweat, nose runs. Not my favourite thing about Korea. But at least I don't have the shivers like yesterday.
So anyway, I could complain about work and how the schedule is still causing trouble, how co-teaching without communication is hard to do, how I sometimes don't know what book my students have or when I will see them again, but those things will work themselves out. Again, like catching a cold or 10, when you work in a hagwon, you HAVE to expect these things. And unlike the usual hagwons, the place I work has already taken steps to solve the problems. For instance, Kimberly, one of the other Korean teachers, and I are meeting Monday to iron out some troubles. I share a couple classes with her. Lower level, younger ones. I am talking phonics. Some have almost no English at all. I had one kid in my class Friday who had mistakenly joined us. I took the attendance and asked his name in English. He looked at me terrified. I asked his name a couple more times. He just froze. I then sat beside him and asked in Korean what his name was and he told me in a voice Jaimie Summers would have had trouble hearing. (Old guy reference. She was the bionic woman with super hearing). We started the class using a book he didn't have so I said he should share with the guy beside him. He just started crying. Crying probably because he knew he was in the wrong class. I thought it was me he was scared of even though the other kids already know I'm a pushover. He just couldn't tell me in English so I think he was frustrated. Then Kimberly knocked on the door and called his name. Said, "You are in my class today." That was a big relief for everyone!
Then there was the text, half in Korean and half in English. I'd say actually more than half Korean. I was just told to implement it in some of my classes. And start at such and such a point. Well I did and I got mixed reactions from my classes. The final class I did it with made me realize that the fill-in-the-blank questions I was giving them had the words in the blanks basically explained in Korean above. Which I couldn't understand. The previous classes had milked it for entire classes but the last one just finished in no time flat so I asked why it was so easy. They told me the reason. So I asked one of the bosses how I was supposed to use the book. Teaching these close exercises is all but useless. She told me to use some other exercises in it. And they DID work better. But like the schedule, the new books, new students, I think everyone is in the same boat. It's a bit chaotic at the beginning of the year. I have no doubt it'll just get easier. Then it'll almost get boring.
Those sort of things, and the other teacher already having taught lessons from the book that you had planned to teach. So you have to pull something outta the old bag of tricks, a.k.a. the arse. I, being the seasoned and jaded teacher I am, not only plan for but EXPECT things like this so I was okay every time it happened. But I mentioned it to the others and we will be meeting this week to try to organize some ways to keep it from happening in the future. Exactly what a bad hagwon would NOT do. This is what Kimberly and I will be talking about Monday.
So all I can say is, of course there were struggles in the first two weeks, but I think those will all be smoothed out soon. This gives me nothing but good feelings about the place I work. So, having said I won't bitch about it, but having bitched a little, I'll try to pretend I didn't and continue the thought I originated three paragraphs ago. I could complain about work or my cold or lack of sleep, but won't, having already done so. What I want to do is figure out what David Bowie song is my favourite. This may seem like a two line blog post to you but I seriously doubt I have done this before. Exactly what IS my favourite? There are so many good ones! I have been listening to a very good compilation of them via Youtube whilst writing this post. So many of my favourites have been included! But which is my absolute favourite? It's not an easy question.
There are the fun ones. Modern Love, Let's Dance, China Girl, Rebel Rebel, Dancing in the Streets (with Mick Jagger (I always thought those two had something going on there)), or maybe Under Pressure with Freddie Mercury. There are the slower ones like Space Oddity, and some of his newer stuff. There are those with mindless lyrics, like Blue Jean, and there are those with lyrics that make you go "Hmmmm..." like "The Man Who Sold The World." That's right, Kurt Cobain didn't write that, kids. There are those that automatically conjure up a specific memory for me. That's no fair, I know, but this is MY favourite so that is going to factor into it. That's music. David Bowie was a contributor to the soundtrack of my most formative years. When I hear "Modern Love" I can't help but think of Castlegar, cruisin' and listening to tunes with Tami and others, the HiLite Restaurant, playing pinball at Harry's, smoking home grown for a buck a joint and coughing almost as hard as I did yesterday with my cold, pit parties, pool parties, Syringa, rugby, camping, grad, all my awesome friends, too many to name and all the fun we had. Some of it WHILE listening to that song. Then I hear China Girl and Blue Jean and the passionate wailing David Bowie and it blows me away!
It's a tough one. But if I were to die right now, go to Heaven and meet David Bowie, and he were to ask me for a request, (with Lemmie playing bass of course), what would I choose? I think it's a good thing that Heaven is for eternity because that might be how long it takes me to decide.
So here's what I'm gonna do: I'll fudge here and pick two. My favourite song of his just based on pure catchiness, stuck-in-the-brain-ability and enjoyable tune combined with obvious passion that few artists can match would be Blue Jean. But since I'm a bit of a stickler for lyrics and this is just a little bit better than a meaningless song, (he actually says in the lyrics that SOME day he'll write a poem about Blue Jean, clearly this song isn't it!), I gotta go with China Girl. I LIKE those lyrics. And the passionate voice and awesome music are both there too. I also have some fond memories of this song associated with fond memories of youth.
So there you have it. If I died tonight, and could find David Bowie in Heaven, (assuming we both get past the bouncer and velvet rope), I'd request China Girl.
How 'bout you?
P.S. They say you're supposed to try something new every day to keep life interesting. Having just eaten, still recovering from a cold, I plucked a few nose hairs and unintentionally sneezed FIVE times in a row! NEVER done that before! Other than that, even though I've only eaten one meal today the cold symptoms are minimal. The core muscles are recovering but still burning from the coughing and sneezing of the last few days. All in all I reckon I've probably gotten a decent ab and core workout, eaten less, and just plain lived healthier over the duration of this cold. I've tried to drink more liquids and get my vitamin C and such. Today, (Saturday), after getting my arse outta bed I have felt absolutely fine. I mean a fraction of the nose blowing, coughing, sneezing etc. So, how much of this can be attributed to the Vicks on the feet?
The jury is still out on that one. I'll get back to you.
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