Have I Told You Lately That I Love These Guys?

 For all the complaining I've done about Korean winter NOT being cold enough or having enough snow, and for all the complaining Heather has done about it being too cold and having too much snow, I think the following pics might as well be considered a mike drop for me. Well, not literally, Mike wasn't dropped, he's in the pics of the fam. Well, minus the dogs and plus Heather's' parents that is. What a good lookin' bunch, eh? I forget the photographer's name but she was a northern American and obviously she knew what she was doing. Even managed to make ME look good! Check these out:

Now come on! How can anyone NOT love winter? I love that last shot! Me and the Kellster. I can't believe how big he is! He'll be bigger than me soon. The Spiwak/Peet family have sustained me spiritually through my many years in Korea. I love them like my own family. What's not to love? These pics are like model shots for cryin' out loud! I get a bit sweaty-eyed typing this but they're (probably - most likely - almost certainly) leaving the ROK in less than a year. I know I'm gonna miss them, but we've been temporarily separated before. It's been my privilege to share intervals of each of their lives with them. A better fam I have never encountered in my travels. Spin me around in any room of my house and I can't open my eyes without seeing an example of their collective generosity, but at the risk of corndoggin' the crap outta this post, the greatest gift they've given me has been familial forgiveness of drunken (and sober) shenanigans, putting up with my patented negativity, not always pointing out the flaws in my arguments, basically giving my assholery some latitude. Yes, I'm talking about the (gag, cough cough) unconditional love that only the best of friends and family can provide. While many have de-friended me after one such awkward post or message, these guys have weathered an F6 tornado of them. Oofa Madonne we could get into some doozies here! I reckon, and this is after 55 years of reckoning, that if a person has dealt with another person's shit, they're friends. When it is literal, why it's gotta be something more, no? I mean, we could probably go up and down a list of excremental bodily functions here. If I went out of my way to be a dick to this family, they'd forgive me. You know, like the mother of the serial killer. That's the kind of acceptance I feel here. I bet if I approached any member of this family and asked if they knew where a guy could bury some incriminating evidence, they'd give serious thought to becoming accomplices. Anyway, I feel like I wouldn't have survived so long in Korea without them and I love them all. 

Now... having said that obvious, but maybe not often enough said thing... I have to recant some of my previous trash-talking to Heather. Although I will never agree with her on cold weather, or even the way to measure how cold that weather is, and even though, the pics have clearly shown that winter RULES... I must admit to empathizing with Heather for a fraction of a second just two days ago. The following is an artist's rendering of an actual event that occurred Thursday morning on the campus of the Hyundai/Kia motors compound where I work. There had been a dusting of snow... FINALLY... and I was cheering the few inches of freshly fallen snow even though it made the commute to the compound a bit longer. I had just had a 5-day weekend for Seollal (Lunar New Year) and had filled my newly purchased cup with Coffee Bean coffee. I buy one or two every day and thought I'd better be environmentally conscious, so I bought a mug. At the big Coffee Bean on the campus (there are at least two) you actually get a discount for using your own cup! So I filled up (at the one where I DIDN'T get a discount) and walked to the building where my morning classes would take place, C 5_10. Just before getting there, this happened:

 

This is a pic of my actual notes from that day of classes. My first two classes were cancelled due to one student catching cold (so he says) and the other being on a business trip to Osaka. Her I believe. Anyway, it gave me time to kill so I drew the above pic of my epic wipe out. I only spilled a little coffee although the mug came completely out of my hand. I didn't hurt myself or break my hip if you are wondering. Still not that old. But I WAS embarrassed. The area was almost deserted, but there was one car coming down the road behind me so I popped up like a Bozo the Clown punching balloon. I checked as I took the elevator to the 4th floor where my morning classes were and found almost no snow/slush on my pants or jacket. I must have really gotten up fast! But I'm sure the occupants of that car had a good laugh. Later when I was going to lunch at the cafeteria just down the road I saw a dude snow-blowing the sidewalk there. It was dangerously slippery!

So chalk one up for Heather and her hiver hatred. I guess I am not totally right that winter is awesome. And, bless her heart, when I told everybody about the perilous fall I had survived, guess who was the only one to respond. Good old Heather. I love her guts.  

I suppose I should end this post before I gush too much and start serenading. I just wanted to put these pics up for posterity.  

Before I finish, an update on the job. I was audited today by the head teacher Daniel. He sat in on a class with probably my worst student. In some ways this is bad. But he says that the majority of students are like this dude. I have had only ONE guy like this dude so far. This dude! He didn't do his preparation for the lesson so it was much harder for me to do. And since EVERY other one of my students listened to me in week one when I told them to prep for every lesson, I was not used to teaching this lesson to an unprepared student. Trust ME to get evaluated on the lesson taught to the only unprepared student! But on the other hand, this makes me feel absolutely great about the job I'm doing because Daniel said the majority of most teacher's students are like this. I have just the one. Either they're very good students, they're afraid of me, I'm "lucky?", OR maybe I did a good job prepping my students in the first week and getting them to buy into the 50/50 flipped classroom scheme. 

It's incredible that this was the student Daniel chose! He was the one and only guy who did NOT fully commit to the 50/50. He said with his job and his 2 daughters he probably won't have time to prepare. He said that. He was the ONLY one. And sure enough, he's the guy I get evaluated on. I even went to the trouble of sending him a text message the day before class saying, "Okay, we're gonna have the head teacher evaluating the class and this is what I'll be teaching. Okay?" He said, "Check. Gotcha. No prob." Then he comes to class without having read the ONE PARAGRAPH he was responsible for! One paragraph! I should be mad at the guy, but here in Korea, especially around holiday time, and with the way jobs pressure the higher ups, I kinda feel sorry for him. And after all, he WAS honest enough to warn me...

But of all the luck, eh?

All Work and No Play Makes Dave a Dull Blogger

 Regular readers may have recognized the reason for my recent reticence. The persistent postlessness is a product of prodigious professional peon-esque occupation preoccupation. A couple apologetic bouquets of alliteration for you all!

The new job has kept me hopping for over 3 weeks now. I'm in week 4 of work even though I've been employed by SPEP since October of last year (officially Nov. 1 though). It's nice when you get a 5-day weekend in your first month of full time work (Lunar New Year here). For two months I was receiving more and more training until finally they just had me working full time hours even though the agreement was no full time hours until Jan. 3. I was doing training at the SPEP office (don't ask me what it stands for, they are in love with abbreviations, which they erroneously call "acronyms" because in modern English language usage, which is becoming more about impressing than communicating, it's better to go ahead and use a fancy word than look it up) and I was pencilled in for telephone teaching 8 hours at a time, 10-minute call at a time - which adds up to 48 phone calls without even a piss break in between. Two weeks of that, with 4 hours of commute time added on kinda hampers the old studies, which they knew about and assured me would not be interfered with until the new year.

Just LOOK at that paragraph! Warning signs all over the place. It's a miracle I have done ANY work for this company! And you haven't heard the half of it! But let's just skip over the half I haven't told you and get to my day shall we? I was told I'd be working in Namyang, which immediately made me wonder why in 2 1/2 months of apartment hunting Namyang was never an area we did any of the said hunting. I think I was found an apartment in Jukjeon because it is a fairly central location amidst all of the various SPEP job locations while being close to exactly none of them. So I was told I'd work from 10:30-7:00 at the Hyundai/Kia compound in Namyang. I guess I was meant to cream my jeans that I was tangentially working for a huge Korean company, like pretty much any Korean would. For me, the employer I am employed by is the important thing, not the client. I would still be working for SKhynix if I did not have to work for them through the horrible middlemen at Carrot. This I expected to be the same and so far I expected right. 

10:30-7 is more than 8 hours a day, a long day to be sure for an ESL teacher but I was fine with it since the past half a year of studies has drained the old bank account. Also, I was told we'd be getting a long lunch every day. Not a bad deal. But, as has been the pattern with this and all other Korean employers in my career, they left out a few important deets. You see because I'm not in Namyang, where I'd pay about 500 thou a month for a bigger place, but in Jukjeon where I pay 850 thou a month for a smaller one (I guess I'm meant to cream my jeans because I'm close to Seoul like pretty much any Korean would. For me living in a bigger place in the country has proven to be preferable in almost every way.) there is a considerable commute. I walk to the shuttle stop from 8:15-8:40, so a little less than half an hour. I can also walk - subway - walk and it takes the same amount of time and somehow ADDS to the walking. The shuttle picks me (and Jess a co-worker who lives nearby) up and takes about 50 minutes to get to the compound in Namyang. We get there around 10 and have time to get to our classes and set up by 10:30. Then we teach 25-minute classes (and a few hour-long classes) until 2. This is lunch time. We have 1 1/2 hours for lunch, which is long, but the cafeterias are not open at this time. I have been packing my own lunch for most days so far. Then from 3:30-7 we do more classes. After that it's another hour and a half of commute time and I'm home by 8:30.

SO, rather than 10:30-7 with a long lunch, I am working closer to 12 hours with a long lunch. I consider the full commute to be "work" although I doubt I'm paid for all of it if any. It's a rather large difference from what I was led to believe. But, as I say, this is nothing new and I was fully expecting something like this. It softens the blow when you fully expect cheap chicanery from your Korean employer.  

Now for the reasons I haven't told SPEP that unless they're saying spep, their name, and a ton of other abbreviations they seem to fancy as legitimization, are not acronyms, and, oh, by the way, you can Johnny Paycheck this gig! 1. As mentioned, I need the dough. SPEP pays. They've shown that. So at least I've got that going for me. 2. I've been getting over 10,000 steps a day on my pedometer since starting this prolonged intensive camp. I can't tell you if I've lost any weight or gut girth, but I do feel better. 3. The sugar numbers are plunging. I haven't changed my eating habits much. If anything they're worse eating dinner at 9 every night. But I have broken my record a few times since starting, and I've dropped my medicine dosage. 4. So far I like the co-workers and the students. That's always the best part of the job for me. And all adult students is a nice thing. 

So this job will be good for my financial and physical health although it will be a constant strain on the mental health. What I haven't told you yet is that there are even MORE hours to this job. Any teacher will know this. Even for an hour long class, it's important to do your prep. For intense 25-minute lessons, it's even more important. With short lessons you get even more students. Double actually. And that almost doubles the prep time. It certainly consumes a lot of extra time if you want to be a GOOD teacher and differentiate! I have over 50 students, most one-on-one, and I am trying to tailor lessons to their specific needs. This is done by giving them feedback at the end of every lesson that includes new vocab, pronunciation coaching, achievements/improvements, about 4 sentences from class that include errors for them to correct, grammar suggestions, and any other feedback you can give them. Then, we are responsible for their online attendance, which is sometimes a challenge since there are lots of tricky (and inexplicable) nuances to it. To name one, if a student has missed class due to a meeting, a common occurrence, there is no M for meeting we can use for their attendance. We can't use A for absent or W for work, we enter it in as Business trip domestic. On the same app is LPE (again don't ask me what THIS acronot stands for) where we have to give each student, most of whom we see for 25 mins a week, running grades from one to five on: 1. punctuality 2. class preparation & homework 3. speaking effort 4. attitude and motivation 5. Concentration 6. English-only policy 7. Book/no book 8. Listening comprehension 9. Grammar Usage-SVA (some vacuous acronot) 10. Grammar usage - verb tense 11. Grammar usage - Prepositions 12. Grammar usage - conditionals 13. Vocabulary Precision 14. Pronunciation 15. Application 16. Overall comments.

As you might have surmised, I have taken a leave of absence from my studies. I somehow managed to get my third 4.0 in a row even though I wasn't able to put as much effort into my studies as I'd have liked to at the end of last semester due to the unexpected work from SPEP as well as the holiday season. I actually just didn't do some of the assignments like marking fellow students' papers. So my overall CGPA went up.

 Not bad eh? But half a master's and a token gets you a ride on the bus eh? It's worthless until it's finished no matter how impressive the grades are. Tell you the truth, it's been a lot more expensive than I'd calculated. Not so much the tuition, but the survival without work. That's why I'm subjecting myself to the SPEPian water torture described above. This is the way I had to get my BA. It took a long time, but I got it. I'm sure this will be the same. I'll keep my eyes on the prize and soon I'll have enough to go back to studying. The harder the work, the more I appreciate the studying days. Even though I read the equivalent to a book a week, write for hours and hours, and have the frustration of doing group projects online with people all over the world while studying, it's like a holiday from work. From THIS job it'll seem like Easy Street! My LOA (as SPEP calls it) has been approved till June. My contract with SPEP ends in the GLORIOUS month of October. I'll have to see what transpires in the mean time. Of course I'd love to make it to the end of this contract and get the severance pay and have plenty of dough to get back to my studies, but who can say? Maybe I'll get an offer from a uni that will give me a sweet schedule that would allow me to work AND do my studies part time. Maybe SPEP will fire me. Maybe I'll quit. Anything can happen between now and October. I likely won't be posting a lot to keep you updated, but if not, just assume I'm still working. I'll let you know if there are any major changes.