I had to blow off a class with Huasheng to catch my train to Beijing. I didn't mind that at all! It was the class with the little brat who cried for 2 hours because he didn't get his way. He will probably own a company like Huasheng someday. I told the boss I had looked at the old schedule when booking my plane tickets and train tickets. The class had been changed the week before. For the umpteenth time. One of the reasons I gave for quitting Huasheng was their instability. Good example right here. And I'm sure the class was changed on the whim of one of the mothers, something I've warned them about but they refuse to respect my knowledge. Probably because it was gained mostly in Korea and they think it is completely different here. It's not. You give the mothers a whiff of control and they'll insinuate themselves into every aspect of the business. Their jobs are to teach their kids manners so they don't cry for two straight hours. I don't tell them how to do that and I would appreciate if they didn't try to tell me how to teach. But the employer still just sees the money. They can't figure out that the parents, (let's face it, the mothers), aren't the money, I am. But they're not very smart, just dishonest, that's why their business is in the toilet.
I also left a bit early from my Thursday afternoon class. It's another I don't like. One of the bird classes the university tossed me. Unbelievably even HARDER than the 4 hour class with the 90 students. For one main reason: the students. For the most part, their English level is far too low for a course like this. I'm supposed to be teaching them about the cultures of major English speaking countries. I chose the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the countries of the UK as my major English speaking countries. They had a textbook that was advanced level and had chosen those countries. Seriously, a native English speaker would have had to work hard to read that book! It's like my TOEFL class. They all have another major, they just want to improve their English as part of their program so they just look at what a GOOD school, with GOOD students might do and regardless of ability or English level, they do the same thing. In both of the classes I've told them to leave the books at home. They understand one of every 100 words. Sell them, use them to prop up a wobbly table or throw them away. That's all the good they'll do you. You are several years of solid English study and who knows how many I.Q. points away from using those books. I've been told by a few of my students that they are at this school because their grades were not good enough to go somewhere else. In short, I'm not dealing with the cream of the Chinese crop here. Whatever the opposite of the cream of the crop is, I see it quite often. The 1% powdered milk of the crop maybe. It's hard to miss.
For instance, the lesson on Thursday was not really a lesson. I gave them an assignment two weeks before to choose one of the listed countries, (or groups of countries), and one aspect of culture and make a poster about it. I wrote a long list of very broad cultural aspects on the board the day they made their choices. Architecture, art, music, food, festivals, superstitions, body language, family, and so on. One chose English rock and did the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Not bad. Solid. Another group chose Australian animals and did the koala and the kangaroo. Again pretty good. Those two groups will pass. One group chose the UK and buildings. They printed out a picture of the right building where Big Ben is, and a picture of some other buildings unrelated. And, of course, they wrote about Big Ben as the clock tower, when really it's the bell. And what they wrote is unintelligible. Four people and nobody knew how to use a period. They'll probably fail. Then there was Canada buildings. They chose the CN Tower. And wrote about Canadian National railway in English AND Chinese. I got them to fix it during class time so they might squeak by. I told the class a poster should be larger than one sheet of paper. That's all most of them had. But group 6, (American buildings), solved that problem. Two of them drew a picture of the U.S. parliament building and wrote about it on one piece of paper. The other two? Same thing. Then they stuck the two pages together.
Another group did Australian seafood and that wasn't bad. Then there was group two. They did American food. On the one hand, they didn't do the expected hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza and fried chicken. On the other hand, they have some foods on their poster that are rarely eaten in America. Certainly not staples. Like buckwheat, sauerkraut, chicken chop, Yorkshire pudding, and they have incomprehensible writing about the foods that sometimes can't be seen. I dunno what I'll do with that one. And finally, my personal favourite, American movies. Of the bazillion American movies they could have chosen, they chose Casablanca, (okay, good choice), and Leon. A French movie. And they KNEW it! I asked and they told me. So why did you choose it? We like this movie. It's not even called Leon in the States. They called it "The Professional." Okay, it has Natalie Portman and there's some English, but really? REALLY??? And then they took lines from the movies that had been translated into Chinese and translated them back into English. Like the very memorable, "There are so many towns in the world. there are so many pubs in the town. she goes in mine." And the oft quoted, "The deepest love I think, later than apart, I will live as you like." But, the artwork was pretty good.
I'll take pics of them later and add them. Funny stuff! Right now I'm using my Fire to watch the Tigers and Doosan scrap it out. We watched two games together in Korea. Well, not quite two and not always ALL together. But good news: the Tigers won them both! If they win tonight, they're Korean champs! It's still 0-0 in the 2nd inning. Tigers came close to scoring in the first but some unlucky base running cost them. They have Hector, a 20 game winner, pitching tonight. Winning 15 in the KBO is like 20 in the majors. So winning 20 is outrageously good! Tigers have TWO 20 game winners. WOAH!!! As I type this Beom Ho just busted out of his hitting slump with a GRAND SLAM! Tigers up 5-0! This could be it!
Well, the Tigers ended up winning 7-6! They are the champs! Woohoo!!!
This is Yang Hyun Jong, the OTHER 20 game winner. He pitched a gem in the second game. Four hits, 11 strike-outs and a complete game shut out. He came into last nights game after the Tigers, as they like to do, had blown a big lead and were in a bases loaded jam. But Yang got them out of hot water and added a save to his dominant game two win to become the KBO Korean Series MVP.
Here's the team with their brand new, Kia Tiger 2017 Champs hats and shirts, (still with tags on), celebrating in Seoul's Chamshil Stadium. It's too bad they couldn't win it at home in Gwangju, but I'm glad they won. Notice some of the players wearing their champagne goggles. Never seen that before. Last night's starter, Hector Noesi even had a snorkel.
Well, it's the weekend for me now. I usually don't stop writing for a few days and then pick up the same blog post, but I did it this time. I have to mention the latest from the low watt bulbs that are my culture class. I put together a lesson on capital punishment for them. As always it took up a lot of time and it was a complete flop. I outlined capital punishment in the major English speaking countries, how it was done, when it was last carried out and when it was abolished, if it has been, (Murca). Australia was tough cuz they did it region by region but I thought the territories of Australia would be a good thing for a class like this to know. The UK was tough too because it goes way back to when you could get put to death for stealing something worth a buck. If you said, "The Queen sucks!" BOOM! Capital punishment. If you used your salad fork to eat your blood pudding, BOOM capital punishment. If you slurped your tea too loudly, BOOM capital punishment. Even today remnants of the crazy harsh laws still remain. If you kill the Queen, you will receive capital punishment. If you kill Ricky Gervais - no! How is THAT fair? Is it possibly for his rotten treatment of Carl Pilkington over the years? No! If I kill any regular Brit, I will just get a lengthy prison sentence. So even though Ricky Gervais' career has probably brought more pleasure to the realm than the lady in fancy dress who does nothing, (I would go so far as to say just his Office dance outranks Liz's entire output!), she is still regarded as death penalty worthy.
What?!?! You don't know the David Brent Office dance?
Now, can the Queen dance like that? Come on! Ha ha ha! I just laughed so hard I coughed and coughed and cried. Yes, for not only did I bring back a well worn body from the Korean outing, (particularly the liver, (I actually drank Soju AND Makkoli and I don't like either!)), I brought back a cold. I had planned to bring back plenty of cold medicine and treatments from Korea that you just can't find here, like Theraflu, a hot lemon drink like Neo Citron, and Halls and Fisherman's Friends, and maybe even a few strands of envelopes full of mystery pills and rabbit droppings expats in Korea call "cold bombs." There may be nobody who could tell you exactly what they are, but boy howdy, they work!
Usually you get a string of about 10 or 15 of these and they have some brown mini feed pellet looking things, (rabbit droppings), with them. Ever eat the cereal All Bran? Just miniaturize that. In fact, my theory is that one of the pills might cause constipation and that brown rubble is just bran to counteract that. Anyway, I didn't end up getting any of that stuff and, of course, I immediately need it. I've had a cold all week. But I didn't miss a class. The hardest was my first class on Monday. After getting back to the uni at 1:30, getting maybe 3 hours of sleep then getting up at 5:30, I had to face, you guessed it, the low watt bulbs. I threw together a Halloween lesson and some questions about being scared and they went over like warm Coke. Although, here in China, warm Coke is preferred over cold I think. Can you believe that?
So they are the start and end of my week. Today I tried the capital punishment and it went over like insects on a stick. Oh wait... Well they got nothing out of it. Put no effort into it at all. Maybe they were upset at their grades on the posters. Only one failed, and I thought I was very generous on most. But I think they've been told to expect a class where they don't need to even pay attention and they'll get good grades. I've seen this before. I spend months evaluating them professionally, hand the marks in and the dean of the department changes them all to 70's or above. Ah, who cares? As long as I don't see it. But in the mean time, I have to deal with these sluggos.
Today for about the fifth time, I gave them all numbers randomly to divide them into groups. There are 32 students so I gave them numbers from 1-8. Groups of four. Hopefully people you haven't talked with before. Then I gave them 20 questions about capital punishment to talk about. It took them longer to figure out how to get into their groups of 4 than to "finish" the conversation questions. I seriously wonder if these kids wouldn't be put into special ed. in Canada. Really interesting things to talk about like, "What do you think the most humane method of capital punishment would be?" "What would the LEAST humane method be?" (I taught them the word humane beforehand and gave them some examples like the Iron Maiden, the guillotine, the Death of a Thousand Cuts, "Lingchi" (used in China!), the firing squad, electric chair, gas chamber, lethal injection, hanging, and asked which they would prefer. How would they be executed if they could choose the method? If someone killed your family, how would you choose to execute that person? What are the crimes that you think should be punished by the death penalty?
I had busted my ass to teach them learning from context. I gave the example, "Jane is terrible! I hate Jane!" What does terrible mean? Most didn't know but I told them to guess. "Does it mean something good? NO! I hate her. So you can guess what it means. (unless you're stupid or don't give a fuck) Then I gave them some sentences from the lesson. "In Canada, the final two people were hanged for crimes in 1962. Then the death penalty was abolished in 1976. Nobody has been executed in Canada for 55 years." It was similar for NZ, Aus, UK and I told them the US has not abolished it. They still used capital punishment. They still execute people for crimes." Not one of them could figure out what "abolished," or "executed," meant. I had written the "death penalty" so many times I started abbreviating it as the D.P. and about half the class asked what that meant.
And every week I spend more time creating really interesting lessons for these students that will just waste the first two hours and the last two hours of my week. The computer in the class is shit so I can't do any of the videos or picture presentations needed to really describe interesting aspects of culture. Can't do music, art, food, I just have to make handouts that bore them. I've asked for computer repairs or if we could change to a room with a serviceable computer and received the knee-jerk, "I'll ask somebody about that..." The same thing I received when I explained how I haven't been paid for my work in August yet. Today was payday and guess what? I still haven't been paid for my work in August yet.
At any rate, I coughed, sneezed and blew my nose through the two hours with my sluggo class. As if they're not hard enough to teach! A couple of times I stopped writing or drawing on the board or talking to sneeze and got laughed at. I took a stack of used toilet paper out at the break and after the class large enough to smother one of them. But if they were all asked about my health, most of them would probably say, "No, I didn't notice any sickness."
But, thanks to quitting Huasheng, the sluggos are my only burden. I like my other classes. However, the nightmare has not yet ended. Today I got a message from Doris telling me that besides the sick day, the holiday classes I didn't work and the one I cancelled to go get emergency dental work done, they are also going to charge me for the two hours I didn't teach on the Sunday I quit. If you don't recall, this is the class they didn't tell me was cancelled until I got to their office. So I even get docked pay when they cancel classes with no notice. After being told that I sent them a laughter icon and said, "I am SO glad I quit!" So for missing four classes mostly legitimately, I was docked half my monthly salary. The total they SAY they are going to pay me on the 15th of November is just a bit over 4000 RMB. My salary is supposed to be 8000. But as I keep saying, I don't think they'll pay me anything. We shall see...
But did they stop there? NO! It is their mission to make my life as stressful as possible. They now are all hot and bothered to get my visa transferred to the university where I'm working. I told them that was unnecessary. My bad here! I should have told them I desperately wanted them to transfer the work visa to the university. Then we wouldn't be having this problem. Instead I told them they don't have to do anything. So, of course, they are doing something. And they actually got Doris to say to me, "I need you to tell me the specific procedure for transferring your visa." RIGHT! Like I'm going to do the work for them! I told Doris it's the responsibility of the employers to do that crap. And they have almost 4 months to figure out how to do it. It took them 7 months to figure out the visa so I don't know if they'll be able to do it. Again, we shall see...
But I got my teeth filled, I saw the Peet/Spiwaks very briefly, too briefly, and I partied with Amber, DB, Ty and Gordon. We ate loads of Korean food, drank Korean beverages, even went to Noraebang! It was just what I needed to wash a little of the Huasheng taste out of my mouth! I think a nice Christmas and some Olympics will finish the job! That's what I'm looking forward to in December, January and February.
There will be more Korean outings to come.
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