Why I Don't Teach Privates

For those of you not on the peninsula, teaching privates is a lucrative sideline which most foreigners do at least occasionally. Basically, you meet with a student and frequently just have an hour-long conversation with them in exchange for $40-50. Sounds good, right? Yet, I haven't done them in years, partly because my free time is worth more than that to me. Mainly, though, I don't like teaching one-on-one. I'm not a big chatter, and neither are students that need to pay someone to speak English to them. You know when talk shows have guests that don't talk? That's what it's like. For an hour.

Unfortunately, for me, my school has a student about to interview for a boarding school overseas. About two months ago, the parents realized he couldn't speak English and now that it's his last four weeks, he's coming to see me ten hours a week. One-on-one. I'm not a miracle worker-- two months of twice weekly lessons has not made him fluent. Now, I've got to get him ready for an interview. Sigh.

Here is a breakdown of our daily two hour session:
About 20-30 minutes of actual work.
Three trips to the bathroom, not during his break.
At least thirty minutes of robot/ machine gun sounds.
My "firmly" reminding him to sit down, about every other minute, sometimes more frequently than that.
Him saying, "I'm not doing that," as each new task is introduced, while simultaneously pretending to fall asleep.

Despite the fact that he has been pulled out of school, he has not had time to do any of his homework yet. So, a fair amount of the precious few productive minutes are spent on work he should have done at home.

The best part? This is at school, so I'm making OT, which is considerably less than private rates.

Other Than Not Being Able to Hear, My Ears are FIne

Went back to the ear doctor for some tests today-- air pressure, beeps, and speech. My problem is speech, since I can't use the phone on my left side. However, since I'm a foreigner, she used easy vocabulary, which I could easily get since it was one carefully enunciated word at a time. That I can do. Normal conversation, not so much. It's not terrible, but it's gotten noticeable. If it hasn't gotten better in a few weeks, I'll head over to the International Clinic and pay their outrageous foreigner fees.

English Lesson Eavesdropping

So, I was at Starbucks today eavesdropping on a group of what I assume where nurses teaching themselves patient English. They were having a discussion on the finer points of this statement:
"The patient is nauseous, she might be pregnant." versus "The patient is nauseous, he might be pregnant."

Jenniferteacher Left the Batcave, and Why Aren't Grown Men as Interested in My Boobs as Seven-Year-Old Boys?

At the KOTESOL conference last month, I saw Stephanie, but was too busy with KOTESOL-y duties that I didn't have time to chat. So, I suggested we get together for some girlie fun. And, in a surprising turn of events, I actually got together with her. :-) Not that I take the Hermit Kingdom as an order rather than a description, or anything...

Some of her former co-workers at Hoseo in Cheonan-Asan were having a bonfire/ slumber party. We went and drank many tequila smoothies and made smores. I can now say that HobNobs are very thick, but otherwise perfect for smores. And they have Nob in the title. Not that I am juvenile enough to make jokes about eating a 'Nob, of course. Well, maybe just once or twice...

Jinksy tastefully removed his hand from Stephanie's boob for the camera.

Unsurprisingly, I did not stay for the slumber party portion of festivities. A little togetherness goes a long way with me. So, Steph and I hitched a ride WAY back to town (Hoseo has a beautiful campus, in the middle of nowhere) and stayed at a yogwan. We really slept in-- I still can't believe we didn't get a "courtesy" get-the-hell-out wake up call. We hung out and talked for a few hours before she went to a wedding (in jeans and a T-shirt-- Korean weddings rule!) and I trudged back home.
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There was a fan at the bonfire! Actually, Jackie was the host. She will probably be on the podcast in the future, assuming she still wants to once the soju wears off...

Jackie, SeoulPodcast fan and bonfire host extraordinaire, and two people that don't listen to the podcast. :-)

Houston eating something that apparently required chopsticks and tongs.Smores!A little post-prandial refresher. I used to get teased mercilessly for the mid-party nap, so I'm glad to see it's become more acceptable. :-)

I think I may need to start actually listening to the podcast. I listened to a couple of episodes recently, but I wasn't on one of them and the other one I wanted to hear what the guest had to say. But I digress. One of the first things Jackie said to me was that she would know my laugh anywhere. Which is how Joe recognized Karl and I the first time he joined us on Seoul Survivor.

So, now I'm wondering what kind of hyena-woman I sound like on the show. I will freely admit that I go through life being inordinately amused by minor things, but most of the time I can hide behind the "crazy foreigner" flag. One of the many benefits of life in a foreign land...
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I got an elliptical trainer last week, but D batteries are proving more elusive that one would think. The search continues... Now, when my pianist neighbor practices for a recital in the wee hours, I'll have some way to occupy my time other than plot her death/ loss of fingers.
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Once again, a handful of my very young male students are fixated on my boobs. A week or two ago, one in particular decided that the best way to interact with me is to stick his face between my boobs and then turn his face left and right. To do this, he has to ignore me pulling his arms or pushing his shoulders away, as I try to head him off at the pass, so to speak. But he is determined, definitely not a quitter. Today, he got up three times during a test, ran up and shoved his face at my chest, like he just had to be fast enough and I wouldn't catch on. While I admire his tenacity in the face of constant obstruction, I wish it would sink in that it's inappropriate. If only I could find a grown man as interested in my boobies...

Happy Black Day!

Yes, here we are on the lamest of the Valentine's Day triple-shot. For those of you not on the peninsula, White Day is 14 March, the day for guys to give girls gifts. Today is the day for singletons to eat noodles in a black bean sauce and lament their sorry lot in life.

I chose not to partake for several reasons. First, I'm not really into Valentine's Day, even when I'm in a relationship, so a second-rate knock off doesn't really interest me. Second, jjajangmyun is not overly delicious. Third, I don't require a special day to complain about being single, I do that everyday. :-)

Here a Ricetard, There a Ricetard, Everywhere a Ricetard

Mission accomplished!
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I've actually done some knitting this week. At Stitch n Bitch yesterday, I made this:

I'm attempting grafting for the first time. I've failed twice so far, and if the third isn't the charm, I'll just do a lame three-needle bind off. It the Tychus pattern from Knitty, which I made in LSU purple and gold for my sister last year. It's a quick knit-- all short rows. I usually don't knit anything twice, but the recipient chose the pattern.

I'm making this one for Aaron, perhaps my oldest podcast fan. Perhaps my only podcast fan... I think he's gotten tired of hearing me moan and complain about my date-free existence. At any rate, he's decided to both help me be less of a social retard and take math out of my axis of evil. The least I could do was make him a hat. And apparently, the most. :-)

KOTESOL conference done and etc.

Yesterday was the annual Seoul chapter conference and election. We had planned for 1-200 and had 4-500 show up. Apparently, free entry and lunch are a bigger draw than we realized... We also had a great line up of presentations, so that could have been part of the appeal. :-)

We also had our elections. No surprises there. As usual, everyone ran unopposed. It seems working for free in your off-time is not as popular as it once was. So, I'm 1st VP for another year. Yay, me. :-) I'll also be filling in as Secretary until we find a new one, since the previous one became 2nd VP and will also be filling in as newsletter editor until we get a new one of those... etc etc etc. The main thing is that we are finally rid of the outgoing president who didn't seem to understand that he was not just a figurehead. The one good thing about his presence was that he caused the rest of us to pull together to do our best in spite of him.
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Earlier in the week, The Seoul Podcast turned one! We didn't have a guest or show notes. We decided to just talk about our personal highs and lows of the podcast's first year. Joe was worried that we wouldn't have enough to say. As if. I'm only quiet with people I don't know. Everyone else gets their ears talked off. Joe and Stafford also have the gift of the gab. So, we ended up recording for three hours. No news. No Things That Make You Go Whaa... No Time Wasters. Just free-talking, as it's called here on the peninsula.

I'm assuming Joe cut out quite a bit, because he was planning to add in an extended clip segment. If that sounds good to you, you can listen to it here. :-) I haven't listened to it myself, of course. I could say yet, but I rarely listen to the show-- I'd rather remember myself as being witty and don't want to face evidence to the contrary... I also don't particularly like the sound of my own voice. I can get a little screechy when I'm excited. I think Joe finally talked me through the adjustments I needed to make to keep my mike from cutting out at particularly screechy moments. It only took a year... :-) Maybe I should take computers out of my axis of evil...
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Other than that, life's been pretty quiet on the homestead. I got the marriage license from PBMX about ten days ago, but I haven't been organized enough to get out of the house early enough to get to the bank before work. Getting foreign funds requires the patience of Job and forms signed in blood, and anomolies, such as wanting funds in AU dollars, can cause the teller to exhibit signs of nervous breakdown. I used to have a teller that knew me and knew that I sometimes got US checks and sometimes got AU checks, but she is gone. (She once confided that we were the same age, so she might have been retired.) So, now I have to deal with the cute young girls that are only used to electronic transfers. As long as they are cute...

Anyway, it will get done. I found out about a Korean school that's at the same subway stop as the bank, so I'll probably do it tomorrow when I go take a level test. If I get up in time...
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I've decided that I've been far too lazy this semester. In order to prevent a teacher being laid off, I voluntarily cut my hours 20%. I still make more than them and I'm not paying off student loans at the current (horrifying) exchange rate, so I don't mind. Actually, I'm kind of bitter that when one teacher leaves in May, she won't be replaced and my full hours will be scheduled.

But I digress. My plan was to spend those extra hours getting things done, like work out, read books that aren't for school, knit, you get the idea. I haven't. I've been completely unproductive for the eight weeks since the semester began.

So, I'm going to check out the Korean school and I'm going to take a math class through LSU, if I can find a local test proctor. I've decided to take math out of my axis of evil this year.
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My apathy hasn't limited itself to home, either. I've been so unmotivated at work the past week or so. I just feel ready for a change and am tired of seeing the same faces. Some of my students I've had for years now. There are a few I would happily put in my pocket and bring home, but not all of them...

Most of the students have been driving me crazy lately. I think their parents are pumping them full of Red Bull before class. At any rate, there has been far too much singing, dancing, splits, high kicks, and loud-talking for me to be a happy woman. On the other hand, one student spanked himself in class the other day, I mean with the finesse of a stripper-- he slowly swung his butt to the side and then smacked himself. Over and over. I almost had a stroke trying to hold in the laughter, especially since he was doing it as an act of contrition when he realized how pissed I was at him for all the annoying crap he had been doing just before that.

Happy White Day!

Today is White Day, part of an ingenious bit of marketing which has turned Valentine's Day in Korea into a three month extravaganza of chocolates and plush toys. On Valentine's Day, girls give gifts to boys. On White Day, boys give gifts to girls. On Black Day, April 14, singletons eat Jjajangmyeon, the Korean "Chinese" dish of thick noodles in a black bean paste sauce. It's not as gross as it sounds, but not something I ever go out looking to eat, either.

In honor of White Day, I took these photos today in Seoul. All three shops are in the Jongak Station underground shopping arcade at the end of Insa-dong. In case you want to surprise your honey with some sexy drawers. If I had a boyfriend, I could only hope he would get me the set with the pantaloons. Nothing says sexy like a man in pastel underwear and a woman in pantaloons. Notice all the options for the last set, it's like a six-piece set. One could mix and match to keep things new and interesting... :-)

I would like to go on permanent record as saying if I ever fall for a man that wants us to wear couple panties, shoot me. Ditto if he thinks pantaloons are hot.

In case you're wondering, all male underwear manikins are wearing cups, or maybe they're just happy to see us.

Teacher, what do you call the stuff Daddy's drink when they are angry?

One of my sweetest, cutest students asked me this today. I would have thought it was funny, but she has imitated "what daddies look like when they come home late" on more than one occasion.

I'm a Survivor! (cue music)

Yes, I have survived an entire week without the internet at home. In the process, I suffered excruciating withdrawal symptoms and discovered there are about four or five more hours in a day than I realized. :-) Now, it's back to business as usual, of course, and there are no longer enough hours in the day.
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Computer gremlins were not the worst thing about last week, unfortunately. Mr. PBMX drama continues ad nauseum. In his bid to show me when I asked him to procure a copy of our marriage license, he got himself hospitalized and lost his apartment and was homeless for a few days. Apparently, his mother is trying to divorce him as well. Or else, sleeping on the street was preferable to spending time with her. She's a pretty miserable bitch, but I think I could suck it up in those circumstances.

So, I am now waiting with baited breath to see if he will actually send me the paperwork (which he claims he has in his possession) so that I can finalize our divorce. I hoping to keep our separation under three years, if possible. I dream big.

Karl is helping me to keep it all in perspective-- I've never been hospitalized against my will, therefore, my life is pretty good. :-)
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I have a new bon mot from school: a summary of a book apparently involving Nate the Great and a drug dealer. :-) I'll try to get it posted in the next few days.

The Catcher in the Rye, not middle school reading

Once again, my admin's lack of reading has had interesting consequences for me. Last semester, I had to deal with the relatively minor issue of explaining how an unmarried woman could be a mother. You may recall that I got out of that one when the students decided it was a miracle. Romeo and Juliet of course uses poetic language and euphemisms that I could glide right past...

This time, I may not get off so easily. The Powers That Be have determined that my middle schoolers need to read The Catcher in the Rye. Sigh. Clearly, they have never read the book or even a review of it. On the upside, I'll definitely know who did their reading this weekend. The ones that DON'T have questions about why the woman took off her clothes in Holden's hotel room and then a guy beat up Holden to get ten dollars for the woman, what horny means, and why was Holden so upset that the girl he knew sat in a car with his roommate, etc etc will be a dead giveaway... Sigh. I'm warming up my jazz hands as I write this.

I understand that not everyone likes to read as much as I do, even if I can't always see my way to dating them :-) , but there is really no excuse for not at least reading reviews before assigning it to students. Barring that, open the book to page one, which has no less that four curse words. One would think after the Kurt Vonnegut Incident a couple of years ago, things might have changed...

Mr. Please-Be-My-X, Thy Name is Predictable (in addition to PBMX, of course)

So, it turns out that I cannot get a divorce without a copy of my marriage license. Simple enough for the average person, right? Well, since my separation, I've been trying to overcome my general pack-rat-iness by culling through literally every single thing I own every three or four months. Can you see where this is going? I've looked everywhere, which in my tiny apartment is not that many places, and it is not here. So, I finally realized I was just going to have to pay the $50 and get a copy.

Unfortunately, I did not get Australian citizenship during my marriage, and without an Australian passport to prove my identity, I can't get a copy of my own marriage license. So, I was forced to contact Mr. PBMX and send him the money to do it. In what has become his typical form over the 27 (!) months since our separation, he did something to himself which lead to hospitalization.

To one-up himself, this time he got evicted "because he was in the hospital" which I am taking to mean he didn't pay his rent, which was probably overdue, since he was only in the hospital for three days. So now he is apparently homeless. He lives in a country with national health care, so these all-too-frequent hospital stays are free, not to mention in a country with dole benefits generous enough to actually live on, and he still can't take care of himself. Sometimes I wonder what he did with the man I married.

My Students Never Fail to Amuse and I Never Fail to Not Have My Camera When They are Amusing

One of my first graders came in today wearing a fur-lined leather poncho (from India, of all places that don't really need fur-lined leather winter wear). Another girl immediately ran up to her, lifted the poncho, and stuck her face on the fur and rubbed away, mid-chest level. As I debated whether I should just let kids be kids or if I should stop one from sexually harrassing the other, the boys started shouting, "Cony's feeding Ahyun milk!" Over and over. Loudly. I just hope there are no parental phone calls requiring me to explain what happened in class.

Happy New Year!

I can't believe it's already mid-month! As usual "intensive" classes, held when students are ostensibly on holiday, are jam-packed with educational goodness. As a result, I've got a few bon mots from my sweet students. Here are some of my favorites:

Other than school, I've had a veritable flurry of brief visits. Week before last, my mother was here for a long weekend and today I had lunch with my step-father. He works for Delta, so he's here for work. Mama was here for me. :-) I was working, so we didn't get to do much, but it was still great to see her. My summer visit was cut short by the hurricane, as you may recall. I could link the post from September, but I probably won't.
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School is going well, considering the academic director got married yesterday. No major lapses in planning or fore-thought. A minor miracle here on the peninsula. I finished with my SAT classes, so I no longer have to think up rationalizations for the minutiae of English grammar on the fly.

Next week, I get to fast forward through a nude scene in the movie my middle school class is watching. It's a class of boys, so I'm already snickering that they aren't going to get to see the one part of the movie that would be interesting to them. Remember the films you watched in school? Wouldn't a little nudity have made them more fun and interesting? Yeah.
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My legs are dying at the moment. I've actually been sticking to my resolutions. No, not the one to randomly blackmail people that I put on my facebook page. My real resolutions: cut out processed foods and exercise. So far, I've learned that green smoothies are delicious, even if they look and sound vile; I've lost 3kg (yes, a sign of how far I have to go); and I've realized exactly how out of shape I had gotten. When I say it hurts to use stairs, I mean, up or down, three steps or three flights, I want to grimace in pain. By "want" of course, I mean that I probably am. Fortunately, I'm a foreigner, therefore, crazy. :-)
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I have actually been knitting, but I don't have any good photos. A few weeks ago, I finished a February Lady Sweater in a lovely green. I finally got the buttons on after Mama left, but I still haven't worn it in public. Maybe to next weeks' SnB... I'm about 1/3 of the way finished with a Henley-style sweater (not from a pattern) in an eggplanty color. Aubergine, if you prefer. Dongdaemun was having a great sale on yarn, so I bought enough to make sweaters in four colors, including these two. :-) Now, I just have to make them. And finish them. And put buttons on them. And wear them in public.

What all the kids are hoping to see in their stockings this Christmas

Merry Christmas! Enjoy something more delicious than spinach wafers and pumpkin cookies.

I'm Also a Culture Teacher...

As a (hopefully) good teacher, I try not to let on when I'm feeling crabby or when my students are driving me insane. However, my perception and reality are not always one and the same. All of my students seem to have consumed several gallons of Red Bull immediately before any class with me this week, and it is grating on me. I hadn't realized how irritated I was, until one of my students started looking like she was possessed-- staring straight ahead with only the whites of her eyes showing. I asked what was wrong and she said she was trying to make her eyes look like mine. Apparently, I had been rolling my eyes with such abandon, that she thought I was purposefully trying to look like I was having a seizure of some kind.

Korean Kids Really ARE More Innocent

I've been reading Walk Two Moons with my 6th grade reading class and today our discussion included the revelation of a character's mother having had a child before marriage whom she gave up. My students were VERY puzzled and kept asking in different ways trying to confirm that she in fact had not been married and yet had had a child. Finally, in Korean, one of the kids opined that it was a miracle. The book has a number of unusual plot twists, so apparently, a virgin birth required no more suspension of disbelief than, say, the main character's mother dying in a wreck (which had also been revealed in the portion we discussed today). Fortunately, the virgin birth scenario seemed no less plausible to them than the rest of the story and I was able to put away my jazz hands. :-)

A Happy Foreigner in Korea

God Bless America! :-)

To Be a Cat Lady or Not To Be a Cat Lady

A couple of years ago, I discovered a baby yarn that looks like terry cloth. Of course, not in Korea, just online. Since it was not locally available, naturally, I lusted after that yarn in an unnatural way. The only thing that stopped me from ordering a sweater's worth (as in, adult sweater, for me) was that it was only available in hideous baby pastels.

Then, last weekend, at Dongdaemun, I saw something even better. What could be better than terry cloth yarn, you ask? Mink blanket yarn! It looks like gigantic pipe cleaner yarn, but feels like a mink blanket. And! It was available in a purple/ lavender/ white variegated colorway. I snapped up a sweater's worth without even asking the price (so, undoubtedly got the foreigner/ rube "special"). Well, it IS NaNoSweMo, right? Right. and if it's knit on 10mm needles, I can get it done in a month. Or a weekend. Whichever.

I will not take a photo, because it is a sweater which screams, "THIS IS WORN BY A DIVORCED CAT LADY!" I will say that it is an over-sized cardi and it took me about 10 hours to knit. My kind of sweater.

In addition to my sweater success (I thought I would run out of yarn, but I finished with about 1/2 a row's worth left over), my weekend was full of surprises. One of which was unexpectedly having a favor for a friend turn into 350K with a promise of future paydays. :-) A little something to offset the won's swan dive. I also used Korean today and... actually had a conversation. About politics. Okay,the guy obviously was experienced with foreigner Korean, but still...

AND I put off the church lady that has decided to be my friend, at least for another week...

I'm Ready to Have Something on the Needles

I haven't had anything on the needles in a few weeks, since I finished this:

Like the error right there in the middle? It's my nod to the Amish. ;-) I know you are also in awe of my ghetto lace blocking style. It works, though. This scarf was super-easy. It's just two repeats of the tilting blocks stitch pattern. I did around 30 repeats. The yarn is Filatura di Crossa, I can't remember the colorway, but it's a nice autumnal blend of rusts and olive-y greens. It's for my mom, as soon as I get it in the mail...
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We had another contest on the SeoulPodcast, and here was the grand prize:

Not one, but two earpickers, an Englice dictionary, a "V-line" face massager, Korean stickers, some socks with gambling card images on them, and some random Korean candies.

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We had Halloween at work this week. I forgot to take my camera one day, but here are a few kids from Wednesday.

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I went to Yuldong Park to check out the foliage this past weekend. It was definitely not a date. :-( It was fun, anyway.

If you look closely, you can see that the bungee jump faces a huge church (above and slightly to the left of my head).

Don't know what it is? Me, either.

Even the port-a-potties are nice. :-)