North Korea, Stop Being a Dick eh?

They are dicks sometimes, those people across the border. 

Mainly their government and it's supporters - the ultimate dicks.

They like to snatch people from China and claim they stumbled across the border. They like to hold them as leverage for their nuclear expansion. 

They like to test missles .... often.

They like to test nuclear missles, at that. 

They like to traffick not only drugs, but also women.

They like using scare tactics for political moves.

They really like pissing off the rest of the world. 

Really, they just seem to hate everyone these days. Thus, they are the definition of being a dick. 

I wish they'd stop it. 

(Mom, I apologize for the foul mouth. I will be looking forward to your email.)

There are days when this life is actually hard.

Such as days like today. Most days, living the life of a teacher in Seoul is pretty chill. I work 4 days a week. The hours I put in on those days are a bit much, especially since 6 of them are standing (yes, I'm not allowed to sit down, as crazy as it seems). But I get three days of relaxing. I can go out in the evenings if I want. I don't have to get up early for anything. So, in all, the standing and stress, generally evens out with the positives of this life. 

However, I've now been going for 6 straight days of work. With new classes. New material. Material I can't get through in the 3 hours allotted. I'm stressed to the bone, 2 hours before classes start, running around, making handouts, making tests, prepping my books, meeting with head instructors, meeting for our subject reviews (which are another 2 hours of my day unpaid). It feels a bit like hell right now. I literally feel myself getting sick! Which, let me tell you, will be tough to go unmonitored. Because of the swine flu crap, we are still being required to give our temperature on a daily basis. But now instead of twice a day, we have to give it only once. And we now do it at our school instead of texting twice a day on the minute. We simply come in, stand in front of a staff member, they wave some weird flashing light, and tell you if your temperature is ok to work. If it's too high, you must go home unpaid!

And they have a new regulation that if you want to take vacation, you can still take your 7 days unpaid. BUT, if you leave the country, you must wait another 9 days to come back to work, in order to make sure you don't have any unknown virus that you caught on holiday. AND, you don't get paid for those 9 days either. It's crazy. This company is crazy. 

I have an interview with Seoul Public Schools tomorrow.

Counting my lucky stars.....

Swine Flu Vacation

Yesterday swine flu vaca ended ... sadly. After a week and a half off, I realized just how much I really needed that break. It was great to get out and bask in the sun, ride a bike, go swimming, lay out, read a book, see a movie or four, watch The Wire, lay around in bed, cook, clean, hang out with friends endlessly ...  a little bit of everything really. It felt quite amazing. And of course some of you are saying "you can do all those things and work. You're just lazy." And my reaction to that ... yeah, I'm totally lazy. 

Some pics:

Looking over the river that runs through Seoul.

Hanging in the park.

Giving Abby a ride on my awesome bike.

This is where I tell Cleo I'm having his baby. (Errr, that's why Cleo looks like he won a week of vacation from CDI? Wrong reaction my friend. Baby's Mama = All your money in my pocket.)

So it was back to the good old grind yesterday. AND, we get a special treat for coming back: We get to work the entire weekend!! Yeah, I was as excited as I sound. It's more money, but it's the reason I get so effin lazy! It's working straight through and onto another week of hell! Ahhh. 

I tell you, I have some good kids from what I've seen so far. But man, there is one class that is going to equal trouble, and some really good blogging. The class has about 10 boys in it, and 5 girls. 7 of these boys were all in a class together last term with my friend Abdel as teacher. And from the look of it, the boys taught the class, not Abby. And from what Abby says, they in fact did teach that class last term.

They were talking back the first day (After I told them I'd be calling parents should they break any of my rules this term.) I had one kid putting his books away mid class going "Class over teacher." I looked at him with evil eyes as all the other kids are like "Cool! Class is over!" My thought "Ummm, no my child. You have made it through 1.5 of 3 hours, and now, I'm gonna make the last half hell ... for you only." Which my hell is heaven I guess compared to most teachers. It's a problem when you're 5'2" and have a weak voice. 

I've decided my punishment this term is standing in class. When they act out ... I will make them stand for 3 hours. And hopefully, they will learn a lesson. If not, at least they will endure my pain.

Did I mention these are elementary kids? Yeah, they're like 8 or something .... 

Making a Come Back ...

There's no better time than today to start writing in my blog again. I took a very long hiatus from writing. Sorry. Hopefully some of you are still interested in reading (likely not I assume, and totally don't blame you!). But for those of you that have asked "why the hell is your blog so lame?!" I've decided I'm gonna make the effort and keep it up! (This is only the second time I've said that. But this time I really mean it.)

What's new? Well .... I officially got 10 days paid vacation, as of today!!! My company offers no paid time off. Not even holidays. Nothing. So this is kinda like heaven for me. The only stipulation .... I'm to stay indoors. And away from a lot of human contact. And not get on a plane. And take my temperature at exactly 10am and 5pm everyday, and then send it into my work. 

Some new hires in our company brought swine flu with them from the States. Awesome.

Today was the start of a new term. (My last term with Chungdahm!) Again we have a completely new structure to our classes (they have been constantly changing the class structures and materials over the past 2 terms in order to beat out the competition). It's really annoying. It's a lot of work to constantly revamp what you do everyday. So, today I went in ready to blow the new students away! (Recently I was told that I could be up for promotion to be Head Instructor for one of the programs. So, as much as I shouldn't care about my performance, since it's my last term, I have a weird inner-passion to be better than ever so that they shed maybe even half a tear when I leave in 3 months.) However, when I got to work and walked into the staff lounge, everyone just starred at me and stopped talking, smirking a bit, as if they had a big secret to tell me. I was like "What?", thinking I'd done something. And then one of them says "we're being quarantined. No work for 10 days." My immediate response was "Shut up! Yeah right! Shut up?! Shit! Really?! Nooo. Really?! I can't miss work that many days!", thinking of course that there's no way in hell Chungdahm would ever pay for time off. Even time they were forcing us to take. 

10 minutes later we were called into a seminar room. Told that the new training group had  7 cases of swine flu confirmed. Told to stay in our apartments for the next ten days. Told to take our temperatures at precisely 10am and 5pm each day and report it to headquarters.

A group of us walked out of work together (secretly excited about our vacation time), and went to buy our thermometers from the local pharmacy. We all took our temperatures together. We were all right around 37 degrees celsius, right where we should be. Except of course for my friend Abdel. He road in right around 35 degrees celsius. We told him he was probably going to die of swine flu, alone. 

Then we all started talking about what we should do for 10 days:

"You know, there's no way they're gonna know if we're staying inside or not." 

"Yeah, let's take a train down to Busan for the week!"

"Yeah! You guys wanna go to the park?"

"Let's all run home, get changed, and meet at the park in an hour."

"Sounds good!"

"Cool!"

"Alright! I'm down!"

"Alright, see ya in a bit!"

We all met up around 6pm. (Reminder: we start work at 4pm.) We hung out by the river. Lounged in the grass. Played baseball, frisbee, badminton. The boys tried jumping over people. 

We found a playground. We swung. Teeter-tottered. Attempted the parallel bars. We kept it up until the mosquitoes wouldn't stop biting our sweaty flesh. Throughout the entire evening we would joke about giving each other swine flu if someone pissed you off. We'd joke about giving the Koreans swine flu, just to piss them off. We also put someone up as a sacrifice. To take one for the team and actually contract the flu so that we could extend this glorious freedom.

Then we moved on to pizza and beer. They happened to serve sweet pickles (they serve them at every restaurant in Korea), which we used to curb our appetite, and proceeded by eating with our hands, touching our mouths, and then touching the pickles when reaching for more.

We walked off our dinner until we were too pooped to walk anymore. It was a glorious day. We did the exact opposite of what we were supposed to do. And in the end, we kinda felt like irresponsible teenagers for it.

Moral of the story .... Chungdahm needs paid vacation .... and people should wash their hands more often.

Day of Love .... part 2

Yesterday was the mark of yet another Korean Love day. First, we had Peppero day (which I think stems from Japan). That was a couple months ago. You go around giving people you love chocolate covered bread sticks. 

Then there was Valentine's Day last month. In Korea though, only the girls give the boys something on this day. 

And then there was yesterday, White Day. On this day, the boys give the girls gifts. 

I got the most wonderful gift of all ... a hand-made card. 

There's pics of the card below. When you first look you may think it's from my students, but if you look harder, you'll see it's from my grown-male friends, Abby and Chris. How can you not love them? 

We also went out with a bunch of friends dancing last night. At about 5:30am we decided we should start heading home. But on the way we stopped at a noraebong, aka, karaoke room. It was so ridiculous, and so much fun! We were in a room that faces out to the street. Everyone on the street gets to watch you making a fool of yourself. It's pretty entertaining. My guy friends that came were insane on the mics. One of the most hilarious things I've seen. Through the windows, the sun began rising, and we realized it was 6:30am, and we needed to get some sleep. Such a fun night. Full of laughs and love. 

On a side note, next month, April 14th, Korea keeps the love going by celebrating Black Day. On this day all the single people go out and mingle with other singles while eating a Chinese noodle dish. And Korea wonders why they need to put up glass barricades in front of the subway openings. Less romantic love days, less people trying to kill themselves. Little thing called logic.

(Abby aka Ab Lincoln, is on the left and Chris on the right. Me in my boots. They love to tease me because I wear boots daily and I hurt myself wearing a pair about a week ago.)

(Both guys are 6'2"-6'3" and I can never keep up when we walk anywhere. But I do not fall. That is just ridiculous. :) And they have several nicknames for me, which you'll notice. Lovely)

I'm not so good at this "blogging" thing....

As many of you have noticed, I often let a month go by before updating my blog. Wish I could say it was intentional? Gonna try harder for all of you out there that care. 

Recent happenings .... I went snowboarding for the first time in ... years! It was pretty awesome. My first run down the hill I fell over a dozen times. I couldn't get my legs to work hard enough to slow down, so I kept falling to stop myself from barreling down the hill. (Awesome.)

At the bottom of the hill I just sat there for awhile, contemplating what I had to do to keep up on my board. I was really frustrated, after just one run. And I was so tired. When you fall down repeatedly, you have to get back up repeatedly, and it takes so much more energy. 

On the second run I didn't fall once, and continued my streak until the harder hills. By the end of the day I was able to run down the intermediate hill! But that was only after falling off the lift as I was trying to get off. (Yeah, really.) We were on a lift for intermediate/expert riders. The lift was much faster than the other lifts, and I was unstrapped to my board, so I had to stand and run when we got to the top. Well, as we got to the top, my friend Abby was with me on the lift, and he's 6'3 and his legs have no problem touching the ground and running. Mine on the other hand, are too short to hit the ground, until it's too late. I went to jump off the lift, the chair caught me in the calves, and took me down. And of course, the lift still had to go over top of me. Luckily I had good reaction time, and I ducked so it didn't hit me repeatedly or anything. When it cleared me, I got up and ran for my life as Abby and our other friends are watching and laughing. Luckily they didn't have to stop the lift, but I could just see all the people on the lift behind me thinking "That girl is not an expert rider. What the hell is she doing up here?". So embarrassing. 

The trip was really good though. We stayed in a hostel one night on the mountain. That night we just hung out, drank beer, ate pizza, and played games at the arcade with the kids. It was definitely a nice get away from the crazy city that is Seoul. 

Here are some pics from the trip:

(Abby and I enjoying beer the first night.)

(In the arcade. Drumming is not my forte, ps.)

(First run of the day, before falling all the way down the hill.)

(Bottom of the intermediate/expert hill.)

(Michelle and I at the end of the day.)

I felt the yellow hair would talk to me

You heard it right. Yellow hair that talks. But before I get into that lovely story, I have another short one. 

Today in one of my classes I asked the kids to write about a time when they helped another person or saw someone else help another person that touched them. I have one girl in my 4pm class, 6th grade, and she's always that kid I want to yell "shut your mouth!" to, but can't for fear of being fired. Well, she was having trouble coming up with something to write about for the topic today. I was filling in grades, looked up, and saw her sitting there, dumbfounded. 

Me: "Nicooooole, you need to start writing."

Nicole: "Teachu, no time I helped someone."

Me: "What?! Of course you've helped someone. Think hard about a time you've done something kind for another person."

Nicole: "Hmm. No teachu. No time."

And I sit there feeling helpless, and then it came to her ...

Nicole: "Teachu! I help you!"

Me: "You helped me? When did you help  me?" Thinking this girl aint ever been a help to me. 

Nicole: "Teachu last week you were real sick. Teachu I was quite entire class. No speaking teachu. I help you."

Me: "Ahhh,  you didn't talk last class? Really? That's great! You did help me. Write about it!"

And now for the title story. This is a writing from one of my past students that entered into a speech contest with the topic "Best Teacher Contest". Another teacher sent this to me today. It is so sweet. A little redemption for the job I suppose. 

Don't mind the spelling errors please. Or that she used my middle name that I can't figure out for the life of me how she got ahold of. She's in all of 5th grade:

Best Teacher Contest - 

Name: Lesley Jeon

Class: Bridge reading/Thurs/4:00~7:00

I will tell you, my favorite, and best teacher.

My favorite teacher is Lindsey Ann Hampton, she was my teacher when I was in 'tera'. Now I am in Bridge, but I miss her very very much. Well, I think she is bright always. Isn't she? Also, she loved every student.

Here, I'll tell you why she is my favorite teacher.

First, I like her bright face. For example, she was always smiles as she was upset. Surprisely, her smile makes me comfortable. I like her smile because it like 'comfortable magic madicine'.

Second, I like her yellow short hair and her earings.

When she spoke to us, I felt the yellow hair would talk to me. Like... "Hello! Lesley, are you exciting now?"

Also, her earings would always change. All the student in our class knew that. But I like her earings too. She has star earings, leaves earings, flower earings, and long chain earings. I like all of them. 

Third, she is fair everyday. She called me 'smart' sometimes (^^) but she told everybody to that they were good or perfect. And she gave same opportunities to each students.

Forth, her voice is very good for class, talking or conversation. I remember until now, her wonderful voice. When it was my first time in Tera, I opened the door and say 'Hello' to Lindsey, then she said to me 'Hello'. Her voice was ebsolutly perfect. I remember corectly.

Lastly, she cares about each person carefully. I met her 'Winter symester second weeks' she talk to me

"Lesley, Bridge is okay to you? Well I think you are good at Bridge too!"

Those two sentences helped to me. Also, I try to be good too.

Accordingly, My favorite teacher is Lindsey.

I dream or hope, I will meet her next term. Also, I hope she will remember me until I meet her, again. 

Last... I hope I get a bright face as Lindsey has. :)

In conclusion, my favorite and also my best teacher in CDI is Lindsey Ann Hampton.