It has been over a week now since camp has been over and I have had time to let my thoughts settle. I said before how unorganized it was and how things weren’t always so clear. Other than that though it was good. Most of the teachers and TAs were/are good people. I got along with almost everybody and those that I didn’t like I pretended to as best as I could.
During the third week of the camp we had to fill out evaluations for every student we had (for me it was 130). This included grading them on their effort and ability, their behavior and had to write comments about each. The next week we had to test them. The last day each student got a “report card” along with some certificate of completion. I looked at some of the report cards and the managers completely changed everything. I saw one girl’s, who earned an “F” on her test (she answered 2 out of 30 questions that I basically gave them the answers to), but on the report card it said she got a “C”!! I asked one of the managers about this and she went a bit pale (which is hard for Koreans to do) and quickly scampered away without saying anything. They also didn’t use any of the comments that they had us write. So basically we wasted our time. That being said, I’d work for the camp again as along as I don’t have to go through a recruiter, they took almost 20% of my paycheck last time!
We moved into a brand new high school this week. It is pretty nice but still has some typical shoddy Koreaness to it. All the signs are in Korean and English of some sort. I always complain about how the English in museum exhibits is always filled with grammar errors. It is no different with our signs here. Is it that hard to ask a native speaker (one whose native tongue is English) to check it over? You don’t have to be a genius to spot the errors, they are blatantly obvious. While at the DMZ museum we only had time to read a couple of signs but I spotted 4 or 5 errors in both! One even had white tape through a couple of sentences (but I think that was more becase it was trying to hide Korean propaganda. The tape wasn’t opaque enough to hide what it actually said, something about how it was the US’s fault for the war.
Our signs at school are crap. I work in the “Dministration Room”. I teach in “Language Room I” but the next class over is also “Language Room I”. If I want to go to the toilet I have to go to “Man’s restroom” and if I want to relax I go to “Man rest room”. If they ladies want to do their yoga (they won’t let me join) they go to “Women s rest room”. The only good thing is that the Man rest room has couches, a TV and a massage chair. The women have a wood floor.
I think that the Koreans are still confused with indoor plumbing. In my apartment all th pipes are on the outside of the walls and there is a big orange hose connecting my kitchen sink to the hot water for all the world (that visits my apartment) to see. I could understand if this was an old building but it is only a year old! It looks like it’s 20-30 years old already. Reminds me a lot of the panelaks in Czech (those ugly communist style apartment buildings). Even our brand new school has pipes just sticking out of the wall in the middle of halls.
I guess this is going to be a bitch about Korea post, didn’t mean for it to be. So continuing along with the theme… Our school is on a bit of an island. There is a convenient little walking bridge over the river that separates the school from the mainland (not really the mainland since that is also an island). I was told yesterday that we cannot use the bridge and must use the main entrance. That would be fine except that it will make my journey at least 10 minute longer. I have a strong feeling that whoever gave this order drives to school everyday. I am going to continue to use the bridge until I am confronted by the individual who ordered this nonsense. I know it is only a small thing (10 minutes) but when the rainy season starts it is going to be a pain in the ass. I guess that it is the Korean mentality that is getting to me. “What? Something is convenient and easy for people? We have to change that, how can we aggravate people more?”
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