Happy Holidays!

Hi guys, I just wanted to tell everyone Happy Holidays from Korea. The picture above is of me on Christmas Eve Day at my school. Being one of two male teachers has its advantages, one of them is being asked to play Santa for the first time in my life. Aside from the suit being really hot, it was a lot of fun handing out presents to the kids (their parents had sent in one present per kid to be handed out by Santa) and having them believe I was actually Santa. It was both rewarding and very nostalgic since I hadnt been around people that believed in Santa since I was a kid.

Christmas here was really different, although it is a national holiday, they dont celebrate it the way we do. I only saw two stores that were closed and there were tons of people out and about, not at all like USA. As for the teachers, we all went to a Canadian couples place and ate, drank, told Christmas stories and watched Christmas movies for the afternoon. It was nice and relaxing and the amount of food I consumed felt pretty familiar. I wish I could say I took it easy today, but I spent most of the day setting up my stuff in my third apartment in 5 months. After telling me that I didnt have to move into the new school, it turns out I was lied to so I spent my Christmas Eve moving all my things and today setting them up. The apartment is nice, brand new, but without a lofted bedroom so its a little smaller.

Yes, moving was a pain, but I am going skiing for the weekend so I have that to look forward to. I hope you all had a great Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa and have an enjoyable New Year.

Take care.

The Mormons Ran Away!

These are the empty desks of Jason and Danielle, a young, married couple from Utah who only taught for 2 months. Sometime in the night or early hours of December 16, the two of them packed up all of their belongings, presumably in a nap sack, and hit the road, coming just 10 months shy of fulfilling their contract with Kids College. For people teaching English abroad, this is known as "running," because the people literally flee the country from their employer, an act not unheard of, but certainly not common. To combat this, most schools pay on the 15th of every month for the previous months work, thereby forcing you to give up the first two weeks pay from the current month if you wish to run. This deters most people, but not Jason and Danielle, they had recently fought the school over part of their contract and thought they were entitled to more money. They won the fight, but were told they would be replaced come February as a consequence of challenging the school.

To be honest, no one really shed any tears when we found out, they had been weird people and less than adequate teachers (in my professional opinion) since they arrived. Jason was an arrogant fellow who thought his Masters in Computer Science made him more competent than our managers to interpret contracts. Danielle was simply a victim a circumstance, she made the mistake of marrying Jason and has been paying for it ever since. Alone, she was a sweet girl who was my desk neighbor for a few weeks, but when the two of them were together, they were either all over each other or allowing Jason to speak for both of them. Please dont get me wrong, they were nice enough, just some of their habits rubbed people the wrong way. So yes, they ran away, but no one is really sweating it.

Funny Pictures

As promised, I just uploaded about 20 new, funny pictures, heres a preview:


Click the link to the right to view the rest.

How to know you're making an impact

Many of you may be wondering if Im really helping my kids and making a positive impact in their lives, this video should alleviate your concerns. It stars two of my former students that I do not miss teaching but do enjoy tormenting.

So it (finally) happend...

Whats up guys and girls, this post is about some things that have happened to me recently, both expected and unexpected.

-I finally uploaded some new photos, more than 600 actually, and like always, you can click on the link to the right to view them. I am also going to post some more funny pictures today or tomorrow and that link is on the right, too.

-I finally met someone from Atlanta. I may have mentioned to some of you that I met a kid from Marietta a few months back, and even though I spent my childhood there, Marietta is not the Atlanta I pride myself on being from. However, last weekend, I met a guy that grew up in Virginia Highlands and has been in Korea 7 years. While he didnt remember where Vinings was, he did go to North Atlanta HS which is right by the church that I rarely attended. Nice guy, he came here right after college too, but unlike me, he has no intention of returning and hasnt been back to Atlanta in a few years. Still, it was nice to meet someone from my hometown.

-I (not finally) had to break up a french kiss between two of my male students. Again, some of you may remember my post on being sexually harassed in the workplace. Since then, it has been pretty manageable around here, but today I turned around only to see Hee-gun and Jay kissing with their tongues. Not much more to say really, I yelled at them to stop, to which they laughed, and then I told them it was gross and there was no kissing in my classroom.

-I finally cost my employer money. Ill start from the beginning: I started teaching a new class in November (I posted a photo) that had 12 kids in it, 5 more than any other class I had. Because I was not used to that many 9 year olds, they walked all over me and I spent half of my time trying to get them to be quiet or discipline them. Consequently, we didnt get a lot accomplished the first few weeks and the parents complained and questioned by teaching ability. Now I know what you are thinking - given my incalculable experience and unwavering love for children, where do their parents get off questioning my methods? I am confident their children would follow me into North Korea if I wanted them to, but apparently that doesnt matter, they actually want them to learn some English. The majority of complaints were actually just a result of a difference in teaching style between me and their old teacher. Their old teacher made them write down everything she taught from verbs to practice sentences, but none of my other classes took notes so I assumed that they didnt either. Now, it turns out Koreans like to torture their kids because in addition to the notes, they also complained that I wasnt giving them enough homework. All of these complaints were relayed to me through very confrontational meetings with my boss that made my day very stressful, so I did the only logical thing to get back at the parents, I made their children's' lives even worse. Now, they dont do anything fun, we take notes all class and I give them double the homework I give my other classes. Still, the parents complained about a book that I wasnt given and therefore didnt teach from, but most said they understood the confusion since it was my first month with that class. However, some parents didnt understand and withdrew their kids, decreasing my class size from 12 to 8 and costing my boss about $2000 in tuition. Some teachers would feel guilty about this (I am not the only one losing students) but it makes my job easier so Im just going to accept it and assume their kids couldnt handle my radically advanced teaching methods.

-I finally fell down the stairs to my loft. Yes I had been drinking and yes it hurt, but I still climb those 18 inch wide stairs every night without fear.

Take care everyone, Id love to hear from yall.

English is hard, mmmkay?

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving, mine was great except that drinking tequila doesnt enhance your teaching skills the next day. Live and learn I guess.

This is from an email I received from my coworker, Robyn, entitled "English is hard!" Funny (and interesting) stuff.

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

P.S. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick'?