Episode 16: In Which DFM Becomes An Englishee Teacher, And Misses Tim Horton's

Hyenii, the English teacher who invited me to her church two weeks ago, also attends an English speaking club. The club members (about a dozen) meet once a week to learn new English slang phrases and practice reading English articles, in addition to having open group discussions. Hyenii had asked me to attend last Thursday, but I was already busy with the climbing competition, so I told her I would come this week.

Before attending the meeting, Hyenii, myself, and two of Hyenii's friends from the club went to a nearby restaurant for supper. Compared to the mounds of sundae (and a free soft drink) I received in Sillim for $6, the $7.50 for a relatively small plate of breaded fish and pork at this restaurant was pretty expensive. Furthermore, I can honestly say it is the first non-delicious meal I've had since coming back here and the service was nothing to write home about.

The club meets in a cafe I was told was "specially designed for hosting meetings." Essentially it is a cafe in which there are conference rooms that can be rented. They also make a cup of warm chocolate for about one-quarter of the price of an equally bad hot chocolate at Starbucks (to get a good hot chocolate you have to go to Tim Horton's).

The club is led by Tom - who directs the discussions and whom I assume finds the articles. This week's articles were on corporeal punishment (coaches on players and senior players on junior players) in Korean professional sports, and Korean actor Kim Myung-min, who recently lost 44 pounds in preparation and filming of his role as a Lou Gehrig's patient for the film "You Are My Sunshine" (he eventually ended up at 114 lbs, at 5'9"). The role was remarkable considering people with disabilities are normally looked down upon in Korea. Kim was so dedicated to the role, he had to be told to stop losing weight by his director, who was worried Kim might die if he continued losing weight.

The club was overjoyed to have a native speaker at their meeting, but the meeting was a great experience for me as well. For obvious reasons, I do not get to speak English freely while I am teaching kindergarten kids, many of whom have barely mastered "hello" and "good-bye," and when I am climbing I try to speak in Korean as much as possible. Consequently, I had not realized how much I missed being able to engage in deep discussions about controversial topics.

I guess I missed talking a little too much though, for at the end of the night I noticed my throat was feeling rather sore. I was worried that I had talked too much and had hogged all the time, but every one assured me that listening to a native speaker was an important learning opportunity they do not usually get. The club members also enjoyed my "kind hearted explanations" of English slang so much that they invited me to be an official member of their club. I accepted, since I really enjoy teaching, and it is a great networking opportunity for myself as well.

Episode 12: In Which DFM Suspects Big Brother Is Watching Him, And Takes Is Taken Away From A Subway Station In A Stranger's Car

On my way to work today I got the rare chance to witness some good old-fashioned racism first hand. I was sitting on the subway and two seats over was a black man. An older Korean woman came and sat down between us because there were no other seats. Later, when three seats opened up across from us, she got up and walked over. Had she sat in the middle seat I would have thought, "she just wants a more comfortable seat" and would have thought nothing of it. However, she chooses to wedge herself between a pole and another Korean woman who was wider than either the black man or myself.

When I finally got to work, I was met by an unexpected guest. I never did learn his name, but he was there when I showed up and proceeded to follow me around for the majority of the morning.

During my last stay here, I heard of a teacher for the same company who had the cops come and inspect his class and arrest him for teaching English (our visas do not cover English teaching). What he was doing, and I am doing is not illegal. I am teaching art, not English, and so legally I am safe. However, this other teacher was also legally safe, and he was arrested by the police who hoped to get a bribe payout by his boss. Our boss instead hired a lawyer, at considerable expense, and beat the charges. Regardless, the situation was fairly stressful for everyone.

Not wanting to experience the same unpleasantness myself, I felt a bit uneasy by presence of this strange guest who seemed far too official, and seemed to be asking a lot of questions about me teaching the children English. Later, though, I found out that he was from the head office for the Korean English teacher at the school and must have just been trying to ascertain the progress of the children. He cannot have been too impressed though, since the children seemed as wary of this new "friend" of mine as I was, and would answer "are you a foreigner?" to him (in Korean of course) every time he asked them a simple English question. (Note: he was Korean.)

In other interesting happenings, the six-year-olds (Canadian five-year-olds) were making banana and apple smoothies. To cut up the apples and bananas, each pair of students had a plastic knife (bigger than a butter knife you'd use at a picnic though, and thicker too). One of the boys came up to me and decided to show me his knife fighting skills. When I told him he could not chop my arm with his banana slime-covered knife, he turned the knife on himself and showed me his seppuku skills (look it up). Although he was just joking, I'm sure glad Mr. Official had stepped out of the room at that moment. Yes, I understand Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world, but usually Korean men wait until they're a bit older and have kids and a family of their own and are passed over for a promotion before they kill themselves. Furthermore, it is considered impolite in Korea for a younger person to try and rise above his age-defined place in this rigid social hierarchy by committing suicide before his elders do. (Sorry to all the Korean readers out there for my tasteless joke.)

After work I went to teach a private lesson in some outlying area of Seoul. I had no idea who I was meeting, but my friend (whose job it is to find teachers) needed a favour this week and asked me to go because he needed a teacher on short notice (that's how I got my current job too).

The lesson took place between 5:45 and 6:45 PM. I thought I would be teaching one or two children, but when I was taken to the apartment there were six children in a living room. I suspect that the woman had told all her friends about the coming tutor, and they decided to get in on the good fortune by sending their kids over.

I already figured an hour would be a long time for the kids, who could not have been more than nine. Today though, I found out first hand that children that age have a maximum attention span for learning English of one-half hour. The children started out eager to learn, but the last fifteen minutes of the lesson were hell, as I had children jumping on the couch and pretty much doing everything but studying. Normally I would not have cared, since they had covered all the necessary material (actually, they were far beyond the material being covered and were probably quite bored). However, I was being paid for an hour, so I got my whip out and cracked down hard. Eventually (I'm not sure how) I managed to get everyone back on task and we hobbled towards the finish. It was fairly stressful, and I was worried I had failed, but when the mother came back in to the room she seemed to think that I was the world's greatest tutor.

She begged me to come back and teach the children, and even offered me $60/hr. I suspect the reason she has so much trouble finding tutors is that no one wants to teach those kids for a full hour.

I felt bad for her actually. She was clearly trying very hard to learn English herself, and even though it would appear to most Canadians that she was pushing her children too hard, Korea is a country where, for better or worse, the government has told its citizens they need to learn English. In many cases, companies will hire or promote an employee based solely on his or her level of proficiency in English, regardless of that candidate's job-related skills, or whether or not the position in question actually requires English language proficiency. This woman was only trying to provide her children (and those of her friends) with a chance to find a successful job. Sadly, though, I really did not want to add another full day of travelling to my already exhausting schedule - not to mention lose another day of climbing - so I told her I was too busy with an ever changing work schedule (not entirely untrue).

Episode 41: In Which DFM Becomes A Gorilla And Has To Fight Off Zombies

On my way to school today I ran into one of my students.  It's nice that this school is the only school in Seoul (as far as I can tell) with brown, plaid uniforms and red jackets, because it makes it really easy to spot my students outside of school.  The student in question was with her dad and I heard her introduce me as her English teacher (wow, I really am picking up the language by "osmosis" here).  The dad bowed to me and shook my hand with both of his, which I'm pretty sure is a sign of deep respect.  It kind of caught me off guard, as I always feel like I have to apologize for speaking English when I meet people.

I was invited to have breakfast with my first class again.  The food was some sort of unrecognizable yellow paste, but it tasted delicious.  For the rest of the day though I saw a number of the younger kids with big yellow stains all over their shirts.

I had another language breakthrough this morning.  This girl and the boy on the other side of me had a rather pleasant conversation about all sorts of things in a combination of English and Korean.  The boy asked me something that nearly passed over my head, but I recognized two of the words and realized that he was asking me if it was cold in Canada.  Also, before this class even started I had a girl tell me her throat was sore, in Korean, and I was able to decipher that as well by recognizing a couple of the words and then filling in the rest.  

Ji-Hyeun (from the climbing gym) says my Korean is getting much better, but that isn't saying much when you start with nothing.  I told her I was in a competition with the children to learn more Korean than they could English.  On closer examination I see that this is a conflict of interests.

The first class of the day was still working on a tree unit.  They had to tear up strips of coloured tissue paper, crumple the strips into a ball, and then glue the ball onto their page to make a flower.  There were some really good flowers/trees, and then there were some pictures that were, um... special.  Take Daniel here:  He's got his tree, but he also has a lightning bolt, some crazy creatures that eat your legs, an angry Chinese farmer with his legs bitten off(?) and, of course, a shark.  He called me over to see his picture by saying "Teacher, teacher, Boom!!"  He was quite proud of it.

I don't know what happened here, but those girls at the back sure thought something was funny.  This class was working on cutting more heads off people and putting them on ants (there is more than one class for each age).

My owner has a school that he uses as a show pony of sorts to impress other schools and parents.  The school still does art and activities like my school, but there is a greater emphasis on teaching the children English there than at my school.  It made me realize that my students were in danger of suffering from a mine-shaft, er... English language gap, so I ramped up my efforts.  With the class above I introduced them to analogy phonics (word families).

Another class (I've lost track of who's who, I think these are five year olds) was working on drawing/naming pieces of food that ants like to eat.  They had to cut out their food and then the items would be placed on a big picture of the inside of an ant hill that the teacher had made on he bulletin board.  This girl shows me how ants eat dalgi (strawberries, or as the kids say it, "suh-tah-wah-bewwies").  If you're wondering why she's in a tutu, I think a number of the children have to go to ballet after school.

It was my big moment in Special Art class, and I got to make up my own lesson today.  The topic was flowers, and I had the children make three flowers.  One flower had to be made using only coloured paper, one using only crayons, and the third using a combination of the two materials.  

I realized afterwards that I was so busy trying to make sure the flowers were being made that I forgot to teach about the flowers in English (which was the whole point of the lesson).  Never mind though, the teacher had left the room for a minute and I was able to get the class back under control, sort of, and also managed to get across that I wanted them to sit in their seats all by myself.  I consider that a moral victory.  Sticker Girl was a big help though, as she really tried her hardest to figure out what I was saying so that she could lead by example for the rest of the kids.

Don't ask, because you don't want to know what's going on here.  Mickey is giving her best Kevin McCallister impersonation I guess, while Lew (Balance Boy) is... well, I'm not sure what Lew is doing.  I think he's trying to get the lid off the glue stick with his teeth.  I told you not to ask.

Of course Louis was still up to his old tricks.  Here he is demonstrating his new poses

 for the camera.

Many classes are still working on their ant farms.  I'm pretty sure the ant in this case died a long time ago, but that hasn't stopped the children from pointing it out to me every time I come to class.  I haven't the heart or the vocabulary, to tell them the truth though.

This girl was doing chin ups off my forearms.  The kids seem fascinated with my forearms and are always trying to hang off of them or feel the muscles contracting, and they also like to pull my arm hair.  Speaking of arm hair, the girls in one class seem to think that my modest arm coat warrants calling me a "gorilla."  Whenever I see them I beat my chest and grunt, which causes them to go into hysterics and scream with glee.

Leaving my classes has been a bit of a problem lately.  The longer I stay the more popular I become, and it's gotten to the point now where I literally have to fight my way through throngs of students to get to the door.  Look at them, they're like really small, really happy zombies: they just keep coming after you, placing their mouths on your face and neck.

Now and then one of the little zombies sneaks out and follows me down the hall.  This girl actually followed me all the way down the hall and up the stairs before she turned back to her own class.  I'm worried one of them is going to follow me all the way to my next class one of these days.