Life Is A Lemon And I Want My Money Back

I had to cancel my flight to Beijing for Buddha’s birthday weekend. I am still job hunting. Sometimes, when life hands you lemons, all you want to do is rub them in the eyes of the people who have screwed you over. But it’s not in my nature, so instead I am just throwing myself into finding a brilliant job.

They exist, yeah?

Rectal Prolapse

Bet that’s got your attention!

In one of my classes earlier, one of the vocab words was housewife. I was asking the kids if their mothers worked and telling them if they didn’t, then they were housewives. (Putting aside all the arguments that mothers who stay at home are working too as this is too difficult a concept for relatively low-level English speakers to get to grips with, non-working mothers was the simplest way to explain the word.) Being the nosy parker that I am, I wanted to know what all their parents do for a living. This class is only made up of seven students, so we had time to go over their jobs.

Unfortunately, because they are low-level, a lot of them couldn’t explain what their parents do, so I brought out my dictionary on my phone. I know, it’s a bad idea, we should never do it, etc etc etc. But sometimes, it works really well. Other times - like today - not so much. One of my kids happily told me that both her mum and dad are teachers, so that was easy. Three of the kids’ mothers don’t work, so they were beaming as they were able to tell me they were housewives. The trouble started when Freddy wanted to tell me what his dad does, and when he handed me back my phone, looking at me expectantly, it was all I could do not to lose it completely. I was expecting office worker, or government official, or civil servant (jobs that have been translated many times before) but no. The words I was looking at were rectal prolapse. I have no clue what it should have said, and I wish I had taken a screen-grab of the word in Korean so I could have found out. I think I shall ask him again on Monday and then do some research. I shall keep you posted.

Korea: Surviving without Waitrose: "Teacher, why do you always have that laser pointer?"

ifindyourlackofwispasdisturbing:

This was the most thought-provoking question I’ve heard in a long time, and it came from a 12-year-old Korean student. Most of my students have sussed that I am a child trapped in a grown-up’s body, but it’s good to know I can still surprise them. Some of it is an act, I have the clownish…

Follow this guy! Not only does he give fantastic boy advice, he is also very funny.

Vomit

One of my first graders made it to the entrance of my classroom and then vomited everywhere. Including all over her hands. My co-teacher cleaned it up. Thank God. I was nearly sick myself.

I think I have had a pretty good run, bearing in mind I taught kindergarteners my first year, and this is the first time I have ever had to deal with any bodily functions. Not that I dealt with it apart from getting a lot of tissue from the girls’ toilet and making sad faces at the poor girl. She seemed to bounce back pretty quickly. It wasn’t enough for her to be sent home. You know. Because Korea.

Freak Out

There I was sitting at my desk teaching my favourite class and I looked down at my coat sleeve (still no heating and my classroom is like an icebox) and I started to freak the hell out. I mean, I flung my arm like I had just been electrocuted and made some weird noise (I am not a screamer) while flailing around like a loon. Why? There was a gigantic bug on my sleeve! I have no idea how it got there or how long it had been camping out but by God did all my kids find out when I did.

They mostly just laughed at me, which is entirely fair enough. I was being pathetic. And then Hector really calmly got a tissue, picked it up from the middle of the floor (where I had flung it) and took it to the toilet. Didn’t even kill it. Just sauntered out with it and back in again, looking at me like I was entirely ridiculous. Which I am. So I am okay with that.

Sometimes 10 year old boys are the best.

ESL Textbook Recommendations

I teach two 13 year old girls who are upper-intermediate or possibly just higher. They are really interested in the UK (I swear it isn’t me convincing them of this, but I certainly encourage it!). Any recommendations for a book I could teach from next?

At the moment we are working through the National Geographic World English 3. Although it is great level wise, at times it has been a bit too old (boring!) for them. They have been interested in most of it though.

Any ideas?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

  • Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?
  • Student: I want to be a kindergarten teacher.
  • Me: Why do you want to be a kindergarten teacher?
  • Student: Because I like small children. And my parents told me they will let me.
  • Ah. Korea!

Done in March…

…staying til September. It’s a bind.

I want to stay in Korea until next September, but my contract ends in March. I wanted to extend, but got confirmation today that that can’t happen. I kind of suspected that would be the case, but it is still quite annoying. It means I have to find a six month contract and move out of my flat. The flat is the least of my worries, as at least one of my flatmates is leaving Korea in March so I always knew that was going to happen.

I just hope that finding a six month contract won’t be too difficult. I have never heard of anyone actually doing that, but there must be a few of them out there. Especially as I am already in Korea and I don’t need flights or anything like that.

Fingers crossed that when the time comes, I will be okay. I am taking the train back to London from Vladivostok in September so I can be home by next Christmas, and nothing is going to change that. It is how I wanted to go home since before I even left for Korea the first time!

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