Matters of Miscommunication

Well, I was at school working today. Up until about 8:50 this morning I wasn't expecting to be at all, so you can imagine my surprise when I got a phone call while just getting out of bed asking me where I was (yes, I am getting up late these days while on vacation). Somehow it seems no one let me know what day I was supposed to come in and work our school's winter camp, or they did let me know but in a way that made absolutely no sense to me. Either way, I was under the impression that I wasn't supposed to work until next week. Ha!

Of course, getting to school I had nothing at all prepared, and my classroom is being torn up to have new flooring done, so my options for getting anything ready at school were pretty limited. Fortunately I'm working with another teacher who happened to put together enough stuff to get through the day.

These little problems of never properly knowing times or dates of events, or even knowing of the events at all, has always been a bit of a problem while working here, and today was one of the best examples of it. It's even stranger when I'm asked what I'm "choosing" to do about something, when I never knew I had an option. For example, this winter camp - after weeks of deliberation, talking about when the camp will be, who will work it, how much the pay will be, I was asked at the end of school whether I would come and what day I would be coming on.

"Uuuh, yes, I'm going to come, and I'm going to come when I was told I should come (which was the 14th of January, not today, the 7th)."

Lunch today was also another "what option would you like, though we haven't given you any" situation. I was told that, since most of the students coming to this camp were poor, something would have to be done about meals for them. Maybe an outside group, maybe the cafeteria, no one knew the details yet. Today, as I'm packing up to go home, I'm asked what I wanted to do for lunch.

"Uuuuh, I'm going to eat lunch at home. Is that okay?" Yes, yes, that's good. Bye!

Now, most of these issues can all be chalked up to matters of miscommunication - everything was talked about with everyone involved, it just happens that I don't understand Korean and someone along the line forgot to let me know in a way I could understand what was going on. At least, I'm assuming that's the problem, though it might also be the people involved in organizing this. See, Shannon's now working a winter camp too, one that was setup so she could be working while I was and make some money/not be bored. Her co-teacher ran into my co-teacher for this camp and tried to get details on when the camp would be, how long each day, and when I would be working it. She had about as much success speaking Korean as I did in English.

Anyway, it's over and done now. I'm working this week and next (and maybe the week after?), and I'm 90% sure of what they're paying me (though that was a debacle too, requiring the services of a nice teacher not involved in the process to "point out" that maybe I was entitled to more than they were giving me), so I think I've got it all under control.

Once this is all done, it's off to Thailand for Shannon and me. We're going to be there from the 6th of Feb until the 29th, and I'm very much looking forward to a nice few weeks hiking mountains, sitting on beaches and taking it easy. My last blog I mentioned how it had been unseasonably warm here - well the next day a blizzard blew in shutting down the nearby airport and dropping as much as 40 cm of snow in places. Mokpo only got a few centimetres, but it was some pretty wild weather to see. Though maybe I just haven't seen a good Canadian winter in a long time. Anyway, happy New Year everyone.