Kyo Jang Soeng Sang Nim, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Principal

Another week, another blog. Thanks to all of you who're keeping up with it, I so glad I’m entertaining enough to be worth reading on a regular basis. I think I was able to make it so you don’t need to log in to comment, so feel free to drop a line on here whenever you like. Especially if you know a good travel agent who can find cheap flights out of Soeul.

There's been some exciting, bizarre, and ever (heaven forbid!) regular nd routine times here in Mokpo over the last little while. Halloween has come and gone, and with it we experienced one of the larger parties here in South Korea, at least for us Waygooks (foreigners). Teachers from all over the province of Jeollanamdo traveled up to 4 hours to take part what's become an annual Halloween gathering, put on by a teacher who's been here for about 6 years now. There were some very exciting costumes (Shannon and I were a Smurf and Arch-Bishop, respectively), and you'd be impressed at how creative people can be given the lack of materials for costume building here in Korea. Or how outlandish and inappropriate they can be. I won't go into too much more detail regarding the night, though there was much Noraebonging (karaoke), dancing and finally it all ended with a number of us catching a bus at 6am for the 4 hour trip home.

The weather is finally starting to cool down, hinting at what might almost be classified as a winter. Well, not by Canadian standards anyway, though there has been one day cold enough I needed a jacket. My school, of course, does not have any heating system in it, and while I was fairly comfortable in the cold, all the students and teachers kept their big winter coats on all day. For a while we looked more like a ski school than an English class room, and while I know the idea of adding in a heating system to the school won’t happen anytime soon, perhaps I could suggest closing all the windows for a change.

Vacation time is coming up, but it’s been tough to figure out holidays, as my Principal, as great a guy as he is, is a bit off his rocker. He’s always forgetting what month it is, will come into my class Thursday afternoons to run our Friday class, and can never quite get the difference between a competition and a seminar. A lot of this is a result of language barriers, but my principal’s also the kind of guy to show up to school on Monday with a bandage on his forehead from some random fall or flying object. Anyway, over the past few weeks, the dates he’s told me my vacation is has changed 4 times. He’s finally started to agree with himself though, so I think I know for sure now what days I have off.

Three times a week, my principal helps me teach my extra class. His job is to mark their homework, and he likes to review some of the material from last class as well. I haven’t had the heart to try and solve the homework issue, but I usually try to keep the class from falling into total chaos while he teaches it, as his methods can be a little unusual. Yesterday, he was working on pronouncing the “f” sound with the kids, which was awesome ‘cause he can’t pronounce the “f” sound either, it’s always “puh”. He ends up trying to work with this one kid who’s doing terrible, so I try to help the kid by getting him to pull up his upper lip. It looks ridiculous, but it works, and the principal digs this, so he gets the whole class to pull up their upper lips and start going “fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff”. So now there’s 35 kids going “ffffffffffff” with their hands in their mouths, the principal is holding up his lip smacking his foot on the ground to get their attention, kids are laughing, he’s yelling (with his lip held up), and by the time I got class started we had wasted almost a full half hour.

Well everyone, thanks for tuning in for another weekly adventure of English teaching in Korea. it’s been a blast as always, and I hope you can make it back next week!