Last weekend all the
teachers at the school except Tara went to Hongdae, which is a party section of
Seoul near the local university. We stayed in a hostel, all in one room. Kristen, Cally,
Tween, and I went a bit earlier on Saturday than everyone else because Tonya
and Shannon had to work, and we hung out for a bit. We got some gkalbi
and just relaxed and played drinking games. Then everyone else got there
and we got ready to go out (even though we weren't leaving for hours) and
played more drinking games. While we were hanging out, other people who
were staying in the hostel showed up and were hanging out in the living room.
We were in the dining room, and a few guys were loitering nearby, and
being Kelsey, I yelled at them to come drink with us. They were a couple
of Americans who are here in the army and live like, twenty minutes away from
Suwon, where we live. They ended up
being pretty cool, so we invited them out with us, and met up with their friend
at a bar down the street. We started at one bar and then went to a couple
of clubs.
The first club SUCKED.
We got downstairs and the entire place was so smoky you couldn't really
see anyone's face, and the dance floor was so packed that you weren't so much
dancing as just rubbing your butt all over random people. It was tiny and
cramped, and HOT, and I in general hated it. But I figured, make the best
of it and dance for a little while, you know, why not?
Why not? Because
Korean men do not understand "no I do not want you to grind yourself on me
to your hearts content get away from me right now please thank you."
I actually would move away from a guy to a different part of the dance floor
and they would follow me. I shoved one guy because he was getting too
handsy, and it didn't deter him even a little. Tween and I eventually
went and sat in a corner of the club and drank water and tried to avoid people
altogether. Finally, everyone was ready to leave. Shannon, Holly,
and Chris all went home because they were tired and it was about 2 a.m. at that
point. We decided to go to another club and had a really good time.
Then, at about 5 a.m., we went home. Most of us weren't that drunk,
though a few were. When we got back, we hung out with the guys at the
hostel for a while before going to bed. It was fun in general. I
think Kristen stayed up until about 7 a.m. I wouldn't know. I was a
good girl, and was in bed by 5:45.
On Monday afternoon, the
director of the school came down to meet with us, and informed us that they're
converting the basement teacher's offices into a parking lot. I'm sorry,
what? Right, and then the first floor that is currently a parking lot
will become a bank. Okay.... so where do we go? We're getting new
offices upstairs, and will have to be out of the basement by the end of the day
on Tuesday. Okay, and we move upstairs? Oh, no, the upstairs was
recently a restaurant, but they have to gut the whole thing and do construction
to turn it into offices and a library. It won't be done for at least two
weeks, more likely a month. Okay... so where do we go? Our
classrooms. No more offices. The gym room is being taken away to
hold the lunches, which used to go downstairs, so we have to have gym in our
classrooms. How, I don't know. And what about breaks? What
about the 15 minute unpaid break we get in the middle of the day when the kids
are still there so that they can work us 29.6 hours and not have to go over 30
hours and pay us overtime? We take that break in the room. While
the kids are there. So, really it's not a break. How do you tell a
child whose first language isn't English that you can't play cars with him
because you're on your break? On Monday they told us to plan through next
Wednesday. Then Tuesday, at 11:30 while we are all teaching, they sent us
an email. It's actually going to be at least the next two full weeks that
we will need to be planned for, because we won't have internet access or access
to printers or copiers for at least that long. Also, pack up everything
in our desks by the end of the day. This fall under the category of
different expectations of staff in Korea, which I spoke about in a previous
entry. Here we are expected to do
anything the company says, no matter how absurd, and to not complain.
Then they had the TPs
(our Korean teaching partners) move the entire supply room up two floors, and
got mad at them when they couldn't finish it in one day. Mind you, they
were supposed to use their break time, not paid time or class time, to do this,
meaning they had a regular workload as well as the task of moving and
organizing about twenty shelves worth of supplies.
Sometimes it’s hard to
work in an environment where administration is unrealistic and deaf to even the
most constructive criticisms.
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