Do You Remember My Name?

Ahh first week back to work.

Surprisingly enough it went pretty quickly.

My group of lovely hormonal crazies were fairly well behaved. Had a run in with Cody (you may remember him from the Vanna White blog). I asked the whole class what they wanted to be when they grew up and Cody appropriately replied:

Cody: "Je-ni-pu. I want President. President of Korea. North Korea and South Korea war." (makes appropriate boy gun noises) "South Korea war America" (more appropriate gun noises).

Me: "Dear God." I'm left a bit speechless at this point because I can't effectively communicate, or say, that's the most f*d up thing I've heard since I've came here. What I managed to say is: "Cody if you are EVER president, well that's just scary. I don't even want to think about it." So note to future people. Don't vote for Cody-EVER.

I'm not saying he's a bad kid. I just don't think he is proper president material at this point!

I guess Ed's classes are going all right. He's trying to figure out how to manage the classes and teach English appropriately with no real working media or materials. You may or may not know, but he has been banned from using the English Lab, not because he did anything wrong, but from what we can figure out its because he is not a Korean English teacher.

You see, the province gave all schools HUGE amounts of money to design new English Labs. Most Native Teachers have been allowed to use them, with the wicked awesome media, or even just some remotely normal power point and projector set up. Both Ed's school and mine are now equipped with super English labs. I can use mine. Ed can't use his. The labs have been designed to help further the students English skills, but the one teacher who can speak English fluently because he is an ENGLISH SPEAKER can't use it because the Korean English teachers want to use it to teach English-read teaching English in KOREAN. The irony behind the whole thing, if it isn't already obvious, is that they hung a huge sign outside the door that says "English Only Zone" outside the door. Ha!

Remarkably, Ed is trying to keep a positive attitude about it, and in time we hope that the other teachers who are 'supposed to be using' the lab (but never do) really never do use it and Ed can sneak in there to teach effectively again.

Alright, so that's enough ranting for on blog I guess. We survived last minute teacher's dinners

Co Teacher: "Oh are you going to teacher dinner tonight?"

Me (and Ed, I'm guessing): "Ummm sure, thanks for telling me last minute, again".

We survived giving students English nicknames (Me: "Beer is not a good English nick name, sorry"). We survived lesson planning, and miscommunications. And we survived countless hours on facebook. Lets see if now we can survive the weekend!