Week 3 - The next group arrive for their sentence....

The third week has come to an end, and it was as I expected...exactly the same as last week, only with different students. The changes to the program that were suggested will take some time to be approved, although they are minor compared to what really needs to be done. A lot of wood is needed to put around the building, and a box of matches to light it. I will happily stoke the fire, as all the other foreign 'teachers' will still be in the building. I doubt many will notice it's on fire.

This week...

Big Friendly American, Pete, loses it with the kids again. He humiliates one in his class for not listening, and squirts water at others who then hate him. He thinks they find it funny. It's a repeat of last week and I don't think he will ever get it. In the 'Sports English' class he humiliates a nice girl for talking and asks her to take over the lesson. It's painful to watch (if I intervened I felt he would explode, so I didn't). All the students go quiet (he keeps telling me that he just wants the kids to 'have fun'. Guess he doesn't mean today.) Pete calls the activity 'musical mats' - which is like musical chairs. The 15 year old pubescent students are to dance around the room to the theme tune of 'Fame', and sit on a mat when the music stops. They don't want to do this, because they are 15 and not 5. It goes on 'till the painful end, however.

The students have important exams next week I discover. Some tell me they would rather be at home or school preparing for them. I asked one if she thinks it is a waste of time coming here because they don't learn anything and a lot of it is boring. She said 'yes'.

Some students are happy though, I think because they can make new friends and they are staying away from their parents for the first time. One Korean teacher stays with them at night to keep an eye on them...and this week it was Mr. Yang (my partner). The main rule Mr. Yang should enforce is to make sure all the students go to bed at 10pm and get a good nights sleep.

On Tuesday morning when I went to my classroom Mr. Yang was already there, and I just about made out what he said:

'The students...stay up all night....talking. I no sleep. Order pizza! All of them! Pizza...from the town. All night they talk. I can't sleep. Talk talk talk. Many mischievous students. I so tired. Many study...but no lights! Hahaha! They try to study but it's dark! (chuckles again; smile disappears...) I so tired'.

Mr. Yang still fascinates me. He will sit in my room all day to avoid the other Korean teachers, and his bosses. He has nothing much to do at all, and will read text books. I cannot get much done when he is there as he will talk forever about history, politics, and religion, and I still can only understand 50% of it. I am interested in 0% of it, but he cannot read the signals I send him to indicate this. He hears what he wants to hear, and says what he wants to say. He IS a nice man, but he DOES drive people insane, and the other foreign teachers are relieved not to be working with him. Whenever I leave the room he will jump into my seat and use the internet, and will always go to the same web page - biblegateway.com, which is always left open for me to 'discover'. He has told me several times that he wrote a text book for schools, and keeps showing it to me. But the thing is it was not accepted and never printed. He insists on taking me to lunch every Thursday, but I know this is really so he can avoid going with all the other teachers (guess I can understand that. They all go with Pete to eat at a dog restaurant). He went to Oxford for a couple of weeks many years ago for a seminar about teaching. He got a certificate for turning up and now, every day without fail, tells me he has a qualification from Oxford University. He has read a lot about English history, and tells me about that every day too. This week, he keeps mentioning Oliver Cromwell, and tells me he thinks the new leader of Korea is like him. I have no real idea of what he is talking about, which is pretty much the norm. Unfortunately neither do any of the students when he is explaining what they have to do in the exciting 'Mission Impossible' activity that we do together. After the explanation, all the students should rush off looking for small packets placed around the school. This week, after Mr. Yang's explanation, which ended with an excited 'NOW GO!', the whole class sat motionless. The worrying thing is he explained everything to them in Korean.

This weeks quotes from the Big, Not Quite So Friendly This Week American, Pete:

The topic was football:

(Me to Pete): So do you watch much football? Oh, I guess I should day 'soccer'?

(Pete to me): I have a question for you...do you guys (British people) have another name for rugby?

Me: No.

Pete: So why do you have another name for soccer?


I don't think Pete has been out of America for long, somehow. This feeling was reinforced when he and I introduced ourselves to a group of new students:

'Now, see if you can tell where this guy (pointing at me) is from. Listen to the way he talks'.

I was about to speak when he came out with these stunning words:

'He has what we call an 'accent'. People from England, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and to a lesser extent, Canada, all have strong accents'.

Pete seems eternally trapped in the small world known as 'America'. He truly believes he doesn't have an accent. I did point out to him that he has an American accent...to which there was no response.


On Friday Pete came into my room and told me he thinks the students bond with me really well, which is nice. This might be due to a group of about 10 of them who have been shouting out 'Hi David, Hi David, Hi David, Hi David, Hi David. Sorry!' all week long. They repeat it many times and find it very funny. They do it to drive me mad, and I am not sad they that they have all gone now.

A girl came up to me and handed me a letter before she left, and in it she tells me that she loves me…which is nice. And one other said she wants to marry me, and when I suggested a time of next Monday lunchtime, she said 'ok'. I'm not sure why they feel this way towards me, as I often amuse myself by taking sweets and money from them (but it's not real money – this place prints it's own play money for the kids to use in the special 'real life' venues). I have quite a stack of this fake money, and will soon open a fake bank account at the fake bank next week. I'll see what response I get from the fake teachers when I tell them what I have done.

On Monday, a group of 12 year olds will arrive at the fake school for 'the time of their lives'. I have prepared a special sign for them that I will put at the entrance. It says 'TURN BACK NOW', written in blood. I hope they understand.