The Countdown Begins.....

Yep, only 5 days and counting till my open lesson. Since that will undoubtedly be the brunt of this piece, I'm pushing any discussion of the open lesson to the rear for the time being, as there are other things to discuss (yeah, I can't believe it either) and I want to get them out of the way before they get swallowed up by the rage and venom that will more than likely flow during the open lesson rant.

First on the docket is the weekend's plans. My misadventures started early this week as I found myself on Seoul for Friday night as well. One of the members from capoeira was leaving us forever and we wanted to send her off bruised and broken as is tradition. Sure somebody was leaving, tear, tear, ohhh I'm never gonna see you again, but honestly I was in it for the roda. Don't mean to be harsh, but I really didn't know the girl that well, plus I'm a selfish prick anyways, so how much compassion can I be expected to have? Anyways, the entire class was a roda, which made happy in ohhh so many places, including some places that shall not be mentioned for the sake of decency. So given my already "excited" state, you can't fault me for "going off" when I found out we were actually gonna fucking string up the berimbaus. Yeah, that's right, 5 months of training in, and I finally get to touch a strung up stick. Bout damn time. I was surprised that I could still hold the thing at all, let alone actually hit some notes. Course, my hand was numb after only 10 min, but still. After class we went out for dinner and hit the bottle pretty hard. Well, some of us did. I still had to go home. Although our instructor did get a little weird and gave one of those "I love you man, you're like the bestest bro I've got, man" speeches to one of the foreigner guys in the group. AWWWWWWkward, at least for me. If I ever saw Carlos do the same thing, I'd probably poop myself. Round 11pm I had to part from the group to catch the train back home. The plan was take the last subway train to Guksu, which is near home, then catch a 8 or 9 buck cab home. Cept sometimes shit don't work out like it should.

First, I got held up in the subway station, as several of the stairs that I had to take were completely roped off and some of the escalators were shut down. I delayed for a bit in trying to find another way around, failed, then just said to hell with it and went down the stairs. Got yelled at, but I didn't care as I had nowhere else to go. With that delay and bad luck with subway cars, I missed the last subway to Guksu and had to settle for the train to Deokso and an even more expensive cab ride. Well, once I arrived in Deokso, I naturally set out for an ATM, as I didn't have the cash to pay for the cab home. Cept, Korea apparently doesn't do 24 hour ATMs. Nearly all of the banks were completely closed and the few that still had accessible ATMs still wouldn't take my money. Hell, even the ATMs at the 24 convenience stores wouldn't take my card. I originally feared that my debit card was bad, but it was just that the ATMs shut down. I feel bad for the Deokso businessman that needs some "attention" from noraebang girls at 3 or 4 in the morning and didn't bring enough cash. Maybe next time Mr. Kim. For those of you that don't know Korea, high class noraebangs (karaoke rooms) have girls on staff that cater to your every whim, if you pay enough. Prostitution isn't as visible as back in the States, but it is most certainly here. But that's another subject all together.

Well, with no machines taking my card, I had to settle for a love motel after 45 min pacing the city in vain. The card reader there didn't take my card the first time, so for about 2 minutes I was about to lose it as I was stranded in a unknown Korean town with absolutely no cash. Thankfully the reader had no problems the second time. Sometime around noon on Saturday, I finally arrived home. Course, I left 3 hours later for my usual Saturday rendezvous with the crew. We headed to the theaters to catch Transformers, as the theater website said it was in, even though it supposedly doesn't premiere till next week. We got to the theater all geared up to see some robots in disguise only to find out that they are playing Transformers 1....the first Michael Bay flick. We were shocked as we had never seen anything like this. Playing a 2 year old movie on the big screens? Really? Who is gonna pay to see that? We settled for Terminator and we weren't disappointed, at least for explosions and mindless action. I left the flick with massive head pains, though I'm not sure if that's from all the story aspects that made no sense or if it was the fact that we were stuck in the front row and my ears were blown out and my retinas permanently scarred. Still not sure, even today. I should have learned my lesson after "300".....the front row hurts.

To recover from the flick we chose, as per our physicians orders, heavy consumption of alcohol and staying out all night (yeah, I know, he's not a very good doctor). After months away, we were back in Hongdae. Not much had changed. Still alot of inebriated young folks doing occasionally strange things. The evening was terribly interesting, as there was plenty of inter-group drama as it appeared that almost everyone was gonna pair up with someone else in the group. It was like the high school I never had, with back hallway conversations about who liked who and so on. Amusing for a night, but would have sucked if I did that for 4 years. In case you needed clarification, by "almost everyone" I obviously meant everybody besides me. Though I doubt you needed to have that clarified.

Okay, readers, I need your advice on the subject of man points. You know, the points handed out to dudes when they do something manly, you know, like killing something or drinking lots of beers. Anyways, I've been having mine taken away recently and I wanted to get some opinions on whether my offenses were worthy of man point revocation. Among other things (like skipping through the subway terminal....that one probably was deserving of the point loss), was the high five. I implore you to find something unmanly about slamming a high five with your bro whenever you drop a mean diss, do something rad, or just for simply existing (i gave a lot of high fives). Insulted, I attempted a even more manly display of brotherly congratulation, the chest bump. Our attempt went astray when we nearly decapitated some poor Korean chick with our flailing arms. Desperate to stem the loss of points, I turned to the most manly of manly congratulations: the ass slap. I mean, c'mon, they use that in football games and it doesn't get manlier than that. Maybe I could have chosen a better location than the middle of a subway car. Maybe it would have been better if Chris didn't think I was joking. Perhaps.

Now, on to the meat of the article: the open lesson. To give you the brief background going into today, here's the timeline. About a month to a month and a half ago, the co-teacher came to me and said, "Eric we have an open lesson on June 26th and YOU need to prepare a lesson plan for it." Last Friday, she asked me how the planning was going and I told her that I was working on the powerpoint, I told her that it was on a previously covered chapter in the book, and that I "hope to have it done by Monday". Remember that, folks, it will come back. For those that don't know, an open lesson is another joke of a Korean education system activity. Basically, you and co-teacher teach a class with many principals, district peeps, and other teaching pairs from around the area. Okay in principle, cept there is an unnecessarily high amount of paperwork and effort, way beyond what would be possible for any normal class, and worst of all, everything is practiced and memorized (even the students have answers prepared), so its more play than actual class. A joke, yeah, but a joke that must be lived through.

Cue today. It's after lunch and I'm working on the lesson plans for the morning's classes as well as for my after school classes for the next day, before jumping back into the open lesson prep. Suddenly, the co-teacher rolls her chair over and asks if I had finished the open lesson stuff. I calmly told her no, I hadn't finished it yet and then the shit began. She immediately got upset and wondered why I was working on other stuff if it wasn't done. I told her that I still lesson prep stuff to do for my classes that day as well as prepping for the after school classes for tuesday, wed, and thurs. I explained to her that I had other work to do for classes that would be taking place before Friday, the day of the open class, and as such, they take precedence. She strongly disagreed, so I guess I'm just supposed to blow off all my other classes for this one class. Cept I'm not gonna do that. Once we cleared the hurdle of my other work, we moved on to the fact that I'm not finished yet. She claimed that I told her on Friday that I would be 100% finished on Monday, how could I not be done? I told her that what I actually said was "I hope to have it done by Monday", which is something completely different. There was arguing for some time, which consisted of basically, "you said", "no, I didn't", "yes you did", and so on. Really petty and such a waste of time I know. Eventually, she dropped the case as she realized she was full of shit and I wasn't gonna take the blame for something I didn't do. Next, we moved onto to accusing me of being lazy, since I spend all my time listening to music and dinking on the internet, and that it should be done by now, if not for my bad time management. Now, granted, I'm clearly not one of those people that is nose to the grindstone all the time and I do spend a good deal of time on non-school related things. But if you know anything about my co-teacher or most Korean teachers, then you know that that comment is probably the most hypocritical thing anyone could ever say. Period. Those insults over with, she moved on to criticizing my subject material, as I chose a topic from a previously covered chapter. Not like it really matters, as these things are all for show anyways, and I wanted to make the best lesson possible, so I chose a topic I liked and didn't use the book at all.

Now, her criticism here is funny, as this woman with years of teaching experience in Korea, years of doing and observing open lessons, and just general knowledge of how this shit works, tells a teacher with less than one year true experience, no knowledge of how open lessons are supposed to go (I haven't even observed one) to make a lesson plan all by himself, with no support, and then has the gall to criticize his approach, his subject, etc. You could have lifted a finger too, as you are supposedly qualified to teach as well. Technically, I could have asked her if I had questions, but they wouldn't have gotten answered (as I've already learned) and there are technically no rules for the open lessons, so I just ran with it. We also argued for a period about what she said. She claimed that she did not tell me that I had to make the thing all by myself, which was exactly what "Eric, YOU make the lesson plan" means, but she said not a word on the subject for an entire month, then asked me on Friday how it was going and expected to have it gift wrapped and placed in her hands. By this point I was noticeably annoyed and I asked if I could just teach the open class all by myself, since I did all the planning and I was told last Friday that I would be teaching 80-90% of the time (I'm told by other foreign teachers that this is shit and that it should be 50-50, whatever). She didn't like that idea and explained that we must co-teach. But I did all the work, I said (starting to sound a little like the old fable where the chicken asks for help making the cake and no one does, but when its done, everybody comes running for a slice...).

From this point, we began arguing over the paper copy lesson plan that must accompany the actual lesson. Now, I was still working on the class itself, so clearly I wasn't gonna put together a paper explanation till it was done, and I told her so. I was ohhhh so nicely told that normally in Korea, the paper lesson plan needs to be done and handed in a week before the lesson to the principal and vice principal and other teachers. That's fine and all, but she never told me, until today, 5 days before the open lesson. She then began to tell me how she is in trouble with the principal, as he's been asking where the lesson plan is and she didn't have anything to give him. Again, my fault. At this point, I told her that we don't have this manner of produced lesson plans in the States and I don't understand what they are for/what they are supposed to do/what is supposed to be in them. After more arguing, and a period where I was asking "why" questions and she was answering "...in Korea we do this", which obviously don't answer the why part, she finally gave me a legit answer and I shut up on that point. The first all day. Our discussion ended with us arguing over when I can finish the lesson plan. I told her I think, I hope, I can probably have it done by tomorrow. No, no, this isn't good enough for her, as I have to say for certain when it will be finished, no maybes. I told her I have no idea how long this shit is gonna take and that I don't make guarantees unless I know I can keep them. A stupid point to waste some time arguing, I know, as I could have just nodded, said tomorrow, then worked on it, but its a big deal for me to not break promises I have made. That's just how I am. Eventually, just to end the whole ordeal, I said I'll have it done tomorrow, she asked if it was a guarantee, and I said yes while rolling my eyes as hard as I could. Argument over. Total time: 1 hour, 30 mins. Amount of work accomplished: zero. Funny, given the whole time is of the essence thingy. To make sure she got the last laugh or something, she spent a considerable amount of time the rest of the day bitching to the other teachers in Korean about me and my laziness or whatever. I didn't get much, but when she starts talking to another teacher, with me 2 feet away mind you, and not in a quiet whisper, "blah blah blah open lesson blah blah blah" and is whining as badly as humanly possible, which is saying something given my reputation in the field, its not hard to pick up on. She even varied her voice, like all people do when they are quoting or impersonating someone else, to quote me and lets just say imitation was not the sincerest form of flattery in this case. Wow. Ohh, and the lesson plan packet also is supposed to have a bunch of shit beyond the actual lesson plan, like surveys of the students about their opinion of English, which I have no idea how to do or anything, so I just told the co-teach that I have no idea how to do that and I think she may actually be putting that together. Maybe. I could spend a considerable amount calling her awful names, which would be very applicable, but the preceding story tells you everything you need to know, which is that is a manipulative, lazy, condescending, petty person and worst of all, is that she is a boring, uncreative, and all around lousy teacher of English. I still have a grudge against her for her lack of compassion involving the vacation days during Alyse's trip and I did in fact swear revenge, but I'm honestly not trying to sabotage this lesson. I think this may be one of those cases where you reap what you sow. Stay tuned, as this looks to only get uglier before it gets better.