More "Informative" Workshops.....(sigh)

Well, not much going on at present, so I figure most of this post will be focused on the absurd workshops I went through the last two days. School is, as I write this, officially over for the semester. The last few weeks, since I posted last, have been mostly doing evaluations of the students in order to help the co-teacher grade and assess the student's levels, so nothing too crazy. Honestly, I could have given the grades without even administering the speaking tests. The students that participate regularly in class and talk to me a bunch all got A's and B's, while the students that never talk or only talk in Korean to me (and there are quite a few) got C's or D's. Surprise, surprise.

Most of the time at work the last few weeks has been spent working on my winter camps, which until two or 3 days ago, I had only a very vague understanding of who I would be teaching. You know, stuff thats normally very crucial, like how many students I'll be teaching at a time and what their ages/abilities are. The details have been changing almost daily. I feel terrible for the co-teacher cuz she's the one having to deal with all the 180s and then relaying it to me. For example, originally (about a month or so ago) our school wasn't going to have camps, so I was gonna get loaned out to another school. Then my school decided they wanted camps, and for 3 weeks, instead of the 2 weeks I would have done at another school. Fine. Then I was told that they would be having the classes seperated by levels. I was under the impression that this meant that all the grades would be mixed, which would cause problems as a high level 3rd grader isn't anywhere near a high 6th grader. I was also told that my classes would be nice and cozy, around 15 students a class. This I could get used to. It would put us around 60 students (15 for each of the 4 classes). Cept when the sign up sheets came back it was obvious that we had 90 students asking for camp. My co-teach fought hard to keep it at 60 students, but the vice principal, knowing so much about teaching....anything (I'm being very, very sarcastic), decided that all 90 students should get a camp. Now, 15 students a class would be wonderful, but 25 or so still is pretty damn good, so no complaints here, just wish I could get more individual time with each student. Just the tug of war nature of the whole thing that annoys me.

Well the back and forth continued, as 3 days ago, I finally learned that the classes were broken up by level, sort of. The low level class would consist of 1st and 2nd graders, the middle 3rd and 4th and so on. This brings other difficulties into play, as my high level classes, who I presumed would be high level students, are simply the oldest students. I have no idea whether these are the students that could hold a normal conversation with me in English or if they are the ones that can't write their name in English. Also, as you might have realized, I'm teaching 1st and 2nd graders.....who I've never taught before, so I have no idea what they know, if anything. This as you can imagine, makes it hard to make a decent winter camp. I just chose some activities that I think would be doable and enjoyable for the vast majority of the students, and hope they work. That's about all I can do.

My annoyance came to a head last week Friday, as I was working on finalizing my camp lesson plans that I needed to have turned in yesterday. Anyways, the vice princ. wanders in and starts chatting with the co-teach and I find out that, because there were so many 1st and 2nd graders that wanted camp, they had to break them up into individual single week groups. So instead of teaching the same kids for 3 weeks, like I do with the other kids, I teach each group for one week. The vice principal was also worried that the material would be too hard for them, so I have to make a new lesson plan just for them. I was told that it needs to be fun, with coloring, games, candy and other fun stuff. Being annoyed with the additional lesson planning I had to do at the last minute, I told the vice principal to her face, "So you want me to be a babysitter then?". Probably good she can't speak English. There was no way I was gonna come up with a 4th week of all new material (coming up with 3 weeks was hard enough), so I just simplified and dumbed down some of the other camp activities I had planned for the older kids.

The worst, however, was when she asked to inspect my lesson plans for the camps. Upon looking over the plans, she uttered, "Where is the title and key sentences?" THE FUCK ARE KEY SENTENCES?????? Yes, apparently my lesson plans were substandard and incomplete without a title for each class and several key sentences that I would teach the students. However, I was planning on having the students actually use the language, rather than having them recite several sentences multiple times, but hell, what do I know? I humored her by adding key sentences to my lesson plans, regardless of whether I have any intention of teaching them (I don't).

Now we come to meat of this post. The mandatory enrichment workshops, or whatever they call them. Now regardless of whether these workshops were going to be good or not, they got off on the wrong foot with most of the teachers, as they scheduled them for the last two days of semester, where the schools usually do some fun stuff/have parties/etc and instead placed us in stuffy auditoriums, listening to boring speeches about stuff. Strike 1. Then we found out that the first day of workshops last from 1pm - 9pm at night. Yeah, as if workshops weren't enough fun, they planned to have it run into our non-working time. No word as to whether we get overtime for it. Probably not. Now, the workshop was nice and close to my school, which was a plus, so after riding the subway for 2 stops, I was there. Having survived several workshops in the past, I came prepared with books, korean homework and my gameboy, should the speakers ramble on about nothing for multiple hours like I knew they would. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I find out that this workshop only has about 70 teachers and we would be broken up into groups of 10 for small group workshops. Booooooooooooooooooooooooo. I was really looking forward to some Phoenix Wright or Pokemon Diamond. Now, we had been given very little info on what was actually going on at this here workshop, basically just when and where to meet. Turns out the instructors had been given even less info on what to do. They were the native English speaker teachers at the university and they seemed to be just as thrilled about the whole workshop as us. According to one of the teachers, they were originally told that we would all be high school teachers (which none of us were) and that we were brand new to Korea (also not true).

Given that information (that we were high school teachers), then maybe the fact that the presentations were supposed to be on such topics as teaching presentations, reading, and writing would make more sense. As we are elementary teachers, those particular topics are completely useless, as we don't start teaching reading and writing at all until 4th grade and even then its merely a few words here and there. You can imagine the absolute absurdity of teaching 7 or 8 year olds how to do presentations. Given the instructors had no idea what exactly there were supposed to be teaching and the stupidity of the assigned subjects, most of our workshops turned into conversations pertaining to everything and anything Korea. Funny stories, frustrations with schools/coteachers, questions about Korea, etc. These candid conversations are always the best aspect and sometimes the only positive one at these kinda workshops, as its always good to know that you aren't the only one who thinks the stuff that goes on at your school is absolutely bat-shit insane. Strength in numbers, I guess.

After 4 hours of this stuff, we were treated to dinner, which was actually damn good. Actually, the candid conversations and the food are the sole positives, usually. Course, they didn't have to check attendance at dinner. I mean, it was after our workhours, so they can't really hold us after. Plus, dinner and the following traditional Korean performing arts (shudder) performance weren't even work-related, so how could your school be angry for skipping out. But, as its Korea, people got yelled at the next day by their school for "neglecting their responsibilities" or something like that. Remember, when in Korea, when somebody higher up or older than you asks you to bend over, you must promptly present your posterior without comment. They really like it if you thank them for it too.

Wanting to save myself the lecture from my school, I stuck around for the musical performance. God, I wish I wouldn't have. Now, I know Korea is super proud about their history and love to show off just how fucking scientific everything is, but at some point they need to realize that most foreigners don't like having this shit shoved down their throat. Also, they should realize that most non-Koreans find this "traditional" pretty awful and boring and terrible and did I mention awful? In fact, I'm now skeptical of anything prefaced with the word "traditional". I'm not up on the dictionary definition, but perhaps one of the definitions is "awful, mind-numbing, torturous, painful". Just a guess though.

Now, I've seen the traditional music before, so I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be just awful. A brief recap. There are some nice sounding stringed instruments, but sadly they never let them do their thing with solos. No, they have the stringed instruments play, but then they drown it out with way, way too many percussion instruments. So all you hear is banging and clashing and booming. It's just a loud mess. Then they break in with some sort of breath powered instrument that honestly sounds like a dying fawn or lamb or goat or something. I kid you not. If you slit the throat of this type of critter and then let them slowly bleed out, I guarantee the awful mewing or crying that they produce would sound exactly like this instrument. Not exactly pleasant, I know.

I assumed that this performance would be people in hanbok dancing to these awful, awful sounds. I wasn't too far off. So we arrive at the theater and I realize that we are at the Seoul Arts Center, a wonderful place, and that there is probably some sort of beautiful orchestra or symphony performance taking place at the same time we are forced to sit through this travesty. That probably made the whole thing worse, that I could probably spit and hit a musical performance I'd love to actually see. Anyways, we got to the theater 30 minutes before it started, so people found their seats and settled in and waited for the pain that would soon wash over them. I wasn't too worried, as I had my gameboy, so if shit got really bad, I'd just break it out.

So the performance starts and we are all ready off to a bad foot. The first 10 minutes consisted of a disembodied voice narrating some sort of backstory. The voice spoke in Korean and was accompanied by the textual version displaying on a screen on stage. Now, I'm no expert on the world of the stage and the arts, but I'm pretty sure that you want to start a performance by hooking and pulling in the audience to get them interested. Narration is fine and all, but to have a slow, drawn out one without a very charismatic narrator run for 10 minutes is a bad move, at least in my mind. The story was something about the crown prince going crazy and pulling some weird shit, like trying to kill his servant or something, being banished from the kingdom and living a lecherous life with performers and poor people for a year, then coming back to the kingdom to beg his father's forgiveness. Well, daddy let him back in, but he is so shamed and embarrassed by his son's behavior that to save face (I presume) he asks his son to kill himself. How? Well, he has the boy climb into a rice box and stay there for 9 days till he dies. But it all ends on a happy note, cuz his son grows up to be one of the greatest kings ever and the performance is about the dead prince's wife's 60th birthday party, put on by his really awesome son. Wait, what???? What the fuck was the point of that whole narration????? Seriously???? That story sounded kinda cool and interesting, do the play about that. Why give us that background that has absolutely no bearing on the performance. We are watching the king hold a 60th birthday party for his mom. Who cares what the hell his dad did, it has nothing to do with his mom's party 40 some years later. ARghaslghaslghlsakhgls.

At least, that's what I think the narration said, from what I could read. I don't really know, as the one screen that had English translations (a good idea) was obscured by lighting and couldn't be seen by the English teacher group (a really bad idea). That's right, they chose to put us, the only people in the audience who would need the english subtitles, in the only seats in the house that wouldn't be able to see the screen. Face, meet palm.

So the play thingy starts and its exactly what I expected: boring and loud and uncomfortable. The birthday girl is escorted out slowly by her servants, everybody else slowly walks in and sits down, there's a bunch of bowing and tea drinking, some kinda bombastic speeches (which I couldn't understand what they said), and some lousy background music accompanies the slow, stiff dancers. Seriously, I have never seen such a disconnect between the senses. Outside of maybe Mardi Gras and Carnivale, I doubt you will see more colors and flashy looking stuff then at a court ceremony like this. I mean look at hanboks (the traditional korean outfits). Hell, it looked like a rainbow exploded on stage. Now, as in the examples of Mardi Gras, Carnivale and most other things, bright colors mean vibrancy, energy, liveliness, and life. This performance was the exact opposite. Slow, stiff, lifeless, dull, and boring. Yuck.

Good thing I brought my gameboy, right? Too bad the supervisor guy from SMOE (the big wig) sat in the row directly behind me.....shit. Well, I'll just try to sleep then. No chance. At least not with that painful music playing. Then I'll just zone out and think about stuff, cuz I'm really good at that. What I didn't count on was that the performance was so uninteresting that it had paralyzed my brain. Like someone in a coma or something I was unable to do anything other than look on stage. I was able to find something interesting on the ceiling for a bit, so I just stared at that.

Now, somewhere about 30 minutes into the whole lousy show, it went from just being really f'n bad to awesomely bad and it instantly became watchable. Sadly, it didn't last for long and went back to its dull, uninteresting self soon after. What happened was that suddenly, the stage began to fill up with smoke, several very large lotus flowers were rolled out, and.........2 dancers came out dressed as Big Bird. I shit you not. Technically, they were cranes, but still. They wore striped socks up to their bird bodies, like the big fella from Sesame Street and had full body bird outfits, with the dancers heads sticking out somewhere around the lower neck area. Now, when this happened, I and most of the foreign audience who was still awake (there weren't too many, I don't think) thought they were hallucinating, and crapped their pants, or vice versa. Seriously, where did the birds come from? Straight out of left field, I guess. Now the birds started dancing, spinning, and flapping, and pecking the ground (to dig for worms, one presumes). I can't vouch for the rest of the foreign folks, but I just about started laughing at this point. The only thing stopping me was that I was too damn confused to be able to clearly tell if this was actually funny or if I was losing my mind.

Shit got more weird when the cranes danced over to the lotus flowers, tapped on them with their beaks, and then the lotus flowers opened up to reveal a Korean female dancer trapped inside. WTF??????? Now maybe I just have sex on the brain (okay, so I do), but that scene came off as a big sexual innuendo to me. You may not see it, but I've seen too many Georgia O'Keefe paintings to not think flowers look like vaginas. And the bird's beak that penetrates the flower and out comes a human? Cmon. "Sure Eric, it's all about sex. What a pervert. Next you're gonna tell me that that really awesome football statue at Camp Randall is actually a big penis." Well, now that you mention it.....

Sadly, the cranes didn't stick around and the performance quickly returned to the bowing and tea drinking and stale nature of it all. Eventually it ended. Only an hour long, but man it felt much longer. The performers all came back on stage and we gave them a round of applause. Why I'm not sure. Take for example the 60 year old mother of the King. Presumably a major character in the story, right? Well, here's what she did. She entered at the beginning, very slowly, being escorted by two servants. She sat down, with her back to the audience (she sat that way the whole time). 20 minutes in, she was helped to her feet, turned to the audience and said about 10 words to us all. She then sat down again. When the performance finished, she was slowly escorted out again. Ohhh, and throughout the performance she occasionally turned her head to acknowledge somebody talking to her. That's it. Fuck, I could have done that....easily. The musicians who played the entire time? No curtain call. The dancers who actually did something? Very minor curtain call. The lady that did nothing the whole time? The biggest curtain call. Yeah, that makes sense.

One of the other teachers I was talking with summed up the whole thing the best when he said, "Man, I really feel sorry for Korea that their culture is so stale, so stiff, so boring, so uninteresting." Now obviously that isn't true for all their culture. Hell, many of their modern cultural aspects (Starcraft, computer games, movies, and breakdancing) are all really great. But the traditional stuff? No thanks. Hopefully, Korea will realize someday that most people really don't care for the old timey stuff and will then begin promoting all the actually cool stuff about Korea. I hope.