First Week Of Teaching

End of September to Beginning of October.

I can't hang onto a routine sleep schedule.  I went to bed at around twelve and woke up at seven in the morning on my first day of school.  It sounds funny to say that again.  You work your whole life to get away from the systematic institutions of schooling so that you can live the life you want.  Now I am back in that institution contributing to brain washing children, but hey at least I am brain washing the Korean children.  

Let me establish something about the location of my school.  Avalon (the school I am working in) rests on the fifth floor of a pretty mammoth sized building.  In the basement their is a grocery store, on the first floor their is a shopping mall comparable to Dillards,  the second floor has a doctors office a dentists office and a bank,  the third floor has a hair salon a spa and a laundromat  and the fourth floor has an in door driving range (apparently it is very expensive to play golf in Korea but to go to driving ranges is cheap so they make virtual driving ranges for the less wealthy of Koreans).  So basically when North Korea attacks and destroys every inch of South Korea EXCEPT for my building, and it just so happens that all the exits are sealed with rubble so that no one can escape...Fortunately I will be living it up in the midst of the chaos.  I might start off the day at eight by getting my teeth cleaned at the dentist (I wouldn't even bother trying to brush my own teeth anymore)  and finish just in time to pick up my laundry at nine or ten.  Before getting fully dressed in my perfectly pressed clothes I will get my daily hour and a half massage.  After putting on my clothes it will be perfect timing for my round of virtual golf that I reserved the night before.  The most exciting part of every day though would be when I walked up to the bank teller with my immaculate aura and confident posture.  I would slide my bank card across the table with a subtle suaveness and with a smile and a nod she would show me on my own personal LCD screen my balance of a MILLION WON DOLLARS.  Thats right in Korea I am a millionaire...I rarely will cuss but I think the situation is yearning for it...I am a fucking MILLIONAIRE.  I use the LCD's fully functional 360 degree rotating capabilities to show the balance to any of the lower class peasants that surround me.  I will admit some days I will pretend to be the giving millionaire that leaves joy and hope in his wake...the one that everyone says "oh there goes Zach Nims the most gracious altruistic man to ever walk the earth, praise the gods...no no praise him for he is as close to a god on earth as we will ever receive."  Honestly though most days I enjoy being the shrewd scrooge like millionaire that decides families fates with a snap of a finger and eats babies souls for breakfast.  Unfortunately for everyone at the bank I would be the Scrooge that day which meant anyone that so much as looked me in the eyes on the way out would be slapped and maybe even hung because millionaires can do whatever they want....because really what is fun about money if you can't use it as a power to exploit the lower class.  On these days I feel like people without money deserve to be taken advantage of because lets be honest people with no money don't have souls therefore with that argument settled their is nothing for me to feel bad about after Im finished with my daily social atrocities.

Sooooooo anyways I arrived on the fifth floor with thirty minutes to spare before my first class.  Keep in mind I had never taught a day in my life and had had no previous training, plus whenever I asked anyone they just told me it was easy and to follow the schedule.  My first class scheduled was called Igen.  Igen are the children that still forget that when finger painting one should not eat the paint or paint themselves.  They know how to repeat english but when you ask what Bill wants to do with his box and they have the choices between mop, pig, and cut...they choose pig and or mop about 99 percent of the time...but alas if one guesses right the first time fortunately every kid has the same answer in seconds.  I can say that I have only just started to enjoy this class.  I felt more like a piece of eye candy rather than a teacher.  A cd runs this class and I am just the theatrics that tags along side.  I like this class more though because I am starting to feel comfortable singing in front of them which helps with my voice and also no matter how bad I sound Mr. Fox on the cd is about as good as listening to the deafening beauty of a fog horn.

I learned that I am not strict at heart and when I try to be I can't take myself seriously.  Even though every teacher has told me, "you need to be strict in the beginning and then nicer toward the end," it didn't work for me.  In every class I have a lot of cute kids and two or three trouble makers.  I think that uptight people should not teach.  I am very laid back so the trouble makers really don't bother me no matter how loud they get.  I found that calling them out by name and just saying come on or joking with them a bit settles them down a lot.  The relations between the girls and boys is great so far.  Every girl in my class thinks I am good looking and the boys all think I am a wrestler.  So for the girls I just have to put up with them flirting during the class and the boys I have to put up with them trying to make me laugh which they do often.  All the girls do want me to cut my hair which makes since because 1. my hair is getting to the point where the length makes me look creepy.  2.  In the states my hair would most likely get me arrested upon stepping one foot onto any elementary school grounds....Charges: Intention to molest children.  The boys like it though because I am tall and they say I look like a wrestler.  I have been telling the children that don't like my hair that my girlfriend likes to pull it when she kisses me....so naturally they ask if she is a wrestler too to which I reply of course and she is also bigger.  They get a huge kick out of it and want to see her picture.  

I have never had a job where the time went by so fast.  I love teaching and I love the breaks to.  Anyone who says that teaching is a hard career is a lier.  Teaching is an easy out and if you are stressed from teaching then you wouldn't succeed at any other career in life other than pizza delivery or McDonalds.  Honestly I don't know how many people get to say that they have fun at work but I do finally.  Being a teacher is like being on summer vacation for the whole year...and teachers in the states get tons of time off.  Anyways my second class was in another school that was about a two minute walk from Avalon.  The classes over in that area are through a different school so naturally my school doesn't care about what goes on.  They will let you do whatever you want.  I could lay down by the chalk board and take a nap for the 45 minutes and no repercussions would follow.  Everyone told me that these kids would make me want to slit wrists and suck on them so that I would die faster.  I found these kids to be so much fun.  They are wild but hilarious and plus I can actually play around with them without the fear of getting fired.  In Avalon we are not allowed to play games so being in the other school is great.  If you try and reign with an iron fist, you will wish you were never born.  Instead if you don't resist them and just  go with the flow the kids are eager to learn...I get to be much more creative and invented a bunch of games for them to love to learn.  Overall I have a bunch of great classes and only one that is half way annoying.  It is just because the kids are old and very smart but they are trying to play dumb with me.  The good news is though I just teach them the lesson and if they want to pretend then I don't have any fun with them when the lesson is over and I make them sit for twenty or so minutes quietly like detention.  So many of the other teachers give detention for stupid crap.  These kids go to school for around fifteen hours in one day and teachers give them detention for acting out.  Detention isn't a good solution it's just a temporary fix to a problem that is going on.  Now they might be better behaved but at the price of some kid getting home at twelve at night.   These poor thirteen year old kids that are frustrated because they can't speak english well and are bored so they begin acting out.  I don't see how giving detention is going to make anything better.  I gave one kid detention so far and it was only because of the head masters words on how to be.  He was saying that I should give kids detention right off the bat so I tried it with one class after a kid flicked off another kid.  He began crying and I just let him cry in the middle of class.  The children still act the same but it was my worst class because all the kids looked like they wanted to murder me and stopped participating.  I got it back so everything is alright.  Anyways teaching is going to be the breeze part of this journey to Korea and I would recommend it to anyone.  It is a great way to get over seas with everything payed for and also the money is good so you can't go wrong.  

I am going to write about a hike later.  Thank you everyone for following and for the comments.  Ill keep posting about he journeys.