Seoul Global Gathering

How many kids can fit on one bus?

October 7th- 9th



Last week all of the foreign teachers were called into a meeting by our very somber looking director. When she began talking about their poor financial situation and how so many schools are going bankrupt, our first thought was that our school was going to be closed down and turned into a chicken restaurant- something that had happened to another foreign teacher we knew. Luckily the situation at our school is not quite that serious yet, but they are hurting for money. Because of this they were getting rid of one of the afternoon teachers and dispersing all of her students into the other classes, so my class sizes doubled and even tripled in some cases. Sounds very similar to the situation teachers are dealing with in the U.S. Also, since it is a private school and there are many competing ones in the area Kids Club has to fight for every child that is enrolled. This means that every child that goes home at the end of the day and tells their parents they do not enjoy school could potentially mean a loss of business if they decide to move them to another one. It is a fine line to walk between actually educating these children and keeping the work easy and fun enough that none of them feel "overly challenged". This meeting seemed to be sort of suggesting to us to lean even more towards the latter. It is a frustrating situation to deal with but I guess I need to just let go a little bit and realize that this a just a job and it is not up to me to be concerned about whether or not we are truly doing the children a bit of an injustice. Another piece of this is the cultural aspect that male children are not ever really disciplined. I have heard that there are many Korean orphanages full of all male children due to the fact that many mothers find it very difficult to raise them without being able to properly discipline them. This adds some insight to why many of my male students have zero respect for me and often yell, tip desks, and even hit me with their papers during class... but even these lovely students must be treated well enough that at the end of the day they go home with only good things to say about our school. If the students, especially the males, decide they no longer want to attend, the mothers will usually allow them to either drop out of the after school club or switch Kindergarten schools. 

'Coincidentally' after this meeting we suddenly had a lot less educational things and more socially driven events on our calendar; starting with a picnic at a park in Okpo on Friday. Fine by me! We got to spend the day playing at a park (actually less playing, more posing for pictures pretending to play- their website is a very important marketing aspect of the company for them and its focal point is us foreign teachers) followed by a huge feast of everything the children's parents had packed us for lunch. They pack extra for all of the teachers, plus we are given whatever leftovers the students dont finish, so the result was a blanket covered in fruit and Kimbop. Kimbop is the closest thing they have to sushi here, it is rice and seaweed but the filling is always a piece of crab, ham, a couple pickled things, and some veggies. It's not bad and they make a tuna version that I eat a lot.

the spread

After school Friday I took the bus to Jinju, and then headed very early in the morning to Seoul with Morgan to meet up with Shireen and her friend Tom to attend the Global Gathering music festival. This is basically a huge techno concert, one of the biggest in the world along with the Global Gathering festival in the UK. I was not previously a huge techno fan, but it ended up being a great show with many different acts on different stages around the venue, and a huge crowd of people from all over the world. It is always nice to be around some more English speaking people even if just temporarily.

The amount of money I quickly dropped in the less than 24 hours I was there, along with the 2 hour subway ride it took to go about 15 minutes across town (it turns out Morgan has about the same sense of direction I do.. or should I say lack of... and this coupled with the signs almost entirely being written in Korean created quite the challenge when trying to transfer from station to station) made me very happy that I have been placed in a smaller town in the Southern region of South Korea. Places like Seoul are a lot of fun to visit, but I just don't think I am cut out for living in that sort of atmosphere- or constant smog- permanently.

Not sure who they are but they looked
kinda famous?