Free Time

As you can probably tell, I have a ton of spare time. I whipped up my lesson last night at midnight and had it done by 1:30. I've taught all my classes today but I have to stay until 4:30 each day. So I've got my lessons planned for the week, so that means I've got about 18 free hours for the rest of the week. Plus, I don't have school on Friday because it's Thanksgiving. So, here are a few anecdotes about school life. Last week Thursday, a casting crew came by the school to cast some students for a "Godfather like soap opera". So it was bit odd seeing kids getting headshots done near the vice-principals desk.

I had a Saturday class this weekend which means I had to come from 10:30-12:10. We just chilled in the library while they wrote out their schedules in English. After seeing that, these kids work like dogs. The norm was to go regular school and then have to go to a Hagwon (Private School) after regular school. So they go to classes from 8:45 until 3:30, when they go to their Hagwon at 5:30 until 10:00. Then they go to bed at 12:00. This is sometimes 6 days a week. Many of them seem exhausted at times.

Also, at the end of the day the schools clean the school. Sometimes it's as a form of punishment, but the kids clean their classroom with dustpans and wipe windows and mirrors. This means that the place is filthy because they don't do a good job. There's lots of dust here and there, the mens room has been out of paper towels for 2 weeks now and the trash never gets changed.

Last Thursday, one of my co-teacher's classrooms was broken into and wallets were stolen. I talked to some of the girls afterwards and they were very sad. The my co-teacher ended up giving them some money out of their own pocket afterwards though I was very impressed. I asked her if she was going to conduct an investigation and dust for prints. She said that was not CSI. The next day she had also bought new bilfolds for them. Monday, they had caught the 3 girls that did it. Apparently, two girls saw the girls that had done it and came to my co-teacher A Young. They did not want to accuse those girls so Mrs. Young confronted the girls and said she saw them and was going to report them to the police if they didn't spill the beans. They confessed and are in the process of giving the money back. They have to kneel and write lines on their knees for a few days though. They also have to clean and are generally in a bad place.

The recylcing system here is very complicated. Everything is broken down into basic ingredients and requires seperation. You seperate metal, plastics, cardboard, food waste, styrofoam, batteries, plastic bottles/cartons, and you have to buy designated bags for general waste. They pick things up only on certain days and they must be cleaned and have the labels taken off. It was daunting at first, but now it doesn't seem that hard. Still a pain in the ass. And all the sinks have fine gratings to keep food from going down, but even grains of rice get stuck in these things.

Hell, I'll probably write more later and put up some pictures. So stay tuned.