Pleasure or Pain, Sir?

I needed to let go of my yellow the other day and as I walked in to the men’s room I thought I heard someone in the toilet cubicle. Not all that interested, I just went ahead to the urinal.

The sound of my footsteps obviously alerted the man in the cubicle that there was someone present and he thought it a good idea to lock the door.

This begs the question, why wasn't it already locked?

Honestly, this still wasn't anything to worry about. It was just a little peculiar at most. The alarming part came when the man started making noises. And not softly either!

I really couldn't tell if the was in pain or grunting from pleasure. I had a mind to look over the door to see which two teachers were doing the dirty during office hours.

I can't wait for the day when I can enjoy myself in the cubicle like that.

Lost in Reality

This was likely the strangest day I’ve had at this school yet.

The education department's people came today and of course everything needed to look great. Problem is that everything in not this great, ever, and it was strange to be because I didn’t know that the department would be here.

The first thing I noticed was that all the students seemed to be busy with something in their classes. Normally early in the morning they run around screaming for no apparent reason whatsoever, until their classes start.

Today it looked a bit like they were busy with tests, but there were no teachers or parents to supervise. It was surrealistic, I tell you. What had gotten in to these little monsters? Why were they not running around and screaming?

The second thing I noticed was that I kept on slipping on the floor. After nearly breaking my neck a few time I saw that there was a distinct lack of dirt in the crevices on the stairs. They had actually cleaned the floors almost properly!

One thing that I have stopped doing here is care about what shoes I wear in the school. I wear the shambles because it is comfortable, but I don’t change my shoes to keep things clean. I would much rather walk barefoot outside than barefoot inside. Outside my feet will just be brown. Inside I will get black soles, I am sure.

The other thing that I found amusingly odd was the Physical Education class. I took a picture of it and will post it at the end of this post. The students were just so orderly. They were actually paying attention and sitting/standing in neat lines. Seeing this made me go: “WOW!” I just stood there for a minute staring just at them.

Can’t we have the department here every day? I can really live with this lack of noise.

The Icheon Middle School English Competition

On Friday we had an English Language Competition for the Middle Schools of Icheon. I have been working with two students during the two or three weeks prior to this to help prepare them for the competition, or should I say I tried.

I was just told that they had to answer question and that one student will deliver a speech while both of them would be delivering a dialogue.

Even thought the speech was called the One Minute Speech I did not actually realise that they will have a timer and stop them after one minute.

The other thing that confused me the form the interview would take. I didn’t know if they would use the provided questions exactly, if the questions would be coming form the example description or if they would be from personal experience.

Basically I knew nothing. This didn’t help much for my motivation, I must say. I did what I thought best with what was provided, though.

One of the rules is that none of the students were allowed to have lived in a foreign country. I understood that that meant countries where English is a major language, so I think Germany, for instance, might not have disqualified a student.

By the standards of their age, both the students were quite good. The boy, however, is what I would call one of the better students in the school, overall. Both his parents teach English at an Academy and I have spoken to his mother. Her English is very good. Although he was born in the USA, I understand that he was brought here as a baby and that he grew up in Korea. Therefore he has been exposed to en English country in a way that would influence his language.

The girl was not that bad, but she just needed to concentrate more. When I would ask a question like “Do you normally travel by bus or by car?” she would answer “I prefer to bus”. I know she know better than that because eating a bus is no fun. I think this is a direct conversion from the Korean Language. Where you take a now and ad a “do” to is so that you basically say “I prefer to bus-do”

I must admit that I didn’t have that much hope for the competition because I expected the other student to be much better than they were. It turns out that they were not. Our two students handled themselves really when on the day and made a good showing of it. We came in third and I am very satisfied with that, considering I had no idea what we were doing.

The students who came in forth, I think it I know who it was, could easily have taken that spot, but based on that the judges saw, there weren’t better. I spoke to them outside in the hallway and they are good. They were twins and both has the same strange accent, though.

The top 25% of the students ware far ahead of the rest. I’m proud to say that third puts us in that group, if you cant figure that out for yourself.

In my opinion the pair that came in First was not the best. The one boy was very good, but the other one was no better than either of your students. He was very funny and entertaining, but that does not make him personality good in a language. The students who came in second were, in my opinion, the best. Both were very comfortable when speaking. Their speeches did seem a bit rehearsed, but it was well pronounced and their interviews showed their ability clearly.

All in all I learned a lot from this and I hope to be able to do a better job next year. I would just like to start earlier with the students.

One last note, the one minute speech turned out to be the 90 second speech. It would have been nice to know that in advance.

All in all, I think that was a good day at the office.