Happy Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year is quickly approaching and this country is getting ready to party. Come Wednesday, my time not many people will be working and the majority of Koreans will either leave the country or head down south for a well deserved vacation. Remember that most people work all the time here. When you're young you go to school just about every day from morning til night, and when I say night I mean night. These kids go to regular school and then they go to their after schools. Learning English, Math, Science, whatever it is that their parents have decided will be good for them to learn. I had the chance to teach a lot of these kids this past month and they need a break man. These young men and women are going stir crazy. I'm kind of split about how I feel. I mean it's important to have some kind of an education in todays times but DAMN!!! These kids don't play sports, they are not in the best of shape, and they don't get any of my jokes. I know lots of people don't get my jokes but those other two things are important also.

Sometimes I think that the U.S. is a little too focused on extra-curricular activities but these kids got nothing. There has to be a balance. If you put 99.9 percent of the kids I've worked with back in the states on a Korean schedule they wouldn't last a week. I'm not sure if I would last a week in this system and I like school work (call me crazy). This vacation is their last week before they go back to their private or public schools. Schools have been out for the past month but those kids that can afford it have continued to attend special school camps, private lessons, and places like my work. What's the point of being really smart if you don't have a sense of humor? That's my motto anyways. So I've taken it upon myself to make sure Korean boys and girls can not just tell fart jokes in English but de-construct them. I've been asking around and other teachers around the area have noticed this lack of physical interactions these kids get. The U.S. has it's share of couch potato kids and I would not classify these guys as couch potatoes. They are not really lazy. They just don't do much else except study. They play video games and help me understand how to work my cell phone but they don't really do much else.

The environment is so competitive here that parent will often take test and write papers for their children. According to some of my Korean co-workers its gotten so bad in the country that they have had to figure out new ways of giving placement test. Everyone has been finding ways to cheat because they don't want their kids to be left behind. Again, it's not like parents in the U.S. don't cheat for their kids sometimes but it is really rampant here. I think that maybe people in the U.S. are more willing to acknowledge that some people are just dumb-ass's and it's better to know who these people are.

I hope my kids are able to do something fun over the upcoming holiday and I hope that fun does not include a crystal screen, batteries and both their thumbs.