CONTRACT OVER

You know what's way better than South Korea? Hanging out on the beach, or at an internet cafe overlooking the beach, but safely inside the air condition. I flew to Hong Kong to visit a few friends for a bit, and I arrived in the Philippines yesterday evening around 6pm, only to find that it's exceptionally dark at 6pm in the Philippines. I had no hotel reservations or any place to stay so I was forced to follow some random guy who wanted 100 pesos ($2) in exchange for showing me to a nice, cheap hotel. Well, the latter was certainly true, as the hotel charged 200 pesos a night, roughly $4 USD, but it also happened to be down a dark alley with almost no means for escape if I were to be attacked as was happening continuously in my head. I promise you, I have never feared for my general well being as much as I did following this guy to the place he promised was worth my effort. It turns out, that he was genuinely a kind person and not leading me to my death, so I ended up buying his "wife" and him a few beers and dinner after they showed me to a much nicer hotel.
It turns out that the national passtime of the Philippines is trying to get more money out of visitors, which isn't so bad I suppose, except for the fact that I didn't even know the exchange rate before I arrived meaning that for the few hours I had to creatively ask people to convert prices into dollars for me, a subtle way of figuring out if the first guy was lying or not.
In any case, i'm waiting to pick up my friend Eiko from the airport, but she doesn't arrive for another 5 hours or so, so i've been walking around this outrageously hot country for the last 3 hours just poking and prodding at anything of interest using my proverbial antennae.
In any case, more updates as events warrant but for the time being I just wanted to point out to the world that i'm not only alive, but fresh off a trip to Hong Kong and kicking it in Cebu. I tell you, travel is fun as hell.

Andover Hagwon

I'm really getting sick of this unhappy country. I would really like to go back to Chicago right about now. Noah got hit by a car yesterday in Seoul, by the way, and the Korean who hit him just drove off with Noah on the ground literally shaking with fear.

Andover hagwon has won. Not some respectable battle fought on the grounds of wits or ethics, but a mere battle for my resolve. They've destroyed it. I dare say not a single poor soul at my hagwon is happy with their current lot. Andover hagwon has us rehearsing an "open class" lately for the parents. It's supposedly a normal class that parents can view, but it's most definitely not. I'm performing for the third time tomorrow in front of the hagwon owner. I can't help but predict epic failure.
I never claimed to be an amazing teacher, I just claimed to speak English. My school has no curriculum, and they change everything constantly so it's not exactly easy to be a good teacher here. They also hire other foreigners for short times that are on tourist visas, yes, illegal, but somehow as an American I'm the one with questionable morality and a bad work ethic.
In any case, the new teachers who haven't breached the 6 month mark are having a much harder time. The hagwon treats new teachers much worse, only because they have to pay a $1000 penalty if they leave before 6 months, so they know they can give the new teacher more shit. It's a horrible system and they should be ashamed, but there's nothing I can do about it.

I was also reading this Article about Korean education and ethics which I found strikes very close to home. I've been told by my boss to give students who can't speak a word of English good marks so that their parents will keep paying and this article really describes the educational atmosphere here in Korea quite well.

I've completed 8 months of my contract, only 4 more to go.

Coincidentally, there is another great post on the aforementioned site that might give a bystander an understanding of the way foreigners are viewed here in Korea. Give it a read if you have a moment.

Preparations In Progress

I've been trying to determine a course of action with some semblance of efficacy regarding computer use in South Korea. I'm planning on selling my G5 iMac for a fist full of bills which combined with my profits from passing on my PS2 should assist me in purchasing a beautiful new Macbook Pro. Toss in my new Canon SD800 IS and I'm a veritable mobile video and photo machine. I imagine with this sort of absurdly expensive mobile technology, this trip to Korea could quite possibly be the most thoroughly documented 12 months of my life.

This is of course assuming that my recruiter, bless her little Korean heart, can find me a job. I've been reluctant to switch to a new recruiter because of how nice she seems, but if I can't find a job all of my new computer hardware will go to waste; That's simply unacceptable. Technology wants to be used, wants to explore.

Korea Blog

It's August 8, 2007 and I've decided to create an online journal of my Korea experience. One might consider this initial post more than a bit fallacious, as I still reside in Michigan and still have no job, but I'm optimistic and feel documentation of the entire process from conception to completion is in order. I've hounded several different bloggers online, tracking them down like escaped convicts using every known search site on the internet. These nascent relationships generally spawn from polite greetings and develop later into interrogations worthy of bad cop movies.
I suppose my target departure date of September 4 may be a bit overly aggressive, but I've never been contained by reason, logic or common sense before. Here's hoping somebody out there is willing to give me a job!