Suitably ominous, I hope? Like the rumblings of some distant twister or hurricane, bearing down on my thatch-roofed house in the tropics?
Well, sort of. We're starting Intensives this month, which basically translates into working from 9AM to 8PM every night. The reason for this switch is that Korean schools are out in January and August. The extra time away from Korean school translates into an opportunity to make our kids do *more* studying in the Hagwon system. Result: some of my kids are in a Monday-Wednesday-Friday 9AM course for three hours, and then in my Tuesday-Thursday class at 5PM for another 3 hours. I am lucky, in that I only have the tykes for the extra classes on Monday-Wednesday, but I can imagine this is a stresser on the kids.
It certainly leaves us exhausted.
We went to Seoul to meet Wong, a former ESL student of my wife, Jennifer, in Kingston, Ontario, at the Queen's University School of English. It was nice to meet him, in my case, and a great chance for Jen to see an old friend and student. He was a bit too generous, as he paid for drinks and dinner, but I hope to make up for this by buying the next round.
This may be a bit of a symptom of a Korean tendency to make friends with English teachers to improve their skills in the language, but even so, it provides a great opportunity to connect in this country. Especially if it can be parlayed into learning, in turn, about Korean culture!
We drank far too much, and then relaxed on Sunday with our colleauge, Oliver, before starting to roll with Intensives on Monday.
Yeagh! Talk about a lot of work. It's worth it, in the end, for overtime pay, but it'll be a long month!
Cheers,
Chris
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