Road Rules, Rip Offs And Pasta.

An eclectic bag of issues for you today, mainly gripes, no actually all gripes which might be surprising given my usually sunny disposition. None of these issues are a huge concern in reality, but I like to make mountains out of mole hills and feel that I have been far too culturally sensitive so far. It's time for a little sneering superiority and Brit abroad complaining.

The first issue is the way these people drive. Not just how they drive, but where they drive. Where? I hear ask. Well on the roads obviously. WRONG. If you ride a motorbike, you ride it wherever the hell you please, which means as much on the pavement (sidewalk) as the road.

As I saunter along the street, whistling and waving to the countless little scamps who shout hello at me as I pass, a motorbike will come tearing around the corner and veer out of the way at the last minute.
I look around, perhaps I'm drunk again and have been wandering down the middle of a busy highway. No. I am on the pavement. On the pavement and contemplating buying a large stick to ram into the wheel of passing motorbikes.

Because most of them don't wear helmets either. Let's see how many pavements you ride on when you have brain damage and two broken legs genius.

This is a constant irritant and yet I have not once used my stick, such is my good nature. Even more baffling is the fact that I keep seeing old people in electronic wheel chairs. And guess where they are wheeling about? Yeah on the road.

Perhaps the wheel chair bound road hogs were previously pavement riding motorcyclists who met with an angry western man and a large stick.

The second issue is not one that is often a problem here, given how everything is cheap. In fact rip offs are few and far between, but my school likes to stand out from the crowd and if we can do something on the cheap, you better believe we will.

A very brief introduction to our "system". Kids are awarded bonus tickets for doing their homework, winning class presentations etc and in the past these tickets could be used to buy a couple of marks on a class test to avoid retesting. However, that has been scrapped much to the horror of the overworked slave children who have to get 75% on any given test just to avoid staying behind after a three hour class to resit.

Instead we were told that at the end of the term there would be a market, with gifts, sumptious spreads of food and a veritable gold mine of activities and games for the kids to spend their tickets on. The mind boggled at what delights would await these lucky children.
Over the weeks as they worked their little fingers to the bone for more of these precious tickets they pressed me on what gifts there would be to buy. I had heard of other schools doing this system where Mp3 players, DVDs and even a Nintendo Wii were up for grabs.

I assured my kids this would be a day to remember.

So it was with much anticipation that our staff gathered to hear the details of this Saturdays market. It started off well, not only was there to be the market but in addition a flea market. I seemed to be the only one who didn't know what a flea market was, but there were signs all over the school. Apparently it would have second hand and novelty items for sale. Erm....right.

So what of the culinary delights in the food market? What cutting edge gifts would we be selling? Out with it, I cannot wait any longer.

Crisps (Chips to you Americans)
Gummi Bears
Coke

And not even the good sort of coke. The crappy black, fizzy liquid type.

Pathetic. Oh well at least they can buy gifts. What's on offer?

Even I was not expecting to hear what I heard. Such a range, such imagination. In all honesty I felt we might have gone too far, pushed the boat out a little too much, and were frankly spoiling these kids.

Pencils. But wait, that was not all. Pencil Cases. Stop, stop this is too much, a case for pencils? I don't know if the children will be able to handle all this. It is one thing to feel the surge of adrenaline that every child gets upon receiving a brand new pencil, but to then realise that it is within your grasp to buy a case that can hold multiple pencils....

We were risking a riot here. What if we ran out of pencil cases in the initial rush of ecstatic children? Sure we had notepads for sale too, and no doubt that would satisfy a good number of them, as afterall who is not calmed and euphoric by a good notepad? But I still felt uneasy about these pencil cases. Sometimes less is more and we had definitely gone for the more is more philosophy.

We were told that the one small problem with this otherwise outstanding market was that we had nothing for the flea market. Apparently the posters were printed and put up before the Korean staff contemplated what would actually be on sale. So we were asked to donate things. I explained that I had a broken, hand held vacuum cleaner that I could donate or there was an unused sponge and half bottle of bleach that were also possible gifts.

These didn't seem to be what they were after. Unbelievable. So I have to buy things for the flea market? Brilliant. Now I'm being ripped off and this seems quite unfair given that there is no way the kids will be feeling ripped off when they turn up on Saturday with 3 months of hard earned bonus tickets and go home with a pencil and a can of coke.

Games wise...well there had been nothing planned or organised by the school so it was all put upon Tiny or Tiny Teacher as she prefers to be known. And thankfully she came up with a host of good ideas, spent a lot of time working it all out and so there should be some enjoyable distractions for the children to avert their attention from the flea market and the pencil stand.

Seeing as I am on a bitter rant about employers, I will end with another quirk of Korea that has good intentions but is misplaced. It all stems from what seems to be a recent obsession with pasta. Western food is pretty popular here anyway, especially amongst the kids, but pasta in particular is viewed as exotic and special. A large number of teachers have told me of how their boss insisted on taking them out for a special treat and it would invariably be to a pasta restaurant.

Two friends Josh and Nat were dragged out on a Saturday off to be carted around Daegu by their boss and proudly taken to some generic pasta joint. Their boss beamed at them and took them in as if these poor English people had never seen the likes of spaghetti bolognese before.

Oh pasta? WOW. I don't know what to say. I mean we haven't eaten pasta since...I don't know, last night at home. But before that it must have been...well at least 24 hours, because oh yeah we don't have a cooker, so by the time we get home from work at 10.30pm to use our little two hob stove, what do we cook? Pasta. Five times a fucking week and now here we are on our day off with the heart pounding excitement of eating pasta. Again.

Luckily for me, my boss despite thinking children love pencils, does know that western people love drinking and thus all our staff nights out have involved large amounts of beer and soju. Both things that the kids would probably prefer to what they will find at their school market tomorrow.