As good as it gets. . .

How do you make up for three hours of essentially uninformative 'workshops' accompanied by two hours of early morning subway travel?

With an eight percent raise of course!

Seems as though Nate and I have both been doing something right as Mr. Lee sat us down briefly this morning (following a meeting about the new middle school books, following a meeting about the new elementary school books) to let us know that we had both done well enough on our 'six month evaluation' to deserve a slight pay hike! Woo hoo!

While he mentioned the possibility of this happening months ago, I had started to question the validity of such a raise as our six month mark, February 24th, had come and gone without word of any 'evaluation.' Apparently my idea of an evaluation is slightly different than Mr. Lee's but, for the better of course! As I once expected that he would in fact show up for a class or two of mine to truly 'evaluate' me, it turns out that all I needed to do was keep my Korean Teachers happy who in turn speak to Mr. Lee on my behalf! Looks like I owe 'em all a belated White Day present. . .not that I meant to forget but come on, I finished work at 10:30pm Friday and had to report back at 8:30am the following morning. . .buying chocolate for my married Korean coworkers was not at the top of my list. McDonald's breakfast however, was.

Anyways, rousing myself this morning was anything but easy as my 8:00am alarm only barely ruffled me enough to realize that I did in fact need to get up! One would think this would not be an incredible problem having gotten to bed a bit before midnight on Sunday. The only thing is that I was still lagging on sleep from what can only be described as a remarkably bizarre Saturday. Even so, the few hours of somewhat agitated sleep that I did get couldn't stop me from getting to soccer on time.

Sunday started out as a beautiful day but quickly turned gray and rainy as the Spitfires took the field against a totally revamped DA-ROK (Democrat Americans in the Republic of Korea) team (they even have jerseys this season). No more than five minutes into the match Jun Ho (my German speaking heterozygous teammate of Korean descent) managed to tap a goal in to the back of the net off a beautiful throw in from center midfielder Joseph. Only a few ticks o' the ole' clock later we found ourselves in a similar position, threatening DA-ROK's goal from the sideline. Timing my run until the last second I burst up the field from my position at stopper just as Joseph let fly an absolute bomb that easily cleared the heads of the scrum waiting in the middle of the box. Catching the ball near the back post I was able to lay a solid header straight into the ground and underneath a perplexed keeper who looked as though he just had a defender run up and score on him. Well in fact, that is just what happened! Despite the lack of unspectacular play to follow, I still somehow managed to wrangle 25% of the votes for 'Man of the Match.' I will admit that this statistic is somewhat misleading however as currently only four people have voted. Though, if I learned anything in college, it's that you can use statistics to support any claim you want to make, so long as you report who and where they come from!

Up 2-0, our defense lost hold on the game for a bit as the midfield decided we were good enough to mark a six man front with out any assistance. This proved to be untrue as DA-ROK managed to bomb one past our keeper, Han D S, not too long after we had began our initial onslaught. From that point forth the game was surprisingly even matched as DA-ROK fought with a vengeance against a Spitfire team that had previously embarrassed them something along the lines of 17-2. . . A rocket off of rookie Jake's foot put us up 3-1 just before half. Despite a number of attempts by both sides, nothing more came from either offense except a great deal of ringing crossbars! Our first victory of the season! Next week, the acclaimed Cheongju makes the trip up to Apgujeong for a rematch of last seasons 1-0 victory in which I took home my first 'Man of the Match' award. I can't wait for it!

Buuuut, what I was saying is that it wasn't hard to fall asleep Sunday night. . . just not so easy to wake up again early Monday morning. To top it all off, I recently (Thursday afternoon) learned from Joseph that my 'Special Classes' were in fact set to begin this Monday, not a week later! This came as quite a surprise, especially considering that I had just professed to Anna that I knew naught of what I was doing.

I had crossed my fingers on the way to Daechi this morning, hoping that something beneficial would come of our meetings (which of course we were not told the content of until they began). Alas, nothing did. Thus, I was left with only an hour or so before class to figure out exactly what I should be doing for this new, unmanned (yes, there is no Korean teacher working with me on this one) class that students actually, gulp, have to pay extra for! Wait a minute, didn't Marx say something about the notion of employees creating surplus value for their employers while receiving no additional compensation for themselves? What was his advice?

As nothing revolutionary (ha) came to me while showering, I decided it would be best if I headed in early, picked up my new book from Joseph and at least familiarized myself with that material. Not that easy, obviously, it's Korea! Arriving at school an hour before my first class, Joseph informed me that he wasn't yet sure what book I would be using. I reminded him that my classes began today and that it would be nice to actually, oh, you know, prepare for them! He did eventually get my my book a few minutes before classes started, only to tell me a few hours later that no one had signed up for the Monday session!

Well hot damn! That's a free two hours for me all of a sudden! And to think, I spent the better part of a morning worrying to death about what these students were going to think of me as I stumbled through a 'special class' that, remarkably, resemebled my normal classes on every level. . .oh, except that I'd be less prepared! Eh, I guess that's only partially true. I spent the better part of the morning falling asleep on subways, even the one that we were on for only 15 minutes!

With only a couple minutes left to prepare I hoped on the world renowned (not true, Koreans employ the all-might NAVER) Google to look into something I had heard mentioned as this morning's meeting: Yellow Dust! Apparently this stuff ain't no joke! I guess the 'season' has officially become as today marks the first of the inevitable storms that blow in sand from the Gobi desert mixed with heavy metal particulate spewed by China's ever producing factories. Strange, but true. Here I was thinking that my sore throat this morning had something to do with playing soccer in the cold rain yesterday! If you want to stay up to date on the particulate count in the air check out the monitoring done by the USofA's 65th Medical Brigade here. (Click on the Yongsan link in the upper left for more detailed information as I believe it is the base closest to us. . .though I've heard of one just north, I'm not sure what it is. . .any clues?)

Turns out I didn't even have to use the Yellow Dust article I found as I was able to scrap together a couple lectures about the 'eminent' launch of North Korea's peaceful 'satellite' in the coming month (April 4-8 is the projected launch date, watch out Hawaii and Alaska). Furthermore, with no one showing up for my first 'special class,' I was able to finally dig in to the stack of almost 100 essays that I have accumulated in the past few months since I was scheduled without any essay time. Sure, now I've gotta obviously get down to business but there's no way you're ever talking me in to taking those things home with me, not a prayer, I'll do 'em during essay time or I won't do 'em at all.

I guess the most important thing I did today was put in to play the single piece of advice that Steve Jung, DYB's sole R&D employee, offered us at today's middle school workshop. According to Steve, the most important thing for any teacher is not how 'good' or 'bad' they are but, at the end of the day, what kind of relationship they have with the students. If a teacher can connect to the students and create a trusting, meaningful relationship then it doesn't matter how good or bad they are at 'teaching' per say; so says the man in charge!

Well I sure didn't accomplish a lot of 'learning' today, but I'd be darned if my kids didn't have a fun time in class. . .and that's about as good as it gets over here!