May 5th in Korea

Today is Children's Day in Korea. It's a National holiday and one of my students favourite days of the year. Often parents spend more time with their kids today and give them presents but from talking to students over the years a significant amount just want to spend their day playing computer games and not outside in the 'fresh' air. As per usual it's a day that I'll be working but I'm going to ignore any negative feelings and just try to enjoy the day and think of how much money my academy pays me to work for them.

It's already a great start to the day, my neighbours kids didn't wake me up which these days is a minor miracle. The temperature is a little cooler and I'm ready for whatever happens in the classroom. I expect quite a lot of my kids to not attend but I know there will be no cancelled classes. On a side note yesterday my school put on the air conditioning - one month ahead of when I was expecting. It makes a huge difference. Anyway because it's Children's Day here is a photo of one of my students who smiles all class long.

Onto March

Today is a National holiday in Korea. Wikipedia calls it The March 1st movement. Not many students seem to know much about the holiday just the fact that they don't have to go to school. However, they and I have to go to my English academy. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out how irritated most of the kids will be in class. Yet another public holiday that I am contracted to work on. No big deal, I'm not Korean so it's just another day but it would be nice to have a three day weekend.

Tomorrow is a bigger day for some of my students, when the oldest elementary school kids move onto Middle school. That is when many of them turn into zombies and lose their personality and freedom due to incessant studying demands put upon them. I'd wager that 90% or more ESL teachers in Korea would tell you that Middle school kids (or High school, which I don't teach these days) are harder to teach. Today marks a small change for me too as my work time has slightly changed. From today everyone starts fifteen minutes earlier and finishes twenty minutes earlier. A small change but I think everyone is happy with it.

Children's Day in Korea

Today was Children's Day here in South Korea. A National holiday where the kids don't have to go to school and most people don't have to go to work. But my academy doesn't work that way and nobody had the day off. No matter, it's only one day so I'm not losing much and to be honest I do like working instead of lazing around the house and spending money unnecessarily, which is possibly what I would do given one day off. It's rather harsh for my academy to work on this day because it means that the majority of the students will have to go there to study. Harsh because recently every student in the country has taken and are still taking vital school exams. The pressure and expectations on students here continue to bemuse me.

Parents are supposed to give presents to their children and they often go on trips somewhere too. This explains why some of my elementary school classes were depleted. I don't know the origins of the holiday and I am sure that my students don't appreciate it either. I fully expected a swathe of my students asking for presents (sweets) but that wasn't really the case. All in all a rather low key and perhaps meaningless holiday here in the land of the Morning Calm.