I’m going to keep this short and simple as I am exhausted from a truly epic week of fucking terrible things.
I am now an English “Teacher” in Korea. I use quotes because I am not, in fact, a teacher at all. I am a day care attendant for an endless miserable stream of kindergarteners who have been raised with nothing but spite and malice in their heart for both me and my intentions of teaching them.
Each day I get up at 7:30 AM, I leave my “home” (tiny box, not home), at 8 and then I take a train for about an hour to bum-fuck Egypt where I teach 8 classes over 9 hours.
Most of these classes are 40 minute blocks where I “teach” (once again, in quotes) about a dozen children who punch me in the junk, scream at me, punch each other, cry, shit themselves, scream more, run, break, thrash, bite me and cause general anarchy. After 40 minutes of me running through pleas for help to a list of gods and spirits that I think might be listening to Asia, the children leave, and I reconsider my life choices while walking to get the next group. Eventually I make it home at 7:20 PM.
Today was the first day a child bit me. Also I met a child who only said two things in English: “FUCK YOU”, and “kidneys, kidneys”. After his second statement he proceeded to punch me in the kidneys. He is 6. I hate him.
I leave you with this picture of a painting of sunflowers. They represent hope.
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Wow, you’re really enhancing my appreciation of my Vietnamese experience, where the children are positively angelic by comparison! You have to appreciate a culture where teachers are viewed as sitting at the right hand of God, or at least Buddha! I had heard that Korean teens were hideous to teach, but I wasn’t aware that the spite and malice had migrated all the way down to first graders! Enjoy your experience!
Oh Jesus. And I thought UMass students were unruly…
sounds like fun brian :p
As your blogs often are, Brian, this is both horrifying and hilarious.
This is outstanding.
Sadly, the middle schoolers I teach aren’t much better!
HAHAHAHahaha I feel like i know you. Wait…no…i’m just reminded of me a few years ago. Luckily I wasn’t in korea.
Hahahaha its hard to find the funny in ESL teaching at times… lonely frustraing job it is… but this post made me laugh out loud. Sunflowers are indeed hopeful. I teach in Tokyo and the students are the exact opposite problem; they are so quiet and shy that the whole class is me talking and them looking at me like I am a freaking ghost. I guess it’s better than being punched in the kidneys, but needless to say, I should have majored in something other than liberal arts, and graduated before the recession hit.