Revolution! of the frisbee disc

Besides my job, the biggest part of my life these days is frisbee. Almost every weekend since I've arrived I've made it out of town for a weekend of practice and partying with team Korea. Finally the first big event is approaching. Jeju Island Gnarly 9's tournament is one month away. I'm looking forward to it so much.

My team this year kicks ass. We have four members of last years championship team: Dray, a prototypical ultimate player with lanky limbs and throws from every release point; Tori, a semi-pro tri-athlete who will not slow down as the day grows long; Candacee, another veteran with sure hands and all the throws; and DB, a squirrley jitterbug who can put it deep or run to the house himself. In addition we have Junseok, the most athletic of the native Korean players he came in 3rd place in a national martial arts competition; Changmin, he's fast as lightning and he has added a lot of variety to his throws over the last year; Beth, the first play I saw her make was when she made a lay-out block of a throw of mine; Chase, another experienced handler who knows how to get open; and myself.

We'll get together next weekend in Ulsan for a warmup tournament and some drinking practice. woohoo

Revolution!

The ramifications of the school shake-up I reported on a few weeks ago are still unfolding. I am reticent to disclose full details and my unabridged opinions on a public blog so let me limit myself to the following statement. If you found my blog searching for information about my school, I hope this satisfies your curiosity, and if you know me and want the full monty, email me and I'll tell you all the details (some are juicy). The following is my honest assessment of the state of the school:

The school's founder (the president of the university) has a vision for the school to be a place for children to grow into independent thinkers ready to enter the world theater through an education that is substantially different from the standard Korean high school experience. I think it is an admirable vision, a goal worth working towards, and one that would require a staff of exceptional teachers, especially while the school is still growing. I'm happy to state my opinion that my fellow teachers can stand toe to toe with an all star team of the best teachers from my highschool career.

Unfortunately we had been saddled with an ineffective leader. Well, I'm happy to say that the principal has been fired and as a result I am now very optimistic about the future of the school. He opportunistically showed his true colors in an unambiguous way at the right time and the staff's complaints were given serious consideration. Again, I realize that I'm leaving out all the nuances for the sake of public relations, but I at least feel comfortable enough to say that the drama of it all unfolding gave me a buzz.

School Shake up

We got a little shock to start the school week: Mr. B. the geometry, econ, and computers teacher quit suddenly on Tuesday morning (recall Mon was a holiday). He had worked the first month having not yet renewed his contract which had expired over the winter break. I guess there was the pretense of a gentleman's agreement between teacher and administrator to iron things out in the early part of the semester. Instead they blew up.

I mentioned that most of the staff is not happy with the principal; here's one reason: Last semester the social studies teacher had the students do a current events project. They were to select an important topic of their choice in current events and present a report on it, the report should include an interview with some adult. One student thought to investigate the gay marriage debate. It seems to me a nice idea for the assignment, but I wonder if the student realized, when deciding to interview our principal, that he was a raging homophobe. Seriously, he published a book last month entitled "The Gay Deception." The principal was so outraged by the very idea of the project that he raised a ruckus as far up as the president of the university, and instituted a new policy for this semester that teachers must have all materials outside of the text book approved before the start of the semester (patently absurd for current events projects to say the least). The teacher was issued a warning which, by the letter of the contract, put her job security in jeopardy.

Back when the new principal first arrived, he asked the teachers for copies of their resumes. After the current events project he told the administrator that the social studies teacher should be fired because she lied on her resume. His reason: she claimed to have worked one year at a high school in Texas, but had only worked 9 months. Well, that's 9 months Sep to June, one school year. Ridiculous to try to use this as a weapon against the teacher.

So during the contract negotiations Mr. B was trying to rewrite the contract to basically ensure that his job security could not in any way be jeopardized by the principal. But it is hard to write such a contract that can reasonably deal with him legitimately going rouge. So it was a stalemate. The teacher had some commitment to the students and was willing to work per diem so as to not abandon them, but things were clearly unstable. Well, early this weekend the teacher and his infant baby were sick, the principal was badgering him to conform to the scheduling doctrine of false precision that I mention in an earlier post, and threatening to "write him up" for failure to comply. Finally the cumulative stress must have broke the camel's back so the teacher snapped, chewed out the principal, and quit. After all, despite his compassion for the students, he had a sweet job offer in the Phillipines on the back burner and a family to think about.

The upshot - I get an extra Geometry class to teach and a $500 a month raise, plus a cheap used motorcycle ($350 125cc daelim), and lose a new friend. Most of the rest of the teachers' resolve is galvanized "by the end of my contract either the principal or I am gone." A lot of the students are upset, I wonder if this will effect their continued enrollment, I'm certainly getting dagger eyes from some of my new geometry students

Let's see how things develop from here.

Hadong Weekend

It was a good weekend for a trip. Monday March 1st is a Korean national holiday commemorating some massacre by the Japanese during an independence protest. So it was a three day weekend. The only downside was that I had to fight off and party through a mild cold.

Magnifying the festiveness was the first full moon of the new lunar year. It seems the country people put extra zeal into their pagan rituals celebrating such events. In a rice field near Hadong there was a bbq buffet free for all to come and enjoy. Grilled pork (same part of the pig that bacon comes from, but uncured) and some of the best mushrooms I've ever had, soup and kimchi, as well as all the soju and green tea you cared to drink. There were some traditional drum dancers to liven the mood, then, at the strike of moonrise, they set light to a gigantic 10m tall bamboo bonfire. It's a fun way to start the night.

It was great to see all my old friends from town. Saturday I hung out with David, the English guy. Not much has changed for him, but he is planning on moving to Busan at the end of his contract in May. His 3 1/2 year old son is as cute as ever, but at that age where he has learned just enough language that you wish he hadn't sometimes.

I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with my Korean friends. Jaesik and Sooyeon got married in December and sold their sandwhich shop. She's pregnant already, but maybe there are some complications: her doctor told her to stay home and rest. I'm not clear what's going on, but I didn't get to see too much of them. I heard through the grapevine that also newly married and pregnant is a girl who, at the time, I felt unfortunate to have met so close to the end of my contract last summer ..

Hanging out (and drinking excessively) with my Korean buddies was certainly fun. I got a much better feel for my current language skills as well. For the most part one on one conversations would be conducted in a mix of Korean and English, but in a larger group I could follow the flow, if not all the details, of the Korean conversation but I found myself chiming in in English more and more as time went on. I want to think that this was just to maintain the tempo of the conversation, but maybe I was also suffering language fatigue trying to keep up, and maybe I new having to listen to a little English would slow them down a bit. Anyway, overall it was one of those things that lets you feel proud of how far you've come while still just making you realize how far you've yet to go.