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Week 6 - Y2 (Apr 9th to Apr 15th) |
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Monday April 10th,One of my favourite students took a trip to Mexico
with her boyfriend (who lives in America) a couple
weeks ago. Guess what she brought me back-- three
bottles of tequila! Being a teacher certainly has
its advantages . . . kind of ironic, though, I don't
even really like tequila, but oh well. I'm not one to
complain about such things!
After I finished teaching today, I met up with Yoo
Oak, Jae's sister-in-law. She just moved back to
Korea from Toronto, where she was studying English at
Humber College, and living with Jae's wife and 4
children. Now she's doing administrative work at
Jae's jazz hagwon. Yoo Oak has studied English for a
number of years, but mostly grammar and writing, and
has had very little opportunity to actually speak it,
so she's looking for a friend to practise on, and I'm
looking for help with my Korean speaking, so we're
going to exchange tutoring sessions in a social
manner. Works for both of us!
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Tuesday April 11th,On the bus ride home today, I had a long conversation
with Ben. Ben (the drum teacher from Canada, graduated
U of T when I was in my first year) just got back last
week from Montreal, where he is working on his
masters. Ben's wife is Jae's cousin, and he's got two
kids. They are living in Montreal right now. The
catch-- Ben's youngest son (4 years old) was recently
diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Ben is quite
conflicted right now about being so far away from his
family. It's difficult enough to raise a family with
an absent father, but throw in a young child trying to
manage Type 1 diabetes? I don't envy his situation at
all. It's good that I'm abroad while I'm still young
and with no ties.
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Wednesday April 12th,Today I went to Seodaemun Prison. This is the prison
that was used for Korean freedom fighters during the
Japanese occupation of Korea. I saw the cells, the
torture devices, the execution rooms, all of it, plus
vivid displays and photos from that time period (early
20th century). Very intense and extremely horrifying.
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Friday April 14th,Today I had a very strange meeting with some of the
other vocal teachers. First of all, Jae takes things
really easy, and of course, he's really busy, so he
had forgotten to tell me that mid-terms are next week
(not that it's really a big deal anyway, I'm sure that
most of the other teachers don't test their private
students for midterms anyhow; at U of T they never
did, plus I'm constantly testing in improv class, so
that's not really an issue). And then they wanted me
to dictate how we should test the students for the
final tests, and how the mark breakdown should be, and
all this stuff. I suppose technically I am their
boss, but I'm still new to the school, and I would
have rather talked about these details with the other
professors, rather than getting weird vibes about it
from the other vocal teachers. While no one has said
or done anything outwardly catty, I know that they're
all watching me closely-- I see them watching my
lessons and classes through the door-- and I suspect
that they might be looking for me to slip up somehow.
After all, I'm the youngest, the newest and the only
one with professor status. Singers are notoriously
catty anyhow, and Ben warned me to watch out for some
shady dealings with the singers-- apparently there was
some conflict with them last year trying to manipulate
others into upping their status. I hate dealing with
ridiculous politics, but I'm actually not too worried.
I know Jae went through hoops with immigration just
to get me here, and I'm well aware that I'm the most
qualified for the job anyway.
Tonight, I got together with Caroline and Eoghan, and
some other friends to go see her sort-of boyfriend's
band play at a club in Hongdae. I was kind of
disappointed with the music, but still an enjoyable
(and very late) night out.
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