Well, after a few months of hell at Anseong Elementary School, I finally gave up trying to beat through the brick wall that was their English program and moved on. It's always a pain when I change contracts. The Korean government doesn't make it easy to switch schools. I don't know why they don't just offer a general ESL teaching Visa and then let us switch schools without having to do a VIsa run. Guess they have a couple of reasons that I can come up with: First, they want to keep track of us while we're here. Too much illegal teaching by Foreigners doesn't help our cause much here and too worried we'll overstay our visa length. Secondly, they seem to like treat us like property, more so the school, than say the government, but that seems to be the Korean way. Your job is your life to many Koreans. Long hours and little vacation time binds the employee to their workplace with little chance to do much outside the workplace. People often talk about the fact that the conventional school system is merely a way to train children for the mundane, routine of the workplace and I think that thought is most true here. If you look at the schedule for high school students in Korea, they start their day around 8am and sometimes go till 10pm. Much like the workplace, they work till they can barely keep their eyes open. They have little time for things that Western students take for granted. Although, they always seem to find time for the one obsession of Korean youth: computer games.

I suppose with little time for any real socialization and group dynamics, computer games actually serve a purpose to the business world. They prepare students to not only hone their computer skills, but also to prepare for the long hours of isolation that they'll encounter working in any company job. Only them and the soft glow of their computer screen to while away the hours till they return home and pass out for a couple of hours till they have to do it all over again. I suppose its why Korea is one of the top countries in the world economically, but it seems to be at a cost of most Koreans having a decent personal life. No time to stop and reflex on the better things in life till you're forced to retire and then have to worry about what the hell you'll do now.