Ooooooooh! We're half-way the-ere!

OOOO-OOOH!  LIVIN ON A i totally just made you sing my title in your head.  But truly, we are halfway there, as I now have less time left in Korea than I have already spent in Korea.  To all my readers who have stuck with me til now, I salute you.  Six more months of this, right?  And holy cow is it ever going fast/slow! (choose appropriate adjective.) 
Because it does feel both, at times.
With my schedule changes, Wednesdays are now an endless slog of classes, without break from the time my workday officially starts at 2:40 until my last class ends at 8:30.  And then I'm required to stay until ten, writing lessons-- So there are days where it feels like the year is moving uphill through six feet of snow. 
And then there are the sunday nights like tonight, after the weekends have flashed by, where I realize another week is gone, and I have to wonder what opportunities I've missed in Korea this week- what sights I've sacrificed seeing so I could catch up on sleep, make it to my lessons, or survive as a teacher. 
Boy oh boy, living gets in the way of Living sometimes.

Korean lessons continue to improve my chances of actually doing something with a Politics degree- I still can't converse fluently in the language, but at least the basic sentence structures are slowly unfolding in the conversations of people around me.  Words were one thing to pick out, but picking out the to-whoms and command forms are an entirely different story.  And let's not even start on honorifics (words that change in length and pronunciation when talking to someone older, younger, the same age, or a different sex than you).  The language is certainly not a simple one.

But then, neither is English.  I'm now teaching the highest-level grammar class instead of my former conversation class, and it has forced me to admit-- I know absolutely no English grammar terminology.  Can I tell you what sentence is right and which is wrong?  Absolutely!  I'll even throw in a correct version to sweeten the deal, and give you a free pine-tree shaped air-thingy that smells like stale Nilla Wafers to hang on the mirror.  But when asked "What is the object of this sentence?"...I had only my college education to rely on.
And that education was in politics and speaking.
Well, let's see what the answer book says...Why do you think it says that?  Who can tell me what the object is in this similar sentence?  Good, David. Does that help, Susan? 
But blustering can't hold one forever (outside of the US senate).  Eventually they realized I didn't have all the answers, I hadn't planned to lead them to the conclusion they reached, and sometimes I just plain didn't know what I was talking about.  And that's the point when I had to tell the class, "You're right on question four.  Sometimes I'm wrong too, that's ok."


Were this an inspirational blog or a sit-com, this is the point where I'd wrap up with a message about how much you can learn from someone you thought you were there to teach.  Or a message about how we all need to reexamine the belief that we are always right. 
But this is a blog of a true life story.  And in life, your problems aren't resolved at the end of a half-hour episode.  I'm going to be back in that class tomorrow, and they'll still want answers that are beyond my ability to give.  My role in classes now has been changed from an Educator in the conversation class to a test proctor in the grammar class.  This was the moment I first realized I'm not here because of a special skillset that put me ahead of the competition-- I'm here because I'm marketable as an American, and I'm willing to do the job for the price they offered. 

Capitalism rules the world, folks.  And whether you and I like it or not is irrelevant.  My time here is not about making a difference, it's about a contract.  I want to offer this bit of wisdom to anyone looking at teaching abroad: On the job, when it comes down to how you feel you should act vs how you're paid to act...

You've got a job to do
'Til next time,
Jeff-Teacher