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In Korea even the best hagwons will step outside contractual boundaries of "work time" and "free time." Bewildered teachers fattened on a Western diet of ironclad labour law are often asked to do various stupid things in addition to teaching, like call students at home to talk about soccer, or make little bear suits for a play. None of this madness is in the contract, of course, but the contract doesn't mean shit. One generally concedes to crazy requests in the interest of not getting spiked in one's hyper-political office by rather gossipy Korean coworkers. And the deprivation of time at a good hagwon is preferable to the deprivation of salary in a less than good hagwon.

Enter the Camp: a fruitful weekend expedition in which select students would magically learn English from getting soccer balls kicked at their faces by white foreigners. Said foreigners would receive minimal compensation for this privilege: they would do it for the kids, and also for many, many bottles of beer. As I loaded this beer onto the bus in full view of concerned parents, I promised them that at least one of their children would die by my drunken hand for having me woken up at 9 am on a Saturday.

Upon arrival, the Camp turned out to not be a camp at all. It was a house: a beautiful house where children could be jam-packed like immigrant stowaways into attics and small bedrooms. This was good news because immigrants are pretty good at working in factories, and also because it was unseasonably cold and rained all day.

Soggy children crashed up and down stairs and formed cliques and were noisy and generally acted like kids, which was nice because at home they only get to act like students. Because our 'English Camp' had 'English' in the title, and also because the outing was a huge bribe to keep kids at Herald during a time when many parents consider switching hagwons, we eventually had to break the kids into teams for some closely regimented fun. Team K Spyce OK, piloted by yours truly, led the league in apathy and also in cramming large quantities of children behind a bookshelf.

A nearby river was explored, which was shortly discovered to harbour many a sharp and piercing rock beneath its muddy waters. A column of kids gingerly waded their way upstream, picking a route through the worst of the submerged stones. It felt very much like a biblical exodus: a torturous and senseless journey, inescapable because of a large quantity of filthy reeds along the riverbank. Barefoot and crippled, I relied on the kids to tell me where the granddaddy rocks were: "Teacher, is big one...oh no! go here!" *painting a crazy swirl pattern in the air, then shaking head in sadness when I bash my shins and fall into the river*

But then the kids ran across a plague of frogs and all was well in the capture of tiny amphibians. One boy found a dirty piece of styrofoam and floated around happily in innocent toxicity. In their eyes, the river Styx doubled as paradise.

Segue into the talent show later that night, where the winning act was a kid who ripped clothespins off his ears and nose with a flourish and very theatrical expression of pain. A strange talent in a country where virtually every child can play a musical instrument with amazing competence.

Fade to soccer, where Chris the oversized goalie tried to fulfil his promises of infanticide to no avail, given the physical invincibility of 10 year olds. Flash to England versus Paraguay and firing roman candles at windows and a junior trivia contest where 100 000 apparently has six zeros. And finally, Star Wars wipe to a blurry shot of Chris Teacher passed out in the TV room, having skilfully escaped the sad duty of sleeping in the attic suite with 20 insomniac children. Hahaha, Mike you sucker!

At one point, perhaps when I was drunk, I decided that perhaps free-turned-work time wasn't too terrible at all. Chilling with the overlords for a weekend was an strangely engaging, albeit MANDATORY, experience.

[Korean hagwons] [Camp] [MANDATORY trips]

Posted by Chris at 10:24 AM >> Commentations (3)