March 17, Madness
Have you ever started a sentence and like Michael Scott, were not quite sure if you made it to the end?
MJ the Music Teacher wanted the semesterly activities deposit for the subject teacher fund which I was able to do with my phone app, you know the one that required me going back to the bank to get another security card and installing a security deposit and sacrificing my first born. I suffered for it so I will use it!
The 50,000 won made it into her account and recognizing that my Korean studies have been much neglected, I attempted to tell her so. (In another sad social virus death, the free biweekly uni TOPIK classes I was so looking forward to were canceled). Only, it took me so long to write the sentence she had already received and responded to my deposit.
My attempt:
계좌 입금 했다고 말하고 싶기 위해서 한국어 연습할 수 있지만 서전에 “deposit” 잦은 것 많이 걸려서 이 대답 빨리 못 보냈어요.ㅎㅎ
Word for word translation:
deposit made say want to in order to Korean practice able but dictionary-in “deposit” looked-for-thing long takes so this response fast can’t sent (ha ha)
What I wanted to say:
I wanted to say “I made the deposit” so I could practice Korean but it took me a long time to find “deposit” in the dictionary so I couldn’t reply in time. (ha ha)
This is, again, why Korean takes a long time to learn if your native language is English– word order and grammar are alien concepts coming from analytical SVO multihistoric Germanic-ish English.
It seems a fair result from more madness from today:
School has been delayed by another three weeks.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Is this how the Joker was made? Slowly forced into chaos by his ever changing surroundings?
The good (?) news is I only have to come in five days over the next three weeks. The bad news is some teachers, Korean and foreign, have received notices that the school can track your bank card and detect if you’re actually not working from home. I just want to say… who cares?
I trekked down to E’s room to see if there is actually planning I need to be doing during our super extended teacher work month. It turns out she thought… I planned all of grade three?
Good thing I checked! I don’t mind planning all of grade three classes but things got confusing: she wants to do testing the first week to assess where all the students are and also start them on the alphabet (thank GOODNESS, because our textbook is the worst). Situations like these do confuse me: I’m not the main teacher, but I’m expected to be?
She asked if I had planned third grade and it was like forgetting your final project but having to makeup an excuse to your teacher on the spot.
“Uh, I have plans for the first few weeks. I can send those to you before school starts.”
E seems very open to change and suggestions and I saw that her board had a learning objectives sign. What a great recall to what I’ve been studying in my teacher program this week.
I, like G, personally prefer planning week by week. We know the approximate targets and can adjust lessons based on what students need.
It’s Korea so I know everything will work out at the last minute. E seemed to want me to make the decision on how we are teaching together but it’s hard for me to make that call when I don’t know who are students are, what the learning objectives are, when the school year starts…
Like Michael said, we’ll find ourselves along the way.