korean life

This is a good week for me. Middle school students are currently preparing for some important tests. In Korea, students don't have tests scattered throughout the school year, rather every 2 months they have tests in each subject over what they've been taught for the past 2 months. As such, most kids don't show up to my school because they are busy studying, and the ones who do show up have class exclusively with the Korean teachers, so my classes are cancelled.

Today I had two classes, both with elementary school kids. After that I pretty much just sat at a computer and played this game for 90 minutes. The best I got up to was 87, then I mistakenly clicked 98 instead of 88. I had 32 seconds left on the clock, so I'm going to go ahead and give myself full credit for that one.

I lost a 15,000 won bet with a class last week. I didn't actually pay students money, rather it was 15,000 won in ice cream that I had to buy them. I lost because I didn't believe what they said about high school life in Korea. They told me that a high school student goes to school at 8am and doesn't leave until 9pm. I didn't believe them because that seems like it should be illegal. Can you imagine? That's twice what I had to do. The kids told me to verify it by asking my girlfriend. I did, and she confirmed that that was her typical day as a high school student.

Speaking of my girlfriend, she still puts in absurd hours, except now it's for work instead of school. For the past two days she's had to go into work at 8:30am, and has had to stay until 10:30pm. That's not her standard day, usually it's until 6, but she has some big kind of project or something. She's some kind of engineer/architect. I'm not sure what her job title would be exactly. She draws the plans for heating ducts in new or renovated buildings. I told her it should be illegal for her to work so much. She agreed. She hates her job. Most people here do.