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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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 Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 3:18 pm Post subject: Strangest teaching nightmare you've ever had? |
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...Last night I had the strangest dream I've ever had before...
I dreamed I arrived at my middle school to find out that we had lost our staff room. Everyone's desk, the photocopier, shelves, and everything was exactly the same as before - they had just been moved outdoors. When I asked what the deal was (as in real life, I had not been informed of anything) I was told that we lost the staff room due to 'budgetary restrictions'. Otherwise everthing was carrying on just as before: students were coming and going; the secretary was typing away; teachers were going over materials; everyone's desk was in the same order - just outdoors in the corner of the field. Fortunately since my main desk is at the high school staff room it didn't effect me that much.
Anyone familiar with interpreting dreams know what this one's supposed to mean? |
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poet13
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
Location: Just over there....throwing lemons.
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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'budgetary restrictions'... yer not gettin' paid next month...
for real though, i have heard that when the walls are removed it is because you feel confined or restricted by something... so, perhaps a need to change?
a few months ago, I dreamt that i taught a class where every student corrected me. couldnt get anything right. left with a feeling of desparation and resignation. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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| poet13 wrote: |
for real though, i have heard that when the walls are removed it is because you feel confined or restricted by something... so, perhaps a need to change?
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Interesting, last week my VP, a school board rep, and me just made an informal agreement for me to stay for another year. Oh well, I think that at any teaching job in Korea one's going to feel a bit confined and restricted. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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| My only bad dream is I find myself back in Canada and I'm like "crap, I'm not in Korea anymore!" |
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Tarheel13
Joined: 20 Apr 2006
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 4:28 pm Post subject: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| Mindmeto: You're always dissing Canada for one reason or another. Did you fail to find success in that fine country, or do you just dislike it in general. I have always found Canada to be the finest spot on the globe to spend time. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 4:35 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| Tarheel13 wrote: |
| Mindmeto: You're always dissing Canada for one reason or another. Did you fail to find success in that fine country, or do you just dislike it in general. I have always found Canada to be the finest spot on the globe to spend time. |
So why are you over here, then? I'll be going back to Canada for 2-4 weeks this summer and the idea of spending time there seems very strange to me. After more than a year-and-a-half here, Canada seems like such a boring, silly, PC place where one has to drive to do anything and everything is unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient. Perhaps it's a great place to come from, but I'll be interested to see if, after this summer, I feel any desire to reside there again. |
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Natalia
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 5:05 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| Tarheel13 wrote: |
| Mindmeto: You're always dissing Canada for one reason or another. Did you fail to find success in that fine country, or do you just dislike it in general. I have always found Canada to be the finest spot on the globe to spend time. |
So why are you over here, then? I'll be going back to Canada for 2-4 weeks this summer and the idea of spending time there seems very strange to me. After more than a year-and-a-half here, Canada seems like such a boring, silly, PC place where one has to drive to do anything and everything is unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient. Perhaps it's a great place to come from, but I'll be interested to see if, after this summer, I feel any desire to reside there again. |
You'll find the vast majority of people who leave their home country to work overseas do so to experience another culture for a little while, not because they hate home and never want to return.
I don't understand why the attitude on these boards is, "If you like where you came from, why don't you stay there?" I've never encountered anything like that while working overseas before. |
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Corporal
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 5:50 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| Canada seems like such a boring, silly, PC place where one has to drive to do anything and everything is unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient. . |
Are you incapable of entertaining yourself? Have you never been on a solo camping trip, paddled for an hour to get to your beach, spent time just watching the sun rise? Or would that be too threatening because there's no email and no cheap drive-thru? 
Korea is a great place to make money. It's a bit short on stretches of nature where one can go to reflect (unspoiled by obnoxious louts brandishing beer bottles, hordes of whining children and chest-thumping hikers with striped socks).
Regardless of your ability to entertain yourself cheaply and conveniently, if an entire country anywhere on earth seems "boring" and "silly", the problem is more likely to lie with you. |
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rothkowitz
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm...back when I was doing split shifts I had a dream that I was using a puddle to shave in at the bus stop(doubled as a mirror,see...).Always harried for time..
Split shifts are evil...you never get used to them,merely resigned to running yourself down. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 7:47 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| Corporal wrote: |
| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| Canada seems like such a boring, silly, PC place where one has to drive to do anything and everything is unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient. . |
Are you incapable of entertaining yourself? Have you never been on a solo camping trip, paddled for an hour to get to your beach, spent time just watching the sun rise? Or would that be too threatening because there's no email and no cheap drive-thru?
Korea is a great place to make money. It's a bit short on stretches of nature where one can go to reflect (unspoiled by obnoxious louts brandishing beer bottles, hordes of whining children and chest-thumping hikers with striped socks).
Regardless of your ability to entertain yourself cheaply and conveniently, if an entire country anywhere on earth seems "boring" and "silly", the problem is more likely to lie with you. |
In Korea I can walk across the street on which I live and start climbing a mountain. I've done it solo but I can also easily find people to hike with as well - because they're determined, in shape Koreans and not fat, lazy Canadians. I can even go hiking with women because they stay in decent shape (and always bring plenty of kimbab). If I want to go camping out in the middle of no where back home I'd pretty much have to do it solo when I return home, because doing it with a friend would involve dragging his fat wife along and we could only go to a location accessible by car. If we went on a weekend we'd spend all Sunday afternoon in one big traffic jam along the Trans Canada Highway surrounded by motor homes and caravans that have been to provincial campgrounds with flush toilets and whiney kids and chest-thumping lager louts who thought they were actually 'camping'. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 8:10 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| Natalia wrote: |
You'll find the vast majority of people who leave their home country to work overseas do so to experience another culture for a little while, not because they hate home and never want to return.
I don't understand why the attitude on these boards is, "If you like where you came from, why don't you stay there?" I've never encountered anything like that while working overseas before. |
I'd say the amount of Korea-bashing here probably more than makes up for the home country-bashing. But yes, I have noticed (online and offline) what you're referring to, Natalia, and it does seem unusual to me, too. That is, unusual in the sense of unexpected, but perhaps not really so bizarre or inexplicable.
I've been in the country longer than most posters, which doesn't mean I know more or am more clued in about these things. But it does enable me to see the trends and changes in foreigners in Korea then and foreigners in Korea now. And this home-hater brand of expat is most definitely a feature of foreigners now. There were always a few Korea-huggers about, but home-haters are a recent phenomenon. So, what's changed?
To begin with, Korea itself has changed. This country is almost unrecognisably more prosperous and industrialised, and its people far wealthier than before. (*yawn*, *snore*) Korea in 2006 is simply more impressive to behold for foreigners who are impressed by such things. And who are those foreigners? Well, they've certainly changed a lot over the years as well. English teachers were always here in some number, but those numbers didn't dominate as they now do (speaking strictly of the Western expat population).
It was the poster Tiger Beer who once mentioned Koreans in the late '90s/early 2000s replying "Wow! Really!!?" when he said he was a teacher, but that today he's more likely to hear: "Another one, huh? ho-hum." Familiarity breeds glazed-over eyeballs, and perhaps the loss of novelty value, of rock-star value -- combined with "Dynamic Korea's" overachieving, hellzapoppin', mini-skirted, high-tech "Gee, Wow!!  " factor -- produces in the minds of some people a diminished sense of self-worth that they extend to their own country. Is that too much of a reach? It probably is.
Another way of looking at this strange, new, "home-hater" quirk is to examine where it's coming from, so to speak. Who are these people? For what it's worth, they're all male, the one's I've seen. That may be no more than a reflection of the gender make-up of Dave's & expats in Korea, or it may suggest something else. Nationality? Canadians, Americans, Aussies, Kiwis and Brits primarily. For most American "home-haters" I've met in person or read on Dave's, their gripes are political, e.g., they hate Bush, or it has to do with specific issues (feminism, PC, etc.). Once those "problems" are resolved, their attitudes are bound to improve. They don't hate their country up one side and down the other. Nor do any of the Brits or Australians or Dutch or Japanese or French or Germans or New Zealanders I've met.
Now the Canadian home-haters I've known, they're special. Their sentiments seem to go much deeper, and hearing them talk, one gets the sad sense that no amount of political or social or economic upheaval will ever really change their minds. Of course, they stand ever ready to join in a US vs. Canada pitched battle when one erupts, but there seems nothing that will permanently alter the basic pessimism. I guess it just runs too deep. There must be things that it takes being a Canadian to understand, because on the surface -- which is all the rest of us can see -- Canada seems like a great place to live.
Oh, and I want to add that home-haters are not always, by definition, Korea-huggers. I've met quite a few expats who hate Korea AND their own country. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| Tarheel13 wrote: |
| Mindmeto: You're always dissing Canada for one reason or another. Did you fail to find success in that fine country, or do you just dislike it in general. I have always found Canada to be the finest spot on the globe to spend time. |
Just as I dis Korea or the USA. Because you find fault in some aspect doesn't mean you're totally against the place. I've found what I would judge as success in Canada: always had a good paying white colar job in high tech, I've lived debt free for all my life, lived in nice apartments in Toronto, authored four books published by Reed, and for five years wrote a tech column for one of Canada's biggest daily newspapers. I've written works for CBC, the Toronto Star, Eye magazine, edited Microsoft Canada's daily web awards for a couple years... yaddie yaddie.
My issue with Canadians is pretty much this:
a) their self congratulatory nature and their assumption the rest of the world actually gives a crap ("Oh you're from Canada! Oh wow! The UN called you the best nation on earth to live for several years! Please spend the night with my daughter!")
b) their need to define themselves as the not-Americans. "I love Canada because we're not like those evil Americans in the following ways..."
My bad dream isn't a swipe at Canada. There are OTHER interpretations. Like maybe I'm just having a totally great time here? |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 10:40 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
My issue with Canadians is pretty much this:
a) their self congratulatory nature and their assumption the rest of the world actually gives a crap ("Oh you're from Canada! Oh wow! The UN called you the best nation on earth to live for several years! Please spend the night with my daughter!")
b) their need to define themselves as the not-Americans. "I love Canada because we're not like those evil Americans in the following ways..."
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Bingo. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 11:44 pm Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| JongnoGuru wrote: |
| It was the poster Tiger Beer who once mentioned Koreans in the late '90s/early 2000s replying "Wow! Really!!?" when he said he was a teacher, but that today he's more likely to hear: "Another one, huh? ho-hum." Familiarity breeds glazed-over eyeballs, and perhaps the loss of novelty value, of rock-star value -- combined with "Dynamic Korea's" overachieving, hellzapoppin', mini-skirted, high-tech "Gee, Wow!! " factor -- produces in the minds of some people a diminished sense of self-worth that they extend to their own country. Is that too much of a reach? It probably is. |
Coming back to Korea after eight years away has been a real experience, and part of it is exactly this sense of change that you describe, Guru. The English program at my university was one year old when I arrived. We felt like pioneers (though I know that the real pioneers were here before us). As foreigners, we were curiosities everywhere we went. I recall being chased by hordes of children yelling 'herro' in areas around Shichon. Once a friend and I went hiking at Taedunsan and became surrounded by a group of schoolchildren on a trip there who wouldn't leave us alone all day; they even asked for autographs. We were rock stars!
Today, by comparison, I walk quietly through the streets here, no one bothering me, not much noticing me. People are friendly, but I'm no curiosity. I've only had one child 'herro' me, and her pronunciation was much better than than her twins ten years ago. Living standards are higher, there's much more to do, the information network that is Dave's today didn't really exist then, and, even though some of you might not believe it, working conditions are much better (I have tales of our battles with the housing office at the university...). I think all this change has been good.
I think someone who had lived here through all this change may not have noticed it as much as I have, coming back after a long tiem away. (well, you did, Guru, but I assume that is just your superior powers of observation). Sorry for the hijack, but I thought Guru's point about the difference from ten years ago was interesting. |
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Corporal
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 29, 2006 8:28 am Post subject: Re: Mindmeto...always dissing Canada... |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
My issue with Canadians is pretty much this:
a) their self congratulatory nature and their assumption the rest of the world actually gives a crap ("Oh you're from Canada! Oh wow! The UN called you the best nation on earth to live for several years! Please spend the night with my daughter!")
b) their need to define themselves as the not-Americans. "I love Canada because we're not like those evil Americans in the following ways..."
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Has a whining girlfriend dulled your ability to be coherent? Even you must realize how juvenile it sounds to say you have an issue with 33 million people. |
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