No Gym, Work... Boring!

The gym is closed in my town until next Monday, due to Lunar New Year. With all this time off, I'd love to spend it at the gym. But, with my 850cal workout yesterday, I was a bit tired, so it was good to sit down and relax this morning.


One of my students, a 14 year old, is learning TOEIC. Basically, in Korea, TOEIC is used as the standard for how well you know English. But, in the real world, TOEIC is used for business purposes. TOEIC only assesses reading and listening capability, and how well you can color in a small circle with A, B, C or D in it. So many people study English in this way, learning grammar, vocabulary, and "how to chose the correct answer" techniques, but then complain that they can't speak English (and the worst thing is, not figure out why). Some of my Korean friends, who are better English Speakers than I am a Korean Speaker, are actually jealous that after 2 years of being in Korea, I can speak better Korean than them, than they could after 2 years of English study. I just wanna quickly say way: I don't study Korean. I am surrounded by it every waking moment in my life in Korea. I have the opportunity to learn Korean in a natural environment. There are almost no natural environments in Korea to learn English. Korean society is very good at putting things into units that can be compared in one way or another. If I sat down in front of a Korean test, that is similar to TOEIC, I would fail. If you put be in a taxi with a decent enough taxi driver, I can start a conversation and get him laughing by the time I'm at the destination. If I had to learn Korean the way that Koreans are forced to learn English in Primary, Middle and High school here, I would end up hating it like so many Koreans do.

I had one student out of ten, hand in their homework that I set on Friday. It was one day late, but still, that is a shit ratio! One out of Ten! On Monday, there weren't any students who returned the homework. The student who did return it, is one of my best middle school students. I wasn't expecting all to return the homework, but I wasn't expecting none. Anyway, I'm disappointed, but at least I know how the students consider homework from the foreign teacher.

i've got 5 days off, and fuck do I need them. Since the gym is closed, I've gotta make other arrangements to exercise. I've also gotta find something to do for these 5 days. I've got a few ideas up my sleeve, but will have to see how things go. I've been wanting to make videos for my blog, but nothing exciting really happens in my life all that often to make videos about. Will see what I can come up with over the 5 days.