Saturday left a bad taste in my mouth in more ways than one. It wasn't just the Pocari Sweat. I had heard of Pocari Sweat before we arrived and wondered what the hell a Pocari was and why the hell i'd want to drink it's sweat. After trying it i still don't know why, but i discovered a Pocari's sweat tastes pretty awful. I couldn't even finish a quarter of the bottle. On the ride into Wonju when we arrived Robert told us it was a sport drink, like Gatorade. Gatorade at least has a little flavour. This stuff tasted like sweetened salt water to me. I can't imagine being thirsty enough to actually finish a bottle. I picked it up on a whim walking back from downtown.

The other bad taste came from work that morning. At the beginning of the new semester we were told the school was going in a new direction and we would be trying to get more serious students. We were told that they wanted the kids to do more work at home and they expected about half the kids to drop out at first. They wanted to extend the semesters to five months and pass out report cards once every quarter semester instead of just twice. Well, that's the way it was supposed to work. They put our vacation at the middle of the first month and many kids went on holidays with their families after that. Those kids missed up to a week of classes. The scores on the tests reflected the missed time. I also didn't help my kids with the tests as much as the previous teacher did, i'm sure. One class had one test that was obviously too difficult for them, but i didn't write it. Quite a few classes had really low scores in some subjects. When the director saw the scores i guess he flipped. On Saturday morning we had our last intensive course and we were pulled aside by Robert right before class for a chat. We were told they've never seen scores so low and if things didn't improve that the teachers would be held accountable. We also wouldn't be handing out the report cards we spent days preparing. I took the talk to mean if we didn't improve the scores soon we'd be fired. Right before class was a bad time to tell us because we didn't teach for the first hour and had that time to be pissed. At first i wanted to just walk out and tell them to handle it themselves for the day. I managed to keep my head and after class i pulled Robert and told him i thought we were getting a mixed message. We also informed him of how C's previous teacher went over the exam and told them all the answers right before the tests. We thought the kids should have to know the answers, not just be told what they are. We came out of the talk feeling a little better, but we've still been pretty blah for the last week. Maybe a little homesickness is starting to set in. Being told you're a crappy teacher doesn't help either.

So we went for a walk downtown later that day and actually did some shopping for a change. Didn't find anything for me, but C managed to get some girly things for herself. As we were walking down the street we got the usual heads craning in our direction. In the past one woman tripped over something and another turned her entire body as we passed. While starting to head for home we passed some teenage girls on the street and i noticed them staring at me with an unusual intensity. As we passed C said she hear one of them say hello. She thought it was kind of funny, but i enjoyed the slight ego boost. It made me feel a little better, even if i have to go half way around the world to have some females find me attractive.
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