While most of my family celebrated Thanksgiving today I was half the world away practicing for Yukbuk’s 2nd English Festival. The practice took place outside and since today its 10 degrees (or 50 for you Americans) everybody was bundled up like winter had begun to descend. I of course was still wearing just a collared t-shirt. This seemed to stun everybody. I was asked repeatedly if I was cold and was met with astonishment when I told them not really. To be fair, it has been between 20 and 25 degrees each day since we arrived so today was a pretty big departure for the normal. I’m personally hoping the weather will stay like this for awhile. It finally feels like fall.
The big news at the school today when I arrived was…well let’s see if you can figure it out. Often times to for an event or opening, Koreans will have a big balloon float outside or over the place announcing it. Yesterday when I arrived at school there was a large balloon floating outside my window with a large pink banner hanging from it reading “2nd Yukbuk English Festival”. Today when I arrived I was greeted by many of the teachers with the words: “Balloon”, “cut”, “FLY!”, “Gone”. The order they said the words seemed to be pretty random. Slowly they asked the teachers and school workers who spoke English to help translate (even though I understood pretty quickly what had happened). With the aid of his coworkers, the Vice Principal finally came up to me and told me that the “edible balloon line was cut and the balloon go away”. Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he meant “inflatable” balloon and that Koreans typically don’t eat the balloons after they are finished using them. The new crisis today is where to put the balloon so vandals can’t cut the line again. It sounds like it’ll be attached to the roof. This should put it high enough up in the air that nobody can read what it says. We’ll see.
One of the nicer things about working in Korea might be the way nobody really seems to take you seriously or believe you when you try and explain things to them that they don’t want to hear. Piracy is pretty rampant over here and apparently getting a fake degree, driver’s licence or passport is only slightly more difficult than renting a movie. In the past month it has come out that a couple of prominent Koreans in high places have gotten their jobs through forged documents. The response of our provincial board of education has been to require that all foreigners prove their degrees are authentic. The way it has been decided that we should prove our degrees are authentic is to take one of our co-teachers to our school’s website and to the area that lists all graduates for any given year. Then we are to print off the page (with the web address) and have it sent to head office. A glaring problem with this idea of course is that while it might be common in Korea to post graduate lists for all to see on the website, this isn’t so standard in North America. It’s great when they make policies for foreign teachers without actually talking to a single one of them. Anyways, Meg’s having trouble with her teacher about it. Today’s the deadline and I suspect she’s having a rough day. I tried to explain to my teacher that it was impossible to do what he asked. I did almost tell my co-teacher however that if he wanted I could have the Wycliffe site show me as a graduate with whatever grade point average he wanted. I’m kind of glad I didn’t. I probably would have made things more difficult for me in the end. Though it would have been fun to log-on to the Wycliffe site and create some bogus article just to prove I really graduated.
Luckily for me, as I could start to see my co-teacher’s eyes glazing over with disinterest I remembered that Wycliffe publishes a magazine that lists the graduates and that we post a copy to the website. So he was happy. Though he does want another transcript. This will be the 3rd one I’ll give to them in the past month. I’m glad Wycliffe doesn’t make me pay for them.
Unfortunately, my proving my degree’s authenticity through the website has only made things more difficult for Meg. Her school can’t figure out why she can’t do the same thing as me. I think she’s explained it to them every day for the past week. They don’t seem to be getting it. Meg told me earlier that she emailed the alumni association to ask for an email verification. It hasn’t arrived as of yet. Her teacher keeps asking her to check her e-mail even though Meg’s explained to her countless times that it is after 10pm in Philadelphia. This doesn’t appear to have had any affect on her. But who knows, maybe the offices at Eastern University are 24 hours.
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Just a few quick notes here: First of all, I want all of you to note how my husband abandoned me. We could have been in this fight together – we could have been a team! - but after I had been hounded about this 'magic list', after I explained over and over how North American schools do not publish graduate lists, my husband – my closest confidant and friend – stabbed me in the back and printed Wycliffe’s Alumni Magazine. Explaining to my coworker that Paul had printed out a magazine, that his name would not have been on the website had he graduated a year earlier, produced only a glazed look. She actually questioned whether I had, in fact, graduated – even though she has held my degree in her hands.
Moreover, I could have made an official-looking list of graduates in about ten minutes. It says something about the system we work in when they believe degrees and transcripts can be forged, while a list of graduates cannot.
Furthermore, I’d like to note that the trouble in the news lately has been about Koreans forging their documents, not Canadians, Americans, or any other foreigners (though they have had problems with foreigners in the past). However, in our schools, only the foreigners are being questioned!!
How do I know this is really Meg posting?
However,he helped you cut your hair so in my opinion he's still worth keeping around.
Meg, I think you are using North American logic. Sounds like that doesn't work well in Korea.
This is great info to know.
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