Andi's got some very interesting sex posts up on her blogs. Go give 'em a read, if you haven't already.
In that, uh, vein, Scott writes:
Hi Kevin,
BigHo wrote:[*NB: I was told by one of my foreign co-workers that one of the school's best teachers, an Australian, was canned for "fucking around" with his students. Somebody somewhere should write an exposé about hagwons and hookups. There's more material than you can shake your dick at.]
Are the Korean hagwons as commonplace for hookups as the Japanese counterparts? Depending on the location in Japan, a guy can get more interested women in an afternoon than he has time for during the remaining week.
It's an interesting question (aside from the general interest in sex). That is, which country has the greater amount of interested young women? And why are they really interested? Is it an insufficient husband? Are the college girls trying out their powers of seduction before they travel abroad? Are foreign guys really *that* desirable? [ answers: yes, yes, yes ]
_Scott
I don't know enough about the Japanese hagwon situation to comment comparatively (Justin? Do you know anyone in the Japanese hagwon system?), but I can begin to comment on the situation at my new place of employment. And the comment is: yes, there are plenty of available ladies.
I do wonder whether the Seoul National senior I blogged about previously is testing her powers of seduction. I think the honest answer is, Probably not, but this requires seeing through a thick cloud of male ego. After all, what fat half-Korean wouldn't want to think a slim, gorgeous, perky young thang doesn't have a bit of a crush on him? Miss SNU was in class again today, and I'll see her again on Saturday. Vulcan biocontrol techniques kept the seismic activity in my crotch to a minimum this morning, which is a good thing for all concerned. What's funny is that the hyper-rational part of my mind has already assessed her and dismissed her as far, far too high-maintenance for someone like me.
Ah, this reminds me: here's my take on dating and/or banging your Korean students. If you work at a typical hagwon where you're little more than a figurehead with a textbook, teaching a curriculum that offers no tests, quizzes, or homework (as is the case at most hagwons), then as Otto said in "A Fish Called Wanda," "Pork away, pal!" There's no real "power relationship" there. You're a teacher in name only, and hold almost nothing over the student. If, however, you're at a place like EC, where there's both testing and homework, then I'm sorry, but you're in a very definite power relationship with your students, and banging them is an absolute no-no. The Hominid has spoken.
The above point is important because I've already got a student making moon-eyes at me. It's a shame it's not Miss SNU, but this student's very sweet, not to mention cute, too. She's a nurse (quit yer chortling), and she keeps dropping unsubtle hints my way. For example: before she came to my class today, she worked with J, my Korean partner teacher. They apparently went over some vocabulary items that included terms of praise like "well-built" and "handsome." My job was to ask the student to use the vocab items in a sentence, and in every case, she'd point to me and say, "You're well-built. You're handsome." She even tried this with "gorgeous," which I told her is probably a better descriptor for women than for men, more in an attempt to deflect what she was doing than because "gorgeous" is for women only (it's not).
Returning to my original banging-related point: I won't be making any moves on any of my students. I'll stew in a vat of my own lust, poaching in imaginary pussy juices, but that's as far as it'll ever go. My rational mind warns me that Miss SNU would be extremely bad news, and while I wouldn't mind going out with Miss Medical, who truly does have a gentle, sweet personality, I know it would be wrong, wrong, wrong. Same applies to all subsequent students.
In other EC news...
I sat down with J, my partner teacher, and had a long, getting-to-know-you talk during one of our breaks. She's been all over the world-- lived in Scotland, lived in South Africa, speaks Afrikaans, understands some German, and was on her way to a PhD when she gave up in the middle of everything, some of which she blames on a suck-ass, inattentive advisor.
J has one radically bizarre physical trait, which I feel like an absolute shit for revealing here, but will reveal anyway: she's got two uvulae. You know-- a uvula. The thing that hangs down in the back of your throat. Well, imagine a pair of them. I managed to keep a straight face when she told me this. In truth, I was dying to ask her to let me see them. Like my Dad, I've always had some interest in the human body. Not enough to want to pursue medicine, but enough to get really curious about anything out of the ordinary. Besides, the very sentence I have two uvulae is enough to pique anyone's monkey curiosity, wouldn't you agree?
J's very nice, speaks English fluently, is a pianist, and is also one of the most tightly-wound Korean women I know. I'd say she needs to get laid, but after reading Andi's recent post, I'm not sure that's a good idea. Perhaps a trip to the local seong-in yong-p'oom ka-gae (adult products store) might be a better idea.
I also had to drop off some paperwork at EC's HQ in Yeoksam, and while there I met K, the founder and CEO of EC. Every new employee meets K, and I was warned that he likes to talk a lot. In my case, we probably spoke about 25 minutes or so, which could have been worse. K quizzed me on some of the material I learned in training, and I think I flubbed an important question about what makes EC unique (like I give a flying fuck; I think EC's method is more gimmick than anything).
The one thing I noticed about K was how twitchy he was. He couldn't bring himself to make eye contact with me for more than a moment, which I found extremely odd for a guy who has degrees in both public and international relations. K probably knows his chain of schools is in a very delicate period: most new hagwons prove their mettle within the first five years. They either collapse and disappear, or they limp along dysfunctionally for decades, businesses masquerading as schools, fooling students into thinking they're getting an education, when in most cases they're just being ripped off (later on, we should explore the ethical bind that people like me are in when we consent to teach at such places). I think that students who succeed at hagwons do so in spite of the hagwons, not because of them. In EC's case, I feel the curriculum needs major reworking.
And before I forget: I think we've got a lab coat battle brewing. The problem is that EC doesn't have a lab coat in my size. The biggest one they have, which belongs to a co-worker and which I'm supposed to wear, bunches up in my armpits and causes high school girls to laugh at me, thereby shrinking my testicles (as noted previously). My co-worker, the coat's proper owner, is brawny across the shoulders but not cursed with my barrel chest and huge, lactating man-tits. My manager at the Kangnam branch of EC very kindly suggested that I should lose weight so I could fit into my co-worker's coat-- this was after I asked her (that is, my manager) whether they couldn't order a larger coat for me.
None of this motivates me to wear the coat, which currently smells like my co-worker. So I'm not wearing it. It means I'm going to do poorly on my employee evaluation, because one of the evaluation questions deals with whether I wear my coat faithfully and maintain it well. I should score high marks in maintenance: you can't ruin a coat if you don't use it.
If I know Korea, my manager will eventually catch on and order a larger coat, with much grumbling and blame thrown my way for inconveniencing her. I have to wonder how another of my co-workers, Dan, is doing down in Pusan: he and I trained together, so I got to see how fucking huge Dan is. The reason I'm merely BigHominid and not StupendouslyHugeHominid is that people like Dan exist. Dan's tall like a basketball player but also built like a football player. He could hammer my sorry ass into the ground with a single blow of his meaty fist. I'm laughing just thinking about the dilemma his manager is going through. If I were Dan, I'd refuse to wear whatever teeny lab coat they offer him. I'm thinking I should offer my manager a compromise: I'll wear the smaller lab coat only if I'm allowed to be naked underneath it.
The actual teaching day today wasn't bad. It was a hectic morning, then we had a cancellation, and suddenly my afternoon was largely free. Tomorrow promises to be busier. I'll have to get all my shitting out of the way before I come into the office. Much as I love taking dumps, I hate doing it on the job when I'm theoretically on call. My greatest nightmare is rushing back into the EC office with clumps of shit hanging off my clothes, while my students try their best to pretend nothing smells.
_
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