Thank God for Suneung aka SAT day!

This week marks the single most important event in a high school student's life - SAT day. The results of this be all and end all test will essentially determine the rest of their lives. Korean universities are extremely competitively ranked and anything short of getting into the top ranked school, Seoul National, is considered failure. That may seem a bit extreme, andperhaps slightly exaggereated, but this is life in Korea. The system here is basically opposite what we are used to back home where moreorless anyone can go to any university, and then you just have to work your butt off to pass your courses and graduate. Here, you work like a dog throughout high school and then study until you are beyond zombie-state, to you can achieve as close to perfect on the SAT and be considered for the top three schools. Ask any student or their parents what their dream is, and they will undoubtedly respond with some version of "I want to attend the best university."

So how do they achieve this, you may ask, with thousands of students vying for those precious entrance offers fromt he best unis? It goes a little like this: Starting way back in early middle school, the students start studying hard to pass the high school entrance exam, and have their pick of the best high schools. Yes, they are also ranked. Then they start in the high school of their choice and their daily schedule is basically arricing at school around 7:30 am, regular classes 8:30 to 5:30, lunch and dinner at school, then mandatory self study and extra classes until about 10 or 11pm. At this time they can leave the school but they do not go home. Instead they will go to illegal nighttime academies for small group tutoring, until about 1:00am. Finally they can go home but often they will stay up studying until 3am, leaving maybe 3 hours for sleep. Saturday classes occur biweekly but once you get into third grade high school, the final year, they will attend every Saturday, and most Sundays, for more extra classes and self-study time. Don't ask me how the students even remember to brush their teeth everyday, because I have no idea. Sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture in some countries around the world...
A typical classroom scene:

Anyhow, Thursday November 10th is the designated nationwide SAT day this year. For foreign teachers, that means a day off! It also likely means a shortened work day on the day before, so the school can be prepared for the exam. Woo-hoo! I am very happy to get this bonus time off since I'm feeling more tired than usual this week. I do have a great deal of interest in this year's graduating class however, since I have taught them from their first year in high school. I also have a couple of my former hagwon (private academy) students here, from our first year in Korea. They are like a special project that you want to see through to the very end. Most foreign teachers do not see the third graders since they are too busy for conversation English class, but many of them still talk to me in the hallways or come visit me at my desk from time to time.
A typical Korean cheer akin to "you can do it":

So how to spend this bonus day and a half off? We'll kick things off with a fajita night with our friends, the Floridians Sean and Kelly. I'll just take a moment to explain that they are very awesome in many ways, including the fact that for this year's Halloween costume contest, Sean came in second place, for his very daring body suit, representing non other than the Y chromosone. LOL, priceless! 

Also avid fans of the "Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy novel series, Sean, Joe and I have some great times joking about the novel's jargon. Kelly needs to hurry up and read the series so she too can be included. For any of you who haven't read the series, it's pretty darn great! The TV show was well done as well.

Oh yes, I forgot that before the fajita night Joe and I will head over to the pension office to check on the state of our Korean pension. Luckily, when we leave the country, we will both be given our accumulated national pension for a total of four years, each! pension equals roughly one month's salary per year, so we'll have a nice sized payout by the time we come home. At this point we want to just make sure the proper amount is sitting in our account.

Up for tomorrow's day off - a visit to the birthing docotor. There are two main hospitals in town, and currently we are seeing a doctor for prenatal visits in one, but we are thinking the other hospital will ultimately be the place to go to deliver. The reason for this is that we hear the doctor over there is more oepn-minded to natural birth and slightly more western style of having babies. In general, due to lingering Confucian beliefs, the doctor is still very much in charge of you and will tell you how things will go down. This includes a heavy duty epidural that will pretty much knock you out, and simply lying flat on your back to pop that sucker out. That's if they don't go ahead and just schedule you for a c-section. And again, in general, Korean patients are happy to oblige and just follow what the doctor says.

In our opinion, those are very outdated methods, and we would liket o be a little more active in deciding what kind of experience we would like to have. It's kind of hippie-dippy, I know, but nevertheless, I want a say in what is done to my body. Therefore, we will go tomorrow to check out this other doctor, and see if he will work with some of our ideas. Basically what we want is a birth as natural as possible - no meds, no iv, no episiotomy, defintitely no c-section! We'll see wha twe can negotiate, knowing full well that we will have to be flexible. We're already thinking that for a second child, home-birth with a midwife might be a better option for us, but this is Korea and this is what we get!