While most of the world is still struggling, reaching their peak, and hitting their highs, Korea has been under control for a very long time.
The numbers have been going down everyday and when I last checked, it was down to only about 11 to 18 new cases (per day) which is amazing.   

What I don't understand is why everyone is still so afraid to get the ball rolling again and start up school? Even if not all at the same time,
why not just gradually start it up again?  I mentioned how they could roll out a system where only a small group come to school each day
(like per grade) and divide them up into smaller groups and they can take all their classes for the day and go home for the week.

Than gradually ramp it  up in week 2 and week 3 and so on until 100% are all back?   Are they actually expecting to just turn it on like
a switch and send all 6 million students back to school in one day?  Really??? I don't need to be an expert in any field to know that isn't
the smartest or most logical way to do it.   You need to gradually get it going.  It's unlikely you'll ever have 0 cases until a vaccine comes out in 18 months because there will always be a few cases lingering around.

Here are a couple things that confuse and frustrate me about this.  Recently a couple students came back to our school but only for
"day care" sort of thing.  It's just 2 or 3 of them and a couple of them are even siblings (brother and sister).  They have been in the school for over a week now and doing games, worksheets, watching tv, going to a couple different classrooms with different "care"
teachers.

I noticed during lunch they had the 3 kids sit in 3 separate tables about 6 feet apart from each other in their care room.  It was funny
because why do you need to do this when the students already have mingled and been physically close with each other all day and week???  Mind you two of them are siblings! Hello! They come from the same house where they share the same rooms, meals, and probably wrestle each other just before getting to school.  Then when they arrive, they have to put on masks and sit 6 feet apart from each other??? For what? LOL.  I don't get that.   

This to me sums up the overreacting and paranoia that is really irritating.    Here's another example.  Everyday the teachers come out and we had lunch together outside at a restaurant.  We all headed there in masks and when we got there, we sat together at the tables and shared side dishes and ate together LOL.  WHAT THE HAAAAAYYYell?  I don't get it.  Why are we even wearing masks if we are going to eat from the same side dishes and share our germs LOL.   Obviously nobody is sick and nobody has the virus if we already doing that.

But I understand it's the policies that are going to be put in place even long after the real threat is gone....until a vaccine comes out a year later, we're going to continue this social distancing and odd rules when clearly we really don't need to.  I could understand if this was New York City and we had 80,000 cases in the city alone.  But no.  We have 0 cases in the city...probably only a couple dozen in the entire province and I don't know how much longer we are going to be like this.

This whole situation reminds me of the Hot Shots jail scene when the prisoner actually crawls out of the jail cell to reach the keys on the ground and then goes back into the jail cell to unlock himself! Uhhhh u were already free...didn't need the key.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhEWKSoAQdg

Speak for yourself.  I'm digging this online class format and wouldn't mind doing this forever.  I'd much prefer uploading 3 pre-recorded videos a week with worksheets than 22 offline classes a week of apathetic and rude students that can't put together 1 sentence in English.  Korea made a great decision with the online classes.

Yeah, I have pre-rec and I'm loving this.  Get creative, practice with my camera. Not so bad.

Come in the next day and everyone is in the office. I ask, and hear the reply. ''Yeah that was only for the day'' WHa Whaaaa WHAT?? How is that logical in any shape or form.[/u]


Korea, the place where logic comes to die.

I was told the plan now is in May the oldest grade of high school is going to head back and they are going to gradually start bringing other grades in starting from high down to elementary keeping an eye on how things go.  Hadn't read or heard mentioned anywhere they were going to just pick a day and have all students head back to school. 

From the news, it says they'll be releasing a decision from May 3-5. This week they'll consult with infectious disease experts, next week they'll be consulting parents/teachers, and finally with the KCDC. From the comments on all these articles, most parents seem to be against opening.
 I'm not sure how I feel.  I don't personally care one way or the other as my contract is almost over; however, I don't know how we'd proceed if an outbreak occurred at any school. Do we just close down and those students get online classes while everyone else continues with (arguably) better in-person instruction? Given how obsessed Koreans are with academic fairness I can see a lot of problems arising from this, especially at higher grade levels.

Was watching another EPIK teacher vlog and they mentioned that their MOE has emailed them telling them to be more careful with their social distancing practices.  Apparently locals have been contacting schools to complain about foreigners gathering together lol.

Foreigners bad!

Koreans gathering in groups outside of CU, in saunas, in PC rooms, in hagwons, in cafes, in small parks, at offices, on subways, playing sports, good!

Silly Alex, you know this.

Then move back home and look for a job doing the same. The reason you are here is for the students to interact with you, gaining exposure to more than just the weak material provided in the Korean textbooks. Why employ someone to live here when they could pay someone half the money to plonk some stuff on a website three times a week the other side of the world.

The face to face interactions with the students are what make this job worthwhile.

I kind of like this remote stuff, but you are right. However, if it were possible that we could continue this and they kept renewing us doing this I would not be objecting.

No, 3 1/2 years ago actually.

Noonchi doesn't happen at my school. They are out at 4.16pm. And the amount of stretching they do during the day with elastic cords and golf videos being watched doesn't scream 'working hard'. Still, they need 3 1/2 months off per year.

Staying at work until the boss leaves happens mostly in the business world. Rarely does it go on at public schools, actually I've never seen it happen in a public school.

And where do get 3.5 months off? It's more like 2.5 months. Although they do tend to show up at school in the last week of Feb. And if you work a high school, often you're there till 9pm, and teaching classes for a good chunk of the summer and winter breaks.

Hi guys, so I'm a Korean American guy born and raised in the USA.  I had trouble dating in the USA and now I'm having even more trouble dating women here.

 

Gotta play by those 'Korean rules'.