A venting session

The last week or so I've been particularly busy. The end of the month always is with work, because we have to write evaluations on each student (so for me, that's around 100). It's sort of like a monthly report card for their parents to see their progress. I'm used to that, although it's time-consuming.
In addition to that, our school was chosen among the many YBM ECC's in Korea to be video-taped. Certain classes that they film will be posted on the website for prospective students to watch. Lucky me, my class was chosen to be taped. I wasn't too happy about this, as the class they wanted to tape was my 5 year olds (really about 3 years old American). I love my kids, but they can be hard to control and are less than attentive at times. So this was a big stressor for me. I had to prepare a phenomenal class for them to film, because it was a pretty big deal. There was a sort of "test run" on Monday and the final cut was filmed Tuesday. Let me just say that it's not gonna win any awards. Did I mention that I hate being video-taped??

In addition to even that, summer classes started on Monday. Most children get vacation from their "public schools" for about a month in August. That means extra work for people like me who work at "private" institutions (hagwons). My school is something they do as an extra-curricular activity, so when they're off of school, they still come to the hagwon and even more: they'd like us to provide extra classes, (aka: baby sitting services). So, all of us teachers have to work overtime by teaching more classes than normal. So, yippee for me, I get to be at school for 10 hours a day.
For those of you who really know my work ethic, I'm pissed. Work, I'm fine with. I do my best when I'm there. It pays the bills, I get the warm fuzzy feeling like I'm helping out the world at times. Great. But it's when work starts taking over my life that I REALLY have a problem with it. So, needless to say, I've been pretty upset the last couple of days. Not only am I writing evaluations outside of my normal work hours, preparing for my video debut, but I'm also teaching extra classes.
So, I was ready to go postal on Monday. Now, I'm not saying I have the worst situation in the world. In fact, other teachers (mainly Korean) at my very school have it worse than I do. But, I have to say, I didn't sign up for this. That's what's gets me about it. Our contract spells out pretty plainly about what is expected of us, but it happens to be ever-so-vague in many areas. It's not just this time either. "Something" always seems to come up to get us to put in more than we've bargained for.
I guess that's ultimately my fault for not going through it with a fine-toothed comb, but live and learn, I guess.
Now that I'm done with my evaluations and video-taping, I feel a bit better. My friend Keri is coming here from Milwaukee on Thursday evening. We are heading to Japan (!) on Saturday, and we arrive back in Korea on Wednesday. I have a break from work! Thank you! My friends Gilles and Geoff are also vacationing in Japan, so we'll get to hang out. Our plans so far include Tokyo Tower, Mt. Fuji, Imperial Palace, and a singing room (of COURSE I have to compare their singing rooms with those of Seoul...).
I can't wait!!!