A looooong week.

Part of most contracts in Korea is that you get 10 paid days of holiday per year. which is not much. One of the nice things the other teachers told me about Unium is that we get 5 days to a week of holiday every two months. This happens at the end of each normal school term when the children have exams. However, because this means we get alot more holiday time than specified by our contract we end up making up the hours elsewhere. In this case we had to make up for our 5 day holiday by working the following two saturdays. In case I have forgotten to mention it my working days on M/W/F is from 9am till 9:40pm. Its not as bad as it sounds, I only have 9-10 hours of classes and about 3 hours of breaks. But it can still be an exhausting experience. Anyway, the two saturdays we had to work were just like my M/W/F working days. So I ended up working five 13 hour days in a week. Not exactly fun! However, as bad as I felt about the situation you have to feel worse for the poor kids. I have been told that Korean children have more school hours than in any other country. Many of these children go to school from 9-4 and then go for 3-6 hours of extra schooling at two or more different Hogwan. Where they learn everything from English to math.