Frustrated.

So, yesterday I spoke to Sukkyeong about the possibility of showing movies in class. She said, sure, no problem. I thought it would be good, because I'm finished my phonics lessons, so really, anything that I do now is just added stress on them before their exams. They can't handle any new vocabulary, believe me, and I can't have them reading or anything, because if I concentrate on one student, the rest of the class goes crazy.
So, movies it is.
It's raining today. Which sucks when you walk to work, but I can't complaing, because Jessie has twice the walk I do to get to school. So, no complaints, really, just it didn't help my feelings for the rest of the day.
I arrived with two movies. For the grade twos, "Around the World in 80 Days", which was a good choice. For the grade threes, "The Day After Tomorrow", which turned out to be a pretty good pick too. After my talk with Sukkyeong yesterday, I assumed that everything was going to be fine.
I went straight to Mrs Kim (the OTHER coteacher) and told her of my plan. She said "No DVD player work!" Well, great, that's just great.
BUT WAIT! The English Lab has a DVD Player and a projector screen, so why are we even talking? I'm going to go get ready!
Kapwing!
I got there, I finally found the right channel for the DVD player to play through the projector, truned on the stereo... the bell went... there was no sound.
I fiddled some more, and there was no sound.
Students came to pull cords and turn knobs. Nothing.
A grade three student, then a second were called out of class to pull the stereo out of it's little shelf and examine the wires behind. By this time, I am ready to pull out my hair. Not only am I losing the class (It had been about fifteen minutes by that point), but since the projector was still showing the movie, they were following that rather than trying to play hangman on the board with me. So I gave up.
Oh, another thing I hate about the English Lab is all of the headphones and knobs on the desks. Every place in the lab is outfitted with a pair of headphones, a microphone and a six-channel PA system, which is great because it allows the students to talk to eachother from across the room. Apparently, these things are only used to distract students from the class material, whether by using the headphones to communicate with one another or listen to music when the system is turned on (it's never turned off...) or by being extremely peelable and otherwise defaceable (... when I finally do turn it off). So yeah, I hate the English Lab.
Then my coteacher (who had left a few minutes before) came back and announced that we could use the Music Room instead. So yay, everyone is out into the hall and into the Music Room. It takes a few minutes to set it up, but finally we are rolling. Whew.

As soon as the bell rings, I run back to the English Lab, where the stereo is still off the shelf, now with all of it's wires disconnected and spilled on the floor (just abandoned once the music room was opened). So I set to work. The problem with getting boys to fix the thing was that they were not systematic about it at all, they just pulled and replaced every wire, pretty much randomly, from the looks of it. SO I set to work, making one change at a time, then surfing through all options on the stereo and the video projector. Finally, I got the sound working. Great sound, no picture. I kept trying. I tried every possible combination, several times.
I was just about to give up, and was walking away from it in disgust, when suddenly the projector started working! Yay!
I had about twenty minutes before my next class, so I decided to play some online video games.

Then, class started. They poured in, they sat down. I confiscated some things. I told them to take off their headphones. I told them to stop playing with their microphones. The movie started, and everything was great. Seriously.
Then about five minutes in, the projector starts flashing a message "Check Air Flow", which means it's overheating. Great. Plus, the message, while quite tiny, is in the middle of a huge white box covering most of the screen.
I fiddled with some buttons until it turned off. Of course, I knew it was only temporary, because it would still be overheating whether I got rid of the message or not. So great. Great great great.
Back to the music room. This time I decide to try the DVD player to try to get rid of the screensaver problem. We got the image up, but the sound was all fuzzy, and very very quiet. They kept yelling at me "More loud! Volume!" and I was getting so angry, because I know, I'm not an idiot. But I look like an idiot, because nothing in this damned school works and every time I try to do something fun or out of the ordinary it blows up in my face and I get super stressed like I am right now.
So, back on the computer. Now, in addition to trying to control the class (put down that desk! give me that mp3 player! Stop punching him!) I have to monitor the computer constantly, and all the while take notes for my questions about the movie later.
It was finally over. Now, it was ten minutes before my grade three class, so I popped my head in and told them to get their DVD player ready so we could watch a movie (their class had one, I knew). I arrived ten minutes later to find that the class was empty. My coteacher gave me a quizzical look and said "I sent them to the music room". Well great, it's better in their class, at least they have assigned seating. So, back they come.
The movie started, no problem. But then they started talking. Problem.
"Where's the Korean writing?" they asked, of course with much poorer English (think "Words, Korean NO!")
"Okay," I asked "Where's the remote?" Well, then begins the hunt for their homeroom teacher, because the remote is locked awway in her desk in the staff room and it is the only way to turn on the captioning.
Another ten minutes wasted.

Now, one thing I like about teaching here is that you can vent quite openly to students in class, and they just think it's the lesson. I mean, they barely understand anyways, so when I start talking about how everything is broken and every time I try to do something fun or different it all goes wrong, they don't understand anyways. But it still feels good to tell someone.

Then at lunch, they served Pork Cutlets. So I guess it's not all bad.