Workplace Weirdness

I've encountered a lot of strange things since I started working at Ding Ding Dang (yep, that's really the name of the school!). A lot of the so-called strangeness can be attributed to cultural differences, and some to management styles and personality differences. But sometimes things happen that are just plain weird. Today was one of those days.

In a meeting with all the teachers at the school, some of the Korean teachers became confused as to the proper pronunciation of the letter "a" as in "apple". Finally, the head teacher proposed a forum with all the foreign teachers in Daegu to come up with the "correct" pronunciation of the "short a" sound. We politely responded that maybe we could focus our efforts on bigger pronunciation issues, like p and f (fish here sounds like "peesh") or r and l (a friend was approached downtown by a group of born-again Christians shouting "Harrerujah!"). Which brings me to the next strange thing that happened...

In her critique of the new teacher's mock class, one of the Korean teachers recommended that "it's very important to make sure you collect the students' pronunciation." Ohhh, the irony!