It only feels like summer

If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now, the students at Taegu Foreign Language High School work their asses off.

The concept of semesters and vacations does not exist here. The concept that teenagers need a lot of sleep to function does not exist here. The very idea of "down time" for a student is risible. Weekends, too, are merely additional days for classes and studying. From my vantage point, if you are anywhere between the ages of 12 and 18 your purpose in life is to study like it's your job--a job in which you have no respite, no sleep, and no physical activity.

A day for a student at my school goes like this:

6:30am: Wake up for roll call (there are dorms at my school that students are required to live in).
6:30-7:00am: Cleaning rooms and shower time.
7-7:30: Breakfast.
7:30-7:40: Get ready for class.
7:40-8:00: Reading time.
8:00am-5:40pm: Classes (with lunch thrown in for good measure)
5:50-11:00pm: Mandatory evening study time (with dinner thrown in for good measure)
11:00-11:40pm: Cleaning and washing up time
11:40pm: Bedtime roll call
11:40pm-1:40am: Optional midnight study time (but more than likely mandatory before the Korean SATs).

This is a schedule that is adhered to every day, 5-6 days per week (every other week, students have Saturday classes).

During the summer "break", students get a whopping 5 days off, and during winter "break", they get 10 days, if they're lucky. This doesn't necessarily mean that the kids get to go home and lounge around, listening to K-Pop and sleeping in--more than likely, they're going to private tutors and private English academies, or taking the train up to Seoul to attend even more prestigious academies. Same goes for the Saturdays and Sundays the kids have "off" during the school year.

So, when I ask kids, "what are you doing for vacation?" and I receive a blank look of total befuddlement, this is why.

As the grades progress, the kids become less and less energetic. By the time they're 3rd graders (seniors), they look tired, sallow, and many have gained weight. They are sleeping 4 hours a night, and somehow managing to function. Naps are taken whenever, wherever possible, which is why I'll often see kids tumbled over each other, leaning aginst a desk, resting their heads against each other, or sleeping on one of the two couches that exist in the school, or just passed out, heads to desks.

I am amazed at their stamina, their ability to persist. As a teenager, I was suicidal if I didn't get at least 9 hours of good sleep per night, and would gladly have taken 12. In fact, I'm still like that. There must be such pressure/encouragement from their families to do well, to succeed, to be better than their classmates, otherwise why would they keep going? Why wouldn't they just find a dark and quiet corner in the school somewhere, curl into a ball, and take a break from everything for just the night?