Bohol

After my days in Manila, I traveled to Bohol. I had some more Korean immigration setbacks, but I told my recruiter that I'm not staying in Manila for the rest of my vacation and that because these setbacks were caused primarily by my new school slacking off in getting my visa shit together, if I needed to make any other alterations to my itinerary, the school needed to foot the cost of the changes.

Anyhoo, I went to Bohol. I had booked a room at an amazing hotel that looked like an island paradise. I stayed at the Alumbung resort. http://www.alumbungbohol.com/alumbungs.html

Manila was great, but I really wanted to get out of a metropolitan environment and go swimming/drinking on the beach. So, I went to Bohol. The hotel/resort was wonderful. I went snorkeling(I would have gone scuba diving, but I have a strange paranoia about scuba diving.) I saw everything I wanted to see there and had a great time. I finally got my visa after returning to Manila and headed back to Korea. Then, the fun began.

Hobbits and Christmas Carols

One evening while in Manila, I decided to check out the nightlife. I started off by eating in some open air little bar/restaurant. I had an alright dinner, some ridiculously cheap San Miguel, and I talked with some expat from England who was there for some sort of business.

While I was eating and drinking, a group a street kids came up to the entrance. They began singing Christmas Carols. It felt a bit out of place, but then I remembered that even though I was in the South Pacific wearing shorts and a t-shirt, it was in fact December and The Philippines is a very Catholic country.

These carolers were amazing though. They didn't just stand politely singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," they had makeshift percussion instruments and a dance routine. I was more than happy to give them a donation.

My next stop for the evening was a very strange, but kind of amazing place, The Hobbit House. This is a bar which was apparently opened by a peace corps volunteer who really really loves Tolkien. The front entrance is a big round wooden door like that of Bilbo Baggins, and most of the staff are little people.

Now, I know what you're thinking. It's exploitative. The bar/restaurant is there for people to gawk at the little people. Perhaps it is. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the place. They had a great beer selection, a bathroom attendant, a pretty good atmosphere and decent music. When the band had finished, the bar-tender put on the "dream match" between Manny Pacquiao and Oscar De La Hoya. It was a few days old, but I don't follow boxing much, or really at all, and it was a great match. During the match, the bartender told me all about Manny Pacquiao and acted as a personal commentator for the match. Needless to say, "The Pacman" is now my favorite boxer.

Manila continued

After my carriage adventure, I decided to grab some dinner and head back to the hotel. I was pretty beat, so I stayed in for the night. I watched Pay it Forward which was a pretty stupid movie. I also really just don't like Kevin Spacey.

The next day, I went out and visited Jose Rizal park, which is really beautiful, interesting and a bit odd.







Call me crazy, but in a beautiful park built to preserve old buildings and honor an author who was executed by the conquistadors, a golf course seems a bit out of place.

The carriage ride

I'm at work now, waiting for my evening class to begin, so I don't have the photos to go with this entry.

Anyhoo, I hopped into the carriage, and the driver took me around intramuros. Intramuros is an old area of Manila where a ton of the old Spanish buildings are. It was pretty sweet because it was a whole neighborhood of grandiose European architecture that was all several hundred years old. He talked about the history of the area and then we went through China town which wasn't too exciting.

The trip ended back where he picked me up. He then said, "Ok, 50 hundred pesos." Before I hopped in, he clearly said "50 pesos" which is why I took the trip. 50 pesos is about $1. I told him, "Excuse me? You told me 50 pesos, not 50 hundred pesos."

He replied "Right. 50 hundred pesos."

I said "That's $100 for a 30 minute ride. I won't pay $100."

He said "You won't pay? Alright. I'm taking you to debter's prison." Keep in mind, this guy looked to be about sixty years old and weighed about 90 lbs (that's 41 kilos). He then started to take me to "debter's prison."

After about 30 seconds, I started pondering whether to leave 50 pesos on the seat and hop out or to see where this was going. I decided to stay for a little while. He then stopped again.

"Ok, I'll tell you what. How about 30 hundred pesos?"
"That's still $60. I won't pay it."
"Ok, you're going to debter's prison."

He moved along and stopped again 30 seconds later.
"Ok, I'll tell you what. How about 20 hundred pesos?"
"You told me 50."
"Ok, how about 10 hundred pesos?"

I mulled this over for a while. It was $20 when he told me $1, but I figured that $20 wasn't a ridiculous price, and I wasn't in the mood to play the going to debter's prison game any longer, so I gave him 1,000 pesos and went on my way.

Manila part 1

So, I had some bullshit to deal with regarding my visa and ended up having to fly all over the Philippines, but most of the time, the trip was great. While I spent my first night in Cebu, I pretty much got to my hotel, checked in, passed out and flew to Manila the next day.

I reserved a room in some shitty "hostel" my first night in Manila. I'm fond of hostels not only because they're cheap, but they tend to have a more friendly atmosphere where you can mingle and converse with people if you're traveling alone. This hostel, however was just a cheap place with no character and no other guests.

It was okay, though. I was in the exciting center of fun and tourism in Manila. I was in Ermita. I had arrived in the early afternoon after getting a full night's rest, so I was ready to go out and see the sites. I wandered around a bit and took some pictures. Here are a few.







It was a pretty exciting, vibrant city. It was busy, but not like Seoul. No one was rushing around. People were everywhere, but they were doing everything at a leisurely pace. I had been to Thailand before, but only in smaller cities, never Bangkok. This was like a strange mix of Thailand, Mexico and something entirely new.

After wandering around for a bit, I was approached by several people who wanted to either scam me or sell me something. The first guy offered access to girls, guns or anything else I wanted. I kindly declined. The next person who approached me was a hermaphrodite. H/She said "Hey, I've seen you around here. I think you're very sexy. Why don't you take me up to your place?" I told him that I wasn't interested, and then he/she insisted that he/she wasn't a prostitute, but I continued on my way. Finally, a skinny old guy came up to me and offered me a carriage tour of Intramuros and China Town. I said, no thanks. He said, "Oh no. I don't want to sell you anything. My tours are 50 pesos. That's it."

I asked him, "50 pesos?" and he confirmed it. So, I took him up on his offer.

My first vacation in quite a while

Between the time I finished at Reading Town and I started at my new school, I had about a month. It was December, so I decided to take this time off to enjoy a nice tropical country. I had already been to Thailand, so I decided to try the Philippines. The trip had two purposes. One was for some r and r, the other was to get my new visa. I booked a trip to Cebu and Bohol after confirming with my worthless recruiter that I could get a visa at the consulate in Cebu. A few days before I flew out, my recruiter contacted me to let me know that I had to go to Manila. I was a little pissed, but after I adjusted my trip and got a ticket from Cebu to Manila for about $20, I shrugged it off. My recruiter and new boss would continue to piss me off throughout the rest of my vacation with visa issuance number delays, but that's another story.

So, I flew out to Cebu. The next day I flew out to Manila. I'm kind of glad that I had to go to Manila, because I really enjoyed the city, but more on my trip to the Philippines later.

The search begins again

So, I put in my notice and began searching for another job. I chose a pretty crappy time to search for a new job, though. The won was at a ridiculous rate, and most employers were offering a maximum of 2.3M. I had several interviews at various Avalon branches, and most of these offered 2.5, which I would have been happy with, but most of the locations were brand new, and they had set curriculums with class flow charts. I was not looking for a job where I essentially follow a script, and I wasn't going to gamble with a location that was just starting up.

A friend of mine mentioned his school which sounded pretty great. The classes were entirely up to the discretion of the teachers, and they taught using novels. I went in for an interview, but there were a couple of things which worried me. The pay was pretty high, but there were no benefits. The visa situation was also a little odd. I ended up declining the position.

Finally, I talked to a school in Anyang. The pay was 2.3, but the hours were very low, teachers were allowed freedom in the classes, and there were lots of opportunities for extra pay. I talked to the teacher I was replacing, and he gave a glowing review of the school. So, I decided to work there.

This was one of the worst decisions I have made since coming to Korea.

My thoughts on teaching and the end of my 1st/4th job

Although my new supervisor was a complete moron, I had started to get into the swing of things at my job. My hours had decreased, and my boss was very supportive of me. During the summer, my mother came to visit, and my boss took us both out a couple of times and was quite generous.

Although the working conditions were getting better, some other issues started arising. The lesson content was alright, but I felt it could be improved in many ways. I was teaching two basic classes, speaking/reading and writing. The speaking/reading classes were a breeze, and the lessons went pretty well. The only issue I had with them was that many of the students would listen for key words, find the the key words in the book and then just read the sentence with the key word out loud with out thinking about or understanding the question. Personally, I wanted the students to read their stories, understand them and be able to discuss them. So, I started having students close their books after reading them when we discussed them in order to break them of the habit of just reading random sentences aloud.

In the writing classes there was a whole series of issues I had to tackle. I had many students with incredible vocabularies, great speaking skills and no understanding of basic grammar. While I'm fond of the communicative method, I also think that fundamentals of grammar are necessary when studying a second language, especially a second language with an entirely different grammatical structure from the native language. For example, I had students who knew words like onomatopoeia but couldn't conjugate to be.

So, in my writing classes, I produced some supplementary materials where the students had to practice writing basic verbs in sentences with different subjects. I thought that there wasn't much of a point in teaching students how to "show instead of tell" if they couldn't convey basic information like "He goes to the store."

The admin liked my ideas, but a few parents complained, and then they started scrutinizing all of my teaching techniques. Everything was suddenly too hard. I needed to just follow the lesson plans made by the experts at Reading Town. All of my classes were going swimmingly. My students were all very responsive. They retained most of the information I covered in class. Their test scores were all pretty decent, but the parents hated me. Or, rather one or two parents hated me and the administration was all over my ass because some parent who couldn't speak English thought she was an expert on teaching English. After a month or so of this, I decided that I was done with this bullshit and wanted to find a job where I had control over the content of my class. I gave my notice and agreed to remain until the six month mark.

Laziness and apathy strike

I'm putting the blog on hold for a while. More updates will come, but it may be a while.

The biggest douche in the universe

My new supervisor had started working, but I didn't see him much as he was spending most of his time going over the system with the director. The weekend before the new session started, we had a meeting to go over the new syllabus, meet the new supervisor and discuss random other things. The meeting started, and the new supervisor was introduced. Then we got down to "important business." The new supervisor pretty much ran the meeting. The first important piece of business was stickers. Parents were complaining that we were too stingy with the stickers and didn't make it clear why stickers were awarded. So, we received sticker guidelines. One would think that this part of the meeting would take about 30 seconds, but some of my coworkers insisted on defending their own sticker policies and arguing with the new supervisor for about 20 minutes. Personally, I didn't give a flying fuck because they were stickers. If little Rora needed four instead of three, it has no effect on my classes.

The next order of business pissed me off. We didn't look busy enough when we were in the teacher's room. When we're not teaching, we should be doing work. If a parent saw one of us checking email, reading or eating, they would be very upset. We needed to appear to be working even if we weren't. This is when I excused myself, picked up my contract and printed out a copy of the current Korean labor laws. We ended up arguing for a bit, but it was settled that it was okay to relax while we were on break, but that we could only use school computers for actual work.

Some more random bullshit was discussed. None of it was in the least bit important, and then the director finally cut off the new supervisor so that we could go over the new syllabus. They explained the new format and that we would be using folders for each of the classes which we shared with our co-teachers so that we could see how the kids were doing in the other classes.

The following Monday, the new session started. We had no syllabi. Our books were also unsorted. So all of the teachers had to pick random books and guess how many pages to cover that day. I wasn't too worried. I just counted the books and compared their difficulty. I generally figured out which books to use and covered about as many pages as I had in previous classes.

When it was time to go upstairs to teach the middle school program, I still didn't have any syallabi, so I talked to the secretary up there. I wanted to be a bit more organized for those classes because they involved daily quizzes and specific computer assignments which would both be a lot more work to make up and adjust. So, I told the secretary that I had no idea what I was teaching that day and asked her if she knew which book I was teaching and what homework to give. She looked it up and told me.

The next day, I received all of my syllabi. While I was doing some prep, the douche approached me and told me he was very disappointed with how I acted yesterday. I should have known what I was teaching. I was a little taken aback. I asked him how I was supposed to know what to teach when no one had given me a syllabus. He then told me that he said the new syllabi were in the class folders at the meeting. I told him to wait a second. I then walked downstairs and pulled out all of my class folders. I brought them upstairs and showed them to him. None of them had a syllabus.

"Oh, so are you much proud? Is you happy to show me wrong? I understand. Yesterday was little bit crazy, so I forgive you. But don't forget what you is teaching again."

"Okay, buddy. Sure thing."

A new supervisor

So, the old supervisor left, but we were on much friendlier terms. My hours became a little lower once I got into the swing of things and was able to manage my time and more efficiently grade the huge stacks of papers I had to correct. I still had to wait a little while for the new syllabus to kick in, but it became manageable. I got my time at the hagwon down to 10 hours maximum, and I was no longer doing field trips.

Then, the new supervisor came. This man was, in fact the biggest douche in the universe. He "lived in England for 15 years" but spoke English about as well as my second year students. He had a perm. He insisted on being referred to as Reverend. He also knew absolutely nothing about teaching English.

Once the new syllabus kicked in, my class and workload dropped, and I had considerably more free time. Other things started to drive me crazy though.

More to come later, but I've got some teaching to do.

Things cool off

After my fight/argument/heated discussion with my supervisor, I went home and thought about my work situation. I had some extra money saved. I was being worked to death and had to deal with tons of bullshit, so as I mentioned before, I decided to quit.

The next day, I went in and spoke with the director. I explained that while I appreciated everything that was given to me, I needed things like sleep and a single day at work that wasn't filled with stress. I agreed to stay for another month and a half so that I could leave after the summer session and he could find a replacement.

My supervisor with whom I battled the night before pulled me aside. She told me that she checked my timecard and saw the hours I was putting in and that she was sorry. She also mentioned that she had given her notice as well and that she was son angry the day before because she was fighting with the director. She told me about an opening at a hagwon in Sillim which had pretty good conditions. A coworker from my first year was working there, so I contacted them for an interview. The school seemed alright, but the hours were similar and the place seemed a little off. I interviewed with Jung Chul at their head office the next week.

The Jung Chul position sounded pretty sweet. They offered 2.6 plus all of the standard benefits, an afternoon evening shift, and a great apartment. I spoke with a few of the at that time current employees and the position sounded good.

I was ready to go back and sign, but then my director pulled me into his office. He told me how much he liked me as a teacher and that he really wanted me to stay. He wrote up a contract addendum which stated that I didn't need to attend any field trips or any other kindergarten related events. He showed me the new syllabus which had speaking two times a week and writing once instead of the reverse, and he offered me a better apartment. He also told me that the new supervisor spent a lot of time in England and was a lot more laid back.

After a bit of thought, I decided to stay. I liked the director and knew I could trust him.

The new supervisor is another story...

Fun times at Reading Town

Before I begin this post, I would like to mention that I still like my boss at wonderland/reading town. The workload was ridiculous, but he was generally honest, paid on time in full, was very helpful in getting the teachers situated, and was open to some compromises. I would recommend the school for a first year teacher who is wary of hagwons. Nevertheless, I wouldn't return there myself.

I began working in the middle of the week. I came in on a Wednesday, I believe. My first week, I was just observing classes and going over the new program. The first surprise came when I was handed my schedule. I was in fact teaching kindergarten. I started in the afternoon, but I had to teach kindergarten PE and attend field trips and Saturday events. I would be fine with this except for the fact that on field trip days, I was working from 9:30am to 10:15pm. That's a bit much.

After my training, I started teaching. Teaching was fine for the most part, but the kindergarten classes were horrible. It's one thing when you teach 10 students everyday and you can build up a relationship with the students. It's another when you teach different groups of 20 students each day and you only teach them once a week in a room filled with toys.

The elementary students were fine. The paperwork involved with the elementary students was insane, however. Each student wrote two journals, one essay and three book reports every week. I had about 80-90 elementary students, so that comes out to around 510 pages of marking every week. Then there were tests, quizzes and report cards. I was also teaching a program for a few hours a week with middle school students. This program wasn't so bad, but there was a lot of information I had to print out and enter into the computer using an incredibly buggy and horribly illogical system.

Most days, I was there for about 12 hours. I was barely able to complete all of my paperwork in that time. Sometimes, I'd make a mistake or two like forgetting to write a daily report or not correcting a set of papers for one class on time. This happened on days when I was there for more than 12 hours. The first two weeks, my supervisor was on my ass the entire time.

I am usually a laid back person. I'll be very stern with kids, but I'm usually very calm and diplomatic when I speak to adults. If I am really pissed, I usually maintain my composure. When my boss in Bucheon lied to me every day about my severance pay, I never raised my voice. After two weeks at Reading Town, however, I snapped.

It was Friday. I had come in at 9:30 to go on a field trip. The night before, I stayed until around 11:30 to get some paperwork done because I wouldn't be able to the next morning because I had a field trip. After the field trip, the elementary classes and the middle school classes, it was 10:15, and I was doing some more paperwork. My supervisor came in and started yelling at me about one of the middle school classes. I made a mistake the previous night while assigning their online homework. I had assigned them homework for level 4-AC instead of level 4-AB or something else along those lines.

I said, "Sorry, which class are you talking about? I'll fix it." She said "the Mario class." I said "Which class is that? Is that WM4C or WT4C?" She started yelling again. "You are a terrible teacher. You should know all of your students names. Why don't you know Mario?" I was still calm and explained that I have only been here for two weeks, I only teach the middle school students twice a week and I have about 200 students in total(As it turned out, Mario had been absent for the first two weeks I was teaching, so there is no way I could have known who he was). She yelled for a little while longer and dragged me into her office to watch me enter the homework into the computer. I logged in and began looking for the class after going through six steps to pull up the online homework assignment page. I was slowly scrolling through a list of around 60 classes to find the WM4C class. After I took to long, she pushed me out of the way, found the class and assigned them.

"Why didn't you memorize the instructions I gave you?"
"I need to sleep and eat. I don't have time."
"You are so lazy. I thought you were smart. Mike Teacher memorized the instructions in one day. You don't know how to use the computer after two weeks."

This is when I decided to vent my fury which had been building up over the past two weeks. I yelled at her first about how I would be able to use the computer system just fine if things were listed alphabetically, by level or any other logical system rather than completely random. There is no way to remember a list of names consisting of three letters and one number. I then ranted about how I wouldn't be making so many mistakes if anyone had bothered to debug the horrible software we were using, if I wasn't here for 12 hours a day, and I was able to eat something other than kimchi and rice during my 12 hours at the school.

After I finished yelling at her, she gave me a written warning and I gave my written notice.

Back to the old stomping grounds

Sorry for the delay between updates. I tend to only catch the writing bug when I've consumed some of the Toad Juice, and it's been a while.

So, after I was dicked around for awhile by Lingua, I decided to say goodbye to my free time and hello to a guaranteed paycheck and benefits. I went back to wonderland.

I talked to my former boss and negotiated my new salary which wasn't too bad. I was also taking the afternoon/evening shift which meant not only no phone teaching but no bullshit weekend work or any other nonsense, or so I thought.

Wonderland had changed. They bought a different franchise which I thought I would like, Reading Town.

Towards the end of my first year, my boss had taken an interest in the Reading Town Franchise. He purchased some of their materials and had the teachers try them out. I enjoyed them. I liked the idea of using children's books and basing classes around the stories, grammar and vocabulary in real books rather than half-assed konglish stories about nothing. I thought that the layout was good, and that a lot of important things were emphasized in the workbooks. Granted, I would still say that Reading Town has a decent educational philosophy and system, but I would never work there again.

My boss picked me up and moved me to my new apartment in my old neighborhood. This was an ok apartment in a really great spot. The apartment was really tiny, but it had a veranda and was fully furnished. The kitchen was in the veranda, but that wasn't too important because I don't cook that often, and the immediate neighborhood was great.

This was back in the neighborhood of Siheung-dong. No, not Siheung-Si. Siheung-dong in the southwest corner of Seoul. About thirty steps away from the front of my apartment was a market street where I could buy almost anything I needed for a ridiculously low price. I also found my favorite food a stone's throw away from my new apartment.

In my new, immediate neighborhood, there were/are tons of Chinese immigrants. One Chinese(sort of) food I had not tried before was yang gochi. This is a very simple but delicious food. It's lmab meat on skewers. Not shishkebabs. This is just lamb meat. You grill it for a while and then move the skewer away from the grill/charcoal. You then roll it in whatever you call the red pepper salt/powder. GochuSogeum??? I don't know. Nevertheless, it's one of my all time favorite foods.

Anyhoo, my apartment wasn't so great, but my neighborhood was amazing. I was also much closer to my school than I was my first year.

I knew I would have to adjust to a higher workload than I had become accustomed to the previous year, but I was willing to sacrifice a little bit of free time for a stable and honest employer.

My new found appreciation for the wonders of reading town soon faded....

The end of the new job

After a couple of weeks in Sanbon/gunpo, my employer secured a sweet apartment in Uiwang. It's pronounced eu wi wong, but I always liked calling it wee wang because I'm mature like that. The new place was the best apartment I've had in Korea. It was a relatively new officetel with a loft, a gs25 on the first floor and a great view.

Work was going ok. Some of the paper work was getting annoying, though. It's a bit frustrating to correct multiple choice quizzes with no possible correct answers.

One tuesday morning, I went to the nearest hospital to get an insulin refill. They gave me a bill for 400,000 won. They told me that I didn't have insurance. I called my boss and asked him what the deal was and he told me my old location never transferred over my visa and he can't provide health insurance until that was taken care of. I called my old institute to ask why I didn't have health insurance when I have a pay statement which said that 50,000 was deducted for it. They pretended they didn't know who I was.

After a while, my visa was finally transferred and I had health insurance. I was able to get a refund from the hospital.

After I left the hospital, I went to work and was called into the office. My new boss was "very upset" I didn't tell him I was diabetic. He gave me two weeks notice because he "didn't feel comfortable employing someone with health problems."

Two weeks later, my replacement arrived from the US. This was his first time teaching in Korea, and this was right after the new immigration policies went into effect.

So, somehow, this person was found, hired and had all of his paperwork and consulate interviews taken care of in under two weeks. I later talked to him, because I was a bit suspicious and found out that he was hired a month before he came over.

So, I was in fact hired just so that I could cover for a month while they waited for a teacher who could work for significantly less pay arrived.

On my last day, I was paid for my month at the hagwon. It was 600k less than I was expecting. I was told that the entire vacation was unpaid. As I mentioned earlier, the new vacation plan was 4 weeks vacation, 2 unpaid, 2 paid. So, If we had two weeks off in May, our paychecks would be 75%, not 50%. My vacation was the last week in April and the first week in May, so because my April pay was 75%, I expected my May pay to be 100%.

I talked to the old school and they said, "Oh, no. The whole vacation is unpaid." I asked them why it said 10 days paid vacation, and they told me it was for sick days despite the fact that there were sick days on a different page. I talked to a couple of teachers at my old gig, and they were pissed too. One of them threatened to quit if she didn't receive her contractual vacation pay, and she was successful. I decided to let it go because I was quite tired of dealing with all of the lying and bs.

I also made another poor choice. I was so sick of dealing with people who constantly lied, cheated and were unable to pay me. So, I decided to go back to my first job. I figured it was a stressful job, but I could always count on getting paid on time and in full. I called up my old boss who was thrilled to hear from me. Apparently, they had a relatively new employee they hated and wanted to fire. I would be taking his schedule which was an afternoon/evening elementary/middle school schedule. I was pretty happy, because while I love the kindergarten kids, most of the stress and bullshit from my first year came from doing all of the extra work for the kindergarten program. He offered me a new contract with a generous salary, so I agreed.

A forgotten anecdote and the new gig

Before I begin my short tale of the adventures in Southeast Gyeonggi-Do, I must relay an amusing event which occurred while I was working in Ilsan.

I began teaching a class, and some kid forgot his book. I gave the kid my copy, sent him outside and told him to go to the front desk and get a copy. I marked the pages we were covering and expected him back shortly.

It took a while, but he returned. He didn't have any copies of the pages I marked, but he had a lukewarm cup of instant coffee. A secretary/desk teacher followed him in with another cup of coffee. She asked if I was ok.

I told her I was fine.

She then told me it's not alright to send students out of the class to bring me drinks.

Anyhoo, back in Bucheon I prepared for my move to the Gwacheon area. The new boss would be picking me up in his car, but there wouldn't be room for a few of the things in my apartment like my recently purchased bike or my clothing hanger. I was a little sad to see my new bike go, but it only cost about 60,000 won and the hanger I could do without.

He assured me that all of the paperwork would be taken care of, my visa would be transferred over and my contract would remain the same.

He took me to my new apartment, which was in Sanbon in Gunpo. The place was okay, but it was pretty bare and not as nice as my old place. He asked if I wanted to stay there or move to an apartment in Uiwang that was a loft style officetel. I opted for the officetel. I truly longed for an apartment where I could have guests over in a room that wasn't my bedroom. I had to stay in the Sanbon/Gunpo apartment for a couple of weeks though while he found my new apartment.

The Sanbon apartment was okay. The neighborhood was pretty happening, and the apartment wasn't tiny, but it was a pretty standard one room villa style apartment. There was also a decent hof upstairs where I had a few meals.

The school was okay as well, but not great. At my previous school, I had only taught one speaking class under the new Lingua system. In the new school, half of my classes were under the Lingua system, and I was teaching writing and multi-media. The speaking class books were good, but the new books were shit. They were written in Korea, which means instead of hiring someone who speaks English to write an English textbook, they hired a bunch of Koreans with a basic understanding to write the books. Most of the class time in the writing class was taken up by me correcting the books for the students and giving them other tasks.

The multi-media classes consisted of me pressing play, letting the students watch CNN videos and then giving them tests on the video after playing it twice. I don't know why they needed someone with a college degree from an English speaking country to do this job, but I accepted it.

Updates coming soon

I will continue my tale and let you all know about the exciting world of gwacheon, uiwang and gunpo shortly. For the time being, however, I will be in Fukuoka on a visa run that has cost me almost 4M won. The reasons for this will be told later on in the story, though.

Things start to get unpleasant part 5

So, I worked through the rest of the week. On Friday, there was a staff dinner at the Ilsan school, but I turned down the invitation. I had to take the subway home because the Ilsan boss was attending the staff dinner. He walked me out and showed me where the subway was and asked me to work for another week. I declined, but then he offered me a permanent position. He explained that he'd handle all of the visa stuff and that he really wanted me to work there.

I turned him down because things were still generally good in Bucheon and I enjoyed my life there. I took the subway home. On Sunday, the head teacher in Ilsan called and begged me to work for the next week. After a ton of begging and the cancer stricken teacher calling me, I finally agreed.

I finished up the week easily enough, but on pay day, I noticed my boss had neglected to pay me my severance. Upon returning to Bucheon, I immediately called my boss to ask what was up. He apologized and explained that the money would be in by Tuesday night at the latest. He had to spend a lot of money on renovations and purchasing the new name. I was pretty skeptical and pissed, so I went into work and made my boss sign a document promising that the money would be paid by Tuesday. Had I not done him a huge favor by working at another school for the last two weeks, I wouldn't have been so pissed, but begging for a favor and then turning around and not paying someone severance after a huge favor is done is a pretty shitty thing to do to someone.

I waited. After work on Tuesday, I went to the bank and checked my balance. My money still wasn't there. I went back to work and went into my boss's office. He said "I'm busy, hold on a minute." He was playing solitaire. I told him that he needed to pay me now and pulled out the signed agreement. He said he forgot. He picked up a bank book and went out to pay me. He said sorry and that he was heading straight to the bank to put my pay in.

The next day, I went to the bank. The money wasn't there. So, my boss actually pretended to go to the bank to delay my anger for half a day. I immediately called my boss. There was no answer. I tried several more times. I then sent him several angry text messages. I started off with simple ones like "Where's my money?" and "내금전 어디에??" which I'm pretty sure isn't quite correct. After a couple of hours, I put in my notice and started sending out my resume. I went in and talked to the head teacher and told him I would not be working there after one month. I decided to do the decent thing and give them a full month notice.

A couple hours later, I get a call from my boss. He was in the hospital. He said that he couldn't pay me the day before because the bank was closed. I was a little skeptical, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He promised he'd pay the next day. It took another five days, but he finally payed me my severance. When he came back he said something in horrible Konglish about how he could put me on an immigration blacklist if he wanted. This was of course in front of one of my students.

After that, things went fairly well. Then, the head teacher brought up the new vacation policy. They were offering now instead of 10 days paid vacation on days of the teachers choice, 20 days half paid vacation during exam periods. So, we would get 2 weeks off at a time and receive 75% pay for the month. I agreed because I wanted to go on a long vacation.

During the first long vacation at the end of April, I was contacted by the VP who wanted to know if I could work at a different branch in Gwacheon. The pay and contract would be the same, but it would be in a different location. I went and checked out the other branch and the area around it. I agreed. I didn't want to deal with any more bullshit from Tony.

Things start to get unpleasant part 4

So, the Ilsan guy picks me up, and he's pretty nice. Apparently, the teacher I was subbing for had cancer and was recovering from treatment. So, this guy was fairly decent. Most hagwon bosses would fire someone with cancer and leave them to deal with insurance and treatment. The school was decent, and the students were alright. The school used pretty good books that the kids all liked, and everyone who worked there seemed decent.

The conditions weren't so great though. They weren't horrible, but they weren't as good as the conditions at my school. Instead of teaching about five classes a day with ten minute breaks between each class, I taught seven classes with no breaks. Most of the kids were good, but there was one kid who asked me "Teacher do you like Puck You?"

I dragged this kid out into the hall. I didn't want to invest a lot of time dealing with the kid since I would only be teaching him for one more day, so I brought him to the head teacher and told him to repeat what he said to me to her. That night I got a very apologetic call from her saying she was so sorry that the kid said something so offensive and that it wouldn't happen again. I was a little surprised, because this is pretty standard fare. Usually, Korean staff don't care and either lightly scold students or ignore it. I told her not to worry because I had experienced far worse.

The next day after I finished teaching, the Ilsan boss took me out to dinner and my Bucheon boss met us at the restaurant. We were at some "famous" restuarant and the Ilsan boss ordered bibimbop for us. It was pretty good, but I just wanted to go home. When my Bucheon boss arrived, he said "Oh no. He is America person. He needs meat!!" He then ordered some galbi. I had a few pieces, but I was already pretty full. My Bucheon boss, Tony(I forgot that I decided to include his name)spent the next twenty minutes stuffing his face and speaking with his mouth full and spitting half of his meal on my plate in true Korean fashion.

After a little while, Tony turned to me and said I need to work there for the rest of the week, but after that I would be teaching in Bucheon. The Ilsan boss would also be taking me out to dinner every night to show his appreciation. I protested, but after enough guilt was pushed in my direction for being taken out to such a nice restaurant, I finally agreed. Mostly, I just wanted to go home and get out of the uncomfortable situation of eating with two ajeoshis in a "famous" Korean restaurant.

So, I worked at the Ilsan school for the next three days.

Hmm, this looks like it will turn into a six or seven part series.

*****Stay tuned for part 5*****

Things start to get unpleasant part 3

A few weeks after the remodeling fiasco, my second year at the Bucheon school began. Things started out pretty well. Under my new contract, I had no more Saturdays and a small raise. I did, however have to stay at the school from 2-9 regardless of whether or not I had classes during that time in exchange for the lack of Saturdays. This wasn't so bad though, because they had put computers in all of the offices, and I spent my free time reading, surfing the web, practicing Korean or playing the best computer game of all time, Escape Velocity Nova http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_Nova Think of this game as a cross between GTA, Freelancer and Battlestations on Facebook. You start off in a crappy spaceship. You fly around doing random odd-jobs and earning a bit of money. You then get a better ship, buy and sell weapons and outfits for the ship and then get involved in one of six major story lines. You then get access to better ships and weapons but can put the main missions aside for a while while you fly around different systems to explore, trade or pirate other vessels and take on side jobs. It's pretty great.

Anyhoo, things were going pretty well for a while. Under my first contract, if I re-signed(I do love how re-sign and resign have entirely contradictory meanings) my severance would come with the first paycheck of my second year, so one month after the end of my first contract. We'll come back to that in a later post.

On a Friday after my first couple of weeks on my second contract, my boss approached me.

He asked me if I could substitute teach in Ilsan for a few days. I told him I couldn't because I had a lot going on in my classes in Bucheon. He told me they'd be covered and not to worry about it. I asked him what the conditions would be. He told me I'd be teaching from 1-7 and that the Ilsan boss would pick me up at 12 and I'd get home at 8. I wouldn't be paid extra. I told him that I wasn't really interested.

Monday morning, I got a call from my boss. He called to tell me that the boss in Ilsan was on his way to pick me up. I asked him what the fuck he was talking about because I had told him I wasn't going to substitute. He begged and pleaded and explained how the guy in Ilsan was his senior and he had to say yes. Finally after he promised that it would be only two days, I agreed.

Things start to get unpleasant part 2

So, a few hours after I left messages everywhere and went off to get my fingerprints taken for my criminal background check just in case, I get a call from work. It was about a half hour before my first class. The call was from one of the secretaries saying that my first two students canceled. I explained that I wasn't coming in anyways and that I had left a message. They didn't understand and wanted to know what was up. I tried to explain that I'm not coming into work while they're painting in a small space with no windows. She didn't quite understand, so I just said I'm sick.

About an hour later, I get a call from my recruiter. I generally dislike recruiters, but this guy and his company are pretty great. The recruiting company is and was esl-planet. This call came 11 months after I started at the school. The recruiter called to ask what was going on because my boss had called him to request two new teachers because he wanted to fire me and the other teacher who didn't come in and pay an immigration officer to ban us from ever coming back to Korea.

I explained the situation. He seemed pretty shocked. He advised that I go in anyways and try to smooth things out, but to take pictures just in case. He then calmed down my boss, and I went in. The place was pretty unbearable, but only one of my students decided to come that day because the rest didn't want to weave through cords attached to running saws in order to sit in a tiny room filled with sawdust and paint fumes any more than I did. On the way in, I made sure to snap tons of pictures with my phone and got the other coworker who opted to stay home to pose with a seven year old student next to a pile of rubble and power tools.

I spoke to the head teacher who said he agreed with me, but I should have handled it more professionally, and that I should just apologize because the boss was pretty pissed. The boss came in, but he had calmed down a bit.

He told me that he was very disappointed and that I stayed home because I hate Koreans. He then said that I wouldn't do that at a job in America. I then told him that if someone running a similar business in America decided to hold classes for children in a construction site, he would be facing class action lawsuits from both the employees and the parents of the students, his business license would be revoked, and he would most likely be facing criminal charges as well.

He then pointed out the new oxygen pumps in each of the rooms and said that he deeply cared about all of the teachers and had them installed in all of the rooms for our health. The oxygen pumps were actually just a gimmick of the franchise he bought based off of some study that if you pump oxygen into a room, students would be more alert and receptive.

I decided to drop it and hope that this was the end of my troubles at this school. Aside from the past week, my experiences at the school were generally good. My hours weren't too bad. Even though I sometimes had a heavy class load, my prep time was minimal, I had complete control over the content of my classes and I had various other perks.

This, however, was only the beginning.

****Continued in Part 3****

Things start to get unpleasant part 1

Around the time when the two new employees started working at our hagwon, CDI moved in one floor below us. For those of you who are unfamiliar with CDI, It's a giant, hugely popular English hagwon/academy. When this happened, many of our students left and joined the more famous and prestigious academy.(At this point I should mention that my teaching hours were increasing, and my boss was pulling a ton of obnoxious crap like calling me in the morning and telling me I need to come to the academy right away to interview students who never showed up.)

Around this time, I was negotiating my contract for the next year, had saturdays removed and re-signed.

In order to gain more students and compete with the hagwon below us, my boss decided to buy a franchise name which was gaining popularity. I'm not too sure about libel/slander/defamation laws here, so I'll just say that the franchise/chain rhymes with Ringua.

After the Chinese new year break, I returned to work. As I stepped through the door, I noticed that there was rubble strewn everywhere, a cloud of grey and white dust, and the sound of drills and electric saws.

I immediately went to the head teacher and asked him what the hell was going on. He explained that they were remodeling and going with the Ringua theme. I asked him why we were open and why the boss didn't think there were any health or safety issues when there were students as young as seven years old running around a construction site. He said he agreed, but the boss didn't want to lose any money by closing the school down for a few days.

I did my best to teach the few students who decided to come during the renovations and had to step outside plenty of times to breathe air that wasn't filled with sawdust and cement powder.

During this time, my boss decided he didn't want to stay around the academy during the construction, so he took a vacation to Busan.

Towards the end of the renovations, the workers brought in cans of paint and paint thinner to be used the next day. I talked to the vp and asked him if they were going to be painting and using paint thinner during business hours the next day. He said they were, but they were only going to use a little bit of oil based paint and set up an electric fan to bring in fresh air.

The next day, I decided to stay home. Early in the morning, I texted my boss, head teacher and the vp that I was not coming in. I then left a voice message on the academy phone saying the same thing.

***Continued in Part 2****

Alex

Alex was and probably still is an asshole.

He was pretty smart. He taught himself Spanish, French, Korean and Mandarin. He never taught himself, however how to interact with people. He would often ask something like "How was your weekend?" and when anyone started to answer, he'd either start talking about something else or walk away while you were talking.

He would ask for other teachers to cover classes for him and then never return the favor.

At this academy, the schedule was pretty flexible because most of the classes were one on one. As a result, schedules would often change every few weeks when a new student came or when one of the students had to change the time they came in. Alex took advantage of this. He would go behind the front desk and change the schedule. He would give the other teachers students he didn't like or who were at an inconvenient time.

His interaction with several of the students was also a little odd. The Canadian teacher and I noticed that he would make a considerable amount of physical contact with many of the middle school boys. At first it was playing around with taekwondo moves. Later, I saw him walking down the street towards the academy with his arm around the shoulder of one of my students. He also mentioned to the Canadian coworker that it wasn't fair that she and I got all of the good looking students while he got all of the ugly ones.

We both had our suspicions about him but figured he was just a little off balance. Then one morning, the Canadian teacher received a telephone call. It was about 7am on a Sunday. He wanted her to go to his apartment and pick up his laptop. She asked why, and he said he needed her to get it right away and he'd explain later. She didn't really want to, but he begged and pleaded, so finally she did.

The night before, our school had a company dinner. Everyone went out, ate and talked, and there were a few beers at the table. Alex drank about half of one.

After she picked up the computer, he explained that he went to a jimjilbang(spa/sauna) after the dinner. He fell asleep and had an erotic dream because of all the alcohol he drank. During his erotic dream, he somehow groped a child who was sleeping near him. The child went to his father and told him that someone groped him, and Alex was picked up by the police.

After hearing the tale of groping a child because Alex was "having an erotic dream," the coworker wanted to know why she needed to pick up his computer. He said he just didn't want anyone taking it because it was expensive.

News of the incident reached our school. This was because the parent of the child wanted blood money from our director. As is the custom here, no criminal charges were filed, but Alex needed to pay a ton of money. He didn't have that kind of money, so the school had to pay. I have no idea why, but he wasn't fired for quite a while.

A couple of months later, he was let go because the school didn't want to keep paying the parent of the groped child and because everyone hated him.

New teachers and the beginning of the end.

A little over half way through my second year, three teachers were let go. One was let go because his classes were dull, although he seemed like a pretty nice guy. The other two were let go because they had no degrees and immigration was snooping around. Two new teachers came to replace them. The new teachers were Alex, who was a dick, and another teacher whose name I forget.

The other teacher was pretty great. He was pretty amusing and had lived in Korea for ten years, was married and was a generally nice guy. He left his previous school because of a legal issue, however. Apparently, he was driving one day and was cut off. He was greatly angered and followed the car for a few blocks honking his horn and shaking his fist. The driver ahead of him called the police.

The teacher went on his way and stopped pursuing the driver who cut him off. While he was at a red light, someone came up to his window, started yelling at him and reached inside the car. The teacher was a bit frightened and didn't know what was happening so he hit the accelerator and drove off.

As it turns out, the person reaching into his car was a police officer who wasn't wearing a uniform. When the teacher accelerated, he hit him with his side view mirror
and somehow severed the police officer's penis. Later he worked out a deal and had to pay what's known as "blood money" so the officer could buy a prosthetic and be reimbursed for his pain. His school let him go because of this incident.

Later, though immigration got wind of the incident and deported him, so he was at our school for about a month.

The other new teacher, Alex deserves a post of his own.

Bucheon apartments and noise.

As I mentioned earlier, my first apartment in Bucheon was pretty decent. It was big, in a good neighborhood and all of the appliances were in good condition. I did, however have horrible neighbors. Down the hall, a man and woman lived and had fights at three or four am every night. These were not your typical brief shouting matches. These were Korean fights.

They would start off with yelling. Then there was shrieking as if someone was being murdered followed by dishes being thrown.

When one of the teachers at my school was fired, my boss asked me if I could move into his place because it would save him some money. I told him I'd have to see the place first. When I saw the place, it was great. It was the same size as my first place, but it was on a lower floor and had a much better layout. It had an actual countertop in the Kitchen, a camera for the door and various other perks. So, I took the place. I took the place and was pretty happy with it for a while. I was also next to Homeplus, so any shopping I needed to do could be done rather easily. Here's a picture of it for you. Keep in mind, I was still unpacking and cleaning up, so forgive the mess.



On my first Sunday in the apartment, though I found out that my noise troubles were far from gone. In my first year, I had come to accept the obnoxious vegetable trucks screaming "TOMATO!!!TOMATO!!!" over and over again. At some point they would drive off, and they were only there every once in a while. My new apartment, however, was next to Homeplus. From 8:00am-8:00pm every Sunday, a greeter would stand outside of the entrance to the parking garage which was right below my window. With a megaphone, she would say "Welcome to Homeplus" to every car that entered. It nearly drove me insane. When you have to work on Saturday, Saturday tends to be the one night of the week when you stay out late and have drinks with friends. Homeplus was not very helpful for my hangovers.

China

A little under halfway through my second year in Korea, I took a trip to China. I neglected my trip to Thailand in the postings about my first year, but there wasn't anything too interesting there. Sun, beaches, girly drinks in coconuts, elephants, monkeys and various other standard Thailand things.

My trip to China wasn't particularly memorable, but it was still quite interesting. I bought my tickets a couple months in advance, and they were pretty cheap. The tax and visa, however ended up costing more than the ticket itself, so I was a little annoyed.
I went there in early September. I decided I wanted to go during a time when I wasn't going to be horribly uncomfortable being outside. Anyhoo, I went to Beijing first. I stayed at a lovely little hostel and met several other travelers with whom I went out for drinks.

At the hostel, there were people from the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Philippines. We all grabbed some taxis and headed to the bar district in Beijing and had some drinks. The German guy with us was a bit tanked. He really really loves Libya and wouldn't stop expressing his love for the country the entire night. At the bar we went to, there were a couple of Koreans. I chatted with them a bit about my life in Korea, and they went back inside. The German joined them in some sort of drinking game, came outside, puked and passed out. The Koreans walked out, seemed fine and grabbed a taxi.

While I was in Beijing, I did the regular sort of sight seeing. I saw Tienanmen square and the forbidden city. The forbidden city didn't do much for me. It was huge and old, but it was kind of dull. It seemed like just a ton of uniform buildings and stone courtyards.

I later went to Behai park, and that was amazing. I guess it was more interesting because of how they integrated the landscape into the design of the park and had a variety of structures. Here's a picture for you.



While at Behai park, I went into the restaurant at the park and had some great, but bizarre food. I had a meal of turtle soup, camel hump and deer penis. At a hole in the wall restaurant somewhere near my hostel, I had the tastiest food I found in China. I have no idea what its name is because I just pointed at a random menu item because I can't read or speak Chinese. It was sort of like a Chinese Tamale, and I hope it was pork inside.

I later decided to get out of Beijing. I went to Jinan which is a nice "little" city with some cool sights. The first day I saw some crazy garden/hotsprings. It was really odd because the water was eerily blue. This wasn't like a clear lake or beach. This was blue of its own accord. Here's a picture.



I spent about a week and a half in China and had a pretty good time. I saw some sights, had some good food and bought some really cheap items. I still have the jeans I purchased for around $3 US.

Time to incorporate pictures into my blog

I'll get to this journey later, but I feel like uploading a picture now. This is a picture from Namwon, a city closely neighboring Jeonju. Jeonju is an interesting town in which I wouldn't mind living. I've visited it twice, but both times I went there people told me that it's famous for bibimbap. I love Korean food. Kimchi is amazing. I use it in most of the foods I cook. It's a vegeatable. It comes spiced. It lasts for a while. It's already cut. I love it.

Bibimbap, however, is one of the dullest foods I've ever encountered. It's healthy. It tastes alright. It doesn't, however have any qualities which merit praise.

Anyways, here's my picture. I like this picture for some reason, but I can't put my finger on it exactly. The only reason I can think of is that I like the geometry of it. I took this picture with a recently purchased lumix camera. I like this camera for a number of reasons, but the greatest thing is the grid view where you can frame shots quite easily.

An outing with my new coworkers

For the first month, I got to know three teachers at my school pretty well. There was my supervisor/head teacher, Joe. He was a Korean American who was a pretty decent guy. He kept Tony's zany Koreanness in check. There was Kevin. He was an Adopted Korean/American who was as foreign to Korea as I was. I got to know these two because we were the three people who smoked at our school, so we would always be in the stairwell smoking together during the breaks. The director smoked as well, but he would smoke in the lobby.

And there was V. I will call this teacher V because her name is not as common as many of the other names I've come across in my time here, and also because I come into contact with her on occasion. Anyways, V started at the same time I did, taught in an office next to mine, lived near me and was the only other person of non Korean descent. She's pretty cool and we fought the man together a couple of times.

Anyhoo, there was an outing planned for both our academy and the other academy my boss owned in Incheon. The three people I had gotten to know weren't coming. I'm not much of a socialite, but I figured this would be a good opportunity to get to know the other teachers and have a good time.

I rode in my boss's car along with Terry, another Korean American teacher I never got to know very well. I'm not sure where we went. I was told we were going to GangwanDo and that it was an island off of Incheon, so all I know is that we went somewhere about 3 hours away from Bucheon.

After driving for a while, we got to the area of the condo we would be staying in, and we stopped at a local fish market. I go with my boss in his shiny suit to haggle with the fish mongers. He points out a few fish, and the fishmonger pulls them out of the tank and clubs them. One fish jumped out of a nearby tank, and my boss yanked the fish club out of the monger's hand, chases after the fish and clubs it. He brings it back and adds that to the pile.

After getting all of the fish, we get to the condo where the secretaries from my school and a bunch of people I've never met were hanging out. It was a pretty nice place. There was a Karaoke machine in the room, and outside there was a ping pong table and a net for the Korean soccer/volleyball game.

The secretaries prepared a meal of sushi, and my boss pulls out three cases of soju bottles from his trunk. The feast begins. I was sitting next to the husband of a teacher from the other school who was about 50 years old. Throughout the meal, he poured both of us soju shots which we drank together. I soon lost count of the shots that were poured and passed the threshold between tipsy and sloppy.

I don't remember much from that night except for one conversation. I sat down with the secrataries from my school. One of them asked me how many soju bottles I could drink, and I said eight. This was a blatant lie. I'm not a lightweight, but after two bottles, things get fuzzy.

Apparently I just stumbled around for a while and then passed out pretty early. The only problem I caused was someone having to drag my unconscious self to the room where the men were sleeping.

The next day wasn't too bad, but it was a long trip home.

A good beginning

Although cleaning my apartment was a bit unpleasant, the apartment itself was pretty keen. It was an officetel and it had a decent bathroom and it came with a huge wardrobe.

I went to work to observe some classes and teach one at the end of the day. My schedule was pretty great. Although I had to teach two classes on Saturday, I was teaching about 15 classes per week my first month. All but one of my classes were one on one classes, and I had no kindergarten. It was pretty nice. There were other nice things about this new job. I had a full ten days of vacation, not the BS ten days including the weekend I had with my previous job, and I could take them when I wanted, not on scheduled school closures, which I also had and was payed for. My students were all at a pretty high level, and I neither needed to follow nor create a syllabus. It was pretty much, a student came in, we picked up where we left off and we went at a pace that worked for the student.

The one really nice thing was the summer intensives. At my previous school, they just made me work an additional two or three hours a day and I got a little bit of overtime for it. At this place, I was asked if I was interested in teaching. I was teaching about 18 classes per week at the time, and the class they wanted me to teach was an additional 1 hour per day M-F. Even though it only brought my teaching hours up to 23, I was still payed for it. I was payed 40%of the tuition for the class. That came out to around 1.2M for 15 extra hours of work, and my days were still lighter than an average day at my previous job.

It was not all sunshine and lollipops the whole time there, but we'll get to that when things go downhill fast.

The return to Korea

I had a nice, relaxing trip home and came back to Korea for a second year. This was going to be my last year, but somewhere along the way, I got sidetracked.

My new boss picked me up at the airport. My new boss was an odd guy. I'm still a little pissed at him, but we'll get to that later. He filled the role of an ajeoshi quite well. Every time he spoke, he sounded like he was drunk (Although he supposedly never drank because it upset his stomache).

He had no problem insulting me or the other teachers on a regular basis, and he pathologically lied. He also did almost no work at all. His name was Tony.

So, during the long drive to my new home in the pleasant suburb of Bucheon, I had some odd, very uncomfortable conversations with Tony.

"Do you have a girlfriend?"
"No."
"You should get one. They are good for sex. If you don't have one it's ok though, there are many prostitutes near your house. They are also very good for sex."

When we arrived at my new apartment, it was pretty good although lacking any furnishings. I didn't really care too much though. It was in a good location, and it had plenty of space. I was also later reimbursed for the costs of the furnishings and he bought a bed. He wanted me to go to the school so I could go over my schedule and get some paperwork done, but I convinced him to give me a bit of time to take a shower, shave and change out of the clothes I had been wearing for about 24 hours.

When I came back home from work, I learned one of the very important lessons about Korea I was going to learn that year. When Koreans move out of an apartment, they leave a disgusting mess. I hadn't noticed it when I first came in because I just dropped my bags, went into the bathroom and took a shower in a half awake daze, but when I started unpacking, it was disgusting.

All of the cupboards were filled with rotting food. The apartment was covered in a layer of pubes and dust, and there were two open garbage bags filled to the brim with used feminine hygiene products. I had to run to Homeplus anyways to buy something to sleep on and a kettle for the next day, so I bought a ton of cleaning supplies.

I began cleaning, and although it wasn't what I would have liked to have been doing, it was rather easy to do in an empty apartment. Everything was going swimmingly until I got to the drain in the kitchen sink. I lifted up the food catcher thing so I could rinse it off, and it was filled with a green sludge the likes of which I had never smelled. I'm pretty sure that at some point, the sludge had been vegetables at some point, but it had been sitting in that drain for god knows how long, and when I lifted the food catcher thing up, I was hit by such a strong stench that I immediately threw up. I finished cleaning and doused the apartment with bleach just to be sure.

After cleaning, I went for a walk to check out my new neighborhood, and it was pretty good. There were tons of convenience stores and restaurants and businesses nearby, so I was pretty set. There were also tons and tons of Anmas, juicy bars and barber poles.

The end of my first year

There are many tales which I have left out of my first year, but I want to get up to some of the scandalous deceit and backstabbing in my other years. So, I'll conclude the first year with this post.

Towards the end of my first year, I decided to stay in Korea, but I wanted to find a new job. I had been browsing the job postings on eslcafe as well as worknplay for many months and saw many jobs which were offering much better positions than mine.

I started contacting recruiters a couple of months before the end of my contract. I had one school interview me. The neighborhood seemed nice, and I liked the boss seemed decent, but the contract they sent me was garbage. I found a school in Bucheon which promised high level students, no kindergarten and a decent salary. I interviewed with them, and they were pretty cool. The supervisor was a gyopo/korean american(one of these days I'll figure out what the difference actually is) and he explained the conditions to me. It was Monday-Saturday, but saturday was only four hours max, and most of the time there were either no saturday classes or only a few. I verified this with some of the teachers there, and I signed up. I had to start a little late because I wanted to go home after my first year in Korea for a couple of weeks, but they agreed.

Anyways, my first year ended, and there was a graduation ceremony for the kindergarteners. I had my ticket form home provided by my boss, and after a light night of celebrating the end of the school year with some coworkers and friends, I went home. I set my alarm for 4:00am, because I had an 9:00am flight. The airport is about an hour and a half away, but I had packed everything and just needed to wake up, shower and get dressed.

I woke up the next morning at about eleven. It was Sunday, and I had my alarm on M-F instead of every day. I woke up because my former boss was opening my door and letting in the new teacher. I half consciously yelled out jamchimanyo(just a moment) and greeted my boss and replacement teacher in my boxer shorts. I realized I had over slept, freaked out for a bit and threw on some clothes.

My boss was a little worried too, so he called the airline and booked the next available flight for me to get out of the country.

I took a 50 second long shower, threw on some clothes and jumped in my boss's car. He took me to the airport. I had to pay $1500 for the flight. While on the flight, I realized that had I waited a day or two, I could have booked a flight for less than half as much, but I decided to let it be and get my refund for the original ticket when I returned.

"Speech Contest"

Near the end of my first year at wonderland, perhaps in December, perhaps in January, there was a speech contest for the older kindergarten students. When I first heard about this, I assumed it would be an actual contest.

This was not an authentic speech contest, however. It was just a speech performance with no winners. All of the older kindergarten students would have to prepare a short speech and perform it along with their classmates. Each class had a theme, and some classes had plays instead of consecutive speeches.

The class I had to prepare was Zebra class. This was the class of first year 6-7 year olds or Korean 7-8 year olds. The theme for their speeches was favorite things. The performance was to begin with a choreographed rendition of "My favorite things" from "The sound of muscic." After the song, each of the students had to go up and describe their favorite thing while the parents guessed what it was. Of course, the Korean teacher wrote the descriptions and assigned favorite things for each of the students, and they just had to memorize and recite the little speeches.

There were many normal things like snow and dogs and baseball and dancing. One student, however was assigned pooping. "My favorite thing smells very bad, but it feels very good. I have to do it in the bathroom. Usually, I do it every day. I have to wash my hands when I'm done. Can you guess what my favorite thing is?"

A side tale from christmas.

The friend of mine who attended the christmas party was visiting from Busan. He was the friend with whom I stayed during chuseok. He brought his girlfriend with him for the trip.

He enjoyed the party and the buildup/letdown involved in the cucumber incident. At some point, his lady friend was tired, so they decided to leave. I knew of one hotel that was nearby, so I told them where it was.

They went in and asked if they had any rooms. They did. They were given their complimentary toiletries and a key, and they went up to their room. His lady friend wanted to brush her teeth before retiring, so she grabbed the supplied toothbrush and toothpaste and went to the bathroom. When she began opening the toothbrush package, she noticed that a dead roach was inside the toothbrush package and screamed.

Needless to say, they vacated that hotel and found other lodgings.

The Christmas Party.

Gary, the scottsman, returned to Korea shortly after he left. He found a new job and an apartment. I was informed that he was holding a Christmas party. The party had an odd twist, however. There was to be an adult themed white elephant.

Before I continue this tale, I should mention Gary had a girlfriend. I may have mentioned this earlier, but stay with me. His girlfriend was an idiot. She was the type who comes to Korea with leftist views from America and then freaks the fuck out when she visits a country with a different culture and language. She expected all Koreans to speak English fluently and abide by the same social standards she was accustomed to. There are many examples of this, but I'll provide you with a single one.

I was sharing a cab with gary and his "lady" friend one afternoon. It was a long cab ride, so Gary requested the radio. the cabbie turned on the radio, but it was a news channel. Gary's girlfriend wanted music. She got the driver's attention and started shouting "music! music!" He didn't understand, so she spent 10 minutes shouting "musica!!, musica!!" When she gave up, she said "Fucking idiot."

Anyways, there was a party. I went to the party and invited a good friend of mine. It was pretty fun. Gary had made a turkey along with many other great side dishes. Then the erotic gift exchange began. I was trying to conserve my funds before this event and as a result, instead of buying any fancy vibrators or odd sex toys, I brought over an open bag of cucumbers with one remaining. I had eaten one with a sandwich, but there was one left in the package, so I wrapped it and brought it to the party.

Many erotic gifts were exchanged. Then Gary's lady friend chose my gift. Everyone was speculating about the contents of the package. One guest was sure it was a G-spot vibrator. She opened it and was unpleasantly surprised.

The rest of the evening she scowled at me until the end of the party. She tried to guilt trip me about how much she spent on her white elephant gift. I said, "sorry, I just bought a round trip ticket to Thailand, so I can't waist a ton of money on a gift for a random stranger." She threw the cucumber at me and skulked off.

The next day, I had another delicious sandwich with fresh cucumber slices.

Chuseok

For Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving, The Canadian teacher, Bob and I went to Busan to visit a friend of mine from College. My good friend from back home was also there. We had purchased train tickets online ahead of time for the trip to Busan, but we hadn't purchased any for the return trip. At the train station, We decided it would be a good idea to get tickets then so that we wouldn't be stuck several hundred miles away from Seoul at the end of the vacation. There were very few tickets left, but we managed to get standing tickets.

We arrived in Busan and met my friends. I mentioned to my friend from home that he might want to get a ticket asap because there were very few left when we bought our return tickets. He went to the train station, but he was only able to get one for the next day at 6am. Nonetheless, we went out and had a great time. I was staying at my Busan friend's house, and my coworkers were sharing a love motel.

We went to a couple of clubs, and Bob had too much again. To illustrate a point he was trying to convey, he dropped his glass on the floor and it shattered. He was trying to drop it on the table, but the table was a good meter or so away. We cut him off, but we were a bit too late. As we were leaving the club, he had to vomit. He started at the entrance, and I attempted to drag him to the bathroom. He broke off, ran into the kitchen and threw up for about twenty minutes in the kitchen garbage can.

Finally, we got him back to his hotel and my friend and I tried to get a cab to take us back to his place. I don't know why, but all of the cabbies that night were jerks. None of them would take us to his place, and finally a couple of college guys helped us and jumped into the cab. They wanted to join us and practice English. We were a little uncomfortable, but we decided to let them come over anyways. They ran into a convenience store to pick up some soju and snacks. They came over and started chatting away. After a little while, I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, my friend was sitting up in his bed with an odd look on his face. I turned and saw our new Korean friends. They were asleep on the floor spooning each other.

The new teacher

After Gary left, a new teacher came to replace him. Because he's still in Korea and has a pretty uncommon name, I'll refer to him as Bob, which isn't his name. Bob was a very unusual individual. He was always filled with energy and enthusiasm for everything. He seemed like a Christian fundamentalist in his zeal, but he wasn't religious.

On Bob's first weekend in Korea, my coworkers and I took him out to Sinchon. Bob was a very strange individual after a few drinks. It didn't take much to get him plastered, and he was a little too lively to begin with. When we were searching for a bar, he thought it would be a good idea to pick a cigarette butt off of the ground, use it as a divining rod and throw himself into a pile of garbage.

After a few places, we wanted to find a more lively bar. We decided to split up and look for a bar and return to the corner we were at in ten minutes. Each of us would go a different direction, pop into a few bars to check them out and return with our findings. The plan worked out pretty well except for the fact that Bob never returned. So, we all split up for twenty minutes in an attempt to find him. We never found him.

This was quite worrying because he had no cell phone, spoke no Korean, had no id to show a cab driver where he lived and probably didn't know how to get home. We searched for a bit more, but we finally gave up and enjoyed the rest of our evening.

The next day, I called his home phone, and thankfully he was there. He remembered the subway station near his house and had a taxi driver take him there. Apparently, he forgot where we were supposed to meet and had no watch to keep track of the time. He met some other foreigners and hung out with them for the rest of the night.

Open class number 1

It was fall. The summer intensives had finished, and I had a relatively light schedule and an actual break during the day. At the end of September, however, there was a dreaded event. Open class. This was a day where we came in on Saturday to teach a special class that parents sat in for.

At first, I figured this would be fine. I would teach a regular class, and the parents could watch. I wasn't an amazing teacher, but I had gotten the hang of it and knew how to get students to understand the material and remember it. I was told to pick a topic to teach and to make a lesson plan which I would submit to the president/director/boss/wanjangnim.(One day, I'll choose a title and stick with it.)

I had started planning a lesson on the daily life of American kids. It was a lesson which was somewhat related to the chapter I was covering with the class I had to do an open class with, and I decided to talk about what American kids do for fun as well as what I did when I was a kid. I included open ended topics for the kids to discuss, a grammar lesson about gerunds, and game vocabulary. I was then told that I needed to do a science class.

So, I went back to the drawing board and devised a science lesson about how soap works.(While this doesn't sound particularly interesting, volcanoes had already been done, and I included lots of colors and pictures to liven up the lesson) I had a demonstration which involved the kids and myself, and it was a pretty fun class. Everyone approved, and so I prepared materials and got ready for the big day. Then, I was told that I needed to practice the class with the kids. I had to teach the lesson every day the week before the open class. The kids had to memorize their responses to my questions. In the end, instead of teaching a lesson, I directed a performance for the parents.

On the day of the open class, although all of the kids answered all of my questions perfectly and in unison, the parents seemed very happy. After my class, the parents then had to meet with the supervisor and discuss their views of the class and opinions about the school.

The next day I was told that I was doing a terrible job. All of the parents didn't like me and liked the previous teacher more. I was a little surprised and asked "So, what specifically are the parents upset about? What would they like me to do differently?" I was then told "Everything. Your teaching is terrible. They want you to be a better teacher." I wasn't sure what to do with this information. I later found out from my co-teacher for this class that one parent had a complaint that I didn't focus on her student enough but the other parents were quite happy. Apparently, the teacher before me favored this particular student and would always let him sit on her lap during class and give him hugs and candy.

A year later, I also learned about Korean management style. While in the west, it is common to give positive reinforcement when employees do well, Korean employers often tell you that you're doing terribly in order to keep you on your toes.

A burglary and the loss of Gary.

As mentioned before, Gary, the Scott was one of my coworkers. He was a good man and a pretty good teacher. He and Korea, however didn't agree. He was always pretty straight forward. If he disagreed with something, he spoke his mind. Needless to say, after a while, he started having problems with the hagwon. After six months, he was gone.

I won't go into more detail than that since I'm writing about my experiences and don't feel it is quite appropriate to spend a significant amount of time and space discussing my observations of a friend/coworker's experiences with Korea.

Anyhoo, a couple of weeks after he left, I was robbed.

One day, I went to work. I left my door unlocked, as I usually did my first year in Korea. I did this because I was under the impression that there was almost no crime here. While I was at work, I heard that one of the other teachers, who lived in the same building had her apartment broken into. After hearing this, I ducked out and went back home to check my apartment. When I got there, my laptop, camera, passport and $10 were gone.

I told my boss, and we saw the police. I filled out some forms and told them what was missing, and I was told that they will try to figure out who the thief was. My boss then gets electronic password door locks installed on our doors. After teaching that day, I noticed that there was a security camera on the corner of my street which wasn't to far from my house. I mentioned this to my boss and supervisor the next day as I thought it could be useful in the investigation.

My supervisor takes me down to the police station to answer some more questions and to mention the camera and file an official police report. While the "detective" was interviewing me and my supervisor was translating, I hear her say "Gary ******" several times, so I stopped her and asked her what she was talking about. She told me that she was giving them Gary's name and information because she thought he was the burglar. I told her that I strongly doubted that he was the thief because he's a decent man and he was in Scotland thousands of miles away at the time. She brushed this information off and began giving the detective more of his information, but then he stopped her and asked me why I didn't think he was the thief. I told him why I didn't think he was the thief and he stopped this line of questioning.

A few days later, my boss pulled me aside to tell me that the police reviewed the tapes from the camera near my apartment and saw a man walking out of my apartment building with my possessions and later entering a car. The license plate was visible, and they were tracking the car down.

I waited about a week for more news and asked my boss if there was any more information. He told me that the police couldn't find the thief and that they probably never would. Later that day, I saw a police officer driving an elderly woman home from the grocery store.

Summer and summer intensives

So, it was summer. It was around 35C outside, and the kids were on summer vacation. In the magical world of Korea, vacation for kids means that they actually get to spend 30 or so hours a week in a hagwon and the teachers at said hagwon get to teach an additional 10 hours each week for the duration of the "summer vacation." This was not a pleasant time.

To begin, it was fucking hot and humid. I've had hot summers before, but never as unpleasant as in Korea. In my home town, it sometimes went above 100F or 38C, but it was dry. I had always heard "It isn't the heat, it's the humidity." Now I know why. If you're in a hot and dry place, you sweat. The sweat evaporates and cools you because evaporation is an endothermic process meaning energy is taken from the surrounding area and put into the reaction. Not only does the sweat evaporating make you feel cooler, but you don't feel disgusting the entire day. My first year, I took about 5 showers a day during the summer.

So, the weather was awful and I was teaching tons of classes. I noticed in my home that even though I had the ac set on the coldest temperature, my apartment still felt like a sauna and I could actually see vapor condensing on the walls. I played around with the remote a bit, and finally I go up in front of the ac and feel the stream of air. The unit has a green light and says 18degrees on it, but the air being blown was room temperature. I ask my boss to get it fixed, and he "calls someone to fix it." He tells me the next day that someone went over to take a look at it and it works fine. I just need to make sure I set it on a cold temperature.

I'm skeptical, but I go home and check it. It's still doing the same thing. I go downstairs to my Canadian coworker's apartment and ask if I can take a look at his air conditioner. He says "yeah no problem." I step inside, and his apartment is a lovely, cool and refreshing 20 degrees. I ask how he turned his ac on, and he tells me he hit the power button and turned the temperature down to 20. So, my ac was certainly broken. I asked my boss about it again, he sends someone to take a look at it, and I get the same story. I say "Fuck it" and I buy a couple electric fans and bring my room down to a tolerable temperature.

Speaking of really hot rooms, the classes in the hagwon weren't much better. So, I'm teaching eight or nine classes a day, and I'm basting in my own sweat. I had a passive aggressive battle of wills with the vp of the school that summer. I would walk into a classroom, and it would be horribly hot. I'd go to the lobby and turn on the ac. I'd teach for a while in comfort until the ac was turned off, and then I'd go out again to turn it back on. After a few weeks of this, I won and the ac remained on. I can handle heat and even humidity, but if I'm in a classroom which is 10square feet or 3square meters, with ten kids and no windows, it gets a bit stuffy.

Anyhoo, the summer was hot. I was teaching a ton of classes. I also had to do phone teaching which is where you call every one of your students from home after you've finished teaching. I also had progress reports for a total of 95 students, and at the end of the intensives, we had to come in on a Saturday to do open classes with kindergarten classes.(More on this later.)

One nice perk about this job was that they bought a small dinner for us every day since we were all there in the afternoon and early evening and we didn't have time to run out and grab something to eat. It was usually pizza, toast, mandu or kimbap. One day in the middle of the intensives, the supervisor tells us that there's no pizza today because the director is bringing in a special treat. So, I wait around for a little bit, and in walks the director with apples. I was teaching from 9:30 to 8:00 with one twenty minute break, and my dinner was an apple.