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.