"Up From Here" Chapter 4: Seoul, South Korea
After Jill dropped me off at the airport I waited for my first International flight over the Pacific Ocean. I always loved to fly but 14 hours was the longest up to this point in my life I had flown in a Jetliner. A few hours into the flight I noticed the window shades were pulled down. If you pushed it up there was a bright light coming from it. It was best to leave them down so the sun did not blind you. After several in-flight moves and meals we were landing in Seoul, South Korea at about 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon and we left San Francisco at around 11:00 a.m. for the 14-hour flight arriving where the day starts on that side of the world before it does here in the USA.
It was a long flight and after I went through immigration I noticed a sign with my name written on it. I was told when I arrived there would be a driver to pick me up at the airport. I went up to the Korean man who was holding up the sign with my name written on it. I shook his hand and he shook mine after we introduced ourselves to each other. We both grabbed my luggage and headed to his minivan parked in the parking lot. A few minutes after we loaded my luggage into the minivan and us on our way to where ever we were going. I asked the driver if he had a cigarette and I explained to him I had just quit but it did not look like I was going to make. I was nervous and needed to have a cigarette and needed to bum one from him until I could buy a pack my self. I think I had at the time about twenty dollars US Currency. I did not have Korean money yet. He gave a cigarette to me and we both lit one up and smoked on our way to my new home in Seoul, South Korea.
It was about an hour later when we arrived at where I would be staying. We parked out front of this building and the driver led the way up three flights of stairs carrying my luggage where I would live. He showed me the bedroom where I was going to be sleeping. We both put down my luggage and then he gave e a tour of the apartment. He showed me one room where the door was closed and explained to me that is where one of the teachers was staying. He mentioned they were back in the states and would be back in a few weeks.
Then he showed me the kitchen area and then where the shower and toilet were in the bathroom. I walked into the bathroom and got the shock of my life as I entered. I asked where is the toilet? He pointed to the ground. All I saw was a hole in the ground with a handle to flush the toilet. I asked, “Well how do you go the bathroom? He just shook his head and I guess he figured I would figure it out on my own. And I did. You have to squat over it for a bowel movement and just stand over it and hope you hit the hole when you take a pee. It definitely was a strange way to go to the bathroom and something I had never seen before in my life. Talk about the Twilight Zone, this was not Disneyland that is for sure.
Before he left he wanted to show me one of the classrooms I would be teaching in. It was on the second floor below the apartment. He took me down there and I had a look around. I was excited now and felt a little better about being so far away from home and in a strange country that I had never been to before.
In a few weeks by the end of the month it would be Christmas and I was told we be moving to a new house in about a week before Christmas. He mentioned he would pick me up in the morning and take me to other schools they had with classrooms too. Where I could meet the other teachers and get my teaching schedule of classes and times I would be teaching them. We bid our goodbyes and he left and I settled into my new home in this strange land so far away from home.
All I know is that it was cold. It was cold in Redding, California but this place was really cold. I found the electric heater. Then I went to look for a place to plug it into. The only problem was the plug looked much different, as I had never seen plug like that before. Then I looked for the socket to plug it into. I finally figured out where the socket was in the wall. As it matched the prongs on the heater and it had to be the right place to plug the heater in. I turned on the heater and began to unpack and put some of my clothes in the dresser and to get ready to take my first shower in the new country I was now going to live in for a while. After my shower, I wanted to go and see if I could find a store to buy a pack of cigarettes and to see the neighborhood I was now living in.
I went down the three flights of stairs and figured one direction was just as good as the other. I made a left towards the corner and at the corner, I turned left again and about halfway down the block. Around the corner, I discovered a little store and went inside and bought a pack of cigarettes. They had American Cigarettes so I bought my normal brand of cigarettes. I bought a pack of Marlboros and the person behind the counter gave me change for my twenty-dollar bill but it was in wons. I had no idea if I was given the right change or not as I had no idea what wons were or their value at the time of exchange rates.
The next day I was picked up by the driver and he and I went to the school and I got my schedule and an advance of about 250,000 won until payday. And payday was once a month. Somewhat the same as it is in the USA for teachers and teacher’s aides. My schedule was all over the place. There were days and times I would be teaching in the mornings and then in the afternoons in classrooms. In people houses teaching students privately in their homes and at a business, in the early mornings, Monday’s through Saturday’s with the only day off on being Sunday’s. The driver would be picking me up to take me to the school for the morning and evening classes. The classroom on the second floor I would just have to walk down one flight of stairs to get there for the scheduled time.
There were three different situations away from the classrooms. One was a Koran Colonel in the Korean Army and his wife in the mornings Monday and Wednesday or Tuesdays and Thursdays for private lessons. Another one at a Beer Manufacturing Company in the early morning at 6:00 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and Fridays and the last one was on Saturday’s with a 12-year-old boy in the evenings for a private lesson. All the other classes were scheduled in between all of the others in the morning and the evenings. It was a wacky schedule is all knew.
Being driven to all of these appointments throughout the week by the driver that would see to it I was at all the class schedule throughout Seoul, Korea. I felt at times I was being watched or being spied on like I was a slave, rather than a free American. I was treated as if I were property instead of a teacher of English as a second language. It was as if I had to ask permission to go anywhere I wanted to at all times. I was getting fed up already and I had been there less than two weeks.
Two weeks later just before Christmas we moved to a new house. This time it was a house on the third floor with stairs on the outside leading up to it. I remember the stairs very well. Especially the day I tried to clean them with hot water to remove all the dirt. That was a major mistake because by nightfall the stairs had frozen over and there was a thin sheet of ice on them. Which made it difficult to walk up and down them without the possibility of slipping and falling down. It is funny now but it was not at the time I did it. But I learned a lesson of what you do not do to stairs in the wintertime.
By this time I had met Greg, the other teacher who had shared the other apartment with me. The other teacher that was in the room at the apartment never came back for his stuff. I guess he quit and by now I could understand very easily why he might have quit. This was nuts. I was ready to find another job teaching somewhere else in Seoul, South Korea too and leave.
So I started looking in the Korean Herald, the English version of the newspaper. I started looking in the want ads for another teaching job at another school (hog won). In the meantime, I was preparing for my exit and by this time Greg and I got to know each other a little better.
I finally decided to bail out of this situation and find another teaching job and I did. I found another job at another school and quit and the other school. The manager of the new school I would be going to helped me move my stuff to a motel they provided for me until they could find me more suitable housing at least that was the promise I was given by Miss Kim the manager of the new school.
The day I left was during the New Year in January 1995 right after Christmas and a few days after payday. It was funny my roommate knew I was leaving and it was not the first time he had seen it happen in the time he had been working for this school. Greg and I had gotten into it one night and he broke a beer bottle over my head because I had the music too loud one night after he had been out with his girlfriend and he was pissed off at her and took it out on me. We ended up breaking one of the outer glass doors as he pushed my head through it that night.
But afterward Greg apologized the next day and thank god I did not need any stitches. Greg and I had a special last night dinner the night before I bailed. We discussed how he would handle it when the driver came looking for me at 6 a.m. on the next scheduled classes after the New Years holiday. We came up with the idea that I would put a sign on my bedroom door “Do not disturb” and when I put that sign up he would know that I had left and was gone forever.
The day I finally did leave Miss Kim and her driver picked me up and we went upstairs and got all my stuff out in less than 10 minutes time and then headed to my new housing situation working for a new school. That day was like “I spy” as I had taken a bus first to meet Miss Kim at the new school where Miss Kim and her driver then drove me back to pick up my suitcases. And while on the bus I felt I was being followed and spied on by someone or that was the thoughts that were in my mind at the time as I remember back to those very cold winter days in Seoul, South Korea.
It wasn’t too long and I was getting tired of this schedule too after a few months. It was a little bit better and by now I was becoming a little more adjusted to Korean customs and culture. I was learning how to get my way around Seoul, South Korean by subway, bus, and taxies. I had two early morning classes, one at lunchtime and two in the evenings. Monday through Fridays with Saturday and Sunday off this time. I even went to a Presbyterian Church on Sundays. There I met my first Korean Friend who spoke very good English and would invite me to go to places with him and even to his job. He worked for a Christian magazine. While in the church I would sit at the back of the church so that I would not be noticed. Yeah, right like I wouldn’t be noticed as being a foreigner. After church, they would go down to the basement of the church and everyone would eat lunch. Korean food and I did not always get along. As I discovered I did not like it very much. The beef and chicken I would eat, the rest of it they could keep. There were some soups that I would eat along with bread, pastries, and deserts.
About a month into living in the hotel they found me a place to live in the basement of a house on a hill. That was a pain to walk up a few blocks from the subway station. I learned how to order Kerosene for the floors as that is how most of the houses and apartments are heated.
After while I became adjusted to the new school and the class schedule I would go home after the morning classes and take a nap. I would take the subway home, as it was only two subways stops away from the school. After my nap would go back to the noon class and then go home again until it was time for the evening classes.
But I was getting tired of sleeping on a mat on the floor and they were talking about putting another teacher in the place to share with me. I asked them to get me a bed and I was told it was impossible for them to get me a bed they were too expensive. That was the last straw with this school too. I was going to quit and go back home. But I really did not want to go back home to Redding, California.
So I decided what the heck I would go somewhere I always wanted to go but never had an opportunity or chance to go. A nice warm place in the Pacific Ocean, an island called Hawaii. I made up my mind and prepared to do it with the money I had left I could buy an airplane ticket and still have a $1,000.00 in my pocket. Before I quit I gave them one last opportunity. I showed up at the evening classes and asked if Miss Kim was going to get me a bed. She said, No! And ordered me into the classroom. I said sorry, I quit and I left and headed home. So, I quit and left and the next morning left on my flight to Hawaii.
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