Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Paddycakes]

[jacl]

[periwinkle]

Heh- LCI Kid's Club in Dongchun dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon. Might be worth it if you're a guy, but you have to kiss a s s to stay in good favor.... This was back in 2001, though- in the meantime, the Mormons may have converted them....


Nevermind. Those people are beyond salvation.

[Octavius Hite]

2 out of my 3 years have been great in Korea but my second year was a nightmare.

As with all young whippersnappers I decided to move to Seoul and experience the joys of the big city, you know the party scene, the club circuit all the great things city life is supposed be. My first year had been in the country at a school that had nothing but gave me everything. I took a job at a Hogwon at Godeok Station, the school, named after the Red Sox hometown, was really something different. It had a library and supplies and all sorts of things my old hogwon didn't have (I wasn't even allowed to use the photocopier). My dreams started to crack though when I was taken to my apartment, I know places in Seoul ae small, but the bathroom was smaller than what you would find in a 40 year old RV. There was no washing machine (I had to pay for a service), there was no gas range, it was a hotplate and the room was literally 12 by 12. I sucked it up and went to work.

If I thought the room was bad, wait till I met the director. Janet was a middle-aged Korean woman who dressed like she was a uni student. The day was not complete unless she showed up in knee high leather boots and a cooter skirt. Her husband lived and worked in Busan so they only saw each other once or twice a month (a very healthy relationship!). Our first battle was over textbooks. I thought it was more important to actually teach the kids rather than race through a book to finish it and keep on schedule. Sorry I was mistaken, better to just plow through the book. Then we fought over hours. She wouldn't pay me my whole 2 mil because I was working enough classes, even though it was her who wouldn't give me the classes, but of course she expected me to stay there from 10 am to 830 at night. Then she told me that other teachers thought I smelled bad. So afetr weeks of narocisis and asking all my friends to smell me and shaving my armpits and contemplating surgery or medication I realized that wasn't true. Then I developed a drinking problem wherein I had to drink 2 bottle red wine (the 5$ e-mart variety) to make it through the day with her. But the kicker, after all that, was the day of the alphabet fight. I discovered to my horro that my kindies didn't even know the alphabet. I resolved that they wouldn't finsh that year without knowing how read and write the alphabet in full. Everyday we spent 1-2 hours on the letters and it really worked. The kids were getting it and thats how I had learned it so I thought I was doing something good. One day she storms into my classroom and yanks me out. She then begind to berate me for teaching them the alphabet and that I am to stop immediatley and teach only conversation! Conversation! To four year olds who don't know the alphabet. I had it. I snapped and yelled and screamed and it took every sense I had to not drag her down 11 flights of stairs and kick the living crap out of her on the street. She fired me and then asked me to stay until she could find a replacement, lol. I did because it was free money and I could slack off and not do anything. The guy she hired, cause no one would take the damn job, was the weirdest and strangest person I have ever met. When we joke about foriegners who can't hack it in the real world so they come here, well thats this guy. Anyway, I flew back to Canada and spent four months sobering up from the booze and replacing it with copius amounts of ganja. I have never seen Janet since, although I did run into a former K-teacher from the school and introduced her to my BF, I can just imagine the look on janet's face when she heard I was a homo, lol.