July 28, 2005

Teaching English in Korea: Part One

This is the story of how I got a call out of the blue and ended up going to South Korea to teach English for a month 26 hours later.

Thursday, July 28th

So on Thursday night, I was hanging out at Meredith's apartment. Doing the usual stuff, you know, like getting chest hair, muscles and highlighter-pink nipples drawn onto my t-shirt.

Sweet, right? So after Meredith finished the nipples, we put a movie on. Around 3am or so, my cell phone rang, but it was from an unlisted number and we were in the middle of the movie so I didn't pick up. After the movie was finished, I checked the voicemail the mysteriously late night caller had left. It was Mike Doyle!

The message? "Brian, I'm in Korea at that English camp I told you about. One of the American teachers that was supposed to come backed out last minute and we need a replacement. I know that you have a passport and no day job. If you want to come teach English in Korea with me and Michael Schickenberg, call me back ASAP. Because if you're coming, you're going to need to go to the Korean Consulate tomorrow and get a visa, buy a plane ticket to get yourself to LA no later than Saturday night and then catch the group flight from LA to Korea super-early on Sunday morning. CALL ME BACK!"

I called Mike back at 6am (6pm the next day in Korea) and told him I was in. He emailed me all the paperwork that I'd have to print out and take to the Korean Consulate in the morning. Sweet!

Friday, July 29th

Meredith didn't have a printer that worked, so I headed over to Tinny's apartment to hook up the Dell printer she'd gotten with her computer but had never set up.

I got the printer set up lickety-split and...

...printed out the docs that I needed to take to the Korean Consulate so that they would give me a visa to teach English.

leigh — While I was printing my papers out, Leigh was cleaning up her room and getting rid of a bunch of clothes which apparently led to us playing dress-up (???) before I left to head uptown to the Consulate. Hahaha. Here's Leigh dressed up as the Deb from Napolean Dynamite (which was the movie we went to the very first time we ever hung out in daylight hours). Awww.

leigh — Hahahaha.

Um, yeah. Then apparently I dressed up in a pair of Leigh's (??) jeans and a vest that Mayim Bialik must have left at the apartment that time she stopped by to hang out after she'd finished a taping of Blossom.

PS: Check out my sweet lil' dumper. No wonder the gays love me.

After changing back into my "normal" clothes, I headed up to the Korean Consulate to try to get my visa.

Despite my super-official looking print-outs (and a whole bunch of pleading), the Korean Consulate told me they were unable to process a teaching visa in time for me to leave the next morning. They explained that it required at least 48 hours, no exceptions. I was totally bummed. I called up Matt Reckow, the director of the trip whose number Mike D. had given me, and he was like "Ok, well you tried your best. No biggie. Get on that plane tomorrow. We'll work it out." Hahahaha. Yes!

After leaving the Consulate, I realized I was right around the corner from Google's offices, so I called Emily C and asked if she wanted to meet up for lunch. (Free Google lunch, that is!) Woo hooo!

emily — Yay, free lunch in the Google cafeteria! Check out Emily laughing at my disgusting assortment of food. (I pretty much took a serving from each of the 9 or so lunch stations.).

"Arrrrrrgh! I'm DoritoBag the Pirate and I demand candy!"

emily — Free candy until your heart's content, O' Scary DoritoBag the Pirate. Compliments of Google and their amazing free lunch cafeteria!

After lunch, I walked Emily back to her desk so that I could check out all the cute pics of Emily's cute nephews and nieces that she has pinned up! (I'm not going to even ask about that Monica Lewinski blazer hanging up there in the corner...Ewww!) How about a close up?

Grody!

Saturday, July 30th

brandon, karen, leigh, sarah, sean d — After spening the night at Meredith's I went over to my room at Sarah's apartment on Saturday to grab my suitcase and then head to the airport. I snuck in expected the apartment to be quiet, but instead was greeted by Leigh, Karen, Sean and Brandon who'd all had a slumber party the night before!

leigh — Leigh was in need of slumber-jammies and helped herself from a pile of my clothes that had just come back from the laundry. What shirt did she pick? The nipple shirt! (But apparently, the pink highlighter colored-in nipples had washed out in the laundry. Booo!).

leigh — I bid the gang farewell, grabbed my suitcase and headed for the airport! (And Tinny smooshed her face against the glass to say goodbye).

26 hours after getting Mike Doyle's message, I was sitting on a plane headed to LA.

Not! Hahah.

The previous day, I'd phoned up my favorite LA lady, the lovely and talented Emilie Elizabeth, and asked her if she'd be willing to put me up for a night! She said she would and we arranged for her to meet me at the waffle shop near her new apartment.

Mmmmm...tastes like delicious waiting.

I followed Emilie back to her place and dropped off my rental car, then hopped into her car with her friend Chris (I think!) and we headed to downtown LA to checkout some rooftop warehouse party.

emilie, me — Hahaha. Yay! Thanks for putting me up, buttercup!

Don't worry, Emilie's friend Chris (who I think was in town visiting from New York as well?) knows where the party's at.

The party was pretty sweet. A full roof with a great view, DJ booth pumping out jams and they even had a...

...swimming pool that people were dancing in!

Hi, I love you.

emilie — Emilie stops to strike and artful pose with the hallway art.

I think I took this picture because this guy reads this site and recognized me (??) but I was quite a few (stolen) beers deep at this point so I can't be sure.

The pee closet.

emilie — We went off exploring and somehow we ended up on the rooftop of the building next door! Emilie put her camera on a ledge so she could take a low-light photo of the party from a distance while I took a photo of her silky, silky panties that were peeking out. Hahaha.

The far-away party.

Sunday, July 31th

emilie — I had to catch a super-early flight the next morning, so instead of waking Emilie up, I just left her a thank you note (and apparently took this creepy photo of her sleeping. What's wrong with me? Why do I always take pics of sleeping people? Hahaha.)

Then I said goodbye to her cat...

...and her dog!

And left! Check out the view of downtown LA from her porch. Pretty sweet, right?

LA at 7am on a Sunday is a ghost town.

I made it to LAX with plenty of time to return my rental car....

...and then checked in and headed to the gate!

On the plane I ended up sitting next to Matt (who was the person responsible for organizing the trip) and Lara. Here's Matt busting out a map of Korea to show me the location of the two different camps that we'd be teaching English at.

Korea, here we come.

Monday, August 1st

Fourteen hours later, we'd arrived at Incheon Airport, just outside of Seoul, Korea.

We had a few hours to kill at the airport while we waited for the arrival of the teachers who'd departed from Korea (including Michael Schickenberg how I hadn't seen in eight months who had no idea that Mike D. had gotten me to fill in as a last minute subsitute). Here's a picture of the weird Korea sushi (?) I got as a snack while I waited. I wasn't eating meat at the time and had to eat around the weird cubes of SPAM (Spam in sushi?).

me, michael s — The flight from San Francisco arrived, and when Micheal was at the baggage carousel about to grab his bag, I snuck up behind him and was like "Excuse me sir, I think that's my suitcase!" He turned around to explain that it was his, and then there was like a 10 second pause while his brain tried to reconcile seeing an unexpected friend that lives in New York standing at the baggage claim in Korea with him. He was like "Holy, coincidence! What the heck are YOU doing here?" I was like "I'm teaching English with you and Mike! Surprise!" Hahahah. Here's us on the bus, heading to our first camp.

An hour or so after we left the airport, our two buses pulled over and let us all out so that the two groups could join up and grab dinner at a restuarant and get to know each other.

Mmmmmmm, tasty!

Then back on the bus for four more hours. Ooof.

A little after midnight, we finally arrived at the camp where we'd be teaching our first of two groups of kids. The trip that we were all on was being sponsored by one of South Korea's largest newspapers, Joongang Ilbo (The Korea Central Daily Press).

At the first camp, we'd spend a few days setting up and having an orientation, then we'd have our first group of kids for just 4 days. (These kids were mostly the children of employees of the newspaper that was sponsoring the camp). After the first session, we'd be heading to a second camp, held at a hotel just outside of Everland (which is South Korea's largest theme park) and we'd spend 14 straight days with our kids there. Got it?

After getting my luggage off the bus, I went to find my room. I met my two roommates, Dan and Jeff, and Jeff told me that he'd just recently left New York. I asked him what he did there, and he told me that he'd just left his job as the editor of the New York Press. We had a weird moment when I was like "Oh, so that means you're the person that named Sarah, one of best friends AND ROOMMATE, one of New York's 50 Most-Loathsome?", but we got through it. Hahaha.

Three dudes in one tiny room. Check out my sweet bed.

Tuesday, August 2nd

8am breakfast the next morning. Here's where I learned that in Korea, they include that pink Spam-type meat in pretty much everything. I had a cheese sandwich, then went back up...

...for some rice and more pineapple, and even decided, hey, what the fuck, to have some kimchi for breakfast.

After breakfast we trudged up this huge-ass hill to the main auditorium building so that we could have our...

...English Camp orientation. Hosted by none other than...

...Mike Doyle! Yay! (I met Mike back in October 2004 during my short-lived residence in San Francisco! I posted on this site that I was moving out there and didn't really know anyone, and Mike was one of the people that emailed me and offered to show me the ropes! Thanks, Mike!).

Mike took us through the entire first session itinerary.

We were all super-excited about the very last activity. I mean, who doesn't love a good ol' fashioned "bonefire." Hahhhaah

After orientation, we had the rest of the day off. We'd spend the next day setting up our classrooms, and then the kids would be arriving Wednesday evening. We all played some frisbee and tried to learn everyone's name. Then, it was time for lunch.

I walked in the door, saw all these bowls stacked, and was like "JACKPOT, MOTHERFUCKER!" Anybody that knows me, knows that one of my favoritest things in the whole world is bi bim bab. FUCK, YES! The only other time I'd ever been in Korea before had been during layovers at the airport and I was never able to find a proper bowl. So I was totally psyched to have my first "official" bowl of bi bim bab in Korea.

After lunch, we went and toured the camp's insane recreation center. It had an indoor roller rink....

...five lane bowling alley...

...and a sweet-ass swimming pool!

Oh, but wait, there's more! There was a fitness center, complete with the long-sought-after Superbelt Massager.

I didn't know these things actually exisited!!! I thought they were just comedy-props that were made up in order to create hilarious "hi-jinx" in movies like Police Academy. Paul was the only one brave enough to get on and try it out. We were all like "Be very careful! That thing almost killed Tackleberry." I didn't think it could get any better than the Superbelt Massager, but then we rounded the next corner...

...and discovered this! At first, I wasn't sure what it was (mostly, because I CAN'T READ KOREAN), but then when I wandered inside the room, it hit me. We'd discovered...

...a private karaoke room!!! (Bi bim bab for lunch? Superbelt Massager? A Private, FREE Karaoke room??? I was starting to wonder if my plane had crashed and THIS WAS HEAVEN!) Hahaha.

mike doyle — After exploring the Rec Center, Mike and I went to the little snack shop in the lobby to score some exotic Korean treats. We both ended up going for these little frozen "milkshakes in a bag" that were totally delicious!

All of the teachers that were on the trip had to sign contracts with the Korean newspaper promising that we'd adhere to a behavioral code. Alcohol and drugs were strictly verboten and we were told that if we got caught drinking or doing drugs, that we'd immediately be sent home. Matt explained that the Korean directors of the camp took this very seriously. So what did we do that night after dinner? Fifteen or so of us decided to walk the 7 or 8 kilometers into the nearest town to try to find a bar and have a party. Hahahah. But, all of the Korean camp people hadn't shown up yet, so we figured we'd be safe.

Check out my sweet sandals that I purchased before leaving because the packet of info that Mike emailed me that that I was required to have a pair.

The rural Korean countryside.

The ginormous rural Korean spiders!

Holy Cra-moly!

I that we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere when we came across this crazy-ass chicken farm! Look how many of them there are!

After about an hour of walking, we finally found a convenience store that was open that sold beer! Right when we got there, the sky opened up and started DUMPING rain. We took our bags of frosty brews and took them to a construction site that was next to the convenience store and had ourselves a little party sheltered by the house that was being built. Party time!

On the walk back to the camp, a car passed us, slammed on the brakes, and turned around. Turns out it was Mr. Ro (the Korean director of the camp)!!! He'd driven up early and totally busted 15 of his 40 English teachers breaking the most serious rule (and camp hadn't even started yet!). He was totally livid. He screamed at a few of the teachers he recognized from the previous year, and then drove away. Later that night, we all got a talking to, but nobody got sent home (because what's he going to do, send home almost HALF of his teachers? Hahaha. Doh!)

Wednesay, August 3rd

The next morning, we had another orientation session.

The kids were arriving later that day so we got the overview of how everything was going to go down.

Looking down on the Rec Center from the top of the hill.

South Korea is hot and CRAZY HUMID!

Lunch time.

Koreans don't fuck around. Their soft drinks are a testament to their hyper-competitive culture. Reach Your Summit! Power Assist! Play Up Drink!

Or you can just drink some Pocari Sweat. The pocari is a tiny Korea monkey. Koreans believe that their sweat quences thirst. (Just kidding! I don't really know why it's called this. But it sure is delicious!).

After lunch, we were all shown to the little cabins that would be serving as our classrooms.

Each little classroom was to be shared by four English teachers. Each English teacher would have 4 or 5 students and would each be assisted by a Korean-teacher who would help us communicate with the kids. I shared my classroom with David, my roommate Dan (hiding over there on the right)....

...and Dan's sister Khara! Here we are all decorating our classroom and getting it set up.

I printed out a bunch of silly photos from this website of my friends and family and then cut them out and...

...put them up on the wall!

With our classrooms prepared, it was time to head up to the auditorium and wait for the kids and our Korean-teacher counterparts to arrive!

Katie, Matt, Mike and Caitin.

Me, Andy and Michael.

Then, the kids accompanied by their Korean-teachers showed up! There was a quick welcoming, then we were all dismissed to our classrooms to get our learn on! Having never taught before, I was a little nervous! So before heading over to the classroom, I made a quick pitt stop at the snack shop in order to score...

...some Confidence! I downed this badboy and suddenly, I was ready to teach!

On the left is my Korean teacher, Jay and my three kids (whose names I had written down, but I've long since misplaced the list. Doh!). All the kids we had were really shy and had never really spoken much English before, so we spent the next few hours doing activities in their work books and I tried to get them to come out of their shells a bit. After three hours or so, Jay and the other Korean teachers took the kids back to their rooms to get them settled in for the night. The American teachers had it easy compared to our Korean counterparts. We'd be with the kids from about 9am until 9pm everynight, but at least we'd get to go off and do our own thing at night. The Korean teachers had to sleep in the rooms with the kids everynight and pretty much play 24-hour camp counselor. Ooof!