Drift Reality

And now I know that no one could have loved me like she did and that is probably the most important thing I can take from my experience. If you don’t know why, then it’s probably impossible for me to tell you because it won’t make any sense to you.

It’s not something that you can really come out and say because that would defeat the whole purpose of why it happened. How can I describe how she looked at me while I was sleeping? Or the way that she would stroke my hair in a way that would remind me of being a kid again and for a moment in time, everything was perfect and I could have died if it meant remembering that moment for eternity.

Or how despite all the shit she could find a way to chip away at my muddled soul until she found something inside of me that was worth recovering? Or how she was essentially the most singular wonderful thing that could have happened to me?

Waking up on a Sunday morning with her next to me, her smooth warmth pressed against mine, our mingling essence sparking me to consciousness of life in a delicately rare manner, superimposing images of childhood on existing frames of reality while lazily hovering my fingers over the small of her back, smelling the faded perfume interwoven with cigarette smoke from the previous night, that pain tingled fog in my head spreading into peaceful sleepiness drenched with her affection, opaquely aware of her soothing brightness over me.

It was all those different things for which I had been searching the Earth. I found it and I never realized it until it had passed me by. Transient statues of glorified life bludgeoned me into a sculpture of distorted proportions that was incapable of lucidity. They had pounded my eyes until my vision flew multitudinously and I became one of those insects upon that hill in Kang-Chun, living and dying in the breadth of a glance, twirling around life frantically until the dizziness became overwhelming and I was forced to immerse within myself.

One you are completely inside, it is the same as death: just one continuous sheet of black consciousness. Boredom turns to fear turns to hate turns to boredom and that’s when you realize what you had and didn’t realize, while you were concerned with the pursuit of glory you neglected happiness and you are left alone with nothing. Sitting immersed in dark, you begin to dwell on everything and anything. You see that energy that was once inside you, compelling you to dance and scream and cry and laugh and shout and fight and love and live and die, slowly fade as you push it away because, as you think to yourself, that is what growing up is about.

Sitting at your desk, you hear a song and begin to hum and something starts to grow: a resonance of your soul, but that was yesterday and now is today - time does not smile at soul you tell yourself, you grow up and see the real world you tell yourself, when you have people depending on you, you have to buckle down you tell yourself, I’m not a kid anymore you tell yourself. You tell yourself these things every day and push and grind and before you know it, you have arrived but where have your arrived?

Before you know it, you have more money than you could count in five lifetimes, you have vacations on the beach, and you have beautiful things. But you have lost life in the exchange and you realize that you got the short end of the stick. Frantically, in a desperate attempt to win back some of your chips, you hurl yourself into the atmosphere with reckless abandon. But it is too late, when you come to earth, you are dust.

Sensations flow from you like water until all that is left is consciousness. Visions pass like clouds in a state of ambivalent nihilism as you realize what had actually happened to you. Anger turns to apathy and slowly, you accept your fate - to die engulfed by boredom. Resigned acceptance of death seeps into your consciousness and you just sit there waiting for nothing.

Then, a very strange thing begins to happen: out of the corner of your eye, a spark flickers. As you tell yourself that it was a delusion, another spark flickers. As you watch intently, the sparks increase until you realize that they are revealing your black panel to be a window. You weren’t in darkness, you were just in a place that lacks light. Shapes and forms appear before you and then sensation reemerges.

Ready to do it over again?

Earlier that day I had asked Jake if there was any way I could get access to the internet, in order to send an e-mail back to my family, telling them that I had arrived safely. So after we left the school that evening, we headed towards the Star PC-Bang. This was my first venture into the world of Korean PC-Bang culture, a strange sort of phenomenon that snatched me into its grip, condemning me to countless hours of Internet chat, video games, and mindless web surfing.

The PC Bang in Korea is a sort of technology age church, in which tens of thousands of young Koreans indulge in all manners of online interactions. The generic PC-Bang is a single room equipped with an average of about twenty computers, a coffee vending machine, a snack bar stocked with Ramyen and a Korean version of Slim-jims that tastes like fish.

Behind the front counter is a selection of about 10-20 video games that the PC-Bang patron can choose from, which is really ornamental in nature, seeing as how Koreans only play three computer games: Warcraft, Diablo 2, and Lineage. There are also a wide variety of internet-based games that Koreans play such as Fortress (which Koreans pronounce “Portress”) and Tetris.

In the United States, there is an image of the stereotypical video game aficionado as being a teenage male with acne, who really has no alternative but to play video games. In Korea, this image is non-existent. Although the majority of PC-Bang fanatics are males, there is normally a sizeable minority of females present at any given time. With regard to age, the youngest patrons are about five years old and the oldest tend to be in their mid to late twenties.

We walked into the Star PC-Bang and a young Korean man with a genuine smile greeted us. Blake told me that his name was “Pak-chal,” but somehow I heard “Puckchuck,” and this was what I ended up calling him for several months.

There were about five or six people in the PC-Bang, all smoking cigarettes as they clicked away to their heart’s content. There was a Caucasian male seated near us and Blake approached him and laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. The man exclaimed and turned around in surprise.

He had wild blue eyes, a brown pony tail, and an overbite that reminded me of how a shark’s mouth looks when examined from underneath.

“Oh man, you scared me,” he said. “You got to watch it, it’s a good thing I caught myself because half the time I would have busted the person by now. Don’t ever come up from behind me like that again.”

This was Bill. He was a thirty year old from Manhattan who had taught at my Institute for six months before quitting and returning home. After realizing that he didn’t really have a whole lot going for him at home, he returned to Korea and was supporting himself by teaching private lessons. He lived in a small one-room apartment near the airport, which he described as being roughly the size of a closet.

As I grew to know Bill, I became aware that he had two main hobbies: telling crazy stories and playing video games for obscenely large amounts of time. He also happened to be a passionately loyal friend and probably would have taken a bullet for Jake if presented with the opportunity.

From the moment that I first stepped into a classroom, I was a step behind. I had watched how several of the Korean teachers had conducted their classes and I decided to model my approach as being the antithesis of theirs’. This was a mistake. I saw the manner in which they answered questions like robots, did their assignments like robots, and even kind of looked like little robots. I saw all of these things and I decided that I would be their savior. I would be the one who would allow them to explore their creative juices and experience life to the fullest. I would be the one that they would remember when they were famous artists, and musicians, and writers.

When they messed around, I would laugh at their antics and encourage them to full around more. If they were overly quiet, I would carry on like a clown until they broke into a smile and eventually started laughing. I thought that I was breathing life into them but without realizing it, I was planting the seeds that would lead to my ultimate demise.

My Parade 5 class was a prime example of this situation. When I walked into the class on my first day at my Hawkwan, the six students in Parade 5 looked at me as though I had blood red eyes and horns. They sat upright in their chairs, refused to speak unless I asked them a direct question, and generally looked miserable.

The daily lesson called for me to teach them the meanings of the words “healthy” and “unhealthy,” and to get them to make sentences out of these words. The teacher’s guide recommended making sentences about different types of food, such as “eating fruit is healthy,” “eating candy is unhealthy.”

I would draw a picture of a food, such as an apple, and then ask them, “What is this?”

“It is an apple” they would respond.

I would continue our stimulating conversation by asking, “Is this healthy or unhealthy to eat?”

They would reply in a robotic tone, “eating an apple is healthy.”

I would follow this response by drawing a picture of a lollipop on the board and asking, “what is this?”

They would then respond by saying “it is a lollipop.”

Of course, my insatiable curiosity would compel me to ask, “is this healthy or unhealthy to eat?”

And they would then answer, “it is unhealthy to eat.”

I began to feel an intense anguish simmer within me after proceeding in this manner for several minutes, and then a little devil crawled onto my shoulder and forced my hand, which had been drawing a picture of a healthy banana, to instead draw a picture of a little robot.

“What is this?” I asked them.

They looked at each other in confusion, and then Jessica, one of the brighter students in the class answered, “It is a robot.”

“Good, now, is it healthy or unhealthy to eat?”

Complete silence filled the room. I looked on the faces of my Korean students and knew that I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I answered for them:

“Eating robots is unhealthy!”

The class stared at me, completely befuddled by this strange foreigner who had just walked into the room and insisted that robots did not compose part of a healthy diet. I narrowed my eyes at the unfortunately named Steve, and asked him, “Do you eat robots?”

He began to look frightened and his head darted to the side where his friend Eric, a heavyset boy who slightly resembled a sumo wrestler, was seated.

I followed his gaze to Eric and asked Eric the same question.

“Do you eat robots?”

Eric shook his head but did not say anything. Finally, I turned to look at Jessica, upon whose face had slowly crept a hint of a smile.

“Teacher, eating robots is unhealthy,” she said as her smile grew in proportion. She followed her sentence with an oddly leprechaun-like giggle and then promptly fell silent.

“That’s right Jessica! Eating robots is unhealthy.”

During the remainder of the lesson, I managed to discern that amongst the various food items that one feel inclined to consume, the following were considered healthy: snow, rain, trees, cows, monkeys, and grass. Conversely, my Parade class felt that the following items were considered unhealthy to eat: robots, houses, cars, trains, and for some odd reason, rabbits.

During the course of the lesson, the smiles eventually grew and slowly evolved into mild laughter. Soon, the entire class was raising their hands enthusiastically. I left the class feeling thoroughly satisfied that I had managed to both entertain and enlighten my students at the same time.

Not all of the classes went so well. My last class of the day was entitled “Expressways 2.” The class was composed of twelve thirteen year olds who had just gotten into the Hawkwan system, meaning there English was slightly above non-existent. I walked into the class and was suddenly immersed in a whirlwind of hoarse laughter and high pitched squealing.

Still disturbed by the display that Augustus had put on earlier in the day, I decided to attempt to discipline the class independently.

“Excuse me,” I said. They did not even look at me.

“Excuse me,” I repeated, this time in a slightly raised voice. Once again, I was completely ignored.

“Hey!” I blurted. To my utter astonishment, even my exclamation went completely unnoticed as they sat and proceeded to ignore me with stunning efficiency.

I shrugged my shoulders, sat down and opened up my book, turning to the lesson that they we were supposed to review that day.

“Okay everybody, lets turn to page 75″ I blared in my loudest and most dominant baritone voice. A few of the girls opened up their books but continued to look at one another and talk.

I managed to struggle my way through 40 minutes of being completely ignored by an entire class of students and was utterly relieved when the bell finally rang at 8:15 at night. I felt absolutely defeated as I walked into the teacher’s office. I threw my things down on my desk (which had finally been provided for me), and marched over to Mona.

“Mona?” I began. “My last class completely ignores me, what can I do to get them in line?”

She sized me up for a few minutes and then told me, “If they act up, give them a warning. If they act up twice, I usually let them stand in a corner for a few minutes.”

This was an idea that had not occurred to me before. It was brilliant. If they were facing the corner of the room, then they could not talk with their friends. I smiled and thanked her and went about my business.

The following Wednesday, I walked into the class and was again greeted by being completely ignored. I marched straight to the board and proceeded to write every student’s name down. As I was writing, I became cognizant of the fact that the entire class had quieted down and were watching me very carefully.

I turned to find eleven pairs of eyes were faced in my direction.

 ”Okay, one,” I said as I held up my pointer finger, “and you get this.” I drew an X by the first name on the list. “Two, and you’re in the corner.” I gave them a moment to let my edict sink in. “Do you understand?”

Although they didn’t say anything, they nodded their heads. Ryan, one of the louder students in the class, turned to his neighbor and muttered something in Korean.

I instantly wrote an X by his name.

“Okay, that’s one.”

He responded by looking down at the table. I opened my book and turned to the daily lesson.

“Okay, turn to page 75.”

Ryan turned to his neighbor and muttered something else in Korean. My response was immediate: I barked three words in rapid succession, “Hey! Ryan! Corner!”

Ryan slowly gathered his things together and walked towards the corner of the room in silence.

Just as I was beginning to think that my strategy was working, one of the other students shouted something in Korean, and the entire class burst into laughter, including Ryan.

My vague façade of control had dissolved almost instantaneously and I was immediately aware of how ridiculous I looked, standing at the head of the class with a vacant look upon my face, wondering what I might possibly do next.

Within a matter of seconds, the entire class had reverted into its original state: gossiping, looking at comic books, and ignoring the strange silent foreigner who was quietly seething. I came to dread my Expressways 2 class, and it was not an unreasonable fear, they were quite terrible.

Still, I decided to avoid bringing in the Gestapo. I felt at some point during my teaching stint, I would have to achieve autonomy or be a complete failure, always seeking the aid of authors to help me because I lacked the authority and strength to do so myself. Also, I was a little scared of Augustus.

My growing fear/dislike of my Expressways 2 class was probably the means by which I came to know the other foreign teachers at my Hawkwan.

At the front of the teacher’s office, Justin, Robin, and Greg sat in close proximity to one another. I was seated facing them and I began to develop a distanced fondness for their antics.

Robin would consistently come to my Hawkwan wearing blue jeans, black chucks, and an assortment of punk rock t-shirts. He was lean back in his chair, facing the teacher’s room and keep a rolling commentary as the various teachers entered the room.

Greg was seated two tables down from Robin, directly next to Jane, a vaguely unattractive Korean teacher who spoke in a rough staccato. The two of them would relentlessly hound Jane as she walked into the teacher’s room every day. Robin would say in his sweetest voice, “Hi Jane, how are you doing today?” To which she would respond my shooting him a dirty look.

She would place her books down at her desk and immediately, Greg would begin hounding her.

“Jane?” He would ask in a tender voice. “Why don’t you ever talk to me?” Feigned dejection would gradually begin evident in his voice as he would ask, “Jane? Why are you ignoring me? Jane?”

Jane would brusquely huff and turn to him and ask, “what?” Her Korean-English would begin with a high pitch and quickly drop in intonation, so that it sounded more like “Waa - uhhht?”

At this point, Robin’s New Zealand accented voice would begin beckoning to Jane: “Jane, will you go out with me? Jane?”

Greg, who would be staring at Jane’s behind at this point, would slowly pan his gaze upwards and tenderly say, “Jane, I just want to be friends.”

Usually by this point, Jane would stomp off towards the bookshelf and Robin and Greg would enjoy a rude cackling laugh together. It was all quite amusing.

Rob, who was seated directly behind me, and Justin, who was seated in front of me would occasionally throw in a crude comment or two. For some reason, they were not overly receptive to my attempts to make friends with them during those first few weeks and it took some prodding on my part to get them to say anything.

When they did talk, all they seemed to do was insist on how bad the conditions were at my Hawkwan, and how much they hated teaching their classes. I avoided buying into their pessimism for as long as I possibly could, a span of about two weeks, but eventually I began to crack as a result of the traumatizing experience that my Expressways class had become.

It was a little difficult for the Korean teachers to empathize with me, seeing as how they managed to somehow keep absolute control over their classes with the greatest of ease, so I inevitably turned towards the dark side of the force.

After our morning classes, Jake and I would sometimes have a cigarette on the back stoop of the school before we headed to the PC-Bang. On the Friday after I had arrived in Seoul, we were standing outside discussing what possible measures I could take to try and gain back at least a small measure of authority in my class. Jake had been telling me how earlier that day, he had taken one unruly student’s bag, and hurled it into the hallway. I was a bit shocked to hear this coming from Jake, especially considering he seemed like such a gentle, passive guy.

At that point, Greg and Justin walked outside and joined us.

“I was just telling Jake how one of my classes is an absolute nightmare,” I told them as Justin lit his cigarette. “How do you guys deal with difficult students?” I asked.

Greg turned his eyes skyward as he pondered the question for several moments before responding, “What was the student doing?”

“Well, it’s pretty much the whole class.” I said, and then quickly added, “There is this one student in particular who just doesn’t do a thing except talk to the other kids during the class.”

“Have you sent him to the corner?” Greg asked.

“Yeah, he just keeps talking.”

Justin, who I had heard say about three words since my arrival in Korea, interjected at this point.

“I carry a marker around and hit the kids on the head with it.”

I looked at him, a bit shocked. “You hit kids on the head with a marker?”

Greg seemed to find my reaction amusing and said, “We can get away with a lot more over here than back West.”

“I can’t believe you hit a kid on the head with a marker!”

Jake chimed in at this point, explaining, “That isn’t nearly as bad as what their Grammar school teachers do to them, or what their parents do to them.” He began to shake his head nervously as he continued, “Sometimes I get kids coming into class with black and blue bruises all over their arms and legs.”

“Sometimes on their face,” Justin added.

“It is just a different standard of punishment over here,” Greg said and for the first time, I noticed a weary, drained look in his eyes. “The kids are used to a lot more than what we expect.”

Even more ridiculous than the telephone interviews were the student evaluations that we were asked to write each month. Each student had their own “student card,” which provided a quantitative score of their skill in the following categories: writing, speaking, grammar, pronunciation, and classroom behavior.

Come the last week of each month, our Korean partner teacher would provide us with the updated version of the student card and their new scores for the month. The foreign teacher would then provide their own score and average the two numbers together. These averages would go on an individual student evaluation sheet, along with a brief paragraph description of the students’ performance, and was sent home to the parents.

Individually, this might not seem like such a difficult task, but the fact of the matter was that each foreign teacher was accountable for about fourteen different classes and a typical class would contain about eight or nine students. Consequently, each foreign teacher was accountable for about 120-140 student evaluations each month. Doing these student evaluations became a dreadful chore on par with the phone conversations, and much like the phone conversations, the quality of these evaluations underwent substantial degradation as the months passed.

During the first few months, I took my responsibilities as a teacher very seriously and put a lot of effort into each individual student evaluation, straining to accurately portray their writing ability as a decimal and encapsulate their essence in the span of a four line paragraph. Here is an actual example of one of my first efforts at writing a student evaluation:

Emily is an extremely bright and dedicated student. She has the ability to perform and a consistently outstanding level. I sometimes feel as though she feels a bit shy and tends to offer short responses to questions in class. From her written work, it is fairly obvious to me that she has a great degree of ability. I would encourage her to be more outspoken during class so that she may really develop her verbal capabilities.

It took me about eight or nine minutes to really formulate a paragraph that I felt was an accurate portrayal of this particular student’s academic performance. Multiply eight minutes multiplied times 120 students, and you have 960 minutes total. 960 minutes divided by sixty minutes gives you sixteen hours. Sixteen hours/month spent on student evaluations is absolutely ludicrous. I spent the majority of my weekend during that first month, grinding through evaluation after evaluation, until I could no longer associate the students’ names with their faces and my mind became a jumbled blur of decimals, adjectives, and Korean faces. After that first weekend, I decided that it would be in my best interests to become more “efficient” in the manner at which I approached the student evaluations.

I managed to decrease the average time spent/evaluation from eight minutes to about thirty seconds, and subsequently, I managed to cut back the total time spent on doing those stupid evaluations from an original value of sixteen hours, to a more manageable 1.5 hours. Granted, in the process of becoming more efficient with my time management skills, a certain amount of aesthetic value was lost with regard to the paragraph descriptions. Here is an example of the type of evaluation that I wrote during the third month for the same student:

• Emily is good and hard working.
• She is smart and a good student.
• I think she is fine. More work on talking needed.

It was not long until my supervisor approached me with a copy of one of my student evaluations and abruptly explained to me that this was not satisfactory and I would need to fill the confines of the allotted space. In response to her unfair request, I referenced chapter five of my “how to pass high-school without working very hard,” the chapter entitled “How to stretch a three page paper into a five page paper through a combination of font and margin manipulation.” This is the evaluation that I came up with:

• Emily is good and hard working.
• She is smart and a good student.
• I think she is fine. More work on talking needed.

Well, it wasn’t too long until my supervisor came to me again. Surprisingly, my font manipulation tactics managed to avoid her criticism. Instead, she told me that the comment that I had made was not only the same comment I had made last month to the same student, but that I had also used the same comment for about thirty other students.

After I pointed out to her that it wasn’t exactly the same paragraph because I had changed the word “Emily” in each of the other students’ paragraphs, she bluntly told me that “I had to write a different paragraph for each student,” and then walked away.
After that month, I more or less decided to play by the rules with regard to the student evaluations and I made sure that each and every evaluation would be like a snowflake, unique and beautiful.

• Emily is like a soaring seagull, flying high over the oceans of this planet.
• She is serene like a cloud, floating over the hills and valleys.
• She is strong like a large turtle with a strong shell, ambling over logs.
• Oh yeah, she needs to work on her speaking skills a bit more.

After that, my supervisor more or less left me to my own devices.

School progressed and I gradually found a sense of rhythm in my daily motions, or at least this is what I liked to believe as I struggled to overcome a fundamental inability to relate to children. It began during those first few moments when I observed Debbie teacher don a mask of professionalism in her approach to teaching, and decided to move in another direction. I would be different from average. I would attain a level of friendship with my students that other teachers could only gaze at as if they were examining the skies. I really believed this nonsense and perhaps that is why I soon found myself drowning in oceans of children’s shrieks.

If my few months were to be broken down into a symphony, the first movement would be replete with flowing rivers of rich melody in a major key played by the string section (my overtures of friendship towards my students). This would be countered with a banshee-like cacophony of sound coming from the brass section (the children taking advantage of my weakness and calling me insulting names in Korean which I could not understand). The second movement would involve choking sounds as the string section would stand up and try to strangle the brass section with their bow hairs.

It was not too long until I made the executive decision to convert from a socialist to a totalitarian dictator with my younger classes. Our age difference made it easier for me to place an emotional barrier between us that allowed me to establish myself as an authority figure. My first policy initiative was the “rule of three.” Upon the initial infraction, the culprit’s name would be written on the board and a large “X” would be placed next to it. Upon the second infraction, a second “X” would be added next to the first, and the student would be forced to stand in the corner. Upon the third infraction, a third “X” would be thrust into the mix and the student would be forced to leave the classroom. Even if the student’s had no idea what I was talking about when I first explained the policy, they caught on extremely quickly as they began to observe their fellow classmates being rudely thrust out of classrooms.

Before too long, I had managed to utterly pacify my most rowdy classes and I could subdue students by simply looking in the direction of the board when they began to feel restless. During my first three months, ten out of the twelve classes that I was teaching contained students between the ages of 6-12 and my “rule of three” was enough to subdue all of these classes. Once I had figured out how to solve the problem of disciplining my younger students I began to focus on a far more difficult task - how to discipline my two older classes. One of these classes consisted of four thirteen year old girls and the other consisted of six thirteen year old girls.

When I was in middle school, I overheard two teachers discussing trends in student behavior. They both agreed that the most difficult students to teach were seventh graders, who existed on the cusp of childhood and adolescence - a phase in which a barrage of mental, physical, and emotional changes creates an entity unrivaled in its malignity. Seventh grade was the time during which I lusted, hated, envied, disregarded, coveted, abused, and was abused with such great intensity that it was all I could do to prevent myself from crying and screaming on a continual basis. If I had been forced to attend two schools and learn a foreign language from some strange creature that could not communicate nor empathize with me, I probably would have acted the same exact way.

God smiled kindly upon me in one of my classes, and I was blessed with a group of six thirteen year old girls who seemed genuinely interested in learning English and committed to paying attention in class. God must have then grown weary of smiling and decided to play a few rounds of golf during the other class, in which I came to know what it is to be an inanimate object. As I made a futile attempt to teach grammar to the group of four thirteen year old girls, I witnessed as they gossiped about the latest teen sensation, checked their e-mail on their cellular phones, and drew pictures in their notebooks.

Occasionally, I would grow weary with being ignored and attempt to get their attention by saying, “Come on guys, lets pay attention,” which they seemed to interpret as “Look up from your cell phone for several moments and humor me before deciding to talk with your friend about makeup while I try to teach you English.” When good cop didn’t work, I made the very serious mistake of attempting to utilize my “rule of three.”

One girl, Lisa, was particularly chatty and one day I decided to make an attempt to discipline her. As she rattled on to her friend, I stood up and wrote her name on the board with an X next to it. This got her attention and I calmly explained that if she continued to disrupt class, I would be forced to move her to another seat (I didn’t think having her stand in the corner of the room was appropriate). Inevitably, she began to talk again and I abruptly stood up and asked her to switch seats.

“Ok, ok,” she said as she nodded and put her hand up as if to say, “Fine, I’ll take you seriously, now sit down and shut up.”

I remained standing and pointed at a seat in front of the class. Lisa responded by shaking her head and looking down at her desk. The frustration of the past five weeks welled up within me and I decided to walk forward, and pull her forward several feet, so that she was no longer seated next to her friends. Problem solved.

A strange thing happened then, Lisa moved her seat back to its original location and continued to talk with her friends. I began to get that same overwhelming feeling that I had when I walked into my first class, and I reacted in the same manner: by leaving the classroom and tracking down the first Korean teacher I could find. It happened to be Jefferson, who was seated in the teacher’s room, munching on a plate of Kim-Bop.

“Yeah? What is it?” He asked, his mouth full of Kim-Bop.

“Its Lisa. I asked her to move and she won’t listen to me.”
“What do you want me to do?”

“Well, I was hoping you could talk to her.”

With a sigh, he got up from his chair and waddled down the hall. He entered the classroom and the group of girls all giggled in unison at his appearance. I decided then that if my authority had not already been compromised by the fact that I had to get another teacher to bail be out of this difficult situation, it would be compromised by the fact that my teacher had a better relationship with these students than he had with me.

“What’s the problem?” Jefferson asked with a smile, which lead me to believe that I was on the losing end of some inside joke. Lisa and him had a short conversation in Korean and I knew that the end result would be Jefferson telling me to ease up on the students as he headed back to finish off his Kim-Bop.

To my surprise, he beckoned her to move her seat. Her grin evaporated and in a matter of seconds, her face was in her hands and she was sobbing uncontrollably. I began to feel increasingly nervous. What had I done? I was only trying to get her to stop talking, I didn’t expect her to act in this way. As I stood there, befuddled, she continued to cry and her friends began to console her, shooting me venomous looks every so often for good measure. Jefferson stood there, dumbfounded as well and I was pleased to observe that there were some things that crossed cultural boundaries, like the inexplicable and irrational behavior of teenagers.

Jefferson offered me a confused look before shrugging his shoulders and walking out the door. I was left standing in a classroom with four thirteen year old girls who wanted to stab me with their mechanical pencils.

I sat down at my desk and re-opened the textbook.

“Okay, let’s all turn to page 82,” I ventured. My request was met with a fusion of quiet sobs and conciliatory whispers. For the next few minutes, I sat there blankly and watched as Lisa continued to cry and her friends continued to console her. I would like to say that at this point, I learned the folly of my errors and never made a Korean child cry again, but that would be a lie.

I more or less spent the rest of the class making a feeble attempt to complete the lesson and couldn’t have been more relieved when the bell finally rang and I could escape the scene of the crime. My last class of that day went smoothly, as if the students could sense that something serious had transpired in the previous class.

When the final bell rang, I walked outside and saw Lisa speaking with one of the supervisors in the hall outside. Alarm bells began to ring in my head as I walked into the teacher’s room and saw Jefferson sitting at his desk, looking thoughtfully at his right hand.
“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Jefferson answered in his typically verbose manner. “Lisa stabbed me with her pencil.” Pausing for a few moments in order to let me appreciate the full effect of the incident, he added, “These girls are crazy.”

I nodded my head in acknowledgment and prepared to make my telephone interviews before heading out for the day.

I met Jinie on a Friday night. Earlier that day, Justin and I agreed to meet Robin, Mejin, JooYoung, and Heinn at a Blues club down in Itaewon. Justin and I had arrived and I was a little disappointed to find that Joo Young was nowhere to be found.

“She’s at a bar down the road, we’re going to go and meet her in a little bit” said Robin as he fiddled with his blow up guitar which he tended to bring out with him. We ordered some drinks and I tried to relax and listen to the band.

As the band began their set, Robin began strumming forcefully on his blowup guitar. As the yearning guitar rift began to flow through the room, I turned my head and my eyes alit upon her.

She was standing next to the front entrance with her arms folded glamorously across her chest. The first thing that I noticed was that she was taller than anybody in the room. She was wearing bell bottomed blue jeans and a tight black turtleneck that hugged her slim, delicately curved torso. A gray felt hat was slickly dropped over her face, casting a partial shadow over two large brown eyes. Angled cheekbones set upon either side of her full lips.

In my typically smooth fashion, I pretended to go to the bathroom in order to get a closer look at her. As I approached, I became very aware of just how beautiful she actually was. It was as if her essence was radiating an aura of such delicious sexuality that I felt time slow down as I passed. From under her felt hat, I caught a moment in which her eyes glance at me, flickered, and then quickly glanced away.

I continued on to the bathroom and attempted to gather my wits about me. I looked in the mirror to make sure that there were no cliffhangers latching onto my nose hairs, that my unibrow (a gift from my Iranian heritage) was not extremely apparent, breathed in deeply and walked out of the bathroom.

I looked towards the spot at which she had been standing and felt my stomach grow hollow as I realized she had left me. I turned towards my table and my eyes widened as I realized that she and her friend has seated themselves next to my table.

I contained my excitement and tried to strut towards my table as though I was oblivious to their presence, a strange flirting technique that I had originally developed in elementary school and had kept with me for all these years. I sat down in my seat and leaned back and began to think about how I might be able to approach the divine creature sitting ten feet away from me. These are the scenarios that I envisioned:

Scenario A: The Smooth Approach - I approach her table, sit down, and tell her “I couldn’t help but notice you when you walked in here. I just want to tell you that I find you very attractive and I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.”

- Pros: I come of seeming confident and self-assured. Also, I am honest and avoid the use of cheesy pick-up lines.
- Cons: I don’t have the balls to do or say those things, and she might not speak English. Also, she might get scared and get the bouncer to beat the crap out of me.

Scenario B: The Friendly Approach - I look at her and wait for her to make eye contact. When she does (which any girl will do if you stare at them long enough), smile and see if she smiles back. If she does, then walk over and say “Hi, how are you doing? My name is Jiyan.”
-Pros: Probably she won’t get the bouncer to beat the crap out of me. Even if she doesn’t speak English, she will understand that I am a nice guy because I smiled.
-Cons: Success is too contingent on external variables.

Scenario C: The Comedic Approach - I stand up and start dancing around like a moron. Then I dance towards her table and attempt to make her laugh with my eloquently contrived antics (dancing around like a moron).
Pros: If she has a good sense of humor, she will go for it. If she doesn’t have a good sense of humor, then I’m probably saving myself future boredom anyway.
Cons: The bouncer will see me from across the room, approach me, and beat the crap out of me. Later, when I realize how ridiculous I must have seemed, I will try to beat the crap out of myself.

Scenario C: The Jiyan Approach
This approach involved me glancing at her every so often and then looking away quickly if we make eye contact. Meanwhile, I have a debate with myself over whether I am good enough for her or not. Finally, I come to the decision that she is not worth my time and she is probably going to be a bitch anyway. Then, I quickly change my mind and decide to talk to her but she has left the bar by this point. I spend the rest of the time feeling vaguely inadequate.

A strange and wonderful thing happened at that point in time. I turned towards Justin and told him that I was thinking about speaking with the girl but I wasn’t sure. He glanced at her, and then glanced back towards the stage and said, “Go for it man.”

For some reason, his nonchalant attitude drifted over my head, just long enough for me to swivel my chair so that I was facing the girl and ask her if she wanted a drink. To my absolute delight, she offered me a dimpled smile and a twinkle of the eye: it was all the confidence I needed to pull my chair close to their table and introduce myself.

“Hi, my name is Jiyan,” I said.

She smiled deliciously back at me but then proceeded to shake her head and tell me, “I am Jinie. No English.”

Fortunately, her friend spoke a little bit more English than she did, and introduced the two of them.

“This is Jinie, I am Yu-Jin.”

“Well, hello there Jinie and Yu-Jin, my name is Jiyan and this,” I turned towards Justin who was placidly staring at the stage with his back to us, “this is Justin.”

Justin slowly swiveled his head around, smiled, waved, and then preceded to turn back towards the stage. I found myself alone, facing two Korean girls who spoke very little English.

During my first month in Korea, I had developed the notion that it was absolutely impossible to interact with Korean girls. This opinion was the inevitable result of getting into numerous bar conversations that resembled the following example:

Jiyan: Hi there, my name is Jiyan.
Korean Girl: Hi. (giggles, covers her mouth and turns away)
Jiyan: Wait! What is your name?
Korean Girl: (shakes head) No English.
Jiyan: What?
Korean Girl: No. Nothing.
Jiyan: So, what’s your name?
Korean Girl: Oh Hyun Joo
Jiyan: Ohyunsu?
Korean Girl: Oh Hyun Joo.
Jiyan: Say that again?
Korean Girl: Bye!

At this point, the girl would rapidly depart the premises, not turning back for fear of making eye contact with me. This type of situation had occurred with consistent frequency and I had just given up the whole though of trying to communicate with Korean girls.

As usual, Gordon had offered his perspective on the situation, explaining that precise semantic comprehension was not a prerequisite for flirting with a girl. Apparently, an individual was capable of communicating through a variety of different mediums, including facial expressions, sign language, symbolic drawing, and Gordon’s favorite - getting drunk and trying to make out with the girl. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about at the time, but on that particular night, inspired by a muse of epic beauty, I made my grand leap into the world of non-verbal communication.

Pointing to my eyes and then pointing to her, I managed to convey my appreciation for her beauty. She smiled and then made a similar gesture, offering reciprocity for my compliment.

After a while, I extended my index finger and my little finger, and held them to my ear while offering her a questioning glance. She got the message, smiled and shook her head vigorously. I responded by shrugging my shoulders and placing a hurt look into my eyes.

She duplicated my “phone” gesture and feigned speaking into the mouthpiece. She then shrugged her shoulders and looked confusedly at the phone. The two words that she uttered, “no understand,” enlightened me as to her dilemma: she did not feel as though we would be able to communicate adequately.

After making the “pen” gesture by clenching the tips of my fingers together and then pretending to write over an imaginary sheet of paper, she got the message and fished a pen out of her handbag. I then proceeded to write the following message on a napkin:

“I will learn Korean so that I can speak with you.”

She understood my message and her acknowledging smile was all the response I needed. We were two mimes in love.

It was then that fortune smiled upon me because just as her friend was beginning to get restless, a solitary Korean fellow at a neighboring table approached her and began speaking with her.

Jinie and I continued our nonsensical banter for several minutes, and then her friend leaned over and began whispering something in her ear. The guy who had joined us then asked me, “do you want to go to another place after this?”

Ordinarily, I would have no problem just moving with the general flow of things, but in this case, prudence calmly explained to me that after only being in this country for one month, and seeing as how I was incapable of communicating with 80% of the population, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to go cavorting around with a group of people who I had known for a total of about one hour. I could end up “in some ditch,” as my Mother always enjoyed telling me when I was young.

As usual, the conflict between male common sense and a beautiful girl was short lived, and next thing I knew we were driving on the highway to God knows where and I was sitting in the back seat with a beautiful girl who did not understand a word that I was saying. As a benefit to all my readers, I have included a translation along with the following transcript of dialogue between Jinie and myself:

Jinie: (points at me) Girlfriend? (Offers a questioning glance)
Translation: So, do you have a girlfriend?

Jiyan: (shakes head vigorously and looks at Jinie) Boyfriend? (Offers a questioning glance)
Translation: No, I’m hoping you can help me with that. Wait, do you have a boyfriend?

Jinie: (Smiles and shakes head)
Translation: No, I just haven’t met a guy who excites me, you know? I need an interesting guy who challenges me.

Jiyan: (smiles knowingly)
Translation: Maybe I could be you boyfriend. I’m interesting, I used to drench my toys with WD-40 and destroy them in a blazing inferno.

Jinie: (Points at me with a questioning look on her face) Job?
Translation: So, what do you do for a living? What makes your boat float? Tell me more about yourself.

Jiyan: (points at self) Teacher. (Points at Jinie) Job?
Translation: I don’t know DHTML, ASP, or VB Script, so I decided to teach English. Well, baby-sit is more accurate a term. So, what do you do?

Jinie: (points at self) Fashion model.
Translation: Well, I’ve been modeling since I was young, it pays well and I only have to work two hours each day. I’m quite beautiful, don’t you think?

Jiyan: (nods head appreciatively) Oh. Model what?
Translation: You’re a model? Well, that certainly seems to make sense? What kind of modeling do you do?

Jinie: Lingerie model. Home shopping.
Translation: Well, I’m a lingerie model on the home shopping network actually. I walk around in my underwear while people videotape me.

Jiyan: Oh baby.
Translation: Oh baby.

I was so entranced by the conversation with Jinie that I did not realize we had been driving on the highway for about thirty minutes. When I finally looked out the window, I was disturbed to see that we were no longer in the city. We had arrived in some strange café in the middle of nowhere.

Thankfully, my companions did not morph into vampires and kill me in a blood-soaked orgy of gore. Instead, we had a few drinks in the café and then headed back to the city.

After dropping of the male stranger, we headed towards Chongshinde to drop me off. It was at this point that I found out that Jinie lived in a distant region in the far Northeast section of Seoul and wanted to know if her and her friend could stay at my house for the evening. Being the pinnacle of chivalry that I am, I politely explained to them that they were more than welcome to accompany me back to my house, and that I would even sleep on the floor and allow them the privilege of sharing my single bed.

This news seemed to please them and we headed towards my apartment.

We arrived and they gingerly followed me through my building into my apartment. We entered and they scrutinized my environment, probably to make sure that I didn’t have any whips or chains in the corner of my room. As I quietly looked on, they exchanged a few words in Korean, and then Jinie’s friend turned towards me and shyly asked, “It is okay if she sleeps here?”

I tried my best to contain the diabolical grin that was struggling its way onto my face and responded, “Sure, no problem.”

My response seemed to satisfy her and she said her farewell and left the room, leaving Jinie and myself completely alone for the first time that night. Playing the role of the gentleman, I offered her some pajamas and we began to prepare ourselves for bed.

Like two children, we sat next to each other and attempted to communicate through drawings on a notepad until morning.
 

After our classes finished that evening, Jake and I enjoyed a savory dinner at KFC, and then headed over to Jake’s place, where we had agreed to meet Bob and greg before heading over to pick up Justin and Robin. We arrived to find Bob seated in front of his computer, drinking a Cass and smoking a cigarette.When asked about greg’s whereabouts, Bob responded with “That bastard went out to meet some girl. That pussy.”

Jake jumped into the shower, so I entered Bob’s room and sat down on his bed. I noticed a few pairs of women’s underwear hanging on his doorknob.

“So, whose are those?” I asked.

“Well, you know, just one of the many,” he responded. Although I found it a bit disturbing to be talking to a 45-year-old man about women’s underwear, I continued: “So, do you have a girlfriend in Seoul?”

“No, I have a girlfriend in Texas aye, her name is Judy” Bob began, she is an aerobics instructor, she has the most amazing body I’ve ever seen.” Bob slowly swiveled his head towards me while plucking a small picture frame off of his desk. “Do you want to see a picture of her?”

I took the picture frame out of his hand and looked at Bob’s girlfriend - she looked like a female version of Bob. “Oh. She is very attractive Bob.”

This seemed to please him and he turned back towards his computer and continued typing. He was apparently in some sort of chatroom.

“So, what’s the plan for tonight?” I asked.

“Well, I know some places in Itchie-won.”

“I’m sorry, Itchie-won?”

“Yeah, that’s what I call Itaewon. Itchie-won.”

“I see.” I scanned his room and saw that there were a few 70s style polyester dresses hanging on his dresser.

“I know this one place in Itchie-won” Bob began, while still typing on his computer, “where I know this girl Sarah. She can introduce you to some of her friends aye?”

“That sounds nice,” I told him even though it really didn’t sound very nice to me. I watched as Bob stubbed out his cigarette butt and immediately reached into his cigarette box for another.

“So, where do you think Greg went?” I asked.

“I don’t know, that bastard. Probably off with some whore, aye?”

I made an ambiguous sound under my breath, which I hoped would satisfy him and attempted to change the subject: “So, how have you enjoyed teaching at ECC so far, Bob?”

He glanced at me in surprise, as if wondering if I was having it on with him. After he realized that I was being sincere, he answered,

“It’s a pain in the ass. But I’m making money aye. There was nothing at home.”

“Right, right. . .” I answered intelligently.

“The kids are a pain in the ass, but it’s not that bad.”

“Hmm. . .”

“You know what?” He said. “You’re a good sh#!.” With that, he got out of his seat, grabbed a worn down towel off of his dresser and headed towards the shower.

I sat in his room for a few moments, attempting to make sense of the conversation, which had just transpired, and then decided to check my e-mail on his computer.

I was loading Internet Explorer when my curiosity got the best of me and I looked into his “My Documents” folder. Not surprisingly, there was a folder entitled “Girls,” which I opened up.

I was treated to a terribly graphic display of some of the most atrociously rude picture I had ever seen. There was a folder entitled “Judy.” I quickly closed the window and moved away from the computer, desperately trying to shake the disturbing images out of my head.

After Bob and Jake had gotten themselves ready, we headed over to Justin and Robin’s house. Officially, their house consisted of two bedrooms and a common room, which served as both a kitchen and a dining room. In reality their house was more of a shanty, and the two bedrooms was more along the lines of one bedroom and a closet. The kitchen/dining area was large enough for a refrigerator, gas stove, and a small table, but you had to walk sideways to get through it.

We entered the house and I was a bit surprised to find Bill sitting in the kitchen by himself, drinking a beer.

“What the f!#k,” he said. “What took you guys so f@#!ing long?”

“Well, it took a while for everyone to get ready” I answered as we took our shoes off and sat down on the floor in the common room.

Robin was in his small closet, cradling a tiny puppy in his arms.

Apparently, the puppy had been a gift from a Korean friend, and shortly after it had come into Robin’s possession, it had acquired a bad case of Kennel cough. Robin told us that the veterinarian had simply deemed that the dog had about “three or four weeks to live,” and there was really nothing that could be done to help it.

The puppy was so weak that it could barely walk, it spent most of its time lying on its stomach, its chin resting on the floor.

I peeked into Justin’s room and saw that he and his extremely beautiful girlfriend were playing a card game with miniature cards.

“Ohh. . .hello there Jiyan.” Justin said in his molasses drenched voice. “This is Sojin.”

“What’s her name? Soju?” This comment inspired a great laughter out of Sojin that morphed into a hyperventilating-like sound.

“Soooojiiiiin,” Justin clarified.

“Oh, it’s nice to meet you Sojin.”

“Hello.”

I smiled politely and then turned towards the kitchen, where Bill had begun his latest hate filled monologue about something or other.

Paraphrasing Bill was fairly easy, you just took a neutral statement such as “I went to the store today,” and filled it in with one of the following phrases:

1. F#!ing
2. Sh#!
3. Unfucking believable
4. Oh yeah, I’ve seen it

What you get is an energetic opinion such as “oh yeah, you wouldn’t f@#ing believe it, I went to that sh#@!y store today.”

Bill was discussing the time that he had spent in State prison for selling drugs. Apparently, he had some friend in the mafia who had gotten him out of prison the first time. The second time, his “friend” had decided that it was probably better for Bill to learn a lesson and therefore left him in prison for three months.

“Oh yeah, you got to watch your back because you never know when someone is going to come behind you and shank you in the back.”

Jake was listening intently to the story while Bob was standing towards the corner, looking a little bit frightened. I felt compelled to leave the room, perhaps for fear that I would slowly grow to believe in Bill’s incredulous web of fantasy tinged reality, and I headed into Robin’s closet.

The puppy was still lying on the floor, its eyes half open, waiting to die.

“He hasn’t eaten anything all day,” Robin said. “He tried to eat a little bit earlier, but he just threw it up immediately.”

The puppy looked up at Robin with its dreary eyes in seeming acknowledgment of his concern. From the kitchen, I heard Bob call out, “Lets go aye?”

I kneeled down and pat the dog on the head and then turned to leave, as I was walking out, Robin called out to me: “Be careful out there.”

I nodded towards him and walked through the kitchen, shaking Jake and Bill’s hands before heading out the door to Itaewon.

Itaewon was a nightmare out of Full Metal Jacket. GIs the size of oxen roamed the streets in herd, laughing rambunctiously as they rudely called out to Korean prostitutes. They exuded a confidence borne out of the knowledge that they had been trained to kill and were protecting a country of small Asian people who were incapable of defending themselves.

We walked through the streets and I watched with amusement as Bob joined in the parade by yelling out to the various prostitutes. We headed up an incline fondly referred to as “hooker hill,” for the many hostess bars that lined both sides of the streets.

In 1993, Private Kenneth Markle raped and murdered a young Korean woman. Her name was Kum E. Yoon.

Bob and I stopped at the top of the hill and watched as a shirtless Korean man was restrained by military police officers.

Kum E. Yoon was found covered in blood and detergent.

He was yelling in Korean and as he was pushed down the hill, I asked him “what is wrong,” to which he responded, “get out of my country.”

Kum E. Yoon was found with her legs spread open.

We entered the bar and Bob ordered two beers and a bowl of soup. As he slurped happily away, I turned and surveyed the scene in the bar. Young Korean girls were prancing around the room, grinding with American GIs on the dance floor, whispering in their ears, sitting on their laps.

Kum E. Yoon was found with a bottle inserted inter her vagina and an umbrella inserted 11 inches into her rectum.

From out of the corner of my eye, I could see that one of the Korean girls was staring at me, trying to get my attention. I responded by staring forcefully into my beer and waiting for her gaze to depart.

Markle was sentenced to life imprisonment. At the appeal court, his term was reduced to fifteen years.

Bob finished slurping his soup and began to flirt with the bar tender, who was thirty years younger than him. His filthy leer made me feel slightly ill.

Mrs. Kim Kook-Hye was a 51-year old owner of a small bar.

After drinking another beer, we headed towards a dance club that was located closer to the base of hooker hill.

Mrs. Kim Kook-Hye was found severely beaten, with her undergarments torn away from her limp body.

We entered the club and as I drank another beer, I watched Bob attempt to dance with a girl who looked about eighteen years old. As if his appearance and his leer did not horrify the girl enough, the fact that he danced like Frankenstein with osteoporosis sealed the deal and she headed out of the club.

Mrs. Kim Kook-Hye was taken to the hospital where she underwent a surgical operation on her brain.

I turned again towards the dance floor and watched as two GIs with camcorders were grinding with two young girls on the dance floor. As they groped the girls’ buttocks with one hand, they recorded the action with the other.

Mrs. Kim Kook-Hye regained consciousness after four months in the hospital. Besides being emotionally and physically scarred, she had acquired a wonderful little mental disorder.

I watched Bob move on to another girl and I began to feel incredibly fatigued. The sounds of laughter began to pierce my ears and my eyes started to feel uncomfortably dry.

Corporal John Roger Saloy of the 2nd infantry division in Dongduchun stated that he had felt compelled to beat her into unconsciousness fearing her ability to use Taekwondo as a means of defense.

I stood up and realized that I had gotten quite drunk over the course of the past few hours. I headed out of the bar and hailed a cab back to Sillim.

Of course, when he returned home the next day at 6 in the morning, I was incapable of waking up and found myself sprinting to the school at about 9:15, 45 minutes before my first class.

During the summer session at my Hawkwan, an intensive morning class was offered to beginning English students. Fortunately, I had been blessed with the responsibility of teaching this class. Call it divine providence. It happened to be the same class that I had watched Darlene teach the previous day, and from what I had seen, I expected the class to go very smoothly.

Within five seconds of walking into the classroom, I achieved a great deal of “firsts.” First of all, it was the first time that I had ever walked into a room and felt like jumping out of a window. The scene that greeted me was straight out of Dante’s inferno. There were small Korean boys running around the room, jumping on desks, and hitting each other on the head. Although several of the Korean girls were seated, a few of them were playing a game in which the rules seemed to be “run around the desk and screech like banshees.”

Shortly after I walked in, they turned towards me and this is when the second “first” took place. It was the first time that I had ever been laughed at by an entire group of seven-year-old girls, and not in the cute way that Asian school girls are portrayed as laughing in popular media. Rather, it was a boisterous, obnoxious, hyena-like laughter that greeted me as I walked into the room, a sound that made my face turn red.

Third, it was the first time I had ever been slapped in the ass by a five-year-old boy, who incidentally was the purveyor of the fourth and fifth firsts, the first time I had ever had a five-year-old boy successfully climb up my leg after slapping me in the ass, and the first time I had every had a five-year-old boy slap me in the ass, climb successfully up my leg, and call me “Hanaboge,” which I later found out meant “Grandfather” in Korean.

This was the greeting that I did not experience during my first day at my Hawkwan: it was truly a special moment for me. I was so overwhelmed by the absolute state of entropy in the room before me, that I just turned around and walked out of the classroom, and straight to the teacher’s office.

Augustus looked up from her desk as I walked in and asked in wide-eyed disbelief, “what are you doing in here?”

Still slightly shocked by the manner in which I had been received by my first class, all I could muster was:

“I need help.”

She gritted her teeth in firm resolve and marched down the hall, with me trailing close behind. She thrust open the door and I watched in amazement, as time seemed to halt within the classroom. The kids literally froze in their tracks as they realized who had just walked in the door. I watched as their faces turned from amusement, to shock, to fear in a matter of seconds.

Augustus surveyed the scene and an angry Korean tirade soon began to stream from her mouth. The children darted towards their desks, yanked the books out of their bags, and sat in guilty attention as she berated them.

I didn’t understand a word she was saying, but even I began to feel a little scared as she began to single out students and ask them questions. They would respond by quickly nodding their head and saying “neh.”

After she drilled a few individual students, she addressed the entire room. She would ask a question, to which the class would simultaneously respond, “neh.” After several more inferno drenches phrases, she silently surveyed the room, admiring her handy work. Augustus then turned to me and said, “I think they will behave now.” I couldn’t have agreed with her more.

She promptly departed the room and I turned and looked at the class in front of me, they had become absolute statues. An uncomfortable silence pervaded the room as I headed towards my small desk and put my books down.

Throughout the remainder of the class, the students were perfectly behaved: they filled out all of the worksheets that I handed them, they answered all of the questions that I asked them, and they did not make any action whatsoever that might have compelled me to get Augustus. Not that I would have gotten her even if they had done something, I didn’t want to see anger incarnate any more than the kids.

I somehow managed to struggle my way through the rest of the day and was relieved when the final bell sounded at 8:30 PM. I plodded into the teacher’s office and felt immediately invigorated as I realized I would not have to endure any more classes for five whole days. I would be able to get settled in my new apartment over the weekend, I could relax and get acclimated, and maybe even go out and see the nightlife in Seoul.

Surprisingly, the Korean teachers had been much more inquisitive than the foreign teachers and had been asking me all sorts of questions about my family, my education, and even my girlfriend.

The first thought that entered my mind as I walked through the gates that lead into the main waiting area of Bangpo airport in Seoul was that the Koreans were taller than I had thought they would be. After all, one of my favorite answers to the question, “Why are you going to Korea,” had been, “Because I want to know what it is like to be tall.” I had said this half-jokingly, but on some deeper level, I think that I had genuinely been looking forward to being tall. Now, glancing around the sea of Koreans in the airport, I realized that my vision might never come to fruition.

The second thought that entered my mind was that I had no idea who was going to meet me at the airport. This idea contained a disturbing gravity that was a stark contrast to my first idea. The question that entered my mind at that point was: What if nobody came to claim me?

I looked desperately at all of the name placards that were being held up by tall Koreans and realized that my grand quest into the unknown might get off to a bad start. It was then that I remembered that I had written down the phone number of the woman who had recruited me to come to Korea, so I grabbed my fifty-pound duffel bag tightly to my side and darted towards the phones.

After growing increasingly panicked with every unanswered ring of the phone, finally a woman answered the phone.

“Yoboseyo?”

“…uh, Hello?” I answered hesitantly.

“Yes? Oh, is this Jiyan?” Relief flooded over me as I heard the tone of recognition in her voice.

“Yes, I’m here Soo-Yeon.” Soo-Yeon was the name of the woman who had recruited me, a self-proclaimed “black bowling-ball.” Over the course of the past month, I had been in constant correspondence with her, working out all the details of my trip. At one point I had mentioned to her that she had a very cute voice, to which she responded by telling me that she was fat and always wore black clothing. Hence, she explained, she was a “black bowling-ball.”

“Well, the supervisor should be there,” she said with a questioning tone in her voice, as if she was wondering why I would be calling her at 11:00 at night.

“Hmm. . .What does she look like?” I asked.

“She is shorter, and she has dark short hair,” Soo-yeon explained. Looking around the crowded airport, I realized that Soo-Yeon might as well have told me that “she has feet and hands.”

“Okay. I’ll look around for her,” I said.

“Okay. Well, call me if you can not find her,” Soo-Yeon responded.

“Okay, bye.”

With that, I hung up the phone and turned around to look for the Korean woman who was “shorter” and had “dark short hair.” Out of the blur of people who had dark hair and were shorter, one figure stopped and looked at me for a moment. I looked back at her and she started to walk towards me.

Augustus had short dark hair and couldn’t have been taller than 5′2″. She had a neat organized little face with eyes that seemed to say “What? So what?”

She stopped about five feet in front of me and asked, “Are you Jiyan?”

To which my answer, “Yes, nice to meet you,” was met with a sliver of a smile. She examined my extended hand gingerly before deciding to limply drop her hand into it and squirm it around a bit.

She looked back at me with her “so what?” eyes and explained, “You look different in person than in your pictures.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I responded with a smile.

She looked at me for a moment, as if wondering what to make of this strange creature in front of her, and then proceeded to simply shrug her shoulders as if it did not make the slightest bit of difference to her.

“My cah is pahked outside,” she said.

I smiled at her as I followed her out the airport doors that opened into Seoul.

Augustus had a white compact-sized car with a small herd of fluorescent stuffed animals resting on the dash. As we headed out of the airport and into the Seoul night, I was immediately struck by the massive size of the apartment complexes that loomed over us. I found my eyes glued to the window as a blur of lights and shapes passed before my eyes - there was a palpable vibrancy that resonated through the air despite the late hour.

I soon noticed myself straining to make out the bizarre characters that were etched onto the looming monolith like apartment buildings on either side of us.

“How was your flight?” Augustus asked.

“Not too bad,” I answered. “I’m excited to be here,” and unlike so many other times I had made that statement, I actually meant it.

“Mr. Kim told me to take you out for dinner,” Augustus said.

“That sounds great,” I told her as I fought hard to control the excited electricity that had begun to arc through my stomach as I gazed in wonder at the Seoul landscape.

“Do you know the Outback Steak House?” Augustus asked, and I couldn’t help but be surprised that I had traveled halfway across the globe to eat at the Outback Steak House.

Disillusionment at the banality of chain restaurants was quickly swept aside by a vision of hot wings and beer, further beautified by the fact that I had spent nearly one whole day eating rationed airplane food and peanuts.

“Yeah, that sounds great actually,” I told her and a slight glint of a smile slid over her lips.

“Do you like Korean food?” she asked.

“Yes, actually,” I responded. “My father always used to buy Kim-Chi.”

Actually, Kim-Chi was the only Korean food I really knew, but I didn’t want to sound uneducated about Korean culture so early in the game.

Augustus’s eyes widened in surprise as she nodded her head and emitted a strange, nasally-sounding “Uhhnnngh.” “So,” she continued, “you like spicy food?”

“Yeah, I put Tabasco on everything actually.”

She repeated her head nodding and her beast-like nasally sound, which I found strangely amusing. In the hopes that I could elicit this reaction from her further, I continued, “My dad always used to put Tabasco sauce on everything, so I gradually just picked up the habit.”

Bingo. She continued her head bobbing and nose moaning.

“So, your Father is Korean?” she asked.

“Yeah. He was born in Pyongyang actually.”

She kept nodding her head, but to my dismay, the “uhhng” sound had ceased.

I turned back to the window and let myself become hypnotized by the scenery.

“So,” she began, disrupting my reverie. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
I was a bit surprised by this question seeing as how the two of us had just met, but not being a particularly bashful person, I took her answer in stride and answered, “Yes, she lives in New York.”

Augustus seemed to be a bit surprised by this piece of information and spouted forth a follow-up question with machine like precision: “Wasn’t she very disappointed when you left?”

I paused for a moment before I spoke. “Yes. But this is something I decided to do.” Thankfully, my answer satisfied her and we continued in silence towards the restaurant.

The rest of the trip took about twenty minutes, which was enough time for me to find out that Augustus wanted to be a man, that she disliked her boyfriend because he was “selfish and uncaring,” and that I would inevitably come to hate Augustus because “everyone else hates her,” to which I diplomatically responded that I was “Definitely not one to follow the crowd.”

We arrived at the Outback Steak House and Augustus watched with restrained curiosity as I proceeded to gorge myself on hot wings and beer. In between (and often during) bites, I managed to babble endlessly about my family, my life, and College experience, while making eyes at the cute waitress who giggled every time she tried to say something in English. The whole time, Augustus just sat there and listened intently, as if gathering information that she would later report to her superiors.

Later, as she paid the bill and we left the restaurant, my thoughts turned towards a vision of what my apartment would be like. During my sophomore year of College, I had stayed in a three-bedroom apartment complex with five of my friends. It had been quite comfortable and we had made sure to adorn it with the quintessential recipe for proper College decor: a large television set, a futon, and posters of Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, and at least one semi-naked girl.

During my senior year, I had moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a close friend. Once again, we had made sure to furnish it with a large television set, a futon, and posters of Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, and at least one semi-naked girl. Seeing as how we were about to graduate and enter the professional world, we also included a poster of a Salvador Dali painting.

In general, my whole concept of what an apartment should be, left me completely unprepared for what I found out an apartment in Seoul was.

After driving along the highway for several more minutes, Augustus pulled off onto one of the exits and we headed down a four-lane road. On either side of the road were rows of four-story buildings containing a jungle of neon signs.

Although it was already about 12:00 midnight on a Thursday, there were still hundred of people milling about on the sidewalks. Again, I felt a thrill run through my stomach at the teeming vibrancy of the place. If New York was the city that never slept, Seoul must be the city in which people not only never sleep, but also never sit still.

We turned onto a small side street and headed up a road that was surrounded on both sides by small Mom and Pop stores. Augustus informed me that the area was surrounded by one of the larger open-air markets in Seoul.

After driving up a narrow hill, Augustus struggled to parallel-park in a space that granted her no more than one or two feet of leeway. The general closeness of the place immediately struck me, as did the manner in which cars were jumbled together in chaotic patterns.

We parked and I heaved my weighty luggage out of Augustus’s car, which seemed to breath a sigh of metal relief. We walked through a black gate composed of aluminum siding, onto a patio that was covered with an unbecoming assortment of boxes and trash bags. On the right side of the patio was a small house and Augustus walked towards the front door and knocked on it.

After a few moments, a slender man in his early twenties opened the door. Jake was wearing faded gray cargo pants and a black t-shirt. He had a lean, angular face with a sharp nose and his hair was extremely thin.

He smiled at me, and then turned towards Augustus.

“What are you doing here?” he asked nervously.

“This is the new teacher,” Augustus said with a forced smile. “He will be staying here until the other apartment is ready,” and her tone left little room for debate.

Jake nodded quickly and then backed into the house. Augustus walked through the door and I followed behind her.

The apartment was modest: the front door opened onto a small common room. The far side of the common room contained a wooden table with three small chairs. A 12″ screen television sat atop a small wooden drawer on the near side of the room.

Augustus cast a disapproving gaze around the room before asking, “Where did you get all of this stuff?”

I examined the barren room and wondered what she could have possibly been talking about seeing as how there was less furniture in the room than one would expect at a Hare Krishna commune.

Jake offered her a feeble smile and shrugged his shoulders.

“You must stop picking stuff up off the streets,” she said.

Augustus then turned to me and calmly explained, “School starts at 10:00. You might want to get there a little bit earlier to prepare.”

With that, she turned and walked out the door. I watched as the door closed behind her.
“I hate Augustus,” Jake said in a flat tone. “She’s a bitch.”

This was the first thing that I learned about Jake, that he harbored a powerful resentment towards Augusts. The second thing that I learned about Jake was that he was an irrepressible gossip and therefore, the perfect individual to introduce me to the world that I had just entered.

We had a few cigarettes and I listened intently as he told me about his roommates: Bob the alcoholic and Greg the lecher, both of whom were apparently cavorting in the Hostess bars.

“What are the hostess bars?” I asked.

A sly smile crept onto Jake’s lips as he explained that the hostess bars were venues in which an individual might purchase both alcohol and female companionship.

“You pay them to do. . .do stuff with you,” he explained coyly. “Both Bob and Greg go there all the time.”

I found it a bit interested that he seemed so enthusiastic to divulge this type of information to me. I got the distinct impression that he had been quietly watching his roommates for quite some time, just waiting for someone to come along who might show interest in what he had to say.

After listening to Jake rant on for about an hour, it dawned on me that I would have to wake up in several hours and jump into the unknown world of teaching English, so I yawned and asked where I could lay my head.

Jake laid a few blankets on the linoleum floor in his room and I fell asleep in a matter of seconds.