Now, on to the dramatic conclusion of my previous post.
To summarize briefly, my first three months of work at Solan were not a problem. There were issues, but none of them became overly conspicuous at this point.
This situation, however, was untenable, and rapidly changed.
After winter vacation, there were a few more weeks of regular classes and the after-school program. Then, there were two weeks when we had no classes, either after-school or regular. Myself and M just showed up at the school and sat at our desks for two weeks.
I spent the time making lesson plans. My goal was to make a plan for all of the classes, even ones I didn’t teach. That way, I would know which pages to cover every day, I would definitely be able to finish all of the books, I would be less disorganized, and hopefully wean myself away from Mr. Bean.
Hey, where are you going? Come back!
I was feeling bad about my lack of organization and materials for the after-school classes, but due to the morning classes (which, despite being ‘optional’ in the contract, were considered mandatory at this school), I had no time. Before these two weeks, I simply struggled to prepare for my regular classes in the meager time I had off.
Thusly, if I set out all the pages and whatnot, I figured I would be set. I would be able to actually teach these children, and teach them well. I would do a good job, and with this routine, I would need to prepare less for future terms. I could get my contract renewed and coast for the next year.
How wrong I was.
—
Soon, M and I had to begin filing our taxes. Hera came up to both of us and showed us a letter from her bank.
“You should have got…gotten…got some letters like this. It from your bank.”
“Um…no, I didn’t get that one yet,” I replied.
M came back from his class, and Hera asked him the same thing. She got the same response. Hera, who has been working with foreigners for at least five years, seems to not have any friggin’ clue how to do this. Maybe it was due to the previous manager’s departure, who knows?
We were forced to go back to our bank, which we had to do during our own personal free time, and pick up this letter to give to her. She spent the next hour on the phone with the tax office, being transferred around, until she finally figured it out.
—
During this time, there was a ‘parent’s orientation,’ which showcased the school for all of the new or incoming parents. We were supposed to attend this function, and just say ‘hello.’ If I had known about this ahead of time, I would have dressed up very nicely.
However, Hera did not deign to inform me of this until the morning of.
Thus, clad in my normal, somewhat casual teaching garb, I said hello to all of these parents. I would have worn a nice shirt, tie, and dress pants, but how was I do know? I didn’t look very impressive, although I suppose being prepared is a lesson I learned for the future.
—
In February, M left the school. He was tired of the crushing workload, as well as the frequent, critical, and unhelpful ‘talks’ and feedback from Sunhwa. A new, female teacher from Hawaii was hired (let’s call her H), but first something drastic happened.
Shortly after M left, I was presented with a list of complaints and criticisms about my class. This occurred about six months into a twelve month contract, and I guess they decided to wait until after M had departed to give me this.
There were many complaints about my teaching style, along with a warning that I could not play Mr. Bean anymore. Each complaint had a date when it was received, and Hera said that, “I didn’t have time to watch your class, or give you advice, sorrryy.” I was utterly shocked, but later I wondered about this statement, as she only taught for two hours a day compared to my four. She could have easily prepared something, anything, watched my class, given advice, helped me out.
But she didn’t.
Hera stated that if I got more complaints, “the principal might give one strike.”
This made me nervous.
Anyways, about the dates of these critiques? Some of them were from October. I got the list in late February.
At the end of the day, I politely asked Hera to please, inform me right away if there are any problems with my class, instead of waiting five months to do so.
—
Around this time, In-Young left the program. She transferred to a different school, and seemed sad to leave.
Hera, Sunhwa, In-Young, and myself went out to a local buffet to celebrate and say our goodbyes. We ate a good meal and sent her off.
We got a new secretary. This new secretary was older, less polite, less cute, and spoke even less English than In-Young. Unbeknownst to me, she was also lazier. The classrooms and office became more dirty over time. The garbage was taken out less and less, until she stopped taking it out altogether.
I never learned her name, and was never introduced to her. The lack of friendliness towards me had morphed from a curtain into a wall.
Suffice to say, her laziness led to a few incidents which I will mention later.
—
At the end of the two-week, class-free hiatus, the third teacher in six months had arrived. H, a Hawaiian, was a very motivated, kind girl who worked diligently at her job.
H was, like M, uncertain about the school. I showed her some of the materials and explained the schedule to her, something that Hera and Sunhwa seemed unwilling or unable to do. H really wanted to learn how to teach and be a teacher, so she was much more active and motivated, often working at home, in the mornings, or after school to make all of the Powerpoints and games that were required for our many classes.
H was also nervous because she saw the hostility between myself and Hera, and was afraid that if she started doing things wrong, it would lead to a downward spiral and a parallel situation. I told her that as long as she tried, that is what they were looking for. I also told her to make sure to ask them for feedback, as they would rarely offer it otherwise.
One thing she said really stuck with me: “Thanks for showing me how this works! If you didn’t tell me I would be completely lost!”
This seems like almost exactly what I told J, six months prior.
—
In April, our school got a new budget. We had a large amount of disposable funding to use on whatever we wanted.
As previously mentioned, my apartment was missing many things which were promised in the contract. However, I didn’t cook a lot, and I already owned my own personal mattress and TV, so I didn’t really need anything.
Instead, I wanted things that would actually help make my classes better.
My recommendations were:
1. Change the stupid, crappy, useless books in our program.
Never use these books, except maybe for kindling.
2. Buy new CDs for these books, as many of the CDs we had were irreparably scratched.
3. If you can’t change the books, at least take a clean copy of each one to a printing store, and make a .pdf version of each one.
You see, at our school, despite being basically free and funded by the city of Bucheon, many parents balked at having to pay $10 for one book for a thirteen-week-long class. Thus, many students had no books, and did not pay attention. If we could simply print out the day’s pages, that would really help the students focus more.
Maybe.
Anyways, they did buy the CDs, but as you might guess, the two more pressing requests were never fulfilled. They instead bought a USB scanner for the books, which would have worked, I guess, if the books were made entirely out of A4 paper. Then, they attached it to the secretary’s computer, which I couldn’t use.
To the best of my knowledge, that .pdf scanner has not been used a single time, to this day.
—
Our school also bought a bunch of useless sh!t, including a blender and toaster for me, both objects that I never requested, never used, and left at the school.
The most useless thing, by far, was a pencil sharpener. I got a green one, and H received a pink one.
I really wish it was a Swingline, as they clearly make the best staplers.
The students, however, considered this an object of fascination, and essentially it became a distraction. Once I noticed kids breaking their pencils, simply for the small gratifying pleasure of sharpening it again, I permanently shelved the sharpener.
—
In our school they also bought a bunch of useless decorations for the hall, and they bought a bunch of games (most of them for four or so players, so again, mostly useless in our classes).
Here’s the useful stuff they bought:
- New computers (our old ones were slow as an elderly person with a walker)
- A spinning wheel, which you could write words or numbers on (and then randomly spin it)
- New chairs
Like this bad boy.
Ominously, all four of the new chairs were bubblegum pink. I helped assemble them, as at this point I was trying to be useful and still wanted (naively) to renew my contract.
—
In the after-school classes, I had made a lesson plan. During those two post-break weeks, where I sat at my desk for eight hours straight, I had prepared a rough outline and schedule, and found some materials. I knew which pages to go over on each day, for each book, and I found homework and activities to do also.
I seemed ready to teach. I wanted to be able to do a good job, and I had a program and a plan. No more Mr. Bean!
But the students weren’t ready.
The students, predictably, did not enjoy this change from Mr. Bean to actually learning. There were louder, out of control, more disruptive. I had to yell at them, or get Hera/the secretary to come and talk to them. It was a struggle to keep them all focused and motivated.
Predictably, Hera and the secretary were not pleased to be taken away from their computer screens and their dramas. Soon, they were explaining that I should ‘control’ my students more. Not how to do so, mind you, just a blind directive to do so.
I tried to play games, to get the students tired and use up their energy. This backfired. The students would merely jump around and yell loudly. After one particularly loud “game,” Hera stormed in.
You see, there is a bench in the hallway, next to the after-school center. Often parents would sit there, and apparently my class was so loud that the parents heard them from the bench.
A week later, the bench was moved farther away. This seemed to be their way of dealing with the problem, and problems in general. Out of sight, out of mind.
—
I began to use two strategies. One was to steal students’ pencilcases, and put them somewhere high up, out of reach. This made the student embarrassed, and ideally they would stop doing whatever it was they were doing. Eventually it turned into a game, which the students enjoyed.
Of course, there is a downside. That being, if the students did not like it, they might cry.
The second strategy was to throw or drop things. This showed the students that I was angry. There was a big shelf next to the teacher’s desk, and if I knocked that over, it made a loud noise. If the students were out of control, this would immediately get their attention and quiet them down. They would stay quiet for a while, then the process would repeat.
Due to the students’ fragile feelings, I began to lean towards the second strategy. It was temporarily effective, with no negative consequences and no hurting anyone’s feelings. I still did the pencilcase stealing, but only if I knew the student well and I knew that they wouldn’t take offense to it.
This strategy of knocking things over and making loud noises, unfortunately, did not go over well.
One day, Sunhwa came down to the after-school program upon its conclusion. She had to talk to me. It was urgent, she said.
Apparently, the principal was attending a parents’ meeting, when one of the parents said her child said that I had (in her words) “pushed a student’s desk.”
This, allegedly, was a great embarrassment for the principal, and was said in front of all of the other parents. Sunhwa needed to hear my side of the story and made it out to be a very big issue.
Now, I never hit or pushed a student. Ever. Even the worst, most obnoxious, most annoying students would simply be sent out of the classroom to talk to Hera.
I told Sunhwa that I was in the habit of knocking over the shelf. Sometimes I would hit a desk, to make a very loud noise and get the students’ attention, but I didn’t push a desk.
Sunhwa seemed to believe me. But I thought about this. A classroom with no Korean teacher, no CCTV, nothing to prevent little students from telling lies. No way to verify what actually happened, who was wrong or right, coworkers who disliked me.
It seemed like to perfect storm for being framed.
—
Since I was now, shall I say, hesitant to even touch the furniture in my classroom, the students got louder and louder.
One afternoon, during our ten-minute break, Hera told me, again, that I needed to control my students.
At this point, please notice how she never gave any suggestions on how to do this.
I said, simply, “OK.”
“OK!” she raged. “It’s not OK!”
I came to the sickening realization that despite being an English teacher and despite studying at “Harvard summer session,” Hera didn’t understand the multiple meanings of that simple word. Her English, which had been strongly intermediate when I began my contract, had degraded into lower-level intermediate. She was having trouble comprehending my speaking. I had to speak very slowly and repeat myself to get her to understand. And, she could barely form a reasonable sentence without twitching and stuttering.
—
I mentioned this to J, as I was still in the habit of talking to him and as he lived in the area. He told me about how, since she failed to use English in her classroom, she was losing her ability to speak the language. How she wanted to go to Canada, but now, in his words, she ‘wasn’t good enough for Canada.’
Harsh but true.
He also let slip his true reasons for leaving. That being the severely uncomfortable feeling that I was currently experiencing, the laziness of Hera, the lack of help or support, the unfriendliness. J told me that P truly loved the school and the students, but he quit.
Why?
Before P, the after-school area had its own manager. This manager would periodically stop by the offer advice and watch classes. This manager would help develop lesson plans tailored to each teacher’s style. This manager was helpful, knew how to teach properly, knew how to deal with foreigners and students, knew how to do taxes for employees. So what happened?
He (apparently it was a he) was fired. The principal, penny-pinching as he was, realized that he could save a bit of money if the manager was also a teacher and worked in-house. So, the former manager was replaced by Sunhwa. P found a new position, and got out of dodge. J couldn’t handle Sunhwa’s management and the deterioration of the program, so he left too.
Allegedly, when he told Sunhwa that he was going to quit, and gave his thirty days’ notice, she simply told him that, “J, you can’t quit. It’s illegal.”
There are three possibilities, all of them awful. First, that Sunhwa did not read or understand the contract. Second, that she actually believed that, once signing the contract, we were slaves to Solan. Or third, she (an English teacher) lacked the appropriate conversational skills to express herself.
—
It seemed like Hera didn’t care about the students.
On one occasion, two of the boys got in trouble in her class. I’m not sure exactly what they did, but I remember seeing them in the office.
They were crying pretty hard.
Hera was taunting them, talking about how she was going to call their parents and get them in trouble. She took her cell phone and left the room. They, predictably, cried harder.
As they were sniffling, Hera came back. She said something to the secretary and gestured at the two boys. They left the office in shame.
Hera and the secretary were laughing.
—
Despite these setbacks, I was able to get a good system in place. At the beginning of the next term, on the very first day, I made the students create little name cards and draw their pictures on them. I stapled these on the walls, and if they did something good, they got a sticker. At the end of the thirteen weeks, they could get prizes for these stickers, like ice cream or a lollipop.
I used smaller groups for singing or dancing activities, gave them all stickers, and then picked a new group. This kept everyone engaged without the craziness of past terms.
In May, the principal sat in and watched one of my classes. It was a bad class, but I was able to keep them under control pretty well. We had instituted homework and quizzes for the new term.
I would check homework, do one or two pages in the book. Sing a song, take a break.
Next hour, take a quiz. Watch a short video while grading the quiz. Talk about the video. Do one or two more pages. Sing a final song.
And that was my two hours for every class.
This was a good system. It was working. It was a good balance between fun and education, the students were not out of control, and I felt like they were actually learning. Seven months into the job, and I had finally hit my stride.
—
As I mentioned, the term was thirteen weeks long. Week twelve was the level-up test, and week thirteen was just games. I usually showed part of a movie, then took the kids outside to play soccer. They enjoyed this, and H took her class outside too, so there was a good mix of new students and activities for them to play.
On the very last day of this term, Hera and the secretary came out to walk back to the bus stop with us. The walk back, previously cold and isolated, was pleasant with H. She would talk to me, and she was on good terms with Hera and whatnot, so there was this bridge between us.
Often, Hera would ask H for personal tutoring, or talk about her ‘friend in Gangnam’ who was looking for someone to work part-time at night.
Seeing as we finished at six, it was a big commitment to make. Predictably, H never said yes to these offers.
By contrast, I was never even asked.
—
Anyways, on this particular day, Hera said that she, Sunhwa, and the principal had a meeting.
They had decided not to renew my contract. It took her several minutes to say this simple sentence, punctuated by stuttering, blinking, and facial twitching.
She seemed awful smug about it.
Truth be told, I was a bit relieved. My previous job had asked me to come back, and there had been several small incidents lately.
Incidents which would become more pronounced in the coming weeks.
Incidents such as…
—
…the air conditioner battle.
It was a hot, humid, sticky summer. It was monsoon season without the monsoon. Humid as hell.
Even with short-sleeved shirts, it was hot and sticky. Each classroom had an air conditioner, a massive, stationary unit, much like a refrigerator.
We weren’t allowed to use it or turn it on, despite the heat.
Yep, that’s right. The principal complained about our energy usage, and we were not allowed to use the air conditioner.
“What’s the point of even having one?” the astute reader might query. At the time, I thought so too, so I began to turn mine on anyways.
Hera would occasionally walk in and turn it off. As soon as she left, I would turn it back on. The cycle would continue. Every break, she would turn it off. As soon as she left, I would turn it back on.
If confronted, I would act innocent and pretend I didn’t know about this rule, or blame it on the students.
This culminated in the most passive-aggressive note I have seen to date, which was put on the air conditioner, in English only, just for me, apparently. Our classroom, with around fifteen students, was to be kept at 28 degrees, which was three degrees higher than the teacher’s office. Let’s see…sixteen students and a foreign teacher, but the temperature is three degrees higher than the office, which only housed two people (Hera and the secretary).
Nonsense.
Speaking of passive-aggressive…
—
…let me talk about classroom cleanliness.
When In-Young was the secretary, she would clean up the classrooms once a week and take out the garbages.
However, the new secretary, apparently, could or would not do this. She did not want to get dirty, or thought it was beneath her, or thought that it was too hard, or didn’t want to go outside and get a slight tan, or something. So, it was decided that the foreigners would take out their trashes.
This would have been acceptable, except they forgot to tell the foreigners about this.
Thusly, with my dirty classroom and overflowing trash can, Hera cleaned it up herself. After she finished cleaning it, she confronted me about my room. Paradoxically, she claimed that it was “always my job” to clean my room, and that the “foreign teachers had to sort the trash and take it to the dumpster by themselves.”
I argued about this, of course. Keep in mind, this is ten months into my contract, and I had never, not even once, had to take out the trash ‘by myself.’ It was always In-Young’s job, and I was never asked to do this until ten months later.
Hera just walked away from this argument, saying blandly that it was ‘always part of my job.’
Hera’s solution? She simply got rid of the garbage cans in classrooms, and told students not to bring any snacks.
Again, out of sight, out of mind.
According to J, he once got in trouble for cleaning his classroom, and was told that it was ‘the students’ and the secretary’s responsibility.’
Another minor, thankfully temporary, quibble was…
—-
…the new computers.
Due to the hostility I sensed at my job, I was apt to stay in my classroom, rather than the school’s office, when I had mornings off. One day, Hera strolled in. She needed me to do something with the computer in the office.
Alright, of course. Why not, I thought.
There was a ‘computer cleaning’ program, with lots of excess root files listed. She asked me if I needed any of these files.
“What?” I said. “What do you want me to do?”
She asked me again.
“So, do I click on the files I want to keep, or the ones I want to delete?”
I should mention that the cleaning program was all in Korean, so I didn’t know exactly what to do.
Hera got angrier and angrier. She was frustrated, at me for not being psychic, or at me for not understanding Korean, or maybe because she couldn’t speak English properly. I’m not sure which.
Finally, H stepped in and told me to check the files I wanted to delete. I was a bit pissed off at this point. It just kept hitting “TAB” (next) and “SPACE” (check) until everything was checked, clicked the delete button, and left the office without saying goodbye.
Another spat involved the new secretary, and…
—
…the combination cellophane mess and report card fiasco.
Near the end of the term, the school decided to make our program a little more structured. This involved homework and daily quizzes, as I mentioned before. It also involved a prize at the end of the semester: a little binder and a blank notebook for each student to take home, as well as a ‘report card’ with all of their grades.
First, the report cards.
They were merely shoved onto our desks, with no explanation. I was told to write their English names. Gave them back to Hera, she gave them back to me. “Now write their homework and quiz scores,” she says. So I did that, gave them to Hera, she gave them back to me…again. “Now write a comment about the students,” she says.
Instead of taking one report card and explaining how to fill them out completely, she explained how to do it one step at a time. I had to give the report cards back to her three times before she fully explained how to do everything. If there was just a meeting or something to figure it out, H and I would have understood it…but having meetings is not part of her job description, I guess.
Wish I was psychic.
Now, on to the cellophane mess.
I mentioned the little packet the students get at the end of the term. A binder, a notebook, and the report card. Well, for the Monday class, Hera and the secretary made the packets for the students. I believed that Hera and the secretary would be making the packets every day.
You know where this is going.
Apparently, I was supposed to telepathically know that it was my duty to build the packets for the remaining four days.
I was never told that I would be the one putting together these packets.
On Tuesday, after playing soccer (as I am wont to do on the last day of classes), I brought the students back inside about two minutes early to get their backpacks and whatnot. I came back, where I learned that I was to put together fifteen packets for the students in the next five minutes, consisting of a binder, a notebook, and a report card. I did this, but the cellophane wrappers from the binders were lying around the office afterwards.
I also had to buy the ‘good’ students (the students with the most stickers) ice cream at the little mom & pop store across the street, as promised. So, after dismissing the students five minutes after they should have left, after ending class late due to not being aware of what I was supposed to do, I grabbed my stuff and left. I rushed out and bought several ice cream cones for a handful of students. I was in a hurry, because many of these students had to go to another academy or go home quickly after my class. I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.
Apparently, though, I did inconvenience someone.
The next day, the secretary yelled at me in rapid-fire Korean.
I sat there, speechless.
Hera translated. The secretary was mad, because I made a big mess and she had to clean it up.
A big mess?
The cellophane wrappers were lying on the couch. They are big, light, foldable, clean items which would literally take less than a minute to pick up and throw away.
Picture lifting fifteen of these. The weight, the effort, the ABSOLUTE STRAIN, of lifting them into the trash, the countless seconds spent picking them up and knocking them down.
The secretary, it seemed, was incensed that she had to do any manual labor whatsoever. And Hera was on her side.
I said it wouldn’t happen again. And it didn’t.
—
All of these minor battles really took a toll. In the first two weeks of August, Dad came to visit. We travelled many places and had a great time. I was happy to take my mind off of the school for a while.
After my vacation, my girlfriend and her family went on vacation. I was annoyed with my job, and I didn’t want to go there and deal with all the pointless drama for a mere two days.
So I did something stupid. I played hooky. I had a three-week vacation, instead of a two-and-a-half week vacation.
I got a pharmacist’s note and a doctor’s note, and missed two days of classes. Two day which, I believe, did not involve after-school classes, and just involved teaching one morning class and a lot of deskwarming.
Of course, Sunhwa confronted me the next week.
Of course, she didn’t believe me.
It’s true, I did not come to work. I had a pharmacist’s note from Thursday, and a doctor’s note from Saturday. If questioned, I would state that Friday I stayed in bed all day, and was vomiting.
I expected to get some sort of questions, but I could not have imagined the interrogation and grilling that I received. Sunhwa basically accused me outright of lying. Not only that, she implied that I was untrustworthy. She talked down to me, like I was sort sort of misbehaving child, and stated that I would ‘receive less money because of those two missing days.’ (This never happened.)
She yelled at me, as if I was a dog instead of a human being. Well, I guess that’s how she and Hera view foreigners – as just people they could push around and threaten with no consequences. She finished her tirade with a strong warning that I had ‘better not cause any more problems in the next three weeks.’
Oh, she should not have been condescending.
—
By this point, I had agreed to return to my old job.
However, my old job started during the final week of my current job, so I was in a dilemma.
Quit a week early, or start a week late? Since Sunhwa had been so rude, my choice was obvious. Talking to Hera, they had already agreed that I would move out a week before classes ended. Since I was already being evicted from my apartment a week early, and the contract stated that my job had to provide me with a place to stay (which they weren’t), I felt like I should just…well…not go the final week.
—
On Saturday, my current boss called Sunhwa. Sunhwa, to her credit, said that there was ‘something wrong with me’ and that there was some mistake. My boss said, well, if there’s something wrong with him, then we’ll take him off your hands, and it shouldn’t be a problem for you.
Finally, the Branch Manager called Sunhwa, and then I was told that everything was taken care of.
It wasn’t.
On Monday, Sunhwa called me and asked where I was. She said that she needed my apartment code, and it was ‘an emergency.’ I imagine that the cleaners or the new teacher had arrived and were ready to move in, but couldn’t.
You see, I was in the habit of changing my code frequently. I didn’t trust Sunhwa, who constantly asked me if I owned my TV and my mattress, and who didn’t seem to care about me whatsoever. I suspected that some of my stuff might have wound up ‘missing’ if they had access. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I like to think I was being cautious.
I said I wasn’t coming to work. She started yelling through the phone, so I simply hung up.
That day, I renewed my visa. She began to call the immigration department repeatedly, complaining about me and saying that I had broken the contract.
Immigration wasn’t happy, and wanted her signature releasing me from the school. She called my Branch Manager, and it was set for me to go back to Solan on Friday and take care of some things. Then, I would get my signed document.
Suffice to say, Sunhwa also let slip that the new teacher had already moved into my apartment. So, she did break my contract.
—
I was hoping not to see Sunhwa. On Fridays, I knew that she was supposed to teach the sixth grades (it used to be my class), and I was hoping she would be busy.
She wasn’t. I did see her.
She started talking to me. I could see her getting angrier and angrier, until finally she was screaming at me. She said how much I had embarrassed her, about how the school had done ‘so much’ for me. About how only the principal could change my apartment, only the principal, and how she didn’t even have the authority to ask me to move out. I kept saying that it was a big misunderstanding. Even the other teachers had to tell her to relax.
I was forced to apologize to her, Hera, and the principal. The principal, to his credit, did not seem to care and smiled at me. Perhaps he remembered seeing me at so many school lunches, sitting by myself as Hera and the secretary talked about how terrible I was, in Korean. (H was allergic to most foods in that cafeteria, so she ate lunch by herself.)
I was forced to finish all of the report cards, even though I had only taught three weeks of the current after-school term. I was forced to finish my lesson plans, even for books that I never taught. I was forced to dust, sweep, and mop my classroom.
All told, it was humiliating.
Sunhwa was having a goodbye party for the principal, as it was his last year. I waited for her for twenty minutes.
Then, twenty more minutes.
Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer, and Hera called her to come downstairs.
Ten minutes later, she arrived.
There were forms to sign. Many, many forms. Apartment forms, immigration forms, etc.
Sunhwa was angry that I left so much ‘trash’ in the apartment. I had left all the furniture that was in the apartment when I moved in, as well as a couch and some snacks in the fridge for the new teacher. Remember: I had moved out at this point. The new teacher didn’t even have a mattress, and I thought she could use the couch more than me. Sunhwa then asked if there was a space heater in my apartment. There wasn’t. She said that she thought P had left one there.
(She didn’t even remember what was in the apartment.)
I was suddenly glad that I moved out a week early. Before I left, Sunhwa had some sage advice.
“Don’t do this at your next job, alright? Also, the students were asking about you. They were wondering where you are.”
I think she was trying to make me feel guilty about leaving. I mean, yes, I did like the students a lot (most of them, anyways), and they seemed to like me. Of course, she was the one who did not renew my contract, so maybe she should just be honest and tell the students and everyone else that she didn’t renew my contract. I’m sure I will get all of the blame for that one, though.
By this point, I was late. It was 2:30, I had class at 4:00, and the bus would take an hour. I took a $30 taxi to my work, rather than the $2 bus I was planning on taking.
—
This was Friday.
On Monday, I went to immigration to sort things out. They quickly called Sunhwa, who said that I had completed everything satisfactorily. They gave me my stamp, and told me that I could now legally work at my current academy, where I had just completed my first week or work.
Whoops…
—
A week later, there was a final form to fill out. Again.
I went there in the morning. H was surprised to see me. I bought a little cake for everyone. Hera even seemed happy. Maybe it was the cake, maybe it was because it was the last time she would ever see me.
I’ll never know.
theghostcoast 