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Published: January 5th 2009
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Quite a few years ago I spent three days as a telemarketer in what I was convinced would be the shortest career of my life. Not so, actually. As an English Teacher in Korea I lasted only two days.
Last April I had the strange experience of throwing in the towel of my career as a posh wine merchant in London, going to South Korea to live and work as an English teacher, changing my mind almost instantaneously once I got there, deciding to go to go back to London and thereby inadvertently circumnavigating the globe. I flew over Greenland, Siberia and the U.S. Desert, visited L.A., Tokyo and my homeland New Zealand and had the brief experience of teaching South Korean 7 year olds. Eventually I ended up exactly where I started - as a wine merchant in London - sitting in the same seat as I had been 29 days earlier and wondering whether I had just had a strange dream.
When Sarah and I arrived in Seoul we had stepped into a huge, exotic, super-modern city. 20 million people live in a city with apartment blocks stretching to the horizon in every direction, with forest-covered low
Lantern festival
This sort of thing feels quite normal when you're actually there. mountains jutting out of the sprawl. We arrived in the first flush of spring when every scrub is replete with bright flowers.
For the first few days we were put up by our school in a "Love Motel" which had heavy fabric awnings to obcure the numberplates of the cars in the indoor carpark. The rooms were small, with elaborate clashing, faux-retro wallpaper designs, a computer with rocket-fast internet, huge mirrors and a brand new television with some channels with questionable content.
"Guri Wonderland" is an English School for 5 to 12 year olds in Guri, a nearby satellite of Seoul: a suburb of tall apartment blocks, a bustling market, malls, movie theatres, a mind-boggling selection of restaurants all covered in neon. The school is on the eighth floor of a typically psychedellic buiding. The classes had names like Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton and Harvard, reflecting the ambitions of the childrens' parents.
The place was teeming with kids stressed to the eye-balls, since most of them actually attended two schools a day - neither with a decent playground, then extra-curricular activities such as Taikwando, and then home to a relaxing two hours of homework, unwinding playing latest game
console and lights out at midnight. So I did sympathise with them... to a point.
The children had an uncanny habit of being very well-behaved for their Korean teachers and very naughty for the English-speaking ones. It was considered a positive thing that whenever certain children learnt a word they would co-opt it into an insult- e.g. "Philip teacher... you are a girl rabbit!" or "Xavier Teacher... you are a fat strawberry elevator!"
But it was on that fateful second day that I attended a "Berkeley" class (7 and 8 years olds) to "observe" that my mind was finally made up for me by a seven year old called Harry. I sat down on one of the tiny plastic stools in a corner trying to mind my own business. Like an emissary welcoming me to the world of primary school teaching, he spat school milk through a straw onto my face. As the liquid slid downwards I reflected that as much as I respect and admire the profession of primary school teaching, I don't want to be a primary school teacher.
Fortunately, once I had officially told Rachael at Guri Wonderland that I didn't want to stay
- not having actually taught a lesson - things immediately improved. I did teach a handful of classes before I left for good, and they were actually quite successful. Almost too successful- as I left my last class I had three "Columbia" class members who seemed to like me so much they were climbing over me and clinging to both my legs, so it took all my strength to leave the classroom without being swamped.
I had a couple of weeks in Seoul before I left and we had a great time - I ate like a king every day, and was lucky enough to be in town while a spring festival was on. This means the sort of organised group demontrations which people dressed in flouro that one can only experience in the Far East.
After a whistle-stop trip to Tokyo, it was time to cross the other half of the globe back to London and my career as a posh wine merchant. It is thankful I took photos so that I can be sure those crazy 29 days did really happen.
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Brandon Heikoop
non-member comment
Heading to the same School
Hello, I read your review and came across with a sense of relief as I am also heading to the Guri Wonderland Institute. Just one question, what apartment complex did you stay in? Aside from the "Love Motel" that is? I am being put up at "Guri Mi Rae Tower", are you aware of that building? Regards, Brandon Heikoop