Writings

Background Story

My troubles began at immigration. I handed over my passport, and the immigration officer asked me where my visa was. Of course, I didn’t have a visa, because my friend’s friend’s mother (who will hereafter be referred to by her nickname, the Dragon Lady) told me not to worry about a visa. The immigration officer then asked me what I was doing in Korea, and I showed him the address of the language institute. He just looked at me with what I later realized was a mixture of pity and disgust. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I had just admitted to an immigration official that I had come to Korea to work illegally. I’m positive the only reason he didn’t put me on the next plane back to the States was that I only had a one-way ticket and I was next to broke. As it was, he gave me a 15-day temporary visa and told me I would have to leave when it expired.

The Dragon Lady herself was supposed to pick me up at the airport, but when I came out of the gate there was no one waiting for me. Actually, there were about a dozen taxi drivers, circling like vultures waiting for a dead body. One approached and asked me if I needed a ride. When I said no, he just smiled—like the vulture who knows that all things will come to it in the end. I went back, found the telephones, and called the Dragon Lady’s house. Her husband answered and said she had already left for the institute. When I told him she was supposed to pick me up at the airport, he said he had no idea about that. As it turns out, she had only gone out to the store and was coming back, but that wasn’t much help after the fact. I went back out to the vultures, knowing I was defeated.

When I asked the driver how much the fare would be to the institute, he asked me how much money I had. Fortunately, I wasn’t that stupid, and I told him a fraction of what I really had. He wasn’t happy about it, but accepted it (I know now that even that amount was a rip-off, but what did I know then?). We then embarked on a two-hour drive around Seoul because the driver apparently didn’t know the city from a hole in his head. It was raining, and he had the radio tuned to some talk show. I only knew the little Korean I had learned during the tutoring sessions, so it was complete gibberish to me. My sleep-deprived, stress-addled mind, though, insisted on making some sense of the unending stream of information. In my delusional state, I heard a man talking about how he killed children by making evil toys. I didn’t even find this disturbing at the time.

When we finally arrived at the institute, I dragged all my luggage out of the rain and into the lobby, then walked into the office. I introduced myself as the new teacher, but the man behind the desk only looked at a calendar and said, “We’re not expecting any new teachers today, and I can’t find your name anywhere.” So then I asked him if the Dragon Lady worked there and he said yes, so I asked if I could wait until she arrived. They showed me to a small room with a short, black leather couch. I curled up on the couch, wondering what to do before I faded into unconsciousness.

The Dragon Lady didn’t actually show up until 6:00 that evening (I slept the whole day through). She assured me that everything was OK, and I actually began to feel better. Then she asked me what kind of visa I had. When I told her I didn’t get one because she told me not to worry about it, she yelled, “You were supposed to get a tourist visa and we would take care of it when you got here.” Maybe I should have known that, I don’t know. I was too delirious at the time to argue. She said she would take care of things, and told me I would be living with two teachers named Sara and Christina.

Having nothing better to do, I hung around at the institute and got to know some of the other teachers. The Dragon Lady insisted that I sit in on one of the classes (this was the whole of my training), since I would start teaching the next day. I don’t remember anything about that class. I’m not even sure if I was conscious. I do know that it did nothing in the way of preparing me to teach English to Korean children.

When Sara and Christina finished their classes, we took a bus back to the house, located near the U.S. military base and the (in)famous tourist neighborhood of Itaewon. By the time we got there I was wide awake, so one of the girls took a few beers out of the refrigerator and we sat around drinking and getting to know each other. I found out that they were also from New York—one of those “small world” moments. The rest of the conversation was the usual stuff, except for two parts which still stick in my mind. The first was when Sara and Christina told me they were lesbians.

“Yeah,” Sara said, “We were wondering whether or not we should tell you, but then we decided that it would only be fair to let you know.”

“Oh,” I replied, somewhat at a loss for words. “That’s very considerate of you.”

A little later on, during a lull in the conversation, Christina asked me something that I probably would have taken a little differently had they not just told me they were lesbians.

“So, Chuck,” she began. “What do you look like naked?”

“Um, pretty much like I do now. Except with no clothes.”

None of this really bothered me at the time, but that’s only because I didn’t realize what it meant my life would be like. When they were getting along, I was pretty much shut out as they locked themselves in their room. When they fought, though, each of them tried to get me to take their side. It was enough to drive me crazy, and it was definitely not what I imagined living with two lesbians would be like. Things weren’t all bad, though, and it was an interesting experience, to say the least.

My first class at the institute was quite an experience. The Dragon Lady brought me to the classroom, opened the door and pushed me in. I turned around to look at her.

“What do I do?”

“Teach them English,” she said impatiently.

“Do I get a book?”

“I’ll get one for you during the break.” She shut the door.

I turned around to look at the children sitting around the table, fighting and flinging coins at one another. I distinctly remember feeling like Daniel in the lion’s den—but without Daniel’s faith. I sat down in my seat at the head of the table, and the children began to quiet down.

“Do you speak Korean?” one of them asked.

I told them that I didn’t, at which point they all erupted in a torrent of Korean, and the coin flinging grew more furious. I made a vain attempt to “teach them English,” but my one class in TEFL/TESL had in no way prepared me for this. To be honest, I spent most of that first half hour trying not to get killed by a stray coin. When break time came I asked for my book, but the Dragon Lady just said, “Oh, I forgot. I’ll get it for you tomorrow.” And then it was once more into the breach, my friends, for the final half hour. I survived without sustaining any serious injuries.

The remainder of my two weeks at the institute are something of a blur, and my memories of that time are like a small set of disjointed snapshots: sitting on the roof with a beer in hand watching the sun go down, tutoring a high school ice hockey team and hearing one of the players say that he thought all Japanese should die, standing around outside the institute between classes on those warm, Indian summer evenings, chatting with the other teachers and watching as the large neon signs on top of the neighboring buildings winked on one by one. It was only two weeks, but the time seemed to stretch on into timelessness. The two weeks did eventually end, though, and it turned out that the Dragon Lady was not able to work magic with my visa, so I had to go to Japan to get a new visa.

Fortunately for me, I had a friend in Japan—Kazuko, the TA from my Japanese classes at university. Unfortunately for me, I entrusted my letter to Kazuko to Dragon Lady, who insisted that the U.S. military post would be quicker than the Korean mail (her husband was in the U.S. army). I sent the letter a few days before I was scheduled to leave, but no reply came. I kept hoping that Kazuko would receive my letter and call me, but that call never came. I had no choice but to get on the plane for Tokyo.