Hogwan Adventures
This week I got a chance to venture out of Paju and the English Village. I was asked by a friend of ours if I would be interested in a temporary position working in Bucheon at a hogwan, or after school tutoring center, for a couple of weeks. At $500 a week plus the opportunity to get some classroom experience, it was hard to turn down.
The downside was that Bucheon is a 2+ hour commute from here, so it meant that I would have to be away from Jessi for several days at a time. (The job there is Monday-Friday, and Jessi’s runs Wednesday-Sunday, so 3 days at a time is the maximum we have to spend apart.) Knowing that it would only last two weeks, we decided that I should go for it.
I showed up on Wednesday at around 1pm and was asked to wait around for an hour or so. At 2pm I was called in to the director’s office and was handed a very cryptic schedule of classes as well as status notes from the two (yes two) teachers I was filling in for. I was offered essentially no other information about expectations, what materials to use, etc., except for the fact that my first class was about to start in fifteen minutes! I feverishly decoded the schedule and teacher notes to find out what books to use, located them, and arrived just in time.
The first class was an utter zoo. The kids were very elementary English students of about 10 or 11 years old, and insisted on talking amongst themselves incessantly. Repeatedly, I asked them to stop talking and listen to the person who was supposed to be speaking. One repeat offender who goes by “Bill” finally crossed the line one too many times and I sent him out of class for five minutes of time-out, which sent Bill into a frenzy of pouting protestations, of course.
I finally made it through that period somehow, and dashed back to the office to repeat the process of figuring out what I needed next and where to be. I repeated this routine for the next class and the six others that followed that night until I was finally finished at around 9:30. I was unbelievably ragged and spent, I thought I would pass out or puke. Fortunately, I managed to escape both of these fates and was led through the loud, neon encrusted streets of Bucheon to a surprisingly pleasant yugwon, or ‘love motel,’ that the hogwan had arranged to be my accomodations for the night.
The two days after that first one were really much, much better. I showed up a couple of hours early on Wednesday to organize the messy desks and materials I had inherited from the previous teachers and get my head around what was supposed to be happening in class that day. Fortunately, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my schedule only involves six classes instead of eight, so the day was much more manageable.
Likewise with Friday, although I did have major drama with that first class again, and ended up sending Bill and the other boy out of class after thirty minutes for the duration of class after they traded full out punches for no clear reason.
Anyway…it’s nice to have a couple of days off to spend with Jessica here in the English Village. We had a lovely time tonight celebrating the birthday of one of the Russian girls, Olga, who works in the bakery here. We had a nice chance to chat with several folks and get to know them better.
Tomorrow, I’ll go to church in Ilsan with our friend Neville and then catch some of the Fringe Festival in Seoul with him while Jessica is working. Then, when she is done working, we’ll head into Bucheon and stay there at my apartment for a couple of days.
That’s about it for now. Blessings from South Korea.
-A.
