I'm Not a Diamond Necklace

They say you should never, ever, ever get into a car with a stranger.  In fact, I even learned in Self-Defense for Women class that even if you're being held at gunpoint, you're better off running and getting shot than getting into the car with the person.  You have a greater chance of survival.  Well, all I do here is get into cars with strangers.

I realize cabs are a bit different, but still...

Monday at work started like any other day at work...with my schedule getting changed and rearranged for the day.  The Puffin teacher had called into work sick and I was to take over her classes for the day.  I was perfectly ok with that.  The Puffin kindergarten class are first-year 7 year olds and are very cute and well-mannered.  I also had to take her afternoon kids along with my own...but there were only 3 and they were also quite well-behaved.  They just joined my class of 7 boys and everything was going smoothly.

On my break at 4:20, the vice principal approached me with a piece of paper.

"I, um, need you to go to this school tomorrow through Friday and teach kindergarten...it's the other school in Ujeongbu.  Then come back here and teach your afternoon classes.  We will pay for the cabs, just, keep the receipts.  I'm sorry!!!"

What?  "Wait...you want me to go to another school?"  I looked at her surprised.

"Yes, I'm sorry...they need a teacher this week..." It was pretty apparent that they had been having lots of discussion about this, and that this had been the only solution.  In other words, she wasn't super psyched about having to send one of her teachers away.


I'm used to them switching me up and shuffling me around, but I never in a million years suspected they would make me go to another branch of our school!  I guess I wasn't all that surprised, though.  Once I thought about it, I got excited I was going to get a glimpse into another one of our schools, and meet new people too!  I'd be on loan, just like a diamond necklace at the Academy Awards.

On Tuesday morning I hopped in a cab and handed him the paper with the extremely crappy map on it my school had given me to get to the school.  He started heading towards Ujeongbu, which is a suburb just north of Seoul.  It was a 30 minute cab ride.  When we got closer, he started asking me questions in Korean and I knew he was lost.  I called the phone number of the school.

"Um, hello?  This is Annie...I'm your substitute teacher this week...can you talk to my cab driver and tell him where to go?"

They did, and the driver got me there.  The ride cost about $13.  When I arrived, I called the school again and told them, and the vice principal of that school and another supervisor came down to the street to greet me.  They were really friendly and extremely happy to see me.  They took me inside, and handed me some slippers to change into.

"No thanks, I brought my own!" I said.  I had come prepared.

They took me upstairs and explained I'd be in charge of the Grizzly Bear class (3rd year 7 year olds).  There were only 3 kids in the class that day, because some were on vacation.  They spoke lots of English and were fairly well-behaved, although just like the Grizzly Bear class at our other school, a couple of them were spoiled and acted like they were in charge and didn't want to listen, even though they understood me perfectly well.  They also acted like 3 year olds--crying when one said "Nananana-boo-boo" and hitting the kid who said it.

I have absolutely no patience for that kind of behavior.  Zero.  I have all the patience in the world for kids listening but not understanding my English, but I refuse to be flat-out ignored by fluent kids.  I got down in the boys' faces and shouted, "Do you hear me?  Do you understand me?  Are you a baby?"  I learned that from the Korean supervisors.  They always ask the kids if they're "a baby" if they cry for pretty much any reason, justified or not.  I only say it when they really are acting like babies.

After that it was fairly smooth sailing.  I had brought a book of awesome stickers from the US to bribe them with, and I just followed the lesson plan that had been handed to me.  My supervisor was really nice, too, and full of personality--something I am not used to experiencing at my school.

At the end of the first day she told me, "I really like you--you have a friendly, bubbly personality!"  I've never been told by any one of my supervisors that they like me or my personality.  In fact, I've only been told before that my personality is too nice, and that they don't like it.  So that was really nice to hear.

At 2:35 I realized that I was going to be late to teach my 3:00 class at the other school.  Didn't they know I was supposed to be back?  Hadn't it been explained to them?  I had assumed so...and here I was still hanging out with the kindergarteners, getting them ready to go home.  I mean, I'm just the merchandise!  They should have worked all of this out.

I told my supervisor, "Um, you know I have to teach at 3, right?"

"What???  You do?"  she was surprised.  She took me downstairs to help me find a cab.  But Ujeongbu is not like Seoul.  In Seoul, every other car seems to be a cab.  On most days, you stick your hand out and one stops for you.  If it takes 5 minutes to catch one, that's a really long time.  Not in Ujeongbu!  We ran around for 25 minutes looking for one!  When we couldn't find one on our street, we walked to another street, and then another, and then finally a bigger, busier one.  Then we found one.  The first one we found wasn't "that kind of cab."  He wouldn't take me all the way to Seoul.  So, I got out and got into another one.  My supervisor explained to him in Korean where to take me, and he dropped me off right in front of my school.  I was 30 minutes late to teach my class.

My school was pissed.  Not at me, but at the other school.  They called them and told them that for the rest of the week, they'd better let me leave at 2:00, and they'd better have called a cab and have it sitting there waiting for me when I got out.

On Wednesday morning, I also had to call the school once to have them explain to my driver where to take me, but I got there on time.  It cost $13.  That day I went out for pizza with two of the teachers who were both from California.  They were very nice.  One of them was brand new this week.  She had actually shared a cab from the airport with our new teacher, Brooke, who we received this week as well and is a vegetarian (YAY!!!).  The day before I had stayed in and eaten with two of the other foreign teachers, who were nice enough, but not very talkative.  They also didn't seem very psyched about answering any of my questions I was asking not only for myself, but for all my friends at the other school.  We were all curious about how our work compared to theirs.  Did they grade all their own homework?  Were they responsible for writing their own lesson plans?  I knew my teacher friends were all dying to know.  They were looking forward to my full report!  I came back every afternoon and on our 10 minute break, I would give them the little snippets of information I had collected.

"The other school is totally cute!  It has huge windows in the classrooms, and wooden ceilings.  The school takes up 3 stories by itself, but it's not bigger than ours.  There's even--get this--an actual outdoor park across the street they can take the children to sometimes! The supervisors are nice, but, I'm glad I'm at our school.  Their apartments don't sound as nice as ours, and they are not as centrally located, and it's like almost impossible to catch a cab out there!  They also don't live in the same building as each other like we do, or even necessarily in the same area.  It wouldn't be as convenient to live there.  They have to travel much farther to get into Seoul.  And they still have to write lesson plans and grade homework and all that.  The supervisors did laugh at me when I pulled out our summer homework to grade on my planning period, though!  They couldn't believe I was responsible for grading all that!  They only make their foreign teachers grade the writing sections, not the little multiple choice stuff.  But I'd rather be living where I'm at, and I like ya'll better than the foreign teachers there, as a whole!"

"I guess the grass isn't always greener!" my friends replied.  They were happy to get some insight from the other side of the fence.

On Wednesday, when I got to Ujeongbu, they told me that today I could leave at 2:20.  I thought, "how funny...they can't even agree on a time to let me go..." Getting loaned out is definitely easier for a diamond necklace.

Then came Thursday.  Thursday was a nightmare.  It was raining, and a cab driver picked me up outside my apartment building.  I got in, and handed him the little card with the school's address.  I had been given that by the Ujeongbu school, so I had it in addition to the crappy little printout map my school had given me.

"Ujeongbu," I said to the driver.  I pointed to the address on the card.  He started to enter some stuff into his GPS.  It didn't work.  He said some stuff to me in Korean that I didn't understand, and began driving, headed towards Ujeongbu.  I handed him my little map but he refused to look at it.

Once in Ujeongbu, he drove around lost for a long time.  I have no sense of direction whatsoever.  Being driven in lost, roundabout ways to this school only twice before was not enough to help me learn which way to go.  I couldn't help him.  I know how to say "Left" and "Right" in Korean, but that's about it...and I didn't know which way to go, anyways.  I called the school.  They spoke with him and he drove around some more.  He stayed lost.  I called the school again.  They talked to him again.  He tried to drop me off on a big highway next to some trees.  I refused to get out of the car.  I was really having breakdowns at that point.  He kept talking to me in Korean and I kept telling him in English that I didn't understand him.  Then he tried to drop me off at some huge school I didn't recognize.  He was ready to get rid of me, sorry he had ever picked me up.  I called the school again.  By the time we got there, I was in literally tears!  That cab ride was $23 and I was 30 minutes late to school.  The 30 minute cab ride had been an hour and 15 minutes.  I didn't want to see a cab ever again in my life!

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option.  At 2:20, I walked downstairs.  On my way out, I asked my supervisor if they had called me a cab.  She said yes.  I got outside, and there was no cab.

I wasn't surprised.  It was that kind of a day.

By some strange miracle, two empty cabs were approaching the school and I hopped into the first one, knowing they were rare, and that if I waited another minute, I'd be late to the other school.  We took off towards Seoul.  I tried to tell him where to take me, but he didn't understand.  I was still totally traumatized by that morning's cab ride, and didn't have the energy to try too hard, so I just had him take me to the subway station closest to my school, where I knew there'd be about 20 cabs lined up who hopefully knew the area.  I got to the station with 5 minutes to spare...and literally hopped out of one cab and directly into the next one.

"Mee Wah Bowling Jang," I told him.  He dropped me off at the wrong giant bowling pin, but it was only down the street.  I walked into my school at 3:01pm.  I was ready to slit my wrists.

After school, the weather was nice in a strange change of pace (we've had the rainiest rainy season Seoul's seen in years) and I walked home.  I didn't even want to look at another cab.  I couldn't believe I had to get into a cab and do the same thing all over again the next day!

I got home and cried.  I don't know what it was, but for some reason, I just couldn't brush off that horrible cab ride.  I mean--it wasn't like it was that bad!  But you know how some days you just can't handle it?  That was one of those days.

Friday morning I was so depressed before school.  I had to get into another car with another stranger who I couldn't understand and couldn't explain where to take me and I was going to have to go through all of that again.  I needed a pep talk but there was no one around to give it to me.  I was in this one all alone.  So, I reluctantly went downstairs and got into another taxi.

The first one heard "Ujeongbu" and immediately said no and kicked me out.  I was fine with that--better he turn me down than waste my time.  I got into the next cab and handed him my little card with the address.  He typed it into his GPS and it seemed to work, so he took off towards Ujeongbu.  Once in Ujeongbu, however, he had no idea which way to go.  Neither did I--after all, I'd been driven around in circles all week!  I didn't know up from down!

It baffles me that even with their seemingly amazing GPS systems, cab drivers can never just enter in an address and just take you to it.  It just doesn't seem to work that way.  It's that way with getting home, too, and to school.  We had to learn how to say it in Korean--which is fine when it's somewhere you go all the time.  But when you're going somewhere new, and out of town...it's not just annoying...it's actually kind of scary, I guess.

Luckily, I only had to call the school one time, and my taxi got me there.  I was only 10 minutes late that day, and my cab fare was only $6 more than it should have been.

When I arrived, my supervisor asked me why I hadn't used the cab they had called the day before.  She had been worried about me!

"I'm sorry!" I explained to her.  "It wasn't there, so I jumped in the first cab I saw!"

Nope, I'm not a diamond necklace.  I'm more like a yo-yo.

I loved the wood ceilings, but especially those huge windows!

View from the "Activity Area" (they don't have an Activity Room like us)

My kids playing during activity time

I have one window in my class and it's the size of the bottom section of those windows on the right!  (But I still like my school better)