Remember the Lanterns

Mr. Choi

I was on the train to my new city. Daegu, it's called. According to Wikipedia, it's a large city, Korea's 4th largest in fact, conservative, and with strong ties to the textile industry – at least formerly. I really didn't know that much.
Mr. Choi was to meet me at the station and take me to my new apartment, which had been occupied by one of the previous employees. I wasn't fussy about where it was or anything, and I had told the foreign manager not to bother showing me photos. It couldn't possibly have been worse than where I had lived in China, so I wasn't too worried. I was nervous and excited. Mr Choi, I was told was in his mid-thirties and very tall with glasses, he sounded exactly my type. Sadly, he wasn't – he was about the size of a rake, with a goofy but big smile. He seems nice. This was my new manager.
My apartment was acceptable. It was a square (I hate rectangle shaped rooms) with a small storage area through a sliding door at one side, which contained my washing machine and laundry line. The bathroom was attached and the kitchen was a little nook that you kind of walked in to. I had requested a furnished place and I was happy that there was a queen sized bed waiting for me in the middle of the room. Once Mr. Choi helped me get my suitcases up, he informed me that the heat would not likely be on until the morning since it was Chinese New Year and

nobody would come at this time. Fortunately, he was wrong and he found somebody to fix it for me while I was out buying a comforter. Had I thought about this, I no doubt would have brought some bedding with me, instead of the twenty something pairs of shoes, perfume and countless bras and underwear – I knew it would be hard to buy that stuff in Korea. I managed to find a comforter in one of the large department stores down the road (my new place was extremely well located) and drag it back home, where I unpacked and boiled myself a cup of tea (which I had brought with me), made the bed and sat down to admire my new place. This is where I was going to be for the next year. I felt like an adult for the first time in my life. This was my own place that I would furnish as I pleased, and I had made a conscious decision to return to the city where I had experienced the world's worst heartbreak, not even 3 months beforehand. I was going to overcome this. Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I can see that I look like a mess. It had been a long day of getting off the plane, onto the bus, then the subway, then the train, then Mr. Choi's car, then the errand to find bedding. Now I was at home and the heat wasn't on and I was bundled up as much as I could, telling myself that at least my apartment was better than what I had had in China. At least I had upgraded my life somewhat.
But what a week it had been. I had attended training in Seoul before I went home to Canada. The trainer, Andrew Taylor was possibly the worst teacher I could ever

imagine, and an even worse teacher trainer. Why he was the national trainer was beyond me. But at least I was getting trained, and what's more was that it was paid. I remember the first morning when he stood outside the classroom door looking at his watch as he made sure we were all inside the classroom before 9am. I imagined he did the same thing with students. I guess he couldn't have made it any more clear that being on time was of utmost importance. Carrie from Ireland walked in at 9:01, apologising that the toilets had been busy with students, Andrew Taylor proceeded as such:
I will absolutely not tolerate any kind of tardiness from now on, and neither will your new boss. Is that understood?
Carrie: Yes. Look, I'm really sorry, it won't happen again.
Andrew: Tardiness is completely inacceptable. Your new boss and BYO management in general will expect you to always be on time.
Carrie: Yes, I understand. My apologies.
This exchange continued for three or four turns before Andrew finally gave up and said to the rest of us:
That goes for all of you. I fired someone last month for being late for training. I had warned him on the first day, and he was late on the second, and here at BYO English we do not permit that kind of disrespect.

He went on for another few minutes finishing with
Promise me that you will not disrespect me, your colleagues, your boss or your students by being late.
It was going to be a long week.
On Day 5, I was late. I had encountered some female issues in the morning after I had arrived, and it took me a few extra minutes to deal with them before our final day of training started (I had run across the street to my room, couldn't find anything easily, then run downstairs to the nearest convenience store, picked up whatever product they had, which, it turned out was a sanitary pad as thick as a diaper – I swear I even saw one with a belt – and then run back upstairs, waited for 2 students to leave, and then put on my diaper.
Andrew: Hannah, you are late. Oh fuck it. I thought.
Me: It's my time of the month Andrew and I didn't want my menstrual fluid to get over the nice chairs.
He was speechless, I was triumphant, and he wasn't rude to us the entire remainder of training. In fact, he was quite pleasant.
***
Mr. Choi met me the following morning to show me BYO English. He opened it up especially for me, despite the fact that it was Chinese New Year holiday. Since classes resumed two days hence, at 6:30am, I think he wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing and where I was going. Despite being a holiday, the hagwon (private study institution) was open for students to come in and register. A few were handing around in the lobby. Impressive. It would be my first time teaching adults, and to be honest, I was excited about the prospect of meeting so many Korean men of dateable age. I was told to sit on the cheaply upholstered bench chair thing in the lobby while Mr. Choi did the rounds to open up the teacher's office, his own office, and one of the classrooms. I sat and caught my breath, we were on the 6th floor.
It was larger than the place I had worked in before, which was in China, a children's school, and constantly smelled like urine due to the two children's squat toilets on the ground floor, that the teachers were also forced to use. Squat toilets in Korea, I would learn, were no better: still a trough in the ground that didn't catch all of whatever it was that you were trying to put in it, apparently because non-Asians can't squat on flat feet. This hagwon, fortunately, did not have squat toilets, I was happy to learn, as Mr. Choi asked if I wanted some coffee. Desperate for some! "No thank you, I'm fine". BYO English (which actually stood for the initials of the founder of the company, Bang Yu Ok, which I thought was a joke at first, but it turns out that that was really his name! After learning this, I figured Bring your own