The front door was usually locked with heavy iron bars that early in the morning. I went in through the back doors and walked up the stairs. There was an elevator, but I could never be sure the power was turned on. It was a very old building with a permanent odor from the restaurant on the main floor. There was always an Ajimah pushing water around on the floor with an old mop, but the tile never looked clean. I think it had been installed dirty.

I was usually early, and I grabbed a cup of coffee in the front lobby where the foreign teachers liked to congregate. It was a small area with a TV mounted on the wall tuned to the American forces station, AFKN, and five tables, each with four chairs. The lobby became a source of friction a couple of months after I started teaching there when the management tried to throw us out. I assumed that by being there we would be a great advertisement for the school. Prospective students could come in and chat with us and current students could hang out with us. I thought it gave the school the look of a happening social English club not just a dry and dusty school. But as in almost everything else in Korea, I was dead wrong. The Koreans were generally timid enough that the sight of foreigners in the lobby actually drove them away. Students in between classes would often mill around in the stairwell rather than risk sitting down in the same room with English teachers.

This was explained to us by the management when we were asked to move. We politely explained to the management that we had nowhere else to go. And management explained that there were teacher’s lounges. That was a surprise to me and explained the mysterious whereabouts of the Korean English teachers whom, I rarely saw.

FLS was a much larger school than the Munwha and had many Korean English teachers on staff. In the beginning, I rather naively looked forward to an opportunity to socialize with them. I pictured staff outings with the Korean teachers as a way to learn something of the culture of Korea. I saw myself over at their homes having dinner with them and working together to create a warm and exciting atmosphere of the best of English culture at the school.

But I learned very quickly there would be very little mixing between the foreign English teachers and the Korean English teachers. Our lifestyles, outlooks on life and incomes were too disparate. To complicate matters, I found they rarely spoke to me, too concerned about losing face if while speaking to me they made some mistakes in English.

When I heard about the lounges, I immediately went off in search of them, intent on beginning those first bonds with my Korean counterparts. I thought it would be awkward at first, but if I made a habit of hanging out in the lounges with them I’d be sure to make some progress in bridging the cultural gap. There was a small hallway running to the right just past the office area, which I’d never gone down before. I knew there was a small storage room there, but I’d never gone further. I walked down that hall and found two doorways. I opened one door and looked in. It was a small room with a couple of couches and chairs. Every spot was occupied with a Korean woman sprawled in sleep. Two of them opened their eyes and stared at me emotionlessly, and I backed out of the room. I opened the second door assuming it to be the men’s lounge. I thought at first I’d opened the wrong door. The room was dimly lit and crowded with what seemed to be corpses. There were bodies strewn everywhere with cloths over their faces. When my eyes adjusted to the dark I recognized a couple of the suits. I’d found the male Korean teachers and they were doing what they did in all their free time: sleeping. No one there even bothered to pull the cloths off their faces when they heard the door open, and I returned to the routine of hanging out in the front lobby.

From the chairs in the lobby, I had a good view of the office, which was a large open area behind a long counter. The two receptionists were kept busy answering phones and talking to students across the counter. Behind them, I could see Mr. Lee’s desk, and though I sat in the lobby watching for many hours, Mr. Lee’s duties as Director escaped me entirely. At all hours, he stood at a window directly behind his desk with his hands clasped easily behind him and stared off towards the brick walls of the buildings beside ours. When he tired of that view, he would return to his desk and contentedly gaze about him. If he was uncomfortable with his limited duties as Director he never showed it.

His moment of triumph involved the installation of a brand new stand-alone air conditioning unit in the lobby. The school itself had a central air conditioner of sorts, but it was more for show than function. The new unit was meant to cool the office and lobby. It stood at least six and a half feet high and was propped up against the wall. In a gentle rhythm it blew a jet of cold air from one side to the other.

I was impressed with the speedy and efficient installation of this monolith. There was nothing about it that I could pick on as being “Korean,” and I was vaguely disappointed that it had gone so smoothly. But, to my delight, I noticed a small pool of water collecting at its feet. They hadn’t bothered to hook up a water drainage system. I got down on my knees and looked and there it was, the long rubber drainage hose all bunched up underneath leading nowhere and connecting to nothing.

I don’t know who was the first to notice the growing puddle (which turned into quite a pool right in front of the reception counter), but Director Lee soon took charge of the situation and emerged with mop in hand. He mopped up the water, returned the mop to the junk room, and went back for more important window gazing. Thereafter, with an unswerving dedication that endeared him to me, every hour Mr. Lee left his window to mop up the pool. He had found his niche. He even displayed a burst of ingenuity and arrived one morning carrying a bucket. Into this he placed the end of the hose. The mopping ritual must have become dear to him though, for he would let the bucket fill to overflowing and then empty it, returning with the empty bucket and his mop to wipe up the excess.

Mr. Lee and I shared another of his rituals early in the morning. Even though his responsibilities were plainly less than pressing, he arrived punctually every day at 6:15. I was already sitting in the lobby with my coffee and my books spread out around me, having arrived between 5:45 and 6:00. As 6:15 approached, I got ready for what I came to think of as the “arrival.” Director Lee walked up the three flights of stairs and appeared in the hallway. From my seat in the lobby, I would look up and see him. Once our eyes met, we would both break out into our big silly smiles. Director Lee beamed and beamed with goodwill as he approached. When he hit the swinging doorway, he became what he clearly thought of himself as, a monarch entering his domain. Director Lee would raise both his hands high in the air above his head as if acknowledging the thundering applause of admiring thousands. His hands in the air, he would smile at me and bow slightly. While he bowed, his hands would make twirling motions as he brought them back down through the air to waist level. Every day, he went through the same command performance, and each time I felt that even though I was just one and not the thousands he envisioned, I should rise to my feet and applaud loudly. It was a display worthy of applause.

 

 

 

Tags: Director Lee, Korea, Korea - First Days Teaching English, Korean English