I teach English at a public elementary school in Seoul, South Korea as an EPIK teacher. I’m always in the best mood ever when I’m at least 20 minutes early for work.
First of all, the buses are more frequent earlier in the morning. I don’t know why, but a few minutes makes a huge difference here. If I’m running 5 minutes late (and for me, late is actually still early and really late is on time), it might take me 10 extra minutes to get to work that day. That’s my whole coffee routine gone!
More importantly, if I go early, there are no children. Most of the kids arrive at school a bit later, and the screaming and stampeding the halls follows soon after. The loud footsteps, shouting, and sometimes banging into my office door during break times can be a bit stressful.
I start teaching at 9, so I try to be at my desk drinking my coffee by 8:15. It’s so blissfully quiet at 8 in the morning. The school is still empty, except for a few groundskeepers, maintenance staff, and some other teachers who also come in a little early.
Sometimes some of the school staff stop and bow to me, which makes me feel a weird a mix of surprise, satisfaction, and awkwardness. On one hand, I’m happy to be accepted as part of the community especially as a foreigner. On the other, this respect feels misplaced coming from someone much older than me who doesn’t know anything about me. I’m just a young, lowly English teacher…
In the summers, it’s humid, so the school hallways are warm and smell like rain. In the winters, it’s frigid cold, but there’s still that unmistakable school smell I can’t quite place. Maybe it’s just the smell of old, dusty buildings. The school was built in 1985. It looks a lot like every other public school in Seoul, following a standardized multi-story concrete design that was popular in the 1980’s due to the rapid population growth of the city. It’s a bit sad now, because there are fewer children every year and the school building is slightly too big for the number of students and staff.
But this is lucky for me, because I get a large office to myself that was designed to be shared with about 6 other people. I look forward to sitting in this office every morning. I have AC, a microwave, a refrigerator, a Nespresso machine, a printer, paper cutter, closet, and shelves and shelves of English books and games pretty much all to myself.
Maybe all I’ve really learned about myself from this job is that I love having a private office, but who doesn’t? I have a feeling that this is a luxury I won’t have again for a long time during the rest of my career, but I’m really enjoying it while I have it.
The school building is being maintained and even slowly modernized, but there seem to be frequent electrical issues or other random maintenance problems. The government pours money into education, so the kids enjoy a lot of modern technology that I think most elementary school kids in America can only dream of. Every student has their own personal school-issued tablet, every classroom has an interactive touchscreen whiteboard, and the gym has an AR rock climbing wall with projection mapping for interactive climbing games.
Still, some of the equipment and decor in this school looks like it’s gone untouched since the 80’s, and I feel like 80’s Korean equipment looks like something out of the 70’s in America. It gives the space a slightly vintage feel as I’m moving through different classrooms to teach, like we’re all still living in an era before Internet, a vibe that only adds to the affection I feel for my early mornings in the office. Everything slows down, and it feels like time itself has turned backwards.
I’m looking out the window of my office. It’s summery and sunny outside. I can see the mountains in the distance, and the cluster of copy-paste white high rise apartment buildings tucked into the hill looks like a quaint medieval castle if I don’t look too hard.
The kids file in slowly around 8:40. The noise outside swells at 8:45 and dies down at 8:50 as the students settle into their homerooms. When I hear the sound of running footsteps past my door, I know someone left home late and is rushing to get to class on time, which means I also only have a couple of minutes before class starts. Time to go!
Love,
B.
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