Goshitel Style

When all is said and done, and this whole affair with the slow, sinking demise of Jung Chul Jr. is over, Alix, my Canadian coworker and I are forced from our apartments.  For a few days we relish in our fairly luxurious Gangnam apartments.  Then, one night I bump into Alix, Phil, and their buddy Jason.  They are towing a few oversized pieces of luggage.  On the side of the road at Bang Bang Sageori I see Aliz as my neighbor for the last time.  A few days later her apartment is bare; it doesn’t even have a bed, something our landlord is fairly pissed about.

Then, I am gone.

I live, at this moment, in a goshiwon.  I have been in this place since September 9.  It is now September 26.  I will stay here until October 1.  I have done quite a bit in this forced vacation.  I have gone south to a small town called Andong.  I have wandered around an old folk village, eaten fish, and drank copious amounts of beer.  I have run a lot.  I have climbed a mountain (and been scared totally stiff on said mountain).  I have also spent a decent amount of time visiting Che in the hospital.  My final memory of Gangnam is Che tearing her ACL in triumphant fashion.

So, some of my plans for this free time were altered. 

A goshiwon, or goshitel, is a kind of place where people who have nowhere else go.  A Korean friend told me that they are good places to concentrate, as noise is frowned upon.  For my first few days here I would only speak if I had a blanket over my head to muffle my voice. 

They were originally meant for people who need solitude to study.  Each room is equipped with a vomit-yellow floor, a shelf that actually covers a good 2 feet of the end of the bed, cabinets, a TV circa 1991, a tiny fridge, and a bed (if you opt out of the floor mat, called a yo). 

Now, I didn’t mention a window.  Some rooms in this goshitel don’t have them.  The people in these rooms almost always leave the doors open; unfortunate because their depression spills out into the hallway with their trash and dirty slippers.  My window had a window once.  For a while, the only thing ineffectively keeping the bugs out was a swatch of blue mesh held in by match sticks that were pushed into the wall.  When the bugs came in just the same I made some spikes out of soju bottle caps.  It did the trick.

Then a typhoon came and a giant storm-window came down and I haven’t had fresh air since.  This is a problem because Korean food is a touch smelly by nature.  Half of the foods eaten here, by myself as well, are fermented or are coated in something fermented.  One of the benefits of these places are an unlimited supply of rice and kimchi (until the kimchi runs out and isn’t refilled again until after your hospital-bound girlfriend complains via messenger). 

To make matters worse somebody down the hall has been eating something that smells like that flaky food you feed fish in a tropical aquarium.  This smell is piped into my room by a tiny vent window until I am drowning in it.  If it doesn’t smell like fish food, then it smells like cigarettes.  On the rare off day when the one giant fan in the giant, dark-as hell, firetrap of a hallway blows the odors from the communal toilet (something which constantly overflows) it actually smells like shit. 

So, when the air is a little heavy and smelly the rooms can become a bit overbearing.  With my luggage there is not enough room to do anything more than stand.  I live in a place no bigger than an American prison cell. 

The people in this place seem to run on both sides of the track.  No, that’s not right.  I think everyone here is poor.  The price per day at this place is less than $10.  It is economical.  While a negative picture is painted above, it is really not bad.  However, if I had a bunch of money I probably wouldn’t be here.  On the one hand there are a lot of kids who seem about college age.  Since we are close to Dongik Univerist I can guess this is their form of a dormitory- a comparison that really isn’t too far off.  They never speak to me.  Nobody ever seems to speak to anybody here.  There’s a general sense of shame and mistrust here. 

There are business men.  These men are all older.  If they are successful or not, I don’t know.  I would say no, but with a lot of people in Korea working long hours and commuting long distances it would make sense to just foot a $10 / day bill for a place to crash during the week.  These are the people who surprise me. 

The only people who have spoken to me here have been two older guys.  One of them came up to me while I was cooking ramyeon in the kitchen.  He handed me his business card and tried his hardest to give me a message in English.  The jist of it was that he was in room 30.  If I ever needed help I should knock on his door or call him.  Then, he turned around and was gone.  He comes in at about 7pm daily in a sharp suit.  The goshiwon is his weeknight home. 

There is another man, a bit further on in years.  For the past three nights he has knocked on my door.  His English is broken but this guy always gives me food.  He has given me a peach, 4 eggs, and just 5 minutes ago a croquet from a fake French bakery called Paris Baguette. 

There are these guys who make me really love the experience of staying here, and then there are others.  There’s the dude covered in tattoos who never wears a shirt.  He is incessantly smoking in the bathroom.  Everybody does this, but he does it even at the urinal.  There’s an old lady who more or less runs the hell away whenever she sees me.  Then there is a younger guy across the hall who never leaves, and never puts on clothes.  EVERY time I have walked by he has been laying on his floor mat in his boxers, watching TV.  As far as I know he doesn’t own a single shirt or pair of pants.  He is basically the poster child for the depression brought on for living too long in a windowless room in a goshiwon. 

 

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Welcome Back Ambition

I thought long and hard about quitting this blog.  I put way more thought into that decision than it warranted; after all, it’s just a stupid blog.  On the one hand I haven’t updated this thing in months.  What is worse, I never even finished a story that was really important for me to finish.  The last post was about my return to Cheongju.  Cheongju is a place I hold dear to my heart, partially because in a stroke of spontaneous stupidity or love I had it tattooed onto my chest.  My return to that place was monumental in my mind.  It is the place that I associated with my entire experience in Korea.  In Cheongju were my friends, my students, and coworkers who I consider to be my family over here.  I never mustered it up to finish the story.

I saw Oo-Rin, but also Jun-Ho.  I didn’t recognize Jun-Ho because he grew up so much.  I was scared he wouldn’t remember me.  He did.  In a quiet moment at the front desk while everyone was teaching he came up to me and sat on my lap, hugged me, and rested his head on my shoulder. 

I saw other kids.  All of them had grown up so much.  So much had changed in their appearance and my own.  Some didn’t know me at first.  Those that did told me I was slim.  My hair was good, they said.  Whatever problems I had in Seoul and at my Gangnam job faded. 

One older student, who had an obsession with Bon Jovi, was confused when I asked if he still played Mine Craft.  I told him my friends built a giant boat, that I became obsessed with it at home.  He clearly had no idea who I was but he was polite.  Before he left I told him that I was his teacher once.

“What! Tom Teacher?!” He said.  He bowed and hugged me and patted my belly.  “So good!”

I saw the elementary school student who gave me a gift.  As he walked out on that last day his eyes were watering and his voice was cracking.  He was trying not to cry and I recognized it because on that day I did the same several times.  The last thing I said to him was a lie.  I told him I would see him again.  I am proud that I saw him again.

Most of the kids were gone, but some of the key players of my time at that school were still around.  Older, pimply faced and awkward with puberty but still there.  They asked if I would be their teacher again and while I wished I could be, that things were different, I could not. 

Billy, who somehow looked exactly the same, walked in and didn’t even say hi.

“Game?” he asked.  Barryfun English.  The wheel game that I wasted so much time playing with him.

At a certain point the Crazy Boy with long hair walked in as bat-shit crazy as ever.  He looked at me behind the desk in shock.  I smiled and said hello.  Another teacher asked if he remembered.  He looked at me again in a comedic portrayal of fake confusion.  He walked around the desk.  At first I thought he would give me a hug.  I thought this boy who sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” with me and who pulled a very realistic toy pistol on me why trying to demonstrate “crazy” would hug me.  No.  He ripped back my left sleeve, saw my tattoo and said “ok.”

There were drinks that night with almost everyone.  Han was gone, Hye-Jin was sick, Shaina was gone, and Ara was in Australia.  Everyone else I ever worked with at that school was there.  We drank for a long time.  I was happy.  I felt as though I had come home.  I saw Albert and we hugged.  The money issues fell into the past and I can barely remember ever being mad at him.  We drank together until 4am, Albert, Boram, and I.  It made me happy to come back to this country when in all honesty I had been questioning it. 

So much has changed since then.  I lived in Gangnam.  I taught at a rich school.  My kids were better dressed but just as crazy.  I worked with Alix.  I ate dinner every day with Alix and Phil.  I then went home and slept next door to Alix and Phil.  Life had a routine.  It was comfortable but I never left Seoul.  My experience felt stagnated. 

Three months ago I lived in a nice apartment in a place made internationally recognized by Psy.  I was comfortable with Gangnam Style.

It all changed so fast, for both good and bad.

I met a girl called Che-Eun.  I quit smoking quite a while ago.  I lost my job.  We all lost our jobs.  They told us that the school was moving.  If the school is actually moving, I don’t know.  What I do know is that none of us are going with it. 

For 2 months Alix and I reached for motivation to teach kids, grade tests, and write report cards we knew were pointless.  Rapidly, we went from a full schedule with few breaks to nothing but breaks.  Kids quit so quickly that by the end we were teaching classes of individuals.  Then, finally, it was over. 

We bonded with our coworkers.  Bankruptcy is like death, I guess.  It sucks but if there is one plus to it is that it brought us together to some degree in the end.  I left Jung Chul feeling as though we were finally all friends.  Too late, but friends just the same.

So now I am here.

I signed on to a kindie north of the Han River in an area called Wangsimni.  I feel sad that the last 6 months counted for little, professionally, but I also feel fortunate.  The first few months of being here I confirmed my nightmare that I was trying to recreate Cheongju.  I now get a second chance.

I’ve done so much since that last entry.  I went to Taiwan, we’ve had three typhoons, I moved, an entire business collapsed.  I regret not writing about them, if even for my own memory.

So, I have decided to start this blog again. 

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