First off–hello everyone!

I’m back on the blog after an unintended month-long hiatus.  I wish I could say I’ve been away somewhere exotic or tropical or both, but the truth is I’ve been working–teaching my kindies, doing freelance marketing, and wrapping up the end of my three-month stint teaching university on the side, which took up more hours of my life than I care to count. The uni experience has given me a lot to process–about Korea and how things operate here, about writing and how to teach it, about what drives me.  So, I’ve decided to write a few separate posts to describe this recent chapter–the first is here for you below, with a to-be-continued…

Also–you’re probably noticing the Coco Busan site looks different–I’ve switched over to a new theme. In the mood for change these days…gotta keep things fresh!  Hope you like:)

I always love hearing your comments, everybody–keep them coming!  Hope summer is treating you all well.

xo~Coco

So, where have I been?  Hanging out with these guys.  Essays.  The five-paragraph kind–complete with hook, background info, thesis, topic sentences, supporting details, concluding sentences, counter arguments, and conclusions.  Or attempts at conclusions.  Though all writing, I suppose–is an attempt, isn’t it?  At saying what you mean.  Which makes the entire tedious and beautiful process revolve around figuring out what you mean, or think, or at least think you mean, so you can write it down.

The course began in March, and I was hired to teach it by an American anthropologist called George.  He leads a program at Dong-A-University called The Global Leaders Program, and was looking for a writing instructor.  A  mutual friend connected us via email on a Friday morning; by lunchtime we were discussing specifics over the phone.  George explained that GLP courses were all taught in English by a foreign faculty, with an emphasis on critical thought and in-class discussion.  The writing teacher they’d lined up for the semester had backed out, and the course was due to begin in five days.

While George and I spoke, my kindergarten students stacked blocks and counted stickers in the classrooms down the hall.  I was on lunch break, taking the call from my hagwon.  I’d been teaching elementary-aged children for exactly one year, wishing my days were spent writing instead of deconstructing short and long vowel sounds, but there was no better opportunity to squelch the student-loan debt that had parked like a semi-truck in the driveway of my life than teaching in Korea, so here I was doing it, trying my best not to resent the tiny creatures who, despite the impact of their voices on my ear drums (at what age does the noise dial begin to self-monitor?!) I cared about deeply.  I held their little hands as we strode down the hallway during bathroom breaks; I decorated their classroom walls with sunrays and tulips.  I just wished persuading them to stop dropping their pencils on the floor while I attempted to explain the rules of past and present tense didn’t mean 40 hours a week not writing–160 hours a month not doing the thing I wanted to do.  

Teaching at a Korean university, however, came with the shiny-gold benefit of four months vacation time per year.  Four months!  Off!  Paid!  The job I was being offered was, albeit, just one course–not a full-time gig.  And it would be taught on TOP of my full-time hagwon position.  But it was teaching writing. To adults.  And maybe–maybe!– it would lead to the carrot I could see dangling in the distance.

“How many students?” I asked George.

“Oh,” he said.  “About twelve, maybe fifteen.”  I agreed to meet with his office assistant that weekend, and we hung up. The job was mine.

On the tenth floor of the Dong-A building where GLP is taught, an office overlooks the stacked homes of Toseong, a neighbourhood one stop past the Jagalchi fish market.  It isn’t much different from any other Korean neighbourhood–the underground stairs ascend to a concrete sidewalk, the streets are jammed with cars and Koreans; windows reveal the insides of coffeeshops and raw fish restaurants blinking with television light.  But when you turn the corner to the campus entrance, your feet are met with cobblestone steps.  Hills rise up behind a tall glass building, the day’s newspapers are displayed open on wooden stands in a big foyer alongside a tall clock, and young Korean men are playing basketball in the middle of an outdoor square.   Dong-A, like universities across the globe, has the distinct air of possibility–the sense that minds are at work.

The office assistant was a young Korean woman called Young-hyun.  We went over some basic paperwork, and upon my request, she showed me a course list for the GLP.    “What is the name of the course I am teaching?” I asked.  I felt a twinge of bewilderment that I had to ask for this detail–shouldn’t the course title be a primary piece of information for a newly-hired teacher?  I would soon learn that what I believed should or shouldn’t occur in a university setting didn’t apply in Korea–the Western form of logic was a non-existent piece in the puzzle I had stepped into.

Young hyun pointed to a title at the bottom of the page. The Advanced English Essay, it read.  The class was scheduled for 8:30 pm on Wednesdays.  Because I was unavailable to teach Friday afternoons, she explained, two classes had now been combined into one.  “So how many students in total?” I asked.  She checked a computer file.

“Twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight?”  I recalled George’s estimate of 12-15 students.  This new figure would mean twice the amount of marking.  “Will I be paid for the amount of two classes?”

“No,” she said.  “You give lecture one time each week.  So, payment is for one class.”  I sat there, absorbing.

“You need to choose textbook for students,” she said.

I glanced around the room.  “Are there textbooks here to choose from?”

“No,” she said.  “You must find at a bookstore.  Email to me title please by Monday.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon combing the shelves of three different bookstores in two different neighbourhoods, finally kneeling on the carpet of Seomyeon’s Kyobo Books as it grew dark outside, flipping through a soft-cover called Effective Academic Writing 3.  It was the beginning of the end of my free time.  The textbook was chosen.  Now all I had to do was plan the course.  In three days.