A Big One: EPIK Orientation Wrap-up and A Spongy Kind of Hell

Welcome back, friends! Sorry for the extended leave of absence, but I am unfortunately without internet in my new apartment here in Daejeon (TAY-chon, more or less). So I have quite a  lot to cover before I get to the much-alluded-to story for this post. Beware, as this runs a little long. First, I think I promised to cover the EPIK orientation. If you’re in no way interested in teaching in Korea and just want to get to the story bits, it’s okay to scroll down. Just look for all the capital letters and asterisks.

If you have just Googled EPIK (English Program in Korea) and are wondering if you should sign on for the program, you should know that my very positive experience thus far is well above the norm. I’ve heard from people whose apartments are not as nice as mine is, from people whose new coworkers have been less than forthcoming, and even one woman whose school told her to buy her own furniture, including her own bed (it is explicitly stated within the EPIK contract that certain essentials will be provided, a bed being one of them). But I’m getting ahead of myself here. I need to cover orientation before I can talk about actually arriving in Daejeon!

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, orientation was a blast in many ways. It allowed us new teachers to network, so now I have friends all over Daejeon. The lecture series they put together was fantastic, as was the field trip they sent us on last Sunday. We were taken to a Korean Folk Village (a bit like a Renaissance village, but, y’know, in Korea) and then to the capital of Korean pottery, Icheon. Here we were given the chance to paint our own Korean ceramic pottery. I tried painting rolling hills with trees dotting them. Unfortunately I painted two rolling hills and my plate came out of the kiln looking like it had been decorated with a couple of molding butt cheeks. But the food tastes sweeter when you’ve painted the ass on the plate yourself.

The other benefit of the EPIK program is how well it eases you into both Korean culture and effective teaching methods. You’ll learn who to bow to and when, you’ll learn how to pour drinks for and shake hands with your new boss, and you’ll also learn not to say “Shhh” in a Korean classroom because that is generally the noise that schoolchildren associate with taking a piss. You’ll be given insane amounts of information and ideas about how to run your classroom, so much that it gets overwhelming. You’ll even be given a few lessons in the Korean language.

The only foreseeable problem with EPIK orientation (other than the dodgy eggs at breakfast time) is that it places you very much within a Western bubble. You go to class with Westerners, you eat with Westerners and party with Westerners and generally hang out with English speakers for nine solid days. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this per se; it is a great networking opportunity. And of course I value the friendships I forged while at orientation and I look forward to all the crazy adventures sure to come with those people. But I worry (as you’ll see in the story later on in the post) that it may tempt some EPIK teachers to not experience Korean culture as much as maybe they should once they get out of orientation. It would be too easy for me to look up some of my EPIK friends every night and go out to one of the few “Westerner bars” around Daejeon rather than meeting new Korean friends or experiencing the history and culture of Daejeon itself. Everybody has their own way of doing things, and I don’t want to call anyone else’s way wrong, but as I’ve said before, if I only wanted to be isolated among people of my own culture I would’ve just stayed in the States. So if you’re coming to Korea to experience something totally fresh and new, to learn a new language and new customs, be aware that with EPIK, you may have to work a bit harder to do so than if you just showed up with your bags at a hagwon (private language institute) and got thrown right into the very confusing fire.

So for those of you who found this blog looking for a little insider info on the EPIK experience, here’s the lowdown from someone who has yet to teach an actual class:

Pros:
- They prepare you well for life in the classroom and outside of it.
- They set you up with a fully furnished apartment (I’m sure the woman mentioned above got it sorted).
-They give you an entrance allowance for airfare, a settlement allowance for getting the essentials, an exit     allowance, and severance.
-They set you up with a “co-teacher”, one of the Korean English teachers at your school who will be your guide through getting settled at your school and in your new home.
-It’s an excellent opportunity to meet other teachers who will be all over the country for the whole year.

Cons:
-You have little control over where you are placed. The solution? APPLY EARLY (for Daejeon)!!!!
-EPIK doesn’t do placements in Seoul, so if you’re hoping to work in the capital, find another way.
-You have no control over which school  you end up in, who your coworkers are, or what your apartment is like (unless you opt for the living allowance, which lets you find your own apartment, but this is a big hassle for most people). You do get to state your preference for the age of your students, but it’s by no means a guarantee.
- It’s all too easy to fall into the “Let’s only ever hang out with foreigners” trap.

So that’s it for information about EPIK. If you Googled EPIK and found this blog because of the EPIK number of times I typed EPIK then that’s about all the help you’re gonna get. But you should still keep reading, because let’s face it, I keep a pretty entertaining blog over here. Plus, you might still learn something useful. And now on to stuff that will be interesting even to people who aren’t considering the EPIK program!
Please keep in mind that most of the names here are for real, just like my own. I will in no case provide family names nor the name of my school on this blog for the sake of protecting the innocent… and the not-so-innocent. Dialogues are generally going to be paraphrased at best, massively inaccurate combinations of things that were said over the course of a long time at worst.  Don’t complain; there’s a reason there’s a Creative before the Nonfiction in this genre. This section will be called:

FIRST DAYS IN DAEJEON, OR WHY SPONGE BAR MADE ME FEEL AWKWARD

Vocabulary Note: The oft-discussed (among Westerners new to Korea, at least) love hotels are places where young couples can go to get their jollies off, so to speak. They’re popular because the custom in Korea is for children to live with their parents until they’re married, which makes trysting tough on the young’uns.

WARNING***WARNING***FOUL F$%#ING LANGUAGE AHEAD***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

* * *

Chris and I are sitting in a booth that has just been vacated by two other foreigners. I’ve already forgotten their names; it’s our second night in the city of Daejeon and we’ve been celebrating by letting the beer flow freely. I  can remember that one of the guys who’d been in our booth was skinny, but I couldn’t hear a thing he said over the thumping music. The other was rather less than skinny, and he said little other than, “I can’t concentrate on anything but the hips,” gesturing to two Korean girls dancing with each other about ten feet from our table.
Chris and I are the last remaining Saturday night warriors out of a whole platoon; our group numbered twenty strong around seven-thirty, but out here in the wee hours the lesser drinkers have slunk home to sleep it off. Chris and I, though, we will persevere.
We got to Daejeon yesterday after the long grind of lectures and nights out and cafeteria meals that is orientation for new native English teachers in South Korea. Straight off the bus, we were introduced to our “co-teachers”, those Korean English teachers that will be our shepherds and our guides through culture shock and beyond. I have been thinking a lot about how much I lucked out on this front. My co-teacher, Sookhee, went above and beyond to make me feel welcome in my new city. She did the standard things, of course: taking me to my new apartment and to the school at which I will start teaching on Tuesday. But she also took me to her own home and cooked dinner for her two sons and I. She even asked me to sleep over, offering me her older son’s room (“You seem so tired,” she said. “Are you sure you want to go all the way home tonight?”). She took me to a massive superstore, bustling even at ten at night: four floors of everything you would ever need to live forever and never get bored. Imagine Super Target, and then multiply it by four, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is Lotte Mart.
Earlier that day, Sookhee had arranged for another English teacher from my school, Seonmi, to pick me up near my apartment and continue the seemingly never-ending quest for the essentials of life. After a few stops, Seonmi had taken me to a café her mother owns. From there, I had hopped across the street to TimeWorld to meet up with my friends from the orientation program. TimeWorld, by the way, is both as exciting as it sounds and much, much more mundane. It’s sort of the Mall of America of Daejeon, floor after floor after floor of designer merchandise, up and up seemingly endlessly into the sky. Here I had met up with Chris and the other twenty or so that showed up for our day celebratory. After stopping back at the café for some beers, Seonmi suggested we check out Sponge Bar, a Western-style bar with billiards, dancing, and a conspicuous lack of soju.
And so here we are, at a place where Westerners who can’t let go of the West invariably end up, dancing, pounding drinks, and ogling the few Korean girls that stray in off the streets. At least, that’s how it seems to me as I sit here across from Chris at three-thirty in the morning.
The less-than-skinny guy comes meandering back from a failed attempt to move in on the two Korean girls he’d been eying.
“What’s your name again?” I ask him.
“It’s Paul, for the fifteenth time,” he says.
“Sorry, man. A few too many beers, I think,” I answer, raising my half-full pint. I don’t mind the shit he’s giving me; I doubt he could remember my name, either.
“What’s your name again, mate?” Chris shouts to Paul from across the table. It’s too loud in the bar to hear anyone talk who’s more than five inches from your ear.
“Paul!” Paul screams. “Jesus Christ.”
“Any advice for some poor rookies, Paul?” I ask. Even as I say it I’m not sure I want Paul’s advice. I’m fairly certain it will have something to do with hips.
“You guys are new?” Paul shouts. I was appreciating his effort to keep Chris in the conversation, but less appreciative of the added decibels in my eardrum.
“Second day in Daejeon,” Chris yells back.
“You’re from England!” Paul exclaims, apparently just noticing Chris’s Manchester accent.
“Yeah.”
“Man, I got plenty of advice for you, dude. What do you want?” Paul says.
“Whatever’s useful,” I say.
“Fuck, everything’s useful,” Paul says. Ah Paul, I think, the wise sage of Sponge Bar. Please tell us more about these hips you speak so highly of. To no one’s surprise, he does just that. “First thing, man. Never take a Korean girl to your apartment. Worst thing you can do.”
“Why?” I ask. I know none of this really pertains to Chris; he has a girlfriend back in England. Nor does it really pertain to me. I’m not really the type to “pick up chicks”, as they say back in the States (even if I had the looks and charm to pull it off), much less pick up chicks in a foreign country. I’m more just curious about the attitude.
“Because they’re fuckin’ crazy,” Paul says. “They get your address, your phone number, all of a sudden they’re calling you or stalking the shit out of you.” I wonder how many Korean girls had stalked the shit out of Paul. I quickly decide on an answer: not many.
“Really?” Chris asks.
“Yeah, man. Different culture, y’know. I even knew one guy got deported ‘cause this girl called the cops. Said he raped her or some shit and he had to leave. Just ‘cause he never called her. They’re fuckin’ crazy man. Never take ‘em home.” I think to myself that it’s quite possible that the American guy had been the one who’d been lying, not the other way around.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, feeling less and less like being stuck in the booth with this sweating sexual philosopher.
“Just take ‘em to the love hotels, man. It’s like, 30,000 Won a night and they won’t know where you live. And don’t give anyone your fucking phone number. Not even the guys. They’ll fuckin’ call you and text you all day long.”
As he says this, I’m finding it hard to believe that Paul is this popular amongst the locals. He downs the last of his beer in one gulp. I do the same, hoping he would take it as a sign that it was time to get up.
“Just keep your head down, man. You can make some sweet fuckin’ money with this gig but you just gotta keep it together, go to work and go home and go out drinking with your buddies on the weekend. And fuckin’ love hotels, man. Every time. Peace.”
And with that bit of wisdom, Paul leaves us behind. I look at Chris.
“Remember when that orientation lecturer was telling us about how our Western cynicism will be shocked here?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“My lack of Western cynicism was just shocked.”
Chris laughs and finishes off his beer. “I think this is a dirty place, mate.”
“Yeah.”
“One more?” he offers.
I check my Faux-lex. It’s nearing four in the morning. Public transit here in Daejeon ends at eleven, but catching a cab home rarely costs more than 8000 Won, I‘m told.
“Can we sit at the bar?” I ask.

* * *

So there you go. Hope all the shocking talk didn’t offend your delicate sensibilities, but all of that was actual advice I got on Saturday night. Now maybe you see where I’m coming from when I talk about the Western culture in Korea, how and why many people don’t break out of it, and why I want nothing to do with most of it.

As a little side note, Seonmi asked me today as she was driving me to get my Alien Registration card (the little piece of plastic that lets you do things you need to do, like get a cell phone and internet access) how I liked Sponge. I think I said something along the lines of, “Sleazy, and a little creepy.” It seems to be a place where Western guys gather to look at Korean girls and try to take one to a 30,000 Won per night love hotel (1000 Won is a little less than a dollar, by the way). She agreed, and said that’s why she doesn’t much like the place. Which in turn made me wonder why she directed us there… perhaps it was to have this very realization for myself.

Next time on English Major Away, I teach children! That’s right, I am having direct bearing on the lives and language abilities of the adults of the future. Good luck sleeping tonight, dear readers.