A Day in the Life: ESL Teacher, South Korea
6:00 a.m.: Get up and jump in the shower. It's early, too early, but you've got to get to downtown Seoul and beat through the early morning traffic. Your first class is, at 7:00 a.m. You catch the bus right outside your door and hop on for a rip-roaring ride through the dark streets of Seoul. Even though it's early, the bus is CROWDED.
6:50 a.m.: Arrive at the Institute and get a cup of hot instant coffee. The newer teachers are already there, anxiously preparing their lesson plans for the morning. Just like you when you first arrived&.. You've been doing this for 6 months now, and you know most of your lesson plans by heart. Goodbye, preparation time!
7:00 a.m.: Greet your first class, a group of eager "salarymen" and "salarywomen." They are anxious to get in their hour of English before they start their jobs at various banks and corporations. It's an advanced class, and most of the students have been at the Institute for several semesters. It's a relaxed and friendly class, despite the early hour. The topic for today? It's a "free talking" class, and one of the students has selected to talk about Military Conscription.
10:00 a.m.: Time for a short break. You've already taught three 50-minute classes. You hang out with the other teachers in the teacher's lounge, and grab a quick game of cards with a couple of Brits. With ten minutes before your next class, you stop playing to prepare a bit: it's heavy on grammar, and you need some technical research.
11:30 a.m.: Say goodbye to your last class for the morning, a group of students studying for their university entrance exams. You've just spent an hour with them discussing the difference between "had" and "has had" -luckily most of the teaching at this Institute is not as dry.
12:00 p.m.: Grab a quick lunch with an Australian co-worker at the little restaurant round the corner. You've become addicted to the food in Korea, and slurp your cold chili noodles happily. And at only $1.50 a bowl, it's the best deal in town.
1:00 p.m.: Time to catch a bus across town to your first private tutoring lesson. This is where the real money is, and although your "split shift" at the Institute is a real pain (you have morning classes, and late evening classes, but nothing in between) it leaves your afternoons free for private lessons, where you can earn three times your Institute salary per hour.
2:00 p.m.: You're having a conversation about cosmetics with a group of housewives on their weekly lesson. You don't think they learn too much (only an hour a week!) and you guess it's more about the experience for them. For you too. You've made some good friends this way - one of the women has invited you out to visit her husband's mushroom farm in the country this weekend.
3:30 p.m.: Your last private lesson of the day is over. You've got a few hours to kill before your next class at the Institute at 7 p.m. Too short a time to go home, too long to do anything else. You stop in at an Internet cafe to catch up on the latest news from home, then you hang out in the park for a while, creating a game for a group of kindergarten students you will teach tomorrow.
9:00 p.m.: The long teaching day is over! You head out with a group of foreign teachers to a nearby bar. You relax and have a few beers. There are a couple of Canadians, two Brits and a Swede with impeccable English. Some are new, though most have been in the country for a while. Meeting all the different teachers, as well as the students, is one of the best perks of the job. In the noisy bar, tables of Korean businessmen are drinking and celebrating. If it were Friday, you'd probably continue drinking and then onto a nightclub or a Korean karaoke bar. But it's Wednesday, and everyone has an early start tomorrow. You take a cab home - it's almost as cheap as the bus.
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