I had to get up very early if I wanted a shower because there were always 12 or more people living in the “residence” of the building I lived in. The number of people would change often, depending on how many new foreign teachers or live-in Korean students there were. There was one bathroom for the men and one for women. I found it so hard to get accustomed to the fact that the Korean men didn’t shut their bathroom door, so women could see them using the urinal. Where I stood having my cigarette, I often saw the men using the washroom. That never would have happened in Canada, so it always shocked me. Anyway, after about a month of living at my institute, I resigned to taking a shower around 9 o’clock in the evening even though I wanted a morning shower. My days were very long while I was teaching.
(About washrooms in 1997: many public bathrooms in Korea were unisex and used by both men and women back then. It wasn’t like the West.)
Most days started with me going down to the floor below me to teach a class in the actual institute section of the building. Early classes were set up to accommodate Korean people who wanted to learn English before they went to work, as many students at my institute were adults. After teaching for an hour or more(one or two classes), I had to hurry down the street to the Karak-dong subway and take the subway across Seoul to another class. Sometimes I went to Yeoido and sometimes to inside Incheon limits in Bucheon. After that, on many days I took the subway back across the city to SongPa Gu again, for the Aju Middle School class, and then had to go back across Seoul to Karibong for my LG class. Thank goodness I’d get a drive home from my LG student, Lee SuIl most of the time. I had to try not to feel resentful toward my boss for expecting me to complete such a heavy schedule.
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