Seeing is Believing

 

Back in September 1990, while I was working at a Del Monte canning plant in Mendota, Illinois, I also tutored a Japanese middle school student in English. Her father, who was the manager of a small Japanese factory in Peru, Illinois, was looking for a tutor for his daughter who was in the eighth grade at Washington Elementary School. One of my friends, who heard about this, put him in touch with me.

Soon, I was teaching his daughter when she finished school and before I worked the evening (6pm-6am) shift at Del Monte.

I taught her in an empty classroom at her elementary school. I usually arrived early and waited for her to finish her last class of the day. 

One day, when I arrived at the school and waited for her, I noticed several copies of National Geographic in a bookcase. I grabbed one and thumbed through the pages. It was the December 1979 issue, which had an article about Seoul.

It was around this time when I found out that I had not been hired for a teaching position in Malaysia with the ELS International, but my recruiter told me that if I was interested, there would be several openings in Seoul later that year. Yes, I told her. I was interested.

 

As I sat there, waiting for my student, I read with interest the article about Seoul. Little did I know that soon I would be on my way to South Korea.

A few weeks later, around the second week of October, just days before the sweet corn pack at Del Monte ended, the ELS recruiter called me again and asked me if I was still interested in teaching in South Korea. It took me all of about one minute to say, "yes."

Around two months later, on December 7th, I arrived at Seoul's Kimpo Airport on a cool, clammy night. And guess what, that picture of that housing complex I saw in the article about Seoul was where I would be living for the next two years.