Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Kelly Teacher - Part One)
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008As I had previously mentioned in Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Preview), I want to write my memories of my first year in Korea before I forget them. Without further ado, here is the first instalment of that series.
When I first started working at Wonderland in Daechi-dong, Seoul in 2001 there was another teacher named Kelly. I have no idea what Kelly’s last name was or even if that was his real name.
He was a creepy guy. I believe he was in his mid to late thirties at the time, which was much older than the typical ESL instructor in Korea. He was American but had been an ex-pat for some time so I’m not sure what part of the states he was from. He had a degree but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t real as he mentioned on several occasions that it was very easy to obtain a fake degree that would fool Korean Immigration. He wore a suit every day. I think he only had two suits and as I remember they were both grey so it looked like he wore the same suit everyday. Now you might say that many men dress that way, but Kelly’s situation was different. Kelly never perspired. Even when it was 35°C and 100% humidity, Kelly was dry. Working at wonderland required a tie or at least a nice shirt 4 days of the week but he was the only one that wore a suit on a regular basis. As part of the duties of instructors at Wonderland, we had to serve lunch to the students. Thus, Kelly wore an apron over his suit, but he never took off his jacket. Kelly also had Robert Palmer hair which was a bit creepy in 2001. In addition, Kelly never smiled. That is, he rarely talked to any of the other teachers in the office and when he did we was ranting and/or manically laughing about something that nobody else thought was funny.
Kelly easily stuck out as the odd teacher when I arrived in August of 2001. He was friends with the head teacher at the time who was older than Kelly and also very strange but at least he was generally nice and spoke to everyone in the office. Other than Dave R., the head teacher in 2001, Kelly did not associate with anyone at work. I began hearing strange stories about Kelly and his personal life; stories about how he had come and gone from Korea several times, had a violent temper, had a wife in Prague, etc. However, there was nothing concrete to show his true character. That is until that one fateful (and horrifying) day…
Note: I refer to Daechi Wonderland and it’s staff in 2001. The current staff is completely different.
