EPTI sat around and made small talk with my mom's co-workers. They were all about as old as her or older, so it wasn't like we were talking about the latest episode of "Game of Thrones" or "The Walking Dead." It basically degraded into my mom teasing me and me trolling her back. I walked into her office, a small thing with just enough room for a desk with a shitty government computer, a filing cabinet that barely opened, a huge square shelf that held all of the bus keys, and a shelf about 7 feet long that held every form a bus driver could ever need. I sat down and tried to pay my internet bill over the horrendously slow and completely useless internet. The guy I was supposed to talk to walked into the building when I finally closed the browser, resigned to paying my bill when I got home. My mom introduced us, I shook his hand, and we walked back to the driver break room to talk.
He was wearing an air force guard jacket, which was odd. He was an English teacher, not a member of the air force. But he looked every bit of 50 years old, and proved it when he said he went over when he was 26 and stayed for 23 years. He went and married a girl he met over there, and had two young girls. As he got closer to 50 he figured if he was ever going to move back to the States he would have to do it then. So he did. And then he found himself sitting in a bus driver break room, talking to his boss' son about taking the same type of job he had for over 20 years.
He showed me a picture of his wife from back when they first met. They looked really happy. He then talked about how he had a house and was living rather well making $50,000 a year with a university. He told me I would have to start with the hagwons, and that I wouldn't be able to get a university job right away. In fact, he went through a bunch of information I already knew. But if I learned one thing when I was growing up, it was to be thankful when someone spent their time helping me out. So I listened and nodded politely, and acted like I didn't actually know anything he told me.
Not that he didn't teach me anything. He told me that there was little crime if I got the right neighborhood, that I had to be careful ordering food because if I wasn't careful I would order something horribly spicy and inedible to my western tastebuds. He also assured me that while they're incredibly xenophobic, nothing will actually happen. They might yell something, but they're so used to UK/US/Aussie people teaching English that nothing big will go down. That was all basic "keep safe and watch it" warnings that I appreciated, but weren't especially enlightening. Then he wiped his forehead, took a breath, and I could tell he was trying not to cry. I felt so bad for him, though I didn't know why a 50 year old man would cry in front of a young adult and the 60+ woman who was heating up the soup my mom made for her. I stayed quite. If there's one thing my explorations into writing taught me, it was to wait and see how things play out before I react to anything. So I looked at him, and he looked at me. Then he started speaking.
He had a job, a wife, two kids, and a beautiful house. He was making $50,000 a year in a easy university job teaching a language he had grown up speaking and knew as well as he now knew Korean. His homesickness got the better of him though. I wasn't surprised, America has a good habit of making us love our country, no matter how fucked up we are or the crazy shit our government does. But he left that behind expecting to find a job here teaching English again. With 20+ years of experience, it wasn't exactly a college student graduating with a liberal arts degree expecting to jump into the workforce.
Of course, he didn't though. His 20+ years experience didn't mean shit for some reason, he needed a license. But to get a license he would either have to get an MAT (essentially 2 years of "this is how you teach" at a university), or spend 2 years getting no pay and shelling out $3000 to the Arkansas state government. He couldn't afford that. He had a family of four to feed. So instead of getting a job as a teacher and living at least marginally above poverty level, he got a job as a bus driver and came in at just under that.
Then he explained his jacket. He got a part-time job as a security guard at the Air Force base just down the road from the bus pound to help get whatever money he could. He had to cut the conversation short because he would be late. I didn't mind at all. The last thing I wanted to do was inconvenience him, let alone make him late for a job that he was doing to feed his children. Without that money he was fucked. I knew it, and the tears in his eyes proved he knew it.
I thanked him and went back to my mom's office. She was putting away the bus keys and I told her that my conversation with the man went well. She was glad. Then I said how sad he looked, and how bad I felt for him. She told me about a time when his car broke down so she went to pick him up so that he could make his morning shift. She offered him $40 to help pay for whatever part he needed to fix his car, but he refused it.
Then he broke down and cried. Right there, in my mom's passenger seat. Cried.
He had a very comfortable life and lived happily in a country he loved. An ex-pat if I ever saw one. Then he came here, and the once proud man was reduced to living below poverty level and not able to pay for a decent car, let alone the bill to fix it. He was on food stamps. That was what really did him in. He hated the idea of food stamps, but he had no other choice. It was either that or let his children starve.
He told her he'd have to take the afternoon off because he didn't have a way home. My mom refused, and made him accept a ride home from her. There was no way his pride would make her let him take time off. A bus driver makes about $60 a day, with $30 of that per morning and afternoon shift. An afternoon off was $30. That's a shit ton when you're making about $10,000 for the nine months of the year that you actually get to work (our summer break is 3 months long. Horrendous for people who lose the $3000 they'd get paid those three months).
I'm graduating in May, and will (hopefully) be starting my job teaching in Korea at the beginning of August if all the paper work is done when I need it to be. I'm going to make new friends from all over the world and experiencing a culture that this man loved and now missed beyond everything. I have half a mind to take half of what I save after bills/living/student loan payments and give it to him in some kind of hope that it'd help him get his teacher's license and get him on his feet. I doubt he'd take it though.
Now I can't let this opportunity go to waste. Not with a man back home, in little ole Arkansas, slaving away to feed his family while his mind was back in Korea. It wouldn't be fair to me, but it definitely wouldn't be fair to him.
