Another New Student

This time the connection was a classmate's friend's cousin. I swear it is remarkable how these people just fall into your lap.

Wednesday I began tutoring my student, ShiHak. He is a ten year old boy who goes to the Korean International School. KIS is more expensive than college, and it's a place where Korean kids with rich parents can go to a Western school and remain in Korea. I thought I would be tutoring the boy in English, but it turns out that his English is as good as any 10 year old kid in America. Convenient. I am, in fact, tutoring my first ever history pupil. We move through his text books talking about world and American history. Over his break from school, the mother wants me to go down there every day for an hour and a half. That means every single day I am given $60.

These students keep getting richer and richer. ShiHak lives in Tower Palace, the most prestigious apartment complex in all of Korea. A cluster of buildings A-G, Tower Palace consists of 50-some story buildings with wacko security and awesome views. When I enter the building, I have call the clerk on a designated telephone to get out of the first lobby and into the second lobby, where I sign in and trade my Alien Registration Card for an elevator pass card. I then have to find the lone elevator with access to the highest floors, use my pass card to activate the buttons, and ride straight up at a blistering speed for 44 floors. (They really should make the elevator stop half way down and let you acclimate to the change in pressure and elevation. My eyes are killing me after the ride is over.) Then I walk to ShiHak's apartment, one of six on the whole floor, and have to find the doorbell on the keycode-fingerprint entry system. I here the bolts withdraw as they let me into their immense apartment, and my secret-agent-like journey is over.

The beauty of tutoring this kid is his ADHD. I've never seen anyone with such a short attention span, and my brother was a maniac child. ShiHak and I will be talking about Catholic Church reformation movement, and then all the sudden he'll come out with a question like "If reincarnation is real, and you're supposed to live a better life than the one you lived last time, and you can't remember your previous life, then how are you supposed to improve?" This kid is a freakin' genius. More importantly, we spend much of our class time discussing his deep, philosophical questions. When it's all over, I'm served some lavish meal, handed sixty bucks, and sent back through the security system to my home.

At times I feel bad for the kid, since this is his vacation from school and he is being drowned in private tutoring. He tells me that he prefers school time to break time because his mother makes him work harder than his teachers do. He has 8 private tutors while on break, not to mention the two sports he plays. She smothers the kid, but I'm not about to complain. That's life, that's Korea, and that's my livelihood.

Downsides to this job are the commute most predominantly. It takes me an hour and fifteen minutes to get where they are. I don't mind commuting so much, but it contributes to a bigger problem: My day is butchered by this student. I always meet him at one or eleven, which means I lose the entire center of my day. I can't do anything with anyone until his break is over. She's even got me coming over to teach him on Christmas morning! And these people are Christians!! I suppose I wouldn't be doing anything better on Christmas morning, but it would be nice to sleep in care free once in a while. Regardless, the every day is temporary and I'm banking a ton of cash, so I can stick it out until the 4th, when winter camp begins!