Dr. In-Hwan Kim, founder and head honcho of LIKE Schools, had called a meeting of his foreign teachers. We gathered in a large room near the LIKE headquarters in downtown Daegu around Christmas 2007. After having a nice meal, we heard some informational/motivational speeches by Dr. Kim and his wife Tae-Soon Lee. I admired both of them for the “empire” they had built. A lot of kids had learned English at their hagwons over the years.
I was sitting at a table with Robert Chambless, a fellow American from down in Alabama. Robert had some unpleasant habits; he was blustery and constantly sought to make an impression on people around him. This I found wearisome, and so I was glad to strike up a conversation with another table-mate named Andy Weiler. Less than half my age, he hailed from Ontario, Canada and had recently graduated from Trent University with a major in philosophy and history. He informed me that he has four sisters (and one brother), and I could only wonder what that was like since I have three brothers.
Despite the age difference, we had plenty in common—the main thing being sports. I told him about the sports history books I had written, the marathons I had run and so on. He, being from north of the border, loved hockey. His favorite NHL team, it came as no surprise, was the Toronto Maple Leafs, although he did not express much hope of them winning a Stanley Cup in his lifetime, or perhaps those of his great-grandchildren. Andy was also a baseball fan, and for reasons that were and still are a bit unclear to me, he did not favor the Toronto Blue Jays but the Detroit Tigers. Of course, I informed him of my connections to Motown.
When the Chilgok LIKE School where I taught closed down in April 2008, I was transferred to the one at Yongsan. Lo and behold, the other foreign teacher was Andy! I was in his room that first day when a couple of eight-year-old cuties, I-Rae and Yeong-Jeon, came in to take a look at the new foreign teacher. It was a pleasure being in that school with Andy. Sometimes we commiserated about life in a hagwon, but mostly it was positive. I remember him coming to my room to borrow my copy of a textbook about Aesop’s Fables, or me borrowing his English for Kids 3 book. Most of the students seemed to adore him.
Andy and I met socially just once, when we visited a Canadian bar. As stated earlier, a generation separated us. I was spending much of my spare time writing books about the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Dodgers while he was taking a hapkido class and having other youthful adventures. Once a week, I wore a dress shirt and tie—or even a full-fledged suit—to school, and he was not about to do that. I recall at least three things he did that I would not: He attended the Boryeong Mud Festival with hundreds of other people and got covered with gray mud (Fine for the young 'uns, but not for me); he went bungee-jumping (I admired his guts); and he got a big tattoo on his right shoulder that displayed his passion for Canadian hockey and the Detroit Tigers (I am philosophically opposed to tats).
At the time he left the Yongsan LIKE School in December 2008, a long-legged girl named Ji-Won sat in my room and talked almost wistfully about “Andy Teacher.” It was clear he would be missed. I immediately moved into his former room, with a set of windows overlooking the street. The guy had a plan and followed through with it. He went to Brisbane, Australia and got a teacher’s certificate before traveling around much of western Europe. He returned to Canada in 2010 and is now preparing to go to Kuwait where he will put his education and teaching experience to good use. That is another possible difference between us—would I go to Kuwait? If I were his age and needed to pay off my school bills, I might. But that is totally hypothetical since I am 58 and living happily in Seoul.
Andy and I have stayed in fairly frequent touch since he left Korea. I have encouraged him to follow his dreams, written a letter of recommendation on his behalf and edited some stories he wrote for a baseball web site. He knows his stuff. Ask him who the Arizona Diamondbacks' top middle reliever is or whether the Houston Astros should sign some new free agents, and he can tell you. He has been a lot of places and done a lot of things for a person in his mid-20s. I wish him well in the Middle East.
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