The Students at Global

The names: Big, Sang-mo, Jennifer, Kasia, Glavine. These were the students I remember most from Global.

Big was a guy who just wanted to practice English. He was often at Global long before his class began reading the Korea Herald or Korea Times. He would ask about vocabulary in the newspaper. Best of all, he would hang out with the native teachers in Cass Town so he could listen to us speak "real" English, not the sanitized version we spoke in the classroom.

Sang-mo was an interesting character, and we became good friends (I wound up being the best man at his and Sara's wedding in Canada the following year). In pretty much every class Sang-mo came to, we ended up talking about sex. He had a great story about attending English class at another hogwan. In this class was a former Miss Korea. The teacher was a Canadian dude. According to Sang-mo, they would have made a nice couple, if not for the fact that the teacher was gay and actually preferred Sang-mo. I swear, that's his story.

Jennifer was this sweet, sweet girl who I first met when she came for a placement test. I interviewed her and discovered that she worked for a trading company, and sometimes went to Germany for business (if memory serves me correctly). Kasia was also a nice girl who came to my class, and the two of them called me oppa - Korean for big brother. We went to bars and restaurants together and enjoyed a nice rapport. When I returned to Korea in 2000, Jennifer had changed her job and became an English teacher. She recruited me for some lessons with kindergarten kids, but that only lasted a little while, and I haven't seen her since.

Glavine named himself after the pitcher Tom Glavine. Obviously, he was a baseball fan. Glavine was (and remains) a close friend of Dan's. I know he has visited Dan in Canada a few times, and when Dan visits Korea he usually stays at Glavine's house.