Some pictures from the past year.

My youngest students.

 

...Haha...

Korean girl scouts.

Spring in Ansan.

Cherry Blossoms

New City

My first year of living and teaching in Korea was successful despite my initial fears of being exploited by the company or being left stranded and alone in a place where I could not communicate. However, I did fail at posting more than one blog entry. Much of the credit for the year's success as well as the blame for my blog failure was meeting this wonderful guy named Daniel Farrell. We have now returned to Korea together as EFL teachers, and this time around, I'll lower the bar and not make any promises of posting much more than before. That way, by writing this entry, I will have already exceeded expectations.

Finally arriving in Daejeon, late Sunday night, was a great relief. Our very long journey started Friday morning. We were faced with obstacles such as United Airlines' terrible customer service, trying to avoid ridiculously high overweight luggage charges for four suitcases with too little time, missing our flight, considering abandoning our contracts, re-evaluating our commitment and paying rerouting fees, switching airports, driving to Baltimore airport through what seemed like a hurricane as we passed several cars smooshed by fallen trees, and then once again almost missing our flights because United Airlines put us on standby. Finally, after about 30 hours of traveling, three airplanes and a bus from Incheon airport to our new city, Daejoen, we could sigh with relief and say, "This better be worth it."

Daejeon is located in the middle of Korea and home to about 1.5 million people. From what I can tell, it doesn't seem much different from my previous Korean city, Ansan. There are plenty of busy neighbourhoods with lots of businesses and restaurants decorating the streets with neon lights and interesting smells. Our first experience searching for food after a long jetlagged day only motivated us to learn more Korean. We sat down at a Korean restaurant and ordered what looked like a delicious place of chicken only to receive a plate of segments of fatty pig legs with the skin still on. Oh and with a side of silkworm larvea. My stomach turned a bit and we felt rather dumb but didn't want to be rude, so we both ate some pig fat with skin, asked for it "To Go", and then dumped it in the garbage outside. Lesson learned...learn more Korean.

Teaching in South Korea

First of all, let me start by saying that my writing skills are rather rusty and teaching English is really showing me how atrocious my spelling and grammar skills really are. I have never questioned myself on the numerous annoying rules of the English language and Google spell-checked words more than I have in the past 3 months. I have never been a strong speller and my friends love to taunt me about my regular misspelled words or grammatical errors on facebook posts. But that’s definitely not as embarrassing as being half way through writing a word on the board and realizing you’re not sure how to spell it correctly. Then you humbly admit you don’t know what you’re doing and ask your students to check the spelling on their electronic dictionaries. It’s quite ridiculous actually. Perhaps this job will teach me as much as I do.

When I signed up for this adventure I knew how to say ‘Hello’, ‘Thank you’, and how to count to three. I’ve moved and traveled a lot before, but never to Asia. I was most terrified of getting screwed over by the business world and being left stranded in a country where I don’t speak the language and don’t know anyone within thousands of miles. Fortunately, my doubts and fears only set me up for a great surprise of feeling welcomed in comfortable South Korea.  The people are friendly and English is welcomed. Learning English is somewhat of an obsession here.  Actually, learning in general is an obsession. It’s perfectly normal for a middle school student to be in school from 8am to 10pm. After normal school hours, students to go to their various private academies (Hagwons).  Math, science, music and English academies have created a huge industry fuelled by the county’s obsession in investing in its youth. Not a negative obsession at all, but boy, these kids study a lot. I feel bad assigning homework when they could really use that time to sleep and then stay awake in class. Someone explained it to me by saying that since South Korea does not really have internationally valued natural resources, the country’s wealth lies in the skills of its people and therefore the future lies in skills of its youth to maintain this country’s rapidly growing economy. English is the international language of business and learning it is highly prioritized in Korea, hence the reason why I am only one in thousands of foreigners who has a job teaching English in Korea.  

In a nutshell, being a foreigner who lives and works in S.Korea is fun, easy and the perfect way to pay off those student loans. The country has recently become so westernized that you can easily find products from home like Oreos or Diet Coke.  The people are great and the country has a deep desire to prove itself to the rest of the world. The language and cultural differences are things Koreans hold on to with pride while becoming more and more westernized and discovering these things makes my everyday experiences exciting.  Here’s a list of some things that deserve an in depth, detailed explanation. Hopefully this blog will accomplish that over the next few months. 

       1.       Konglish: Every day is like a big game of MadGab.

2.       K-Pop puts the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys to shame.

3.       Drinking. Koreans know how

4.       Noraebong: Don’t hog the mike.

5.       Subway: You can go anywhere for a buck.

6.       Cute kids and their chosen English names, like Optimus Prime.

7.       Matching Couple’s underwear. Relationship status is serious.

8.       Traffic laws. What traffic laws?

9.       Fast Internet and limited copy right laws.

10.   Image: “You have a small and head and pale skin” is a compliment and source of envy.

11.  The health care system includes Gym equipment and Hula hoops in the parks.

12.   Foreigners who just didn’t fit in where they came from.