Welcome to my blog. I hope you enjoy your stay.

Wow, so where to begin?  I’ve been in Korea for nearly two weeks now, and I already feel like I have enough material for multiple blog posts.  My first week was spent in an orientation which, despite being beneficial in certain ways, felt something like what I imagine an oppressive catholic boarding school would be like.  It didn’t have to be that way, but whatever.  That’s behind me now, so I won’t dwell on it.  That experience could be an entry in itself, but I don’t really feel like reliving it.

I guess I should start from the beginning, with the basics.  Who am I?  What am I doing here?  Questions more difficult to answer than you might imagine.  I assume most of the people reading this already know who I am, but I’ll introduce myself anyway.  My name is Kevin, I’m nearly 27 years old, an American, and I have spent the last few years of my life inadvertently (or perhaps subconsciously) avoiding any semblance of stability and continuity that might make my life more “normal.”  I’ve achieved this by moving frequently, changing jobs even more frequently, and allowing my insatiable thirst for adventure and genuine experiences to carry me wherever the winds of fate care to blow me.  I graduated from the University of Dayton in my home state of Ohio in 2008 with bachelor degrees in English and secondary education.  Since then, I’ve worked in public schools in several varying capacities, wearing many different hats.  In 2009, I packed my belongings in my 1998 Buick LeSabre (R.I.P. Ol’ Girl) and drove across the country to western Washington State where I served in AmeriCorps and worked as an overqualified, underpaid paraeducator.  The current economic atmosphere and resulting budget crisis made it all but impossible for me to land a full-time teaching position.  When I found out the job I had coveted all last year would not be mine, I spent a couple days cursing my fate, shaking my fist at the sky, and feeling sorry for myself.  Then I decided that bitterness doesn’t suit me opted to view the situation as a golden opportunity to do something that I’ve been talking about for years:  go teach in a foreign country.

And that brings us to the present moment, more or less.  After a nightmarish summer filled with paperwork and roadblocks, I finally landed at Incheon International Airport on August 24, 2011  (If you ever plan to teach in South Korea, please go easy on yourself and begin the application process at least 4 months before you plan to depart).  So now I’m here, two days of teaching already under my belt, and it still feels a bit surreal.  I’ve landed a dream job in a prestigious foreign language high school, and the school has set me up with a rent-free apartment (a standard perk for English teachers who come here from overseas).  As I type this entry, I’m seated on my 15^th floor balcony enjoying a nice breeze, the vocal stylings of Gillian Welch, a watery Korean beer, and the chirping sound of a cricket hiding somewhere under my washing machine (how it found its way up here is anyone’s guess). 

So, why South Korea?  That’s a great question, and one that I’ve had to answer many times over the past few months.  The simple answer is money.  Koreans are so serious about their children learning English that it has become a requirement in every school, at all levels, and the government is throwing a ton of money into recruiting native speakers to teach in its schools (I’ll leave it to you to weigh merits of this course of action.  Koreans see this as a undeniable necessity in their quest to become a major player in the 21^st century global economy.  There are as many opinions on this matter as there are Starcraft accounts in Seoul, and I don’t feel like exploring them here).  My apartment, as I already mentioned, is rent free.  My roundtrip airfare was covered.  My salary is twice what I made as a paraeducator in Washington.  And getting hired for a teaching job here was surprisingly easy.  So honestly, the opportunity to live cheaply in Asia while actually making enough money to travel and save was a major appeal.  But obviously, there was more influencing my decision than financial benefits.

Korea is a place that most Americans know very little about, myself included.  As I began to tell people my plans to come here, I came up against some startling misconceptions (perhaps that’ll be a topic for a future blog entry).  So in a way, lifting the veil and shining light on the mystery was an exciting notion.  That’s a rather romantic way to put it, I suppose.  Truth be told, I wanted to challenge myself by going to a place that seemed so completely foreign that it would turn my worldview on its head.  That was the idea, anyway.  My previous travels have been to relatively “safe” places – Europe, New Zealand, and the like.  Western cultures.  This time I wanted to go as far in the opposite direction as possible.  Korea seemed appropriate in that regard.  Also, the food here is bizarre and exotic.  The language is confounding.  And there’s pretty mountains everywhere.  That’s a nice bonus. 

So now it’s adventure time.  It feels good to be exploring a new place and culture again.  I’m only just getting started here.

I think that’ll do for an intro to my new blog.  Check back soon for more entries about my experiences teaching, traveling, and whatnot.  I hope to have a lot to share.  Take care all.