One Semester Down

Unlike most schools in western countries, where December marks the half-way point of the school year, the end of the calendar year also means the end of the school year here in Korea.  And the end of the school year is an exciting time at Chungnam Foreign Language High School.  After enduring a solid year of masochistic study routines, the students are finally finished with exams and are permitted a little breathing room and a chance to cut loose.  At this school, final exams and grade calculations are completed a full two weeks before the break actually starts, leaving a lot of time at the end for bullshit.  This was a welcome reprieve for me, the teacher; I can only imagine how the students must’ve felt. 

Since the other teachers didn’t seem to be doing anything productive in their classes, I didn’t feel any guilt over showing Christmas movies for the entire week after finals.  We watched Elf, and it was a big hit.  I’ve never been much of a Will Ferrell fan, but his role in that particular movie easily transcends all language barriers.  To be honest, I really enjoyed being able to spend time with the students without the pressure of trying to teach them, trying to force participation, or giving them feedback on their pronunciation and grammar.  I adore my students – they are, after all, the reason I went into education in the first place – and my Korean students are sweethearts.  I treasured the opportunity to just hang out and build better relationships with them. 

There was another fun activity I cooked up for them at the end of the year, and it ended up being one of my most successful lessons to date.  I’m not sure they learned much, but they had fun and got a chance to practice their English.   That’s all that matters, right?

Like normal teenagers the world over, Korean teens love music.   They’ve known since I arrived that I play guitar and they’re always asking me to bring it in to play for them.  So I had the inspired idea to have each of my culture classes help me write a blues song.  To start things off, I gave them a brief history of the blues – how the genre developed historically, what makes a blues song a blues song, etc. – and I played a few YouTube videos of some of the greats, like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, and Mississippi John Hurt.  I then taught them about the concept of “end rhyme” and had them come up with a few examples.  I also very briefly reviewed metaphors, similes, and imagery, explaining that these techniques are often employed in songwriting to make the lyrics more interesting and intuitive.  Finally, we decided on the subject matter of our class song.  I suggested that since blues songs often incorporate themes of “hard times” (poverty, lost love, hard work, addiction, death), that we could write a song about the “hard life” of the average Korean high school student.  They LOVED the idea – they don’t often get opportunities to vent their frustrations on this subject. 

I divided the class into pairs and had each set of partners come up with a rhyming couplet – just two lines per pair of students.  Here’s a few examples of what they came up with:

“My head’s going to blow from the insanity

of always worrying about university.”

“Can’t you see me living life without fun?

Can’t remember when I last saw the sun.”

“I don’t want to study, but I don’t have a choice.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a voice.”

“We always study for 14 hours

But there’s no guarantee that success will be ours”

“I’m so sick of this school,

But at least teacher Kevin is cool”    **(Those kids should’ve gotten extra credit)

Once all the students had contributed some lyrics to the project, I took them home, fitted them together, and reworked them slightly so they would fit with the music (I used the tune for Pride and Joy because it’s simple and flexible).  On the last week of classes I went in to each class with copies of the lyrics, passed them out, and performed the song for them.  I think they really enjoyed it. 

The hosts of the Golden Bell game show make their entrance 

onto the set.

The very last week before the break was a whirlwind of activity.  The students were really excited about the fact that Golden Bell – a nationally broadcast Korean quiz show for students – was filming an episode at our school with select students as the contestants.  The elaborate set was erected in the auditorium of a nearby university, and the entire staff and student body were present for the game.  Filming dragged on all day, and the whole thing was obviously conducted in Korean, so it got a bit boring for me at times, since I wasn’t able to understand what was going on.  But it was still exciting overall.  Several student groups got to perform traditional music for the show’s opening, and later in the program there were more performances by the dance club and the cheerleading squad.  It was a great reminder for me that there’s a lot more to these students than relentless studying, and I was very impressed with their talents. 

A student playing a gayageum, a traditional
harp-like instrument.

Oh, did I mention that I got to participate as well?  One of the questions for the game was an English conversation question, and it’s customary for an English speaking staff member to read the question.  So I was paired with a third year student who has excellent pronunciation, and together we read a short scripted conversation.  The question was about budae jjigae, a spicy soup that has its origins in the time immediately following the Korean War when, due to a food shortage, Koreans began utilizing surplus foods from US Army bases (read: hot dogs and Spam) and incorporating them into a soup with more traditional ingredients like kimchi and gochujang (red chili paste).  We really do export the best of our culture to other countries, don’t we? :-P  Budae jjigae (literally, “army base stew”) is still popular today. So anyway, I’ve had my one minute of fame – or I will on February 5^th when the show airs. 

"Teacher, I'm hungry.  Do you have anything to eat?"

The show actually had a rather sensational conclusion.  It came down to two students who battled it out with each other round after round after round.  It’s rare for contestants to get beyond 30 or so questions, but these guys fought each other all the way up to the final 50^th question.  Our principal was thrilled, because it made the school look really good.  Winning the game is a big deal – the winner gets a scholarship and a trip to America, or something like that.  Unfortunately, in the end there could only be one winner, but the runner up got a pretty stellar consolation prize – a trip to Europe. 

The final two contestants battling for first place.

Students playing Jenga at the 'cafe' 

during the school festival.

The final day of the semester was the day of the school festival.  Since Korean students don’t have the traditions of a homecoming dance or prom, the school festival is what they look forward to all semester.  I had been looking forward to it as well.  The day started off with students setting up “stations” all over the school – there was face painting, organized games, a mock casino, puzzles and trivia, and an imitation café.  They had a lot of fun with it.  I spent the morning bouncing around from station to station, ending up in the café playing cards and Jenga with a group of students while other students served us drinks, chips, and choco pies.  There were even a few student guitarists who served up some live coffeeshop-style entertainment for the rest of us. 

Two students perform a pop duet for a captive 

audience at the school festival.

After lunch, the students piled into the auditorium for the main event – student performances on the big stage.  The acts ranged from singing pop songs and choreographed dances to performances of classical guitar or the traditional gayageum.  Again, I was amazed by the depth of talent the students possess.  These performances went on for the rest of the day and into the night.  The students never tired of it, and considering how hard they worked during the rest of the semester, I think they deserved all the fun and recreation they could handle. 

So now the school year is over and I can officially say that I survived my first semester in a Korean high school.  No sweat.  Over the break, I’m still required to come in to school every day even though there are no classes for me to teach.  This pointless practice is called “desk warming.”  The Korean teachers don’t have to be here, but my contract is different.  So basically, I sit in my office and waste away hour after hour on facebook, searching for the end of the Internet, studying Korean (I am now a boss at reading Hangeul), reading, napping, playing games, watching movies...and getting paid for it.  I’m also doing some lesson planning for next semester, but it’s hard to stay motivated with this much time on my hands.  Anyways, I’ll soon be busting out for 10 days to visit an old friend in Japan.  I leave next week and couldn’t be more excited.  Kyoto, Tokyo, and Hiroshima are on the agenda, and hopefully a few other places, time permitting.  So my next blog post will likely be about my adventures in the land of the rising sun.  Until then, take care all!

Me posing with the two most promising members of my lunch-time guitar club on their last day of Grade 1

Beginner's Guide to Teaching in Korea

UPDATE 12/5/11:  Starting in 2012, the Chungnam Office of Education will stipulate that all foreign English teachers must have some sort of certification -- a teaching license, or some kind of TEFL or TESOL certificate -- in order to be hired.  As far as I know, this only applies to Chungnam Province (where I teach), but similar changes may be coming to other provinces in the near future.  It also only applies to public schools in the province, not hagwons.  This was just announced last weekend, and I wanted you all to know.

*      *      *      *      *      *      *

I've had several friends tell me that they're considering coming here to teach, and they've asked me for information and advice. So I decided to take the time to type up a detailed 'Beginner's Guide' and adapt it into an entry for my blog.  So here it is -- everything you need to know about teaching English in South Korea. I want to be clear that this account is based on my own experiences and those related to me by other foreign teachers; they are not to be taken as universal.


Things You Need to Understand -- Challenges and Benefits

If you're planning on teaching abroad, Korea is easily one of the best places for saving money, since they cover a lot of your living expenses (unless you want to go to the United Arab Emirates or somewhere else in the Middle East...they pay outrageously well, but require a higher level of credentials). A standard contract will reimburse you for your flights, give you a settlement allowance, pay for your housing, and reward you with a bonus at the end of your contract, all on top of a salary of around 2 million won ($2000) per month, give or take (it’ll be higher if you are more qualified and/or experienced). My only bills are for my utilities and my phone.

Another bonus is that the jobs are less demanding compared to teaching jobs in the US. You'll have a 40-hour a week schedule, but you'll only teach a maximum of 22 hours. You also get 18 paid vacation days and lengthy school holidays. The attitude and ability of the students can vary widely though. Since I actually have a teaching background as well as a degree in English, I got placed in a prestigious foreign language high school where the students are gifted and highly motivated. If you get placed in some out-of-the-way agricultural community, however, you'll find that many of your students couldn’t care less about learning English.  This will obviously create some friction in the classroom and make your job more challenging.

Generally speaking, you can either teach in a public school or a hagwon (private academy). I personally recommend going with a public school -- in addition to getting more vacation time, the contracts are standard and almost always honored, whereas the hagwons are a crap shoot -- some of them are great and pay better than public schools, but I've also heard a lot of horror stories about others that take unfair advantage of their foreign teachers and even renege on pay and benefits (they are, after all, for-profit organizations). Most public schools will ask you to follow a textbook, which makes planning easy. Your job is to come up with fun activities to help the students learn the textbook material. The more creative you are, the more successful you'll be. It should be noted that the Korean approach to ESL instruction is extremely narrow and counter-intuitive, which causes frustration for a lot of foreign teachers, so be prepared for that. It's not unusual for schools to expect the students to memorize long textbook passages, which seems cruel and unnecessary, since it stresses the students out and doesn’t actually help with fluency at all. It flies in the face of Western educational philosophy, so it's a hard pill to swallow, especially for trained teachers or those with experience in education. Of course, the severity of this varies from school to school -- I've been lucky enough to land in a school that adheres to a more American-esque curriculum and approach. My classes are taught more like Language Arts classes in the US.  In other schools, this would never be possible due to the comparatively lower level of the students’ English language ability.  I am also lucky to have other native speakers teaching in my school.  In most cases, you will not have that luxury – you will likely be the only native English speaker in the building.

Another thing that you need to understand is that Korean students work much harder than you or I have ever had to. By the time they reach middle school, they are expected to forgo all social and recreational activities in order to become study robots. Most students will go to their public school for the regular school day, then go straight to a hagwon in the evening. A 12-14 hour no-fun schedule is pretty typical. My school is a boarding school, so it's a little different, but my students' day starts around 7:45 and ends around midnight. Studying is their entire life; it seems pretty masochistic.  (Here’s a great 12-second video that pokes fun at this system).  Long after I go home in the late afternoon to relax, make dinner, have a beer, fool around on the internet….my students are still at school studying their butts off.  They are under a tremendous amount of pressure to prepare for a college entrance exam, which is taken in the third year of high school and is only offered once a year.  How a student performs will determine which college he or she gets into, which in this country can make or break your entire future.  There are far too many stories of students attempting suicide after doing poorly on the test.  It’s pretty insane.

Schooling is also very competitive here.  There’s a lot of stock placed on a student’s class rank, so cheating and copying work is rarely an issue.  However, Korean students have this huge fear of giving wrong answers or appearing as if they don’t know what’s going on – this sometimes prevents them from asking questions when they don’t understand something, or volunteering answers when you ask questions (many teachers have become familiar with the dreaded ‘Korean stare’).  In most cases, they will do anything to avoid standing out (which isn’t a virtue in this culture – conformity is what’s valued).  This can be extremely vexing for inexperienced teachers, but those with some know-how can usually make due.

Another thing you should be aware of:  some people, depending on their school and co-teacher, feel as though they are being under-utilized and feel guilty that they aren’t working very hard.  I’ve heard some people make comments about how they feel as though they’re ripping off the Korean government.  The extent of these sentiments varies greatly on a case-by-case basis.  Some teachers are strongly encouraged to just play games with the kids and make their classes fun, so they don’t actually teach much real material (which is awesome if you’re lazy, not so much if you’re ambitious).  Some of the worse cases I’ve heard describe Native English teachers whose main job consists of correcting the grammar and pronunciation of their Korean co-teacher.  I personally have not experienced these problems, but they’re definitely out there.  In some schools, you might only see a certain class once a week, which causes progress and growth to occur at a much slower rate than you would probably like.  So it’s totally a toss up.  If you’re ambitious, you may find yourself feeling frustrated that you can’t fully use your skills or make more of an impact on student learning.

One final common complaint about Korean schools is that the chain of command is complex and inefficient, which can be rather annoying (It’s largely a result of a Confuscianist top-down approach to authority and seniority).  Usually, you will be the very last one to hear important information, and stuff gets sprung on you at the last minute.  You may show up to school on a given day to find out that your schedule has been changed, or that you need to cover another teacher’s classes and you have 10 minutes to come up with a plan.  It's just the Korean way, and you learn pretty quickly to just roll with it.  If you’re smart, you’ll keep a couple of emergency lesson plans tucked away somewhere in your desk – like a grammar review or a game of some sort that requires little preparation.

Above, I’ve tried to be honest about some of the challenges you may encounter if you come teach in Korea.  But I want to be honest about the positives as well, and there are many.  You can have a lot of fun in this job, and you will have the opportunity to build some really great student-teacher relationships.  Korean students are very sweet and funny, and they will be completely fascinated by you and your strange foreign ways.  For the first couple of weeks I was at my school, I felt like a celebrity.  They are very inquisitive, so they will challenge your knowledge and teach you a lot about Korea in return – most of what I’ve learned about this country and culture has come from them.  Korean society traditionally has a pretty narrow, conservative perspective on things, so you’ll be in a prime position to open up the students’ minds and expose them to new ideas, new ways of seeing and being.   I find the job to be pretty laid back and easy compared to teaching jobs back home – there is far less paperwork and pressure, and you aren’t expected to do much in the way of grading or evaluation.  Instead, you can fully dedicate your time to creating the best possible experience for your students.  You have ample time to plan, so you rarely have to take your work home with you.  Your Korean coteachers will probably be very welcoming and invite you out for dinner and drinks, and even sometimes other things like hiking or cultural events.  If you demonstrate an openness and willingness to learn about the language and the culture, you will be endlessly rewarded.

I feel like I should emphasize that it takes a certain kind of person to flourish here.  Many people love it here -- I know expats that have been here for years, are married to Koreans, and speak the language fluently.  But to be perfectly honest, I have to mention that there are also those who hate it here -- I know people who have bailed on their contracts early and skipped the country.  A lot of it has to do with what kind of school you end up in and what your co-teachers are like, and these are things that are largely out of your control.  It's a little bit of a gamble, but life is more exciting when you take chances.  I got really lucky.  Hopefully you do too.  As long as you keep an open mind, are willing to step outside your comfort zone, have a little patience and a sense of humor, and can put up with a little bullshit -- you'll be fine.


How to Land a Job

If you make the decision to teach in Korea, do your homework before you choose a recruiter.  The ones with established reputations should be easy to vet online.  Do NOT, under any circumstances, pay a fee to a recruiter for their services.  The way things work here, the recruiters make a commission from the schools for every candidate they recruit, so their services should be entirely free to you.  If they try to charge you, they’re scamming you.  Some recruiters are catch-alls, while others will specialize in a certain kind of school (hagwon, public, or university) or a certain city or province – so again, do your homework, especially if you have your heart set on a certain type of placement.  When I first contacted my chosen recruiter (I see no reason to keep it a secret – my recruiter was Alistair at Korean Horizons, and I give him my full endorsement) I told him upfront that I wanted to be in a public high school in a small to medium-sized city.  I initially found my recruiter after simply posting my resume on eslcafe.com – the emails from recruitment agencies started immediately pouring in, and it was just a matter of doing a little online research and selecting the one that I felt was the most reputable and the best fit for me.  Once you’ve made your choice, your recruiter should help you with the entire process – completing the formal applications, preparing for the phone interview, applying for a background check and a visa, and all that good stuff.

Another piece of advice -- start the paperwork process as early as possible, because it can be a bit of a nightmare. It takes 2-3 months to get an FBI background check, so applying for one should be your first step, and it would be ideal to do so like 4 months before you plan to depart. Trust me on this. I only gave myself like 2 and half months, and the stress almost killed me.  Also, the earlier you get your application in, the more placement options will be available.  A majority of contracts start in either March (start of 1st semester) or August (start of second semester), but there are plenty of exceptions, and recruiters are usually willing to accept your application whenever you’re willing to submit it.


Living in Korea

Living in Korea is both endlessly fascinating and endlessly frustrating. The language is extremely difficult to learn (in my humble opinion), but you honestly don't really need to learn it before you get here. People will be eager to help you out, and learning just a little can go a really long way.  I've been here 3 months and haven't learned more than a few basic phrases, and I’ve been getting along OK. There’s no doubt, however, that learning more Korean would make my life easier because it would decrease my dependence on my Korean friends and coworkers.  There’s a long winter break coming up, and I plan to use the extra time to get more serious about learning Korean.  It is also very useful to learn how to read Korean characters, and it's actually much easier to pick up than the rest of the language. Most people can teach themselves how to do it in a few days.  There are some great tutorials for this online.  Try TTMIK.com (Talk To Me In Korean).

Korea is a really beautiful country with lots of mountains, beaches, temples, and museums. It’s culture and history are rich and complex.  Korean cities, however, all look exactly the same, and they aren't very attractive, if you ask me. During the country’s big economic boom in the 1980s, it seems that they favored utility over aesthetics when it came to architecture, but I guess there's nothing wrong with that. The climate is very similar to the American Midwest  most of the year, except for the super high humidity and the monsoon rains during the second half of summer. The air quality can be pretty poor during certain times of year (yellow dust, anyone?), but this usually only affects people with respiratory problems like asthma.  Smoking is common, and is still permitted in all bars and some restaurants and coffeeshops.  Korean cuisine might take some getting used to (hope you can handle spicy food), but it's usually pretty healthy and there are plenty of dishes that I've come to absolutely love and crave. Korean beer totally sucks, I'm sorry to say.  American-style fast food is also pretty easy to find in any decent-sized city (if that’s you’re thing), and Koreans do fried chicken especially well. I’ve heard it said that this is a hard place to be a vegetarian, but I can’t really speak from experience on that topic.  There are coffee shops everywhere. Transportation is cheap and efficient, and with it being such a small country, you would be hard-pressed to find a destination in South Korea that you can't reach in 3 hours or less. Health care is very affordable.  The people are generally very friendly, though their often hypocritical and closed-minded social conservatism can be a bone of contention for many people (for example, homosexuals are generally considered to be mentally ill). But it has to be said -- Koreans of both sexes are really attracted to foreigners. Seriously.

I guess that's everything you need to know. For what it's worth, I'll say that I had originally planned on being here for a single year, but I'm already considering sticking around for a second. I really love my school, and the money's too good to pass up. Plus, it's still really hard to find a teaching job in the States, so I'm in no hurry to return to that job market. I wouldn’t say that I’m in love with Korea like I was New Zealand or Washington State, but I definitely don't dislike it either. Bottom line: if you want to teach abroad while saving enough money to do more traveling, pay off debts, etc....Korea can't really be beat.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments.

Cheers, and good luck!

First Impressions

Alright people.  I suppose it’s time for me to actually start writing about my experiences, now that I’ve been here three weeks and haven’t told you anything at all.  As a result, this will probably be a rather lengthy entry.  Grab yourself a drink and get comfortable.

I’m going to start with the day I left orientation, because that really felt like it was my first day in Korea, even though it was actually my seventh.  Orientation ended with a little ceremony where they gave us all certificates and then sent us on our way.  For those teachers who had already been here and teaching for a while, they had to take public transportation back to their schools.  For the newbies like me, we got picked up by our Korean co-teachers.  My co-teacher’s name is Sunny.  I had already met her earlier in the week because she was one of our trainers on the second day of orientation.  I knew that I was being taken straight to the school to meet the staff and have lunch with the principal, so I had spent the morning cleaning myself up, shaving off my week-long beard growth, and donning my suit so as to make a good first impression.  As if being nervous wasn’t enough, I was sweating like a whore a church because it was like 88 degrees with 1000% humidity, and I was wearing a freaking suit. 

Sunny was in a hurry, so I didn’t even get to say an abrupt farewell to the friends I’d made at orientation – fortunately, I was smart enough to write down everyone’s contact information earlier that morning. Sunny took me straight to Chungnam Foreign Language High School, my new place of employment.  (I’m not going to say much about my school right now, because that deserves its own blog entry, which I promise to write soon).  On the short drive to the school, we chatted a little about my reasons for coming to Korea and my teaching background.  At one point, to my utter astonishment, the song “F—K You” by Cee-Lo Green came on the radio (I wasn’t aware that any American music was popular here, especially a song like that.  I mean, I thought Koreans were supposed to be conservative), and Sunny was sort of drumming out the beat with her thumbs on the steering wheel. That put me at ease a little. 

When we arrived at the school, I was given a whirlwind tour and introduced to dozens of people.  In my state of nervous excitement, I could do little more than give each new person a stiff, self-conscious bow and a mumbled “Annyeong haseyo” – one of two Korean phrases I’d picked up at orientation.  Then I met the principal.  After a bow and a handshake, he asked me to sit down across from him, and he began asking me questions.  Even though I already had the job, this sort of felt like an interview.  At first I was intimidated, but that soon passed, because he was very friendly, always smiling, and seemed satisfied with the things I was telling him.  After speaking for a bit about my credentials and experience, we went to lunch.

I had thought lunch was going to be a somewhat informal affair, but I was wrong.  In addition to Sunny and the principal, we were joined by close to a dozen other teachers and administrators, as well as Liz, the American teacher I was replacing.  I’m thankful she was there, because she told me to just follow her lead.  Koreans have many idiosyncratic formalities when it comes to dining, especially when “elders” are present, and I was sure I would make some kind of faux pas.  But with Liz’s help, I made it through alright.  If I did make any mistakes, my companions were too polite to say anything. 

We went to a traditional Korean restaurant.  It was the real deal – shoes off at the door, sitting on the floor, etc.  Traditional Korean dining is a sort of communal experience – there are no individual servings (except for rice).  Instead, all the dishes are placed in the middle of the table and everyone shares.  Korean meals usually consist of some main entre (in this case salted, grilled fish – not nice, neat fillets, but the whole fish – bones, eyeballs, and all) and a great variety of small, colorful side dishes. The side dishes were mostly different types of spicy fermented vegetables, the infamous kimchi among them.  There was also some kind of spicy soup with tofu and seaweed in it.

At the start of the meal, the principal made a little speech in which he thanked Liz for all her hard work at the school and told her how much she’d be missed.  Then, he spoke directly to me, invoking the old “when in Rome…’ adage and applying it to my experience of Korea, encouraging me to keep an open mind and experimental attitude.  In keeping with this spirit, I dove right in to the meal.  It was all very good.  Even the kimchi wasn’t terrible, though I tried it out of politeness and kept my serving small.  After a week of the cafeteria-style food we’d been eating at orientation, I was starting to fear that I was going to have a tough time stomaching Korean food.  But this meal was my first indication, which has since been corroborated, that the food at orientation was just crap, an unfortunate introduction to Korean cuisine that I’m glad to have behind me. 

The fish was especially good, though it was difficult to eat.  If you’re ever curious what it feels like to be handicapped, try de-boning fish with chopsticks, without using both hands.  Oh, and a special note on Korean chopsticks:  they’re made of metal, and a little more slender than chopsticks I’ve used in the past.  This makes them kind of, shall we say, “slippery.”  Even though I’m no stranger to chopsticks, I struggled quite a bit, which was probably also due to nervousness.  I was aware of the others watching me in a clandestine manner;  it was probably my imagination, but I felt like I was being “sized up.”  Finally, the principal took pity on me and offered me some pointers, which didn’t seem to help much.  At one point, another teacher, who hadn’t spoken a word to me during the meal, asked the waitress to bring me a fork.  I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted or not.  I didn’t want to use the fork; I wanted to learn to do it the way Koreans do it.  I mean, “when in Rome,” right?  But I also didn’t want to offend the guy, in case it was meant to be a generous gesture.  So I spent the rest of the meal awkwardly switching back and forth between the fork and the chopsticks. 

After lunch, I was taken to my apartment.  In addition to taking over Liz’s job, I was also taking over her living space.  I don’t think 

My apartment building

there’s much need to describe the apartment, so I’ll keep this brief.  It’s a small one-bedroom on the 15^th (top) floor of a highrise, not far from my school.  It has a bed, a wardrobe, a couch, a TV, a table or two, and not much else.  Korean homes usually don’t have ovens, but Liz had gotten a small convection oven which she passed on to me.  To tell you the truth, Liz made this transition super easy for me by selling me a bunch of her stuff for cheap – kitchenware, bedding (yeah, I’m sleeping on pink sheets and a flowery bedspread…don’t judge me), and the like.  There’s also a large balcony, a washing machine that doesn’t work very well, a rack for drying clothes, and an oscillating fan in lieu of an air conditioner.  The building is in a neighborhood called Hosan-ri, which is technically in Asan, but also pretty close to Cheonan.  It’s a pretty good location.  Cheonan is a decent sized city, with neon lights, street food, department stores, night clubs, foreigner bars, and taxis that nearly run you over.  I’m also pretty close to some major transportation links, including the Asan/Cheonan KTX station (high speed rail), which makes it really easy to get up to Seoul.  I’ve already made the trip 3 times.   

Hosan-ri, seen from the top of my building

That night we went out to dinner – Liz and I, and some of my new co-teachers.  This was when I met John Spooner, a native of New York who’s been living and teaching in Korea for a while now.  He has since become almost like my personal guide to Korea.  He’s helped me figure out which buses to take, how to get a transportation card, where to shop, where to eat, how to say my address to a taxi driver, and he’s been introducing me to lots of people in the area and helping me make friends.  I feel like I’d be lost without his help.

The view from my balcony

I’m going to end this entry here, and save the other adventures for next time.  I’ll also try to add things to this blog more regularly.  Now that I’m settled in and starting to become somewhat acclimated, things should be slowing down a bit, allowing me to dedicate more time to projects such as this.  Take care, all.  I’ll be in touch.

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.