Thursday, October 28, 2010
Note
The main reason I'm doing this isn't for you it's for me. My mom always hassles me about keeping a diary when I go abroad, and it's one of her good ideas that I always think about and plan on doing but don't actually follow through with. I really regret not having one in Argentina. So I'm going to try to do it this time around. Anyway, there's going to be lots of mundane stuff in here, and most of it won't be interesting to you, but I'm not trying to entertain anyone. So I wouldn't recommend reading this unless you're bored.
Seoul-day 1 (first full day)
I finally went to bed around 1.30ish and was only able to sleep for five hours or so. I just couldn't fall back to sleep for some reason, and part of it was probably because my apartment is next door to a big construction site. After I laid in bed for a long time, I finally got up to take a shower, but there was no hot water so I couldn't. There was a thermostat in the main room but it was in Korean, so I couldn't figure it out.
After that, I decided to go to breakfast. I can't really describe well where I live: it's on a backstreet, but you walk a block or two and you're on a really big main street. On my block there are a couple of restaurants and a 7-11. I went into the 7-11 for some breakfast, which wasn't too difficult because most of the products were in English. I bought a notepad and paper (to keep track of expenses and write down what I needed to buy), some orange juice, yogurt, and some pastries. The guy working there speaks no English and always bows to me. There's lots of bowing in Korean culture from what I've seen so far.
After breakfast I walked around and tried to find some other necessities. The first thing I wanted to get was an adapter (Korean plugs aren't American plugs). I went into a cell phone store and asked where I could find one. They didn't speak English but he called up a friend who did and I was able to communicate what I was looking for after a little bit. He pointed me in the general direction of a place where I'd be able to find one. I was walking along the street and some Korean guy came up to me and said "Hello!" It was the first time someone just tried to talk to me in English other than for helping me. That was about the only word he knew though. So I said "Park Ji Sung" and he started talking about soccer in Korean. I explained to him with hand motions that I wanted to find an adapter. Then he pointed to a computer store that was on the street (probably the same one the other guy was trying to direct me to). I went in, and the guy working there didn't speak English either. But through gestures I found an adapter.
Next, I bought a plastic cylindrical bin at some little market that I'd use as a trash can. It was a tiny building but it was amazing how much stuff they could fit in there. Next, I went to a grocery store. I wanted to find trash bags and clothes hangars so I could start unpacking. It took me a very long time but I found some clothes hangars, and found trash bags after an attendant helped me. They were at the information desk in the back along with some other stuff. I bought the biggest ones I could but they didn't really fit and they're terrible. They're not like normal trash bags, they're plastic and they have four flaps at the opening that don't do anything useful.
After that I went to my hagwon. Simon had drawn me a map of how to get to the subway, and told me that the hagwon was only 7 or 8 stops away, but he didn't mention which direction I had to go to (he probably did and I just forgot). I hoped I could figure it out. But when I got there I realized it wouldn't be so simple. Simon said that I had to get a subway card at a local convenience store. The guy at my 711 didn't speak English and it seemed like it would be hard to communicate. So I was just standing there, looking at the map and trying to figure out what to do and where to go. Some Korean comes up to me and in a perfect Australian accent asked me if I was lost. Turns out he was an Australian-Korean who had just left everything behind to come here and teach English. He didn't like his contract and had just pulled a runner, I think, and was staying with a friend and wandering around. Anyways, I had the address with me in Korean (but not in Konglish, which probably would've helped me) and he looked it up on his iphone and figured out which stop I had to get off of and where I had to go. After that, he showed me the whole process of how to get a card and how to put money on it. There's no way I could have figured it out myself.
I got off at the subway stop and was hungry for lunch. There was a burger king right there, and for whatever reason, it appealed to me. I had a number 8 (bacon double cheese) but of course it was way too small (it tasted just like it does in the US though). After that I started looking for the hagwon. I went to the street it was on and saw a sign high on a building that said TOEFL and SAT, so I went up to that floor, thinking it was my hagwon. I showed them the address and asked where it was, and the lady went and asked someone else and they said it was a couple building over to the right. It obviously wasn't there though. So I showed the address to a few people, and finally they showed it to me. It was the next building over and to the left (the opposite direction that the lady told me). My school's sign was very obvious but the other school's sign blocked it, which is why I couldn't see it. Later they told me that the other school was a rival and made a huge sign like that on purpose so you couldn't see my school's. So I'm pretty sure they gave me the wrong directions on purpose, and there's no way the lady at the front desk wouldn't have known where my school was.
So I got to the school and had a meeting with my boss and the people at the front desk. My boss told me what I would be teaching within the next few days, and I had a meeting scheduled that night to discuss a class I'd be teaching on Saturday. He also told me about a girl I'd be tutoring on Sundays. Later, Simon told me this is the fastest a teacher had ever started after arriving (usually they waited around two weeks). It's because the teacher I'm replacing left the day after I came (when they were going out for drinks the night I arrived as a going away thing), so I have to take over his classes.
After that, I had a meeting with the people at the front desk. They're the ones that schedule our classes so it's really important to have good rapport with them. They sort of understand English but don't speak it to well, so Simon was the translator. They wanted to know about my teaching style and what type of student I wanted, questions I don't really have the answer to. They said to Simon though that I was very studious looking.
After the meeting, Simon and one of them went to lunch with me (burger king hadn't filled me up). We had some excellent Italian food. The other one was very nice and complementary, she said that she had a feeling that I'd be a good teacher and said that it was the only time in 7 years of working there that she'd felt that way (I'm guessing exaggeration in flattery is part of the culture or something). They were also shocked I didn't know my blood type. They told me that Koreans think you can judge a person by their blood type and were surprised that Americans don't care about it. It was a lot of fun. After that, Simon found me an adapter (my computer plug didn't quite fit into the other one, it was some sort of weird European one I guess, holes for three prongs that are slightly smaller than ours).
Then, I went home for a little while (and got lost from exiting the wrong way out of the subway). I tried to find a digital alarm clock but couldn't. I found a non-digital one but decided to wait until I could find a digital. I went home and tried to figure out the internet (they explained to me how to plug it in) but after I plugged it in it still didn't work. I tried calling Simon on the phone like they told me but it was only an intercom phone and didn't have any numbers on it. I took pictures of the thermostat and internet plug in with my computer camera. I figured out the thermostat after pressing random buttons, one of which turned the thing one, and turned up the middle dial to the max like they had told me to (I'm very confused by the whole thing, apparently the only source of heating in the apartment is a radiator in the floor that heats the water, and Simon had said I'd want to buy a floor heater). They said that by turning the middle dial it would only heat the water and not the whole apartment. After watching a little Korean TV I headed back to the hagwon for my meeting.
We voted on the books we're going to teach and I'm going to be teaching reading. So I have to have Call of the Wild ready by Saturday (a day and a half later). which I should be reading instead of writing this. I met the other two American teachers at the school. One of them is Korean-American and the other is half Indian (matters of ethnicity are very important to Koreans). They seem really cool, but I was pretty disappointed that right after the meeting they just left and didn't invite me to dinner or anything. Maybe they were going to but didn't after I started asking Steven some questions about the apartment. So I went to a random restaurant and had dumpling soup. It was very good and looked healthy. I headed home to drop off my computer, and the apartment was a sauna. The hot water worked, but middle dial had turned up the heat as well. The thermostat said 27 degrees Celsius, which is what it felt like. I turned the middle dial way down but when I woke up the next morning, it was said it was 26 (but if felt much cooler). I was going to go to the PC cafe and a drink afterwards but I was too tired, so I just passed out, and slept in until 8.30 this morning. I still felt tired but decided to get up. I'll write on the rest of the day at some other point.
After that, I decided to go to breakfast. I can't really describe well where I live: it's on a backstreet, but you walk a block or two and you're on a really big main street. On my block there are a couple of restaurants and a 7-11. I went into the 7-11 for some breakfast, which wasn't too difficult because most of the products were in English. I bought a notepad and paper (to keep track of expenses and write down what I needed to buy), some orange juice, yogurt, and some pastries. The guy working there speaks no English and always bows to me. There's lots of bowing in Korean culture from what I've seen so far.
After breakfast I walked around and tried to find some other necessities. The first thing I wanted to get was an adapter (Korean plugs aren't American plugs). I went into a cell phone store and asked where I could find one. They didn't speak English but he called up a friend who did and I was able to communicate what I was looking for after a little bit. He pointed me in the general direction of a place where I'd be able to find one. I was walking along the street and some Korean guy came up to me and said "Hello!" It was the first time someone just tried to talk to me in English other than for helping me. That was about the only word he knew though. So I said "Park Ji Sung" and he started talking about soccer in Korean. I explained to him with hand motions that I wanted to find an adapter. Then he pointed to a computer store that was on the street (probably the same one the other guy was trying to direct me to). I went in, and the guy working there didn't speak English either. But through gestures I found an adapter.
Next, I bought a plastic cylindrical bin at some little market that I'd use as a trash can. It was a tiny building but it was amazing how much stuff they could fit in there. Next, I went to a grocery store. I wanted to find trash bags and clothes hangars so I could start unpacking. It took me a very long time but I found some clothes hangars, and found trash bags after an attendant helped me. They were at the information desk in the back along with some other stuff. I bought the biggest ones I could but they didn't really fit and they're terrible. They're not like normal trash bags, they're plastic and they have four flaps at the opening that don't do anything useful.
After that I went to my hagwon. Simon had drawn me a map of how to get to the subway, and told me that the hagwon was only 7 or 8 stops away, but he didn't mention which direction I had to go to (he probably did and I just forgot). I hoped I could figure it out. But when I got there I realized it wouldn't be so simple. Simon said that I had to get a subway card at a local convenience store. The guy at my 711 didn't speak English and it seemed like it would be hard to communicate. So I was just standing there, looking at the map and trying to figure out what to do and where to go. Some Korean comes up to me and in a perfect Australian accent asked me if I was lost. Turns out he was an Australian-Korean who had just left everything behind to come here and teach English. He didn't like his contract and had just pulled a runner, I think, and was staying with a friend and wandering around. Anyways, I had the address with me in Korean (but not in Konglish, which probably would've helped me) and he looked it up on his iphone and figured out which stop I had to get off of and where I had to go. After that, he showed me the whole process of how to get a card and how to put money on it. There's no way I could have figured it out myself.
I got off at the subway stop and was hungry for lunch. There was a burger king right there, and for whatever reason, it appealed to me. I had a number 8 (bacon double cheese) but of course it was way too small (it tasted just like it does in the US though). After that I started looking for the hagwon. I went to the street it was on and saw a sign high on a building that said TOEFL and SAT, so I went up to that floor, thinking it was my hagwon. I showed them the address and asked where it was, and the lady went and asked someone else and they said it was a couple building over to the right. It obviously wasn't there though. So I showed the address to a few people, and finally they showed it to me. It was the next building over and to the left (the opposite direction that the lady told me). My school's sign was very obvious but the other school's sign blocked it, which is why I couldn't see it. Later they told me that the other school was a rival and made a huge sign like that on purpose so you couldn't see my school's. So I'm pretty sure they gave me the wrong directions on purpose, and there's no way the lady at the front desk wouldn't have known where my school was.
So I got to the school and had a meeting with my boss and the people at the front desk. My boss told me what I would be teaching within the next few days, and I had a meeting scheduled that night to discuss a class I'd be teaching on Saturday. He also told me about a girl I'd be tutoring on Sundays. Later, Simon told me this is the fastest a teacher had ever started after arriving (usually they waited around two weeks). It's because the teacher I'm replacing left the day after I came (when they were going out for drinks the night I arrived as a going away thing), so I have to take over his classes.
After that, I had a meeting with the people at the front desk. They're the ones that schedule our classes so it's really important to have good rapport with them. They sort of understand English but don't speak it to well, so Simon was the translator. They wanted to know about my teaching style and what type of student I wanted, questions I don't really have the answer to. They said to Simon though that I was very studious looking.
After the meeting, Simon and one of them went to lunch with me (burger king hadn't filled me up). We had some excellent Italian food. The other one was very nice and complementary, she said that she had a feeling that I'd be a good teacher and said that it was the only time in 7 years of working there that she'd felt that way (I'm guessing exaggeration in flattery is part of the culture or something). They were also shocked I didn't know my blood type. They told me that Koreans think you can judge a person by their blood type and were surprised that Americans don't care about it. It was a lot of fun. After that, Simon found me an adapter (my computer plug didn't quite fit into the other one, it was some sort of weird European one I guess, holes for three prongs that are slightly smaller than ours).
Then, I went home for a little while (and got lost from exiting the wrong way out of the subway). I tried to find a digital alarm clock but couldn't. I found a non-digital one but decided to wait until I could find a digital. I went home and tried to figure out the internet (they explained to me how to plug it in) but after I plugged it in it still didn't work. I tried calling Simon on the phone like they told me but it was only an intercom phone and didn't have any numbers on it. I took pictures of the thermostat and internet plug in with my computer camera. I figured out the thermostat after pressing random buttons, one of which turned the thing one, and turned up the middle dial to the max like they had told me to (I'm very confused by the whole thing, apparently the only source of heating in the apartment is a radiator in the floor that heats the water, and Simon had said I'd want to buy a floor heater). They said that by turning the middle dial it would only heat the water and not the whole apartment. After watching a little Korean TV I headed back to the hagwon for my meeting.
We voted on the books we're going to teach and I'm going to be teaching reading. So I have to have Call of the Wild ready by Saturday (a day and a half later). which I should be reading instead of writing this. I met the other two American teachers at the school. One of them is Korean-American and the other is half Indian (matters of ethnicity are very important to Koreans). They seem really cool, but I was pretty disappointed that right after the meeting they just left and didn't invite me to dinner or anything. Maybe they were going to but didn't after I started asking Steven some questions about the apartment. So I went to a random restaurant and had dumpling soup. It was very good and looked healthy. I headed home to drop off my computer, and the apartment was a sauna. The hot water worked, but middle dial had turned up the heat as well. The thermostat said 27 degrees Celsius, which is what it felt like. I turned the middle dial way down but when I woke up the next morning, it was said it was 26 (but if felt much cooler). I was going to go to the PC cafe and a drink afterwards but I was too tired, so I just passed out, and slept in until 8.30 this morning. I still felt tired but decided to get up. I'll write on the rest of the day at some other point.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
In Seoul
I flew from Spokane to Seattle, and left Seattle at 2.20 for a direct flight to Seoul on Korean Airlines. It was a great flight. It lasted under 12 hours, making it as speedy as any flight to Seoul (many are 20 hour affairs that involve several stops), and Korean Airlines is great. Everyone gets their own personal TV and they can watch whatever they want and even play games. There was a Uruguayan film available and I was very pleased with the opportunity to listen to some Spanish, but there was hardly any dialogue in the movie that lasted more than a sentence or two. After that I played this soccer game for a while and quit after it got too easy. Then I slept for about 4 hours. After that, I watched the news (BBC, CNN, and KBS, the Korean news) and read the newspaper articles that were available as well. Then I read my magazines until we landed. The flight was almost entirely over the ocean, though at one point I opened my window to look at the Pacific and was shocked to see nothing but mountains. I thought we'd only be flying over the ocean but we fly northward to account for the curviture of the earth's surface, so we flew over the peninsula that separates the Sea of Okhotsk from the Bering Sea...I don't know what it's called. Anyway, it was nothing but snowy-peaked mountains, and there was a settlement on the coast. We flew over the Japanese countryside as well, but only saw a little bit. Eventually we got to Korea and flew over Suwon (I believe) which had several sports stadiums.
The Incheon airport was very nice, as good as any I've seen in the states. I got my bags immediately (no wait) and bought a bus ticket, and the bus showed up right away. The people on the bus were very helpful and let me know when I had to get off. I got off at the stop and was supposed to call a cab to take me to the school (that's what the instructions seemed to indicate). I tried flagging a taxi but none would stop. Then, this girl came up to me and asked if I needed help. I told her I needed a taxi, but the ones we stopped wouldn't take me because my bags were too big. So she called a taxi to pick me up, and a few minutes later just went ahead and called the number they had left me. She told them to pick me up, so after about a half an hour they came. She is an English teacher and very nice and friendly, she left me her number and said that she and her husband could show me around Seoul anytime I wanted. And while she was waiting with me she called and cancelled an English lesson with one of her students, just so she could help me! I wouldn't have let her but she told me after she had already done it.
So they dropped me off at my apartment and I put my stuff there, and then Simon (the guy helping me; he works at the front desk at my school) showed me a restaurant and I had some great beef soup. The other teachers at the school were having a drink very close by. Initially I was going to go out and meet them but in the end I decided I was too tired. So he took me to a 'PC room' instead so I could write this blog post. It's pretty hilarious, it's midnight and it's full of Korean kids smoking cigarettes and playing World of Warcraft. Everything is very high-tech here from what I've seen, and all of the computers are very nice and have huge monitors. Nothing like the e-cafes I've been to in Latin America.
Well, I'm absolutely exhausted (it's like 8.20 AM my time)m so I'm going to quit here. Maybe I'll edit it later and add more or something.
The Incheon airport was very nice, as good as any I've seen in the states. I got my bags immediately (no wait) and bought a bus ticket, and the bus showed up right away. The people on the bus were very helpful and let me know when I had to get off. I got off at the stop and was supposed to call a cab to take me to the school (that's what the instructions seemed to indicate). I tried flagging a taxi but none would stop. Then, this girl came up to me and asked if I needed help. I told her I needed a taxi, but the ones we stopped wouldn't take me because my bags were too big. So she called a taxi to pick me up, and a few minutes later just went ahead and called the number they had left me. She told them to pick me up, so after about a half an hour they came. She is an English teacher and very nice and friendly, she left me her number and said that she and her husband could show me around Seoul anytime I wanted. And while she was waiting with me she called and cancelled an English lesson with one of her students, just so she could help me! I wouldn't have let her but she told me after she had already done it.
So they dropped me off at my apartment and I put my stuff there, and then Simon (the guy helping me; he works at the front desk at my school) showed me a restaurant and I had some great beef soup. The other teachers at the school were having a drink very close by. Initially I was going to go out and meet them but in the end I decided I was too tired. So he took me to a 'PC room' instead so I could write this blog post. It's pretty hilarious, it's midnight and it's full of Korean kids smoking cigarettes and playing World of Warcraft. Everything is very high-tech here from what I've seen, and all of the computers are very nice and have huge monitors. Nothing like the e-cafes I've been to in Latin America.
Well, I'm absolutely exhausted (it's like 8.20 AM my time)m so I'm going to quit here. Maybe I'll edit it later and add more or something.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Seattle trip
The Seattle trip went well. Unfortunately, I couldn't renew my Mexican passport; they made a rule recently that you have to make an appointment to renew it. I tried to set one up over the phone for that day (which was incredibly difficult, it was impossible to understand the guy's English over the noise of the traffic and a few times I had to ask him to repeat the same sentences about 10 times). I successfully obtained my Korean visa in the next few days, it's pretty cool: it's like a whole page in my passport. After that I volunteered with my friend Nick in voter protection for Patty Murray. It was pretty cool, and then they let me volunteer for crowd control at her event, which Barrack Obama was to speak at! It was great, I got to direct the people walking in and let everyone know that the floor seating was standing room only.
There were several speakers there, starting with the UW class president and some King County executive moving up through Bill Insley, Norm Dicks, Christine Gregoire, Patty, and then Barrack Obama. Obama was awesome: he has a great presence. It was pretty amazing to see someone that famous, that you only see on TV, right there in person. And he totally looked at me a few times. He focuses on certain people in the crowd during his speech, and I was standing by myself in the volunteer's seating section with a striped sweatshirt, so I stood out. His speech was pretty negative though, the whole thing was about how all of our problems were caused by the Republicans in the 00s. So that was different. Earlier on his message had always been positive, talking about all that hopey-changey stuff, and he didn't have to play the blame game with the Republicans. But now that the past two years have been so horrible and his approval ratings are so low that it's all he can do. I think it's an indicator of the political climate right now and I don't think it's inconceivable for the Republicans to take both houses.
There were several speakers there, starting with the UW class president and some King County executive moving up through Bill Insley, Norm Dicks, Christine Gregoire, Patty, and then Barrack Obama. Obama was awesome: he has a great presence. It was pretty amazing to see someone that famous, that you only see on TV, right there in person. And he totally looked at me a few times. He focuses on certain people in the crowd during his speech, and I was standing by myself in the volunteer's seating section with a striped sweatshirt, so I stood out. His speech was pretty negative though, the whole thing was about how all of our problems were caused by the Republicans in the 00s. So that was different. Earlier on his message had always been positive, talking about all that hopey-changey stuff, and he didn't have to play the blame game with the Republicans. But now that the past two years have been so horrible and his approval ratings are so low that it's all he can do. I think it's an indicator of the political climate right now and I don't think it's inconceivable for the Republicans to take both houses.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Last step: Seattle
So now I'm off to Seattle for a few days on Sunday to get my visa. This is the last part of a long and tedious process to get my visa. I've had to fill out mountains of paperwork that span several states across the country, but I finally got all of my stuff sent to Seoul. Then they gave me a visa number, so I set up an appointment on Tuesday with the consulate in Seattle to fill out more paperwork and to get my passport stamped the next day. I'm also going to renew my Mexican passport. Might as well if I'm going to be there for a few days. After that, I'm approved to go teach in Korea!
What I'm doing (my job)
Here I'll explain what my job is. After living in Williamstown, Massachusetts for four years, and Coeur d'Alene (a metropolis in comparison) for years before that, I'm ready to live in a new place. I want to live in a city, and my priorities in my first post-grad year are traveling and enjoying the last bit of my waning youth. So I decided I wanted to teach English in Korea. The southern one. Why Korea, you might ask?
Initially I wanted to go to Japan. But I learned from research that teaching English there is not what it used to be. It has been a popular destination for the ESL world for years and is now completely oversaturated with English teachers. It's basically impossible to make a living there if you don't have a lot of prior experience (it's also the most expensive country in the world) and I'd probably have to commute to two different schools.
The next idea was China. And I could learn Chinese there in my spare time, which is supposedly what everyone is supposed to do. But the ESL industry there looked pretty sketchy, not to mention living in a third-world country with a billion people and the worst pollution in the world wasn't exactly what I wanted. Now don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with living in third world countries. Living with a host family for three weeks in Nicaragua was one of my favorite experiences. But lounging on the beaches of San Juan del Sur sounds much more enjoyable than navigating my way through Beijing and being unable to see 10 feet in front of me because of the smog. Living in a big city, such as Buenos Aires, is crazy enough, but living in a Chinese big city just sounds like too much.
Then it was Thailand. The pictures make it look like paradise, and apparently it has some of the best beaches and surfing in the world. But the ESL industry over there is even worse, and the students apparently have absolutely no motivation nor the ability to behave in a classroom setting.
Then I looked into Korea and Taiwan, and they definitely seemed like the best bet. They have the most reputable ESL industries, where almost every kid there goes to an afterschool program to learn English. They also use the most advanced teaching methods that focus on conversational English as opposed to grammar-based instruction taught as a content course. So the teaching would be enjoyable. The salary was good, and since there was such a high demand for teachers, you could get any type of job wherever you wanted. Taiwan seemed too small so I chose Korea.
Of course then there was this recession. A few years ago, there were 10 jobs for every teacher. You could get a job there in two days if you wanted to. They were begging people to come. Now, they're cutting back on hiring, all of the teachers already there are extending their contracts since there's no work in their home countries, and just about every recent college grad has decided they want to teach English in Korea. So, the job search wasn't going well. I found a job that would've been great, but since I didn't have all my documents ready in time, they gave it to someone else.
Most of the other offers I got were in the middle of nowhere or wanted me to leave the next day, before I had everything ready (note: if you're going through this process, make sure you get all of your documents ready beforehand). I really wanted to be in Busan, which definitely seems like the best city in Korea: big and cosmopolitan enough that there's plenty to do and I wouldn't get homesick or culture shock, but not crazy like Seoul or too westernized. I'd have beaches to go to as well as mild weather year round (in the rest of the country, the winters are harsh, something I'm really sick of, and the summers are very hot and humid, something I can't deal with).
And then this job came up. The recruiter (they're the ones who put you with the schools) saw that I went to Williams, so he thought I'd be qualified to teach at an AP test prep hagwon (these kids are so good that instead of going to after school English classes, they go to after school AP classes). I had an interview, impressed my boss enough in the quiz section I guess, and so I got the job. I'll be teaching AP US government, comparative politics, and probably European and American history as well. I'll also be teaching SAT prep classes as well as some grammar and reading and writing classes. They pay for housing and the hourly is good, so it'll be a good way to save money. But, I'll be working 6-7 days a week, usually around 60 teaching hours. And there's going to be lots of prep time. So you do the math...
So there won't be the weekend trips I was planning and I won't get to hang out with all the other people my age, who'll be going out on weekends (this is when I have lots of hours, the students aren't in school on the weekends so that's when most of their classes are). There won't really even be free time to explore Seoul. But I guess I can suck it up for a year. Or maybe less. I teach my classes based on student demand. So if my classes are good, lots of kids sign up and I get lots of hours. If not, I don't get hours, and I get fired quickly. So we'll see how it goes. Now on to Seattle!
Initially I wanted to go to Japan. But I learned from research that teaching English there is not what it used to be. It has been a popular destination for the ESL world for years and is now completely oversaturated with English teachers. It's basically impossible to make a living there if you don't have a lot of prior experience (it's also the most expensive country in the world) and I'd probably have to commute to two different schools.
The next idea was China. And I could learn Chinese there in my spare time, which is supposedly what everyone is supposed to do. But the ESL industry there looked pretty sketchy, not to mention living in a third-world country with a billion people and the worst pollution in the world wasn't exactly what I wanted. Now don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with living in third world countries. Living with a host family for three weeks in Nicaragua was one of my favorite experiences. But lounging on the beaches of San Juan del Sur sounds much more enjoyable than navigating my way through Beijing and being unable to see 10 feet in front of me because of the smog. Living in a big city, such as Buenos Aires, is crazy enough, but living in a Chinese big city just sounds like too much.
Then it was Thailand. The pictures make it look like paradise, and apparently it has some of the best beaches and surfing in the world. But the ESL industry over there is even worse, and the students apparently have absolutely no motivation nor the ability to behave in a classroom setting.
Then I looked into Korea and Taiwan, and they definitely seemed like the best bet. They have the most reputable ESL industries, where almost every kid there goes to an afterschool program to learn English. They also use the most advanced teaching methods that focus on conversational English as opposed to grammar-based instruction taught as a content course. So the teaching would be enjoyable. The salary was good, and since there was such a high demand for teachers, you could get any type of job wherever you wanted. Taiwan seemed too small so I chose Korea.
Of course then there was this recession. A few years ago, there were 10 jobs for every teacher. You could get a job there in two days if you wanted to. They were begging people to come. Now, they're cutting back on hiring, all of the teachers already there are extending their contracts since there's no work in their home countries, and just about every recent college grad has decided they want to teach English in Korea. So, the job search wasn't going well. I found a job that would've been great, but since I didn't have all my documents ready in time, they gave it to someone else.
Most of the other offers I got were in the middle of nowhere or wanted me to leave the next day, before I had everything ready (note: if you're going through this process, make sure you get all of your documents ready beforehand). I really wanted to be in Busan, which definitely seems like the best city in Korea: big and cosmopolitan enough that there's plenty to do and I wouldn't get homesick or culture shock, but not crazy like Seoul or too westernized. I'd have beaches to go to as well as mild weather year round (in the rest of the country, the winters are harsh, something I'm really sick of, and the summers are very hot and humid, something I can't deal with).
And then this job came up. The recruiter (they're the ones who put you with the schools) saw that I went to Williams, so he thought I'd be qualified to teach at an AP test prep hagwon (these kids are so good that instead of going to after school English classes, they go to after school AP classes). I had an interview, impressed my boss enough in the quiz section I guess, and so I got the job. I'll be teaching AP US government, comparative politics, and probably European and American history as well. I'll also be teaching SAT prep classes as well as some grammar and reading and writing classes. They pay for housing and the hourly is good, so it'll be a good way to save money. But, I'll be working 6-7 days a week, usually around 60 teaching hours. And there's going to be lots of prep time. So you do the math...
So there won't be the weekend trips I was planning and I won't get to hang out with all the other people my age, who'll be going out on weekends (this is when I have lots of hours, the students aren't in school on the weekends so that's when most of their classes are). There won't really even be free time to explore Seoul. But I guess I can suck it up for a year. Or maybe less. I teach my classes based on student demand. So if my classes are good, lots of kids sign up and I get lots of hours. If not, I don't get hours, and I get fired quickly. So we'll see how it goes. Now on to Seattle!
First post
So, I've decided to become one of those lame people with a blog. I'm conflicted, because in my opinion there's nothing worse than becoming a part of the graphomania that epitomizes our generation. We're the facebook kids, who insist on publishing every mundane detail of our lives on the internet and document them with hundreds of photos. I've always prided myself in not being one of those people (which includes just about everyone my age), and I do my best to try and avoid participating in such facebookery. It's completely worthless: even its chat feature, the one thing it's useful for, sucks (and I suck at using that too, maybe it's because I waited until I got to school to talk to my friends instead of using messenger as a kid, but for me it's no surprise that for my generation we had to invent a form of conversation even more difficult and awkward that talking on the phone). And I don't want to lower myself to the level where I've made a webpage presenting myself to the world that has my interests, favorite TV shows, quotes, relationship status, and more! It was lame, but then people outside of the 18-25 age group starting using facebook, since the .edu was no longer a requirement (Mark Zuckerberg, you suck and you've become a corporate sellout). That's when it got REALLY lame.
On a level slightly above that are the bloggers. They insist on making webpages chronicling the adventures of their cats or narrating their experiences in the grocery store or showing off their artwork. Or they start spouting off their ill-informed political beliefs to an uninterested audience that doesn't have time to actually read the millions of blogs online. Then there's that post-college kid you know posting about his adventurous travels in a far-away foreign land (usually Southeast Asia) from the safety of an e-cafe with wireless internet. So why then, with this pretentious sense of superiority, am I becoming part of the problem and making my own blog?
It's completely for practical reasons. That's my excuse. I'm going to have dozens of people constantly asking me the same questions over and over again: what am I doing, how's Korea, how are my classes going, etc. etc. etc. This is not because I'm a socialite who has hundreds of friends who care about what I'm doing. My parents are though, and for whatever reason their thousands of friends are curious as to what I'm up to. There's also relatives to think about, and maybe there will be the occasional friend from Idaho or Spokane who I've lost touch with thanks to my poor facebook habits (that probably didn't happen all that much in the pre-facebook or pre-cell phone era, imagine that) that might be bored enough in the USA to wonder what I'm doing. So with a blog I don't have to constantly send out mass emails, and I save myself from the embarassment of documenting my life on facebook. And I don't have to worry about my Korean students scrutinizing everything I have to say about them. They can find my on facebook but they can't find me here. Although, maybe they can, it was a real stupid idea to put my full name in the web address. But most importantly, it'll be my diary, so I can remember my experiences later on. It's more for me than for you.
So, I'll have this blog here, and if you want to know what I'm up to, I'll just point you here rather than have an actual conversation about it. That's no offense to you, it's just that there won't be time. I'm going to have 40-60 teaching hours a week with this job, teaching highly condensed AP classes. And unlike high school teachers, I'm going to be teaching several different subjects that I have to write curriculums for. So yeah, it's going to be at least an 80 hour work week, and I'm not going to have time to talk to you. The very little free time I will get will be spent exploring Seoul. So don't take it personally.
And BTW what is with these paragraphs? Why are they so narrow? I can only write three sentences before it becomes too long for people to read (for the old it's because of their eyesight, for the young, it's because they're so used to messenger and facebook that a normal sized paragraph is nearly impossible to read). Any suggestions?
On a level slightly above that are the bloggers. They insist on making webpages chronicling the adventures of their cats or narrating their experiences in the grocery store or showing off their artwork. Or they start spouting off their ill-informed political beliefs to an uninterested audience that doesn't have time to actually read the millions of blogs online. Then there's that post-college kid you know posting about his adventurous travels in a far-away foreign land (usually Southeast Asia) from the safety of an e-cafe with wireless internet. So why then, with this pretentious sense of superiority, am I becoming part of the problem and making my own blog?
It's completely for practical reasons. That's my excuse. I'm going to have dozens of people constantly asking me the same questions over and over again: what am I doing, how's Korea, how are my classes going, etc. etc. etc. This is not because I'm a socialite who has hundreds of friends who care about what I'm doing. My parents are though, and for whatever reason their thousands of friends are curious as to what I'm up to. There's also relatives to think about, and maybe there will be the occasional friend from Idaho or Spokane who I've lost touch with thanks to my poor facebook habits (that probably didn't happen all that much in the pre-facebook or pre-cell phone era, imagine that) that might be bored enough in the USA to wonder what I'm doing. So with a blog I don't have to constantly send out mass emails, and I save myself from the embarassment of documenting my life on facebook. And I don't have to worry about my Korean students scrutinizing everything I have to say about them. They can find my on facebook but they can't find me here. Although, maybe they can, it was a real stupid idea to put my full name in the web address. But most importantly, it'll be my diary, so I can remember my experiences later on. It's more for me than for you.
So, I'll have this blog here, and if you want to know what I'm up to, I'll just point you here rather than have an actual conversation about it. That's no offense to you, it's just that there won't be time. I'm going to have 40-60 teaching hours a week with this job, teaching highly condensed AP classes. And unlike high school teachers, I'm going to be teaching several different subjects that I have to write curriculums for. So yeah, it's going to be at least an 80 hour work week, and I'm not going to have time to talk to you. The very little free time I will get will be spent exploring Seoul. So don't take it personally.
And BTW what is with these paragraphs? Why are they so narrow? I can only write three sentences before it becomes too long for people to read (for the old it's because of their eyesight, for the young, it's because they're so used to messenger and facebook that a normal sized paragraph is nearly impossible to read). Any suggestions?
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