k a - b e a r: May 2013

What?
You're moving to KOREA? (South Korea, right?)
HOW did this come to be?
WHY KOREA?

Well, let me tell you the saga.
And it is a SAGA - this post is HELLA LONG. HELLA. (Because god forbid I give anyone less than the ENTIRE story.) (Actually, if you don't want the whole "Korean" intro - you can skip directly to number 4 or 5, that's when I start talking about actual job stuff.)

1. My cousin Laura got married a few years ago. I flew to Atlanta for the wedding, and ended up spending most of my time with my then-16-year-old cousin Abby. She had been listening to this K-pop song called "Super-Girl" that she had stumbled on through her younger brother, who has lots of Korean friends. So over the course of that week, we watched and listened to Super-Girl quite a bit.

I thought it was fun, but I wasn't like crazy hooked or anything. When I got back home, though, I did think that I should show it to my bff Heidi who's a dance fan. When I finally found the video at home, I made the graaaave / wonderful / life-changing mistake of clicking one of the thumbnails in the sidebar. This link, to be specific:

Now, NOW I was hooked. (I still think this is one of the THE most beautifully choreographed pop songs ever. I also really like the song.) I then proceeded to watch every video Super Junior ever made, listen to all of their music, learn all of their names, and just basically turned into a crazy 14-year-old SuJu fangirl. There are 13 / 15 members in Super Junior - it's difficult not to find at least one of them who will suit your fancy (well-planned SM, well-planned).

2. G-Dragon pretended to be a girl pretending to be a boy. I wasn't going to listen to other Kpop bands besides SuJu - that was always my plan. I don't even remember why I finally branched out and decided to listen to Big Bang - actually I think it was because of this video - but once I started I was hooked on them as well. (And super-hooked on G-Dragon, my favorite Korean person ever.) So I proceeded to fangirl about them, and watch all their youtube videos, etc. One of the great things about Big Bang is that for their big concerts (BIG SHOW), they would always make a funny parody of whichever Korean television show (K-drama) had been most popular that year. I saw one of these, for Coffee Prince, and thought, wow - I bet I would really like this show (I had just recently realized/acknowledged my great love, affinity and attraction for androgyny.)

So I went out and found Coffee Prince to watch online. Now, to simply say that "I Love Coffee Prince" is an incredible understatement. The entire show is 17 hours long. I watched it 7 times in two weeks. It is unbelievably wonderful and romantic and funny and touching and beautiful and just just just perfect. So perfect. And thusly, I was hooked on watching Korean dramas, which are, in many ways, superior to American television. But I won't go into that now. The point is, I started digesting A LOT of Korean media in many many forms. The real kicker, however, was at some point when I was watching a show and I realized that I "got" one of of the jokes that only made sense in the context of Korean culture - it was something that I would not have found funny 6 months before. That was just SO COOL to me - that I had started to understand little cultural cues and rules enough to get their jokes... man, yeah. That's STILL cool to me. And that's what planted the seed of me actually wanting to go to Korea and potentially live there.

3. Crossfit plays a part in all of this, as well. Well, crossfit and the SWLBootyCamp and person X and my own decision to change my life for the better. While I had always wanted to go to Asia (China) as a kid, after I reached high school, I had gained enough weight and gotten sad enough about it to know that going to Asia would be a terrible experience for me. I knew I would just feel incredibly fat and sad all the time, constantly comparing myself to effortlessly-skinny Asians. However, during the summer of 2010 I decided to make a real effort to lose weight and get in better shape (mostly in hopes of attracting person X, or at least being more confident about myself in trying to attract person X). I started going to a weight loss boot camp in the mornings, and counting my calories. I lost about 25 pounds, and felt indescribably more confident about myself and my body, which just continued to grow when I started crossfit and gained a lot more strength. And I started to realize that, at this new weight and with this new body and confidence in said body, I could probably actually handle traveling in Asia without getting depressed and wanting to kill myself. It was a wonderous realization.

4. I've always wanted to spend more time living abroad, but couldn't figure out how. I feel like I've always espoused that living abroad is a wonderful and important thing for all Americans to do, in order to be less ignorant about the rest of the world. The problem with my espousing, however, was that I've always felt a bit hypocritical in doing so, considering my own experience abroad is pretty paltry (I spent a quarter in Paris in 2006). But after undergrad I'd collected considerable student loans and credit card debt, and I couldn't imagine a way that I'd be able to make enough money living abroad in order to be able to make payments on all my debt. Coincidentally, it was a friend I had made while studying in Paris who disillusioned me to this idea (thanks Dorothy!). She let me know that, "no - I know people who've gone to teach in Japan and Korea specifically to pay off their student debt." What!?! This warranted further investigation. Turns out she wasn't lying. It's not that they pay you an incredible salary or anything to teach English, but the money they do pay for typical teaching jobs in Korea, when combined with the fact that you do not pay rent makes living abroad and saving-money / paying-off-your-debt actually a really fiscally plausible thing.

5. So, what's holding me back? Uh, nothing! Let's do this bitch!

WAIT. WAIT. I have a cat. I cannot leave my cat. I have told him, verbatim, on multiple occasions, that I love him and I'll take care of him and I'll never let anything happen to him. Because I talk to him like he's my child. Because as I'm sure some of you know - if you do not have an actual child, it is very likely that you treat your pet as your child. They play that level of importance. The thought of leaving him behind/with someone else was just inconceivable. I'd made a promise to him, and I loved him and I just couldn't.

Dreams of Asia were dashed. I was heartbroken.

I do not remember who told me to actually go check the quarantine rules. Maybe I could bring him with me, they said. So, I checked. And, lo and behold, KOREA IS AMAZING, YOU GUYS, AND THEY LOVE ME AND MY KITTY. At most, quarantine is 10 days. But if your cat has all his rabies paperwork in order, chances are there is NO quarantine, and you can just take your pet with you.

So, there was really no good reason for not going. Sure, I was mid-masters degree, but that just meant that I had plenty of time to plan, research, and inform my parents and give them enough time to get used to the idea. I also decided to take an online TESOL certificate course last summer, since I knew that was going to potentially be a requirement for teaching, or at least a great thing to have for applying for teaching jobs.

6. My initial plan was PUBLIC SCHOOLS, all the way. Mostly based off of this video:

Also based on the fact that any kind of research you do into the private hakwon (private after-school English schools) market is fucking scary - bad directors taking your money, treating you poorly, over-working you, under-paying you, or worst of all - closing down and leaving you jobless and homeless. So, I gathered all the documents necessary for the public school applications. There are a couple of different public school programs - EPIK (for all of Korea), GEPIK (for the province surrounding Seoul), and then metropolitan specific programs like SMOE (for Seoul specifically). I was planning on applying for GEPIK, as it does have better benefits, but is still close enough for Seoul that you can get to the city relatively quickly. (More on location choices in a bit.)

After looking at multiple sites (not just based on Simon and Martina's recommendation), I put in an application with KorVia consulting. After a few weeks, I had an interview with a recruiter from KorVia named Ashley, who was very nice. Unfortunately, however, my exchanges with Ashley led me to believe that I would have a difficult time getting a job with GEPIK, as 1) there are less jobs available for public schools in general as Korea has cut some of the funding for these programs, 2) there are less jobs available in the fall application period, and 3) GEPIK schools actually review applications individually, and are unlikely to choose a teacher without experience because everyone wants to go to the GEPIK program. Then the real kicker came - 4) even if I applied for EPIK/SMOE instead - there are new stipulations in the EPIK contracts that prohibit you from bringing a pet. Mostly because when you first arrive you have to go through 10 days of training - and while your pet may be okay in the apartment the school provides, pets are not allowed at the training facility.

7. So I turned to the hakwon market. Which, it turns out, is a better option - not just for me, but in general. Eighty percent of the stuff you read online about teaching in Korea is from 2008-2010, when you bother to check the dates. And yes, back then, public schools were the way to go. BUT in 2010 when the government started to cut funding, the public school market started getting pretty bad. Not only were there many less positions - but the actual teaching positions started being less respected in the schools, and there are lots of stories of foreign teachers being really poorly treated by their Korean co-teachers. Also, if you apply to the EPIK/SMOE programs, you have absolutely NO SAY in where you get placed. You just go where they tell you. And they place people on a first-come, first-serve basis - so if you don't get your application at the top of the pile, the "preferences" you select may not have any bearing on where you go and what age level you teach. HOWEVER, the hakwon market, while still fucking frightening in terms of how bad it can be, has LOTS. OF. OPTIONS. and LOTS. OF. JOBS. You just have to be very, very careful, do your research, and not be an idiot and take for granted that things are going to go your way. But you can decide where you go, when you go, what age you teach, and what kind of schedule you'll have. And, it's very likely that they will be able to accommodate your pet, should you choose to bring one.

So, it took me a while to really solidify all the things that I wanted, but my final list of preferences was:
(a) Location: in Seoul
(b) Age group: Elementary / Middle
(b) Schedule: Afternoon position (starting at 1 or 2pm)
(c) Number of foreign teachers: 10 or less

(a) Location: SEOUL. There's a super simple reason for this. Sure, I'd love to be in the city where there's lots to do - and close to the only "gay" district in Korea (no, literally, it's called "homo hill"), but mostly it's about one thing. CROSSFIT. THERE'S CROSSFIT IN KOREA, YOU GUISE. More than one, actually. There are somewhere between 8-10 crossfit boxes in South Korea, and all but about 3 of those are in Seoul. And now that I'm a crossfit fanatic - that's super important to me, both in terms of being able to work out and keep up the level of fitness I've attained, and in terms of the great great advantage of having a crossfit community to join when I move to a foreign country.

(b) Age group and Schedule. I have never actually been much of a "kid" person. I am trying to change this in myself, and it's turning out to be surprisingly easy, actually. However, I'm still much more comfortable around older kids - those that I feel like I can have some kind of conversation with (you know, if they actually spoke the same language as I did...). Those in the 3-6 age range act a little too much like tiny drunk people for me to be able to handle them. So I was specifically looking for the older of two age ranges you can teach: "Kinder-Elementary" or "Elementary-Middle" (I do not know why Koreans have shortened kindergarten to "kinder" or "kindy," but they have). The other fantastic benefit of teaching elementary/middle school kids is the schedules. These are jobs with shifts that are either 1-9pm or 2-10pm. Which for some people could be a nightmare - I fully understand that. But for someone whose natural circadian clock would have me sleeping from 3am-11am - this is a WONDERFUL schedule. It means I'll actually be naturally awake while I'm at work - instead of just faking it for the first 4-5 hours, which is what I do now.

(c) Number of foreign teachers - 10 or less. And more than 1. This was a requirement I picked up later in the process - after my first interview, actually. Generally, "franchised" schools are less scary than tiny schools with only one or two foreign teachers - they have a better chance of not going under financially and leaving you stranded, or not being able to pay you on time, etc. However, if it's a really big school, with more than 10 foreign teachers - the chances are high that you're going to be over worked and not really treated as a person. These are the schools that just plug and play teachers based on nationality / age / gender / appearance to appease the parents - curriculum may already be completely set, and you have very little say in what you do. Yes you get paid on time, but the chances that you will be treated like shit are very high. The first interview I had was with a school that had 14 foreign teachers. The interview lasted for an hour - but only the first 10 minutes were questions about me. The next 50 minutes were me asking questions about the school (partly because I didn't understand that it could be that easy, and so thought perhaps I was being judged on what kind of questions I might ask). It definitely gave of a weird impression - and I realized later that it really didn't matter what I said, which was why she hadn't asked me more questions. The "more than 1" stipulation is so you avoid the tiny schools, or schools just starting up - which have the opposite kinds of issues, and also lack the benefit of providing you with other foreign teachers to talk to and spend time with.

8. The Yeouido School. Recruiters are your friend - but not your best friend. One of the mistakes that teachers make in job searching is that they assume that recruiters are going to do everything for them - or that the schools they are listing in their ads have been vetted by them. This is not the case. Now, there are varying levels of recruiters, and some do provide these services, but for the most part recruiters are simply there to act as a middle man between schools and teachers, and set up interview times. They get paid a recruiting fee for every teacher they place, so they want to be the one to find you a school. And 95% of hakwons go through a recruiter, so you do have to deal with them. For the most part they are Koreans with good English skills, and you talk to them via email - although they also will call you to confirm things or if you haven't responded to an email for a few days. I talked to a couple of different recruiters about jobs - my favorite being Juhee, who set up the first interview I had (with the 14-teacher school that I ended up not working at - I'd already decided against them after the interview, and it turned out their apartment didn't accept pets anyway). Juhee was incredibly responsive and also very nice about the cat thing. But she was obviously a normal recruiter - just working for one of the many (poorly-named) recruiting agencies out there. (J&J Recruiting - the "J&J" stands for "Job & Joy," I kid you not.)

I also sent my information to a recruiter named Isaac, who had a elementary-middle job listing for near Mapo (a pretty great part of Seoul). Isaac actually called me right away - and it took me 10 minutes of conversation to realize that he was actually pre-screening/interviewing me. But it was nice - since he was a recruiter I wasn't pressured to have the right answers, and apparently I impressed him with my frank enthusiasm (you guys know how I get). He thought I'd be a great fit for the school, and was willing to forward my resume along. (I'm pretty proud of my resume, as I think I did a fairly decent job tailoring it for the Korean market - and I'd learned to attach my letters of recommendation as part of the PDF file, other wise there was no telling if the schools would actually see them. I also tried to format it to look like a Korean-style resume, and include my best selling features - "Female. Under 30. American. No Accent.") After a day he responded, that Yes - the school was interested, and would like to interview me.

The interview with Brenda and Julie - the schools' operations manager and director - was MUCH more like a normal / slightly-stressful interview than the first one I'd had. They asked me lots of questions, and put me on the spot to come up with how I might react in certain situations, etc. They also had an interesting school curriculum and set-up (all-English classes, and only 3-7 students in each class), and I could tell from talking to them that they really took their job seriously and were more interested in making sure kids learned than just making the school look good to parents. And they were really interested in my arts background and potentially starting up drama/art based classes, since they hadn't had a foreign teacher yet who could fill that kind of role. Also, after researching more about the part of the city it was in (basically the Manhattan/financial district (very wealthy also) of Seoul), it had started to seem like a dream job - and one I really, really wanted. Like, really really.

This is Yeouido. It's actually an island in the center of the city, and it's got a central park filled with cherry trees and a skating rink - as well as being surrounded by a park on all sides. It's reeeeeeally beautiful.

After the interview I sent them a couple of example lesson plans (they had asked for them during the interview), and they also asked me if I could also write up a lesson plan for FPS and I sent that along. Then I found out they actually did reference checks on me - so this was a really legit school, and I wanted it even more. A few days later, they offered me the job! Yay! And they sent a contract!

9. Contracts. One of the scariest parts of navigating the hakwon market is reading the contracts, and figuring out what you're actually signing up for. Once you're in Korea, this is the only legal protection you have (if the school chooses to honor it), so they're pretty fucking important. The contract the Yeouido school sent me was okay - but I'd done my research about the things that should be included, and so I had lots of questions. 17 questions, to be exact - between both my father and me. I framed them in a very respectful letter (trying very hard not to overstep my bounds or be disrespectful by accident) - and sent them to Isaac. He then called me back and talked me through my questions, and we edited them down to 5 - of which only about 3 were actually specifically about the contract. And they'd invested so much time into choosing me, I really felt confident that we'd negotiate a little bit and then it would be okay.

I didn't hear back for 2 days.

Then, in the middle of JKPOP, I checked my email to see this:

Oh man. I was SO SAD. Heartbroken. I got really upset/sad and went home early (which I NEVER do - JKPOP is my favorite night of every month). I tried calling Isaac to see if I could fix anything - I would have signed the contract if I knew it were non-negotiable - nothing was that bad. And the cat thing is fucking weird, but I could at least perhaps say that the scale was misleading since I'm pretty small. (Resume videos and more info on the cat thing here.) Anyway. To cheer myself up I went home and looked at the Korean Job boards to remind myself that there are literally HUNDREDS of jobs out there, and I've got plenty of opportunities. It was just sad, you know? I really had my heart set on this school, and it felt like a really awkward slap to be rejected that way.

On the upside, I did send an email directly to Brenda stating (nicely) what I'd said above - and got a really great response in return:

I thanked her, and hoped that maybe I could work for her in the future - considering I'm hoping to be in Korea for 3-5 years, to which she responded positively and asked me to keep in touch. So, at least it all ended well and I don't feel so jerked around.

10. Southern charm and transparency for the win! Hello Gwangjin! I had started sending my resume and information out again the day after finding out about not getting the Yeouido job - starting with getting back in touch with Juhee and a few of the other recruiters with listings that I liked. I also sent my resume to a rare non-recruiter post on the Seoul craigslist site. The school had all of the things I was looking for, except that their start date was sooner than I had been planning to go (my earliest start date in mind had always been July 15th. The Yeouido job would have started in mid-August) - they wanted a teacher there ideally by the 3rd or 4th of July. But, I thought it was worth applying to anyway, given that everything else was good. I heard back from the guy who'd posted it within 24 hours, saying that my paperwork looked good and that he'd like to set up an interview in the next week. He ended up emailing me a day after that, asking if I would be available for a telephone interview an hour later - but no pressure if I couldn't. It was 10pm Sunday night, I felt like I had the interview thing relatively down, so why not? Sure, I replied. So I had a nice interview with Brendon - the head foreign teacher at this smaller school in Gwangjin, Seoul.

There are 3 foreign teachers at the school, and 5 Korean teachers. Brendon, a father of two from Texas, is the head foreign teacher, and the one to whom I'd be reporting. He's also the one who usually manages communications with John, the director (whom, he reiterated multiple times, was a really good guy and not a bad director like some that you hear about online). More importantly, though, David - the foreign teacher I'd be replacing - was also there at the interview, which led me to believe that they had a pretty open / good relationship. There was also someone else there (I think it was probably John the director, actually), but they didn't speak. Anyway - they gave me a really good impression - both in the way they communicated, and the kinds of questions they asked me. I don't think this school is as impressive / fancy / prestigious as the school in Yeouido - it's more of a normal hakwon, but I do think it's a good hakwon, and has a good working environment.

The next day he sent me a contract. Literally EVERY QUESTION I had had about the Yeouido contract was already answered in this contract. It had everything I wanted, including the higher salary of the two I could ask for. (I asked one little question about sick leave, which Brendon was quick to answer positively to - it's not a standard thing included in Korean contracts, but he doesn't have issue sending/letting teachers stay home if they're too sick to work.) I called my parents, and we discussed the timing - it would mean they could come up for my graduation, which was a nice perk that I had pretty much written off before this. Really it was just mentally getting over the fact that I'd be leaving SO soon. Which I did get over - everything else just lined up too well not to accept the job. So I signed the contract, and now I have a confirmed teaching position and plane ticket to Seoul for July 5th. Which is pretty fucking crazy / awesome / amazing / wonderful / scary / exciting !

I also think that they find my cat / cat-dependency to be silly and adorable. The apartment building is cool with animals - and they're cool with the cat as long as I pay for his airplane fees, which is what I was planning anyway.

Also, the school is across the street from a crazy building that looks like a tall ship:

So weird / wonderful. I've also emailed back-and-forth with David, the teacher I'll be replacing, about the apartment, etc. He also confirmed that it was a good place to work, etc. The housing is a little far from the school - probably a 40 minute walk (they usually take a taxi), but I'm TOTALLY OKAY with that - because the apartment is only a 15 minute walk from a crossfit box! Yay!!!

The process from here out is that I've sent them all my Visa paperwork, which they've submitted to immigration there. Once they get a temporary visa number (2-3 weeks), they'll send it to me and I'll take it to the Korean consulate here in Seattle to get the temp visa. (Then when I get to Korea we'll go back to immigration to get the real visa.) I fly out of Seattle on Friday, July 5th at 7:30am, stopping over quickly in San Francisco before flying to Incheon, arriving at 3pm on Saturday, where both Brendon and John will pick me up at the airport.

AND THEN I BEGIN MY NEW LIFE IN SOUTH KOREA.

BRAND NEW LIFE!

(EXCEPT FOR THE CAT - THANK GOD FOR THE CAT!)