some folks drive the bears out of the wilderness, some to see a bear would pay a fee - but me, i just bear up to my bewildered best, and some folks even see the bear in me -Lyle Lovett
It's 100 percent humidity here in Seoul. How you doin'?
My face skin fucking hates South Korea. Or South Korea hates it, maybe, I'm not sure. Either way, my skin has looked TERRIBLE since I got here, and I'm waiting patiently for it to sort itself out. Now, my skin has never been fantastic - but I'd much prefer to have 23-year-old acne instead of the 15-year-old shit, you know? Hulllllll.
"Hullllllll." It's a stupid sound/expression that Korean students use to express distaste/dissatisfaction/whatever, and I use it way too much. Way more than my students.
For the most part, Korean people are exceedingly awesome in a number of ways. Super nice and super helpful (the majority of them). AND super-super willing to get all emotionally involved in songs and sing and dance at any time. Singing especially for ballads. And dudes are the first ones to dance in bars/clubs. And they're terrible dancers, for the most part.
Oh yes. 6:30am faces.
Clubbing in SK is way better than clubbing in the states. Because Korean boys are shy as shit. And so they won't come up and start trying to dance/grind with/on you unless you legit hold eye-contact with them for at least 5 seconds, and then it may take some more inviting beyond that. It's really nice to be able to dance without feeling pressured or preyed upon. My week of clubbing with Kodee was awesome because of this - and literally every time we realized the ratio of foreign-guys had gotten too high, we would either move to the other side of the room or leave the club entirely.
This being said - once you give a Korean guy an "in" - chances are he's going to act ridiculously possessive. There's no casual 'I'll just dance a few songs with this cute dude and then go back to my friends' - getting away from them can be really difficult. But not really, like, "scary" difficult - just annoyingly difficult.
ALSO - Seoul really really is a city that never sleeps, especially on the weekend. There's no 2am time-limit on alcohol here, so clubs (and coffee shops and norebangs near clubs) stay open ALL NIGHT. And they don't get dead at 2-3am, either - we left one last Sunday morning at 5:30am and it was still packed like sardines in there. Which is all pretty great, because the subways stop around 1am and don't start up again till 5am. Needless to say, I fucked up my sleep schedule something awful during vacation. AND, when you're done clubbing in the morning, there are lots of restaurants open (Koreans don't really eat anything different for breakfast, so you can get anything at 6am). Our last night out we ended up at a place where we found a plate of "sausage and french fries" which was actually pretty delicious.
Just what the menu said it would be.
Anyway. The timeline of my stay thus far has been:
Week 1: Training (2ish-10ish), immigration office visit, shopping for necessities
Week 2: Normal Schedule (2pm-10pm), found a crossfit gym, got my Alien Registration Card
Week 3: Summer Camp (10am-10pm), got a bank account and a cell phone!
Week 4: SUMMER VACATION - lost my cell phone, got a new one through insurance, went out dancing almost every night
Week 5: Summer Camp (10am-10pm)
Next week: Summer Camp (10am-10pm) - last week of this 12-hour shit, thank god.
WORK
So far so good. I like teaching so far, but I'm still figuring it all out... some of the classes have so much busy work to do because of the textbooks we use that I don't have to think about much. But the older/higher-level classes I'm starting to need ideas for. I don't have a good arsenal of language/word games to play with kids yet, and so a few of my classes are boring, which I hate. But I also really want to have a little more focus - I'm planning on asking the director this week what is the main goal for each level - what he's looking for from the English teacher. He inadvertently gave me a phonics-class focus/lesson the other day, and that was really helpful and I think knowing what he wants (other than "teaching the book") will be helpful for the other classes, too. In retrospect, it seems like maybe this is something they should have told me at the beginning. Oh well, I'll figure it out and make sure to add it to my "incoming teacher" notes. It's a growing school, and they're still in the midst of setting up admin processes like this.
The kids really are great. And I definitely have my favorites and less-favorites. Out of the 65+ students I have, really only 3 leave a bad taste in my mouth. Most of them I really really love. One of them is my favorite, for no real reason other than he makes me smile/laugh. The best thing I've done so far is make a bunch of the higher level kids write stories in a format that was taught to me in undergrad:
My favorite class (actually I have two, I think) is tornado-face class, for obvious reasons. I love those guys - they're super fun without being violent/ridiculous (and I mean physically/literally in class - many of my classes jump and fight with each other in a normal kid-like way - but this class doesn't). It also helps that they're my 2nd highest-level class, I suppose, so we can have good conversations pretty easily.
**Also, like, the Korean admin boy at my school is UNBELIEVABLY ADORABLE. Like, like, hullllllll. I just want to coo at him a lot. He's freakishly tall, and only 22, but soooo cute. And his English is pretty terrible, which is wonderfully ironic. ("You don't want lice? I bring you lice.") ALSO ALSO, the best thing about him is that his name is "Juan". No, for real. Technically it's "Oo-won", but yeah. Juan. Juan the Copy Bitch. Because that's his job. He mostly sits in the copy-machine closet and makes copies of things. Occasionally he gets to herd children around or take attendance (the middle-school girls have also noticed how adorable he is), or is subjected to random office-bitch requests from the teachers (apparently he fetched fried chicken for a teacher to bring home after work yesterday). I reeeeeally want to make him a name tag that just says "Juan" and under neath that "Copy Bitch" but I don't think he'd get it... So I settle for trying to make tiny conversations with him ("I go through the dry erase markers very fast, I think I use them more than the other teachers." "Haha! You're markah-gul!") or bringing him left-over ice cream from my class so he'll smile at me and I get to see his dimples. Gah, dimples! He's a nice perk of working at the school. **
MOVING ON - I had my first outside-of-school spotting earlier tonight, where a pair of twin girls from my highest class were apparently at the same movie as me (EPIC, in 4D, whaaaat?!?). It was kind of nice/fun - they seemed really excited to see me even though we just said hello.
FREE TIME?
There was that week-long vacation I had, wherein all the clubbing happened. The first two weeks I was occupied with getting my alien card/cell phone and finding a crossfit box. Now that it's "Summer Camp" and I work 12 hour days, I don't really have much free time outside of the weekends. And so that mostly consists shopping for different things I'm realizing I need/want, hanging out in coffee shops, and going to movies. Towards the end of my vacation week I bought a bike (yay bike!), and it makes me super happy. And it gives me a bit more mobility/freedom. The subways here are cr-amazing, but I still like being able to pick my own route from point A to point B. Tomorrow I'm planning on riding to my crossfit box to see how long a trip like that takes (it takes me about 20 minutes on the subway). I'm super excited for summer camp to be over so I can get back to crossfit - I haven't been able to go at all in the last two weeks because I can't even fathom trying to get there for the 7am class, and all the other classes are while I'm at work. :(
Also, my bike is super adorable. And it has pretty red tires! Yay!
The food here is really good. Too good. I eat so much fried chicken here, it's ridiculous. And delicious. The three tenants of Korean cuisine that I've discovered are: 1) MAKE IT SWEET. If it was salty in America, chances are they've found a way to make it sweet here. 2) CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN. Like really, it's everywhere, and it's all amazing. 3) SINGLE-SERVE ICE CREAM. Super important when it's going to stay consistently above 85 degrees for two months. It's like an ice-cream truck ran rampant through the country - there are ice cream boxes outside of most stores, and they all have single-serving ice-cream cones and popsicles and milkshakes and little freezy otter-pop-esque things, and all of them are delicious. So, Koreans are super good at making delicious fried and/or sweet things. You know what they're not so good at? Coffee. Like, really really bad really overpriced espresso. I only drink dopios (because I still don't like the taste of coffee for the most part, although it is slowly growing on me), and so it's REALLY OBVIOUS that the vast majority of coffee-workers (I'm not even going to call them baristas) have no idea what good coffee is supposed to taste like. I have found once place that does, and so I visit them on a pretty regular basis (i.e. all the baristas know me and wave hello).
I'm enjoying being a faux-asian looking foreigner here. I like it because I'm enough of a novelty in my neighborhood that even if I only go in a place once, they will definitely remember me the next time I'm there, and so there's a nice amount of recognition. And it's nice being faux-asian looking because I don't get as much blatant staring as I know some people get.
My Korean still sucks. Part of the down-side of being an English teacher here, especially during summer camp, is that I spend 12 hours of my day in an English-speaking environment. I am going to start taking weekend Korean classes in September, and hopefully that will help. Also that vacation week I was hanging out a lot with Kodee (from Washington), so that was also a whole lot of English. I guess all I'm saying is that apart from very short interactions with people I'm buying things from, I don't interact with Korean-speakers all that much. I know that will change though, I just haven't really had time to make friends yet.
...... okay. I'm going to stop writing now. Because it's almost 3am and I want to try and maintain a pre-3am sleeping schedule from now on. GOOD NIGHT YALL.
Anyway, SUPERFAST RECAP to catch everybody up:
1) I graduated! I'm a MASTER of PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION now. Whew.
2) My parents came up for graduation, and helped me clean/pack/ship. Yay family!
3) I managed to pack up, throw away, sell, give away, and ship off ALL of my belongings in the two weeks immediately following graduation.
4) Me and the cat spent a looong 18.5 hours in transit from my house to my new apartment (read: shoebox) in Seoul.
So, life is still pretty surreal at present. About twice a day it hits me that I fucking live in Seoul, on the other side of the planet from where I was and where 99% of everyone/thing I know is... Sometimes it's weird, sometimes it's this crazy little fangirl revelation that this place I've been looking at in countless hours of dramas is no longer some fantasy place, but where I actually am. Right now. Like, right now. And that fangirl kind of goes "eeeeeee!" when I realize that I'm in the same city as all these actresses/actors/idols that I'm totes in love with. Which is kind of silly, but I also did the same thing when I first moved to Seattle - because, like, it was a big enough city that there was a distinct possibility of actually seeing someone at least slightly famous. ANYWAY.
I. MY APARTMENT IS BUT A SHOEBOX, BUT IT IS MY SHOEBOX. Well, mine and the cat's. I was expecting small, don't get me wrong. But apparently the majority of people who post videos of their "apartment tours" on Youtube do so because they have awesome apartments. Which I should have realized. But I didn't. I'll probably make a video, but it will be ridiculous because I can literally show you then entire apartment in two photos - actually, just one if I'm sitting in the right spot. Anyway, it's fine, and all my stuff fits, etc. It's clean and pretty, and the electricity bills will actually be pretty small because it's such a tiny amount of space to heat/cool. The only thing I feel bad about is the cat has a pretty limited amount of space now - much much less than he had in my apartment in Seattle. So much so that I'm planning on trying to get him on a leash and see if I can walk him around a bit.
II. KOREAN CHILDREN ARE FUCKING ADORABLE. No really, like super super adorable. And for the most part, incredibly well-behaved. I had 4 days of training with the guy whose classes I'll be taking over, and my first official day was Friday. It went okay, but I've brought home all of the textbooks and files so that I can write up lessons plans, etc., for next week - because while the other native teachers (and the guy I'm replacing) are really good at just improving this stuff as their teaching, I'M A PLANNER. AND IT MAKES ME NERVOUS NOT TO HAVE A PLAN. Also, most of the materials are boring as shit, and some games and activities will undoubtedly be appreciated. The school is seemingly good/chill so far, but only time will tell as far as that goes. The director seems nice, and isn't going to pressure me to drink alcohol (a real possibility in many Korean company outings), which gives him a lot of good points in my book to start out with.
III. I WANT TO LEARN KOREAN, BUT ALL THAT'S COMING OUT IS FRENCH. Because apparently that's my default second language. So even though I've learned some basic Korean phrases, when it comes time to actually say them out loud to a Korean person, instead all I manage to do is barely prevent myself from speaking to them in French. So I point a lot, and try to smile (I have good teeth compared to many Koreans), and at least manage to say thank you and goodbye. I had my first awkward/awesome conversation with a Korean woman in a little street shop today, where she was very kind and patient and interested enough to keep asking me things. Basically it was 'where are you from, is MIT/Yale in Seattle, are you a student, oh then where is the school you teach at, how old are you, do/did you study Korean, do you live around here'. I managed to ask her name, which was Han Chi Won. (It might have been Han Ji Won, I'm not sure.) It helps that I know how to read hangul, and can say a random smattering of words.
IV. MOVING TO A FOREIGN COUNTRY INVOLVES RED TAPE. RED TAPE THAT PREVENTS ME FROM GETTING A CELL PHONE OR BANK ACCOUNT. Yet. You have to have an Alien Registration card to get a bank account, and both the Alien card and the bank account to get a cell phone. Which I thought was going to be a one day thing - but it turns out they have to actually send your paperwork to a different place to verify and print your card, so it takes 2-3 weeks to get to you after you spend 2.5 hours waiting at the immigration office (plus 3 hours driving in the rain to and from said office).
V. THE WEATHER CAN ONLY GET BETTER. No really, I came at what is sure to be my least favorite time of year - because I actually am looking forward to the cold and snowy winters here. Right now, however, its a constant ~80+ degrees (at night as well), with humidity at 85% or higher, and rainstorms every 6-7 hours. And the only thing I managed to forget when I left were my flip flops, which I left in Haley's car when she drove me to the airport. I can't believe it's taken me 7 days to go out and buy better rain shoes (i.e. plastic sandals), but I'm glad I waiting because it meant I got the most awesome yellow boat shoes ever. There's this huge fad in Korea right now for crocs and croc-like shoes, so ridiculous plastic shoes are everywhere - but they're actually really perfect for monsoon season since they're all like water shoes.
VI. CROSSFIT HERE IS HARDER THAN CROSSFIT AT HOME. Like for real, the WODs are legit harder. And then they make us do a second, faux-WOD after the WOD. At least that's what happened during the only class I've been to so far. (I was going to go again today, but apparently I still had some jet lag that I'd been putting off for work, which hit me at 11am this morning and knocked me out till 2pm.) And the box I've signed up at (a 1-month membership, I may try another box after this month to compare) coaches all in Korean. Which I've decided I like, since hopefully it will help me with learning Korean.
VII. FYI KOREANS ARE TALL AND ALL THE WOMEN HERE HAVE INCREDIBLE LEGS. I was hoping I'd be less noticeably short here, but I'm still a midget. But there are lots of other midgets - they're just all 35 or older. Because while the older generation is still Asian-stereotypically short, the younger generations are HUUUGE. There are tons of tall guys here. Well, tall for Asians? Lot's of dudes at close to 6 feet, but they probably all look taller because they're all so skinny. (And they all dress well. I love looking at all the clothes here, on girls and guys.) And Korean women have amazing legs. Amazing. (Which they all like to show off, perhaps especially now when it's so hot.) Even when they're legs are as big as mine are, they're just muscle and tight skin and really beautiful and make me jealous. It's pretty crazy. BUT, when you look up the legs, you reach their ass-less ass-less torsos. HA.
VIII. ASIANS ARE SO PRETTY, YOU GUYS. It's like constant eye-candy for me, 24/7, everywhere I look. And I want an adorable/cuddly Asian boy/girlfriend. Because couples here are adorable, and I see them everywhere since I live in a college neighborhood where everyone is at their prime dating age here.
IX. MY TEXTURE SENSITIVITY IS GONE. Or at least on hiatus - suspended at the enormity of change my life is going through. I've eaten shit here you could never have gotten me to try in the states. And it was fine. Seafood still isn't my favorite, but I didn't gag on the textures like I thought I was going to. And I just put the vegetables in my mouth and chew them up and swallow them like it was nothing. It's pretty weird and kind of wonderful - not the vegetables themselves, but the fact that I can just eat them. I can feel the part of myself that wants to revolt, but the bigger part of it that really wants to just open myself up to all the new things here just tells the old part to shut the fuck up and sit down, this is not the time nor place.
X. THAT'S NOT REALLY A CORNDOG. So they have these things here. They look like corndogs. They even put ketchup on them. They have what may be considered a "hot dog" on the inside. What it is, my friends, is a bit of actual meat (hence the quotations around hot dog) on a stick, deep fried in a DONUT, coated with sugar, and then garnished with ketchup. Not a corndog, but not terrible, either. It's actually better with the extra sugar coating than without, because that really kills any association my brain wants to make with a corndog. Then it's just a donut with meat in the middle - which is weird, but still a donut and so is delicious by default.
P.S. SPEAKING OF DONUTS: wtf, man. The thing that has shocked me the most since I've been here was walking through the bottom of Lotte World and practically into a Krispy Kreme. Not, like, "pretending" to be a Krispy Kreme - a LEGIT Krispy Kreme franchise. They're all over the place. They took so long to make it up to Seattle that I would never have guessed they had also crossed oceans.
Amazing how quickly that little (big) attitude problem I'd been having all week was solved by just a little bit of crossfit. ENDORPHINS FTW! And considering I hadn't done any kind of substantial workout for over 50 days, I really think I came out pretty well.
I only got through 2 rounds (plus another 400m run), but there were other people at the same pace as me. And I probably should/could have used a 20" box instead of 16", but I didn't want to push it. And I didn't ever have to go up to the blue band on the pull-ups, which was good.
Wall climbs continue to be a bitch.
But afterwards I got a little lesson in rope climbing, and I'm going back early tonight to practice some more :D
I hate things a little less than I hated them yesterday.
I'm so tired. So, so, so tired. I have one more paper due Wednesday at 6:00pm, and My parents fly in Wednesday night at 9pm. I'm relatively certain that as soon as we get back to my apartment I'm just going to collapse into a ball of sad-happy-tired that they're here and I'm really done with school and they'll take care of me for a second and shit. I just think it will be enough of a release/relief that I probably won't be able to take it. (FYI, Dad, I'm probably just going to hug you for like, hours, on Wednesday night. You don't get to unpack, you just have to stand/sit there and let me hug you until I fall asleep. Then you can unpack.)
(click, then right-click open in new tab to see full size)
I really did eat the worst shit imaginable for the past 7 days. WHICH IS SO UNFORTUNATE, because I was on the last week of this big crazy diet and so I pretty much destroyed all the good work I had done. But really, today is the first day in a week where my brain has been able to say, "hey, maybe we should, like, drink some tea and not destroy ourselves with chocolate and fried and all the sugar, what do you say?" I say yes, body - we can do that. I'm sorry for the last 7 days in which I treated you like an abusive boyfriend. So back to paleo eating. Which, really, is pretty great when I think about it for half a tick. Because I like meat.
I have dreams of getting back to where I was at the most successful point of this diet, because, like, daaaamn. I looked good. Partially just because I felt like I looked good, and that makes all the difference. And I could see my collar bones really easily, that makes all the difference too.
See - lookit my sadface now. First picture is from May 31st, just 11 days ago. I was really trying to recreate the first picture for comparison's sake, but I just couldn't hide the sadface:
also fatter cheeks and sadder skin :(
I'm happy my parents are coming. And I'm happy that I had to clean my apartment Sunday (they were showing it Monday), so that's already done. SEE, I'M LOOKING FOR POSITIVES, HERE.
Also, was supposed to go to Crossfit last night but couldn't make it because was finishing my crazy paper. Am signed up for class tonight - hopefully I can make that. (Even if I am marginally afraid of it.)(But better to jump in than pussyfoot around it - and I know once I get there and get back into it I'll be much, much happier.)
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!)
- If, somehow, there was something I left out, lemme know in the comments and I'll answer it :P
I made a new resume video for Korea! I shot it the morning of the day I held the interview with the school I'll be working at, so it turns out there was really no need at all to redo my resume. BUT, since I had it, and I like editing, I went ahead and put it together - it is a better video than the first in a few respects - mostly in that I actually talk about kids and teaching experience/ideas, etc. It's also shorter, which is good.
This is the original resume video I made, back in January. It's mostly just me talkin' about me. But there's also a couple of other people talking about me. The cat also makes an appearance. Most importantly, it's all fancy in that I shot in multiple locations, in multiple outfits, and my friend Hyun graciously agreed to provide a Korean translation so that I could caption it.
The problem with this video, however, and the reason that I made a new one - is THE CAT. I love the cat, and I didn't want to shock any employers or feel like I was hiding him or something, so I thought it wise to include him in the video. WRONG! I had two different jobs reject me because of the cat, and one specifically because of this video - because he looked "too big," according to the landlord. Perhaps all hogwash, but seeing as how this was 4 months old by now, and I thought I should probably have talked more about kids and teaching, I went ahead and shot a second one. And the second one only took 20 minutes of shooting and 30 minutes of editing (compared to something like 6 hours of shooting and 4 hours of editing for the first one), so why not just have them both up there, just in case.
And I felt like posting the new one, because I kind of like it and I wanted someone to see it, even if no schools ever need to.
UGH ALL I SEE IN THAT FIRST VIDEO NOW IS HOW UPTURNED MY NOSE ISSSSSSS.
