Hello. I felt it was about time I contributed my own entry to this blog. Having been a vehement anti-blogger for most of my 27 years, it's a big step (you need only click the "Random Blog" link above for an indication of the absolute dobbers who generally keep these things), but there are several reasons I've decided to lift my self-imposed ban.
I guess, first and foremost, we want to try and provide the sort of info we wanted to read before we came. Yes, there are plenty of ESL teacher bloggers, but after sifting through countless gushing posts about "hilarious" questions from students, the beauty of cherry blossoms and how liberating it is to prance about a jinjilbang in the buff, it becomes clear that down the line, practical info is not at the forefront of most blogger's minds. Secondly, we want to exchange good advice about what works and what doesn't work in the classroom, particularly if, like us, you feel you don't necessarily have the all-singing, all-dancing personality some people (e.g. 70% of those at the recent GEPIK orientation. Shudder.) would suggest you need to be a good elementary school teacher.
Of course we will interject it with the odd tale of what we've been doing, a blog wouldn't be a blog without a healthy dose of self indulgence, but we hope that it's at least a little bit more useful than merely a we did this, we did that diary.
So as Maureen covered extensively, the application process was long, hard and expensive, while the opening days were enough to make me nostalgic about my bi-weekly trips to Partick Jobcentre. Now, however, we are beginning to feel settled in South Korea. We have new friends, a decent gaff, a great social scene and I enjoyed probably the smoothest week of work since arriving. There are good and bad days, and today feels like one of the good guys.
Furthermore, having now been here for just over a month, we feel we're in a position to list some of the good and bad points of Korean life. These may well evolve throughout our time here, but having come here blindfolded ourselves, perhaps it will give other potential newcomers an insight into likely first impressions. It feels like as good a place to start as any, so without further ado:
GOOD - The people.
Ok, so you will be stared at and laughed at (particularly if you look the complete opposite of Korean, like me). If you're a man (or woman) sporting facial or arm hair, you can expect bemused strangers to come up and pull it. You can also expect to be barged on and off buses and subways, your neighbours to ignore you and to be left slightly repulsed by the half chewed food bouncing about your new Korean friend's mouth as they excitedly attempt to find out more about you. This is all just part and parcel of living here, regardless of nationality. However, the Koreans I've got to know well have been brilliant; enthusiastic, incredibly generous and unbelievably interested in where I am from. They are fiercely proud of their country as well, something I always like to see, and determined to make sure we leave with a good impression. There's a lot of unusual etiquette here; accepting gifts with two hands, not pointing chopsticks etc... but I've found that as long as you are respectful, Koreans will be respectful back. Learning a little bit of the language helps as well, even if it's just one or two phrases at first.
BAD - Spitting.
Imagine arse scratching was common practice in the streets of Scotland. Only it wasn't just jaikies and neds, but everyone; lawyers, teachers, business people, luvvies, OAPs, the lot. Now imagine that didn't just entail a subtle movement while nobody was looking but rather a blatant hand down the jeans and an almighty rummage with accompanying screwed up facial expression. Now picture the most inappropriate scenarios where this could happen; on a crowded subway, in a meeting, during an exam. Yup, you've just imagined the equivalent of spitting in Korea. It astounds me that so many Koreans, particularly woman, can spend so much time trying to look attractive, and then accompany their Gucci outfits and gravity defying heels with an almighty hawk and gob. The first time I met my principal, who should be regarded as God by me given the hierarchical nature of Korean society, he was mid-hawk. Rather than be embarrassed by this, he waited until I'd fully entered his office to unleash the sequel, as if to set the gauntlet down for a hawk off.
GOOD -
Food. Something Maureen and I differ on greatly. This is because while I sit there BBQing half a cow in the middle of my table before dunking it in dozens of different side dishes, Maureen will be at the other side miserably getting to grips with a bowl of soup with noodles. Koreans lack of tolerance for vegetarians is pretty appalling really but, while not everyone agrees, I think for meat eaters the food is tremendous. The food is pretty spicy but those used to Glaswegian curries will have no hassle getting to grips with it. Byeongjeom, our home, has a ridiculous amount of Korean restaurants as well as a handful of Chinese, Japanese and Italian. Eating out is the only option here and we will only cook when we're too tired to leave the flat. Oh, and if the idea of fermented cabbage doesn't excite you, it's probably best not to pencil in a trip to Korea for your summer holidays.
BAD
Pretense - You know those people who are more concerned with taking lots and lots of photos of themselves having a good time without actually having a good time? Well, that's like a microcosm of many aspects of Korean life. Something I noticed quite quickly here is that appearances are everything to most people. I'm not just talking about the women who never leave the house without half a ton of make-up and heels. Nor am I merely referring to the fact that people get plastic surgery here as if they were getting a haircut. I'm talking about the guys who walk up little more than a steep hill kitted out as if they were about to conquer everest. I'm talking about the fireworks and banners at K-League matches in which throw ins are celebrated as much as goals. And I'm also talking about kids' sports days across the country resembling the mass games. It got me thinking about the World Cup 2002, which is immortalised here. It's portrayed as being the greatest, most colourful competition in history yet people conveniently forget that South Korea progressed largely due to some of the most suspiciously awful refereeing decisions of all time. It's an attitude that's particularly prominent in the education system. Despite being relatively unmonitored for 99% of the time, it appears you must produce the goods when you are given an open lesson (a class in front of parents and peers). So essentially I could spend the year showing the kids Trainspotting and teaching them how to swear, as long as I put on a good show that day to appease their folks. I've heard plenty of more unsavoury stories about how this manifests itself but perhaps I should wait to see if I experience it first hand before speculating.
GOOD -
Cost of living. I'm penning this entry shortly after going to the cinema, buying popcorn and juice, eating my bodyweight in sushi and sides in a Japanese restaurant and having a 500ml bottle of beer. The cost? A tenner. That's right, the equivalent of three pints in the West End of Glasgow. Of course it's possible to spend whatever you like in Seoul, but if you want a cheap night you can have it. When the weather's nice, people tend to float around the liveliest areas drinking on the streets (it's completely acceptable here and newsagents will even put out tables and chairs for you to sit at) and there are plenty of great little street food stalls. Public transport is efficient, far-reaching and incredibly cheap. The subway stops at around midnight but you can book yourself a Love Motel (not half as sleazy as it might sound) for around 25-60,000 won (15 to 35 quid) or a jinjilbang, a Korean style bathhouse in which people are given pyjamas and a communal floor to sleep on, for even less. These pretty much need to be seen to be understood.
BAD -
Lack of bins. May sound like a bizarre one this but I'm fed up of my gradual morphing into the bagman of Byeongjeom. Time after time I will reach in my pocket to pay for something and produce an empty bottle, a bag of crisps and a Become A Christian flier. There are virtually no bins on the streets here so always remember to do a mass unloading when you visit any metro station.
GOOD -
Children. They work hard and they play even harder, and by that I mean they batter lumps out of each other. But generally speaking, the Korean kids are a good bunch. The bad eggs in my classes are not bad by Glaswegian standards; the worst they will do is chatter away and get up and wander about during the class. 40 of them can be hard to control but when you meet them in the streets or in the corridor by themselves they are all very excited and friendly. Consensus appears to be that grade 4 and 5s are the best to teach. The 6s are a little cocky while the 1, 2 and 3s are just thick as mince.
BAD -
My job. Emphasis on the "my" here. While others seem to have good deals, I've landed a rather unfortunate position within the GEPIK programme. You see, my school is a model school, meaning it's given more money by the provincial education office to try out things. As such they have employed three English teachers, the brilliantly-named Willem Pappendorf, a South African, the unfortunately-named Mi (pronounced me) Suk Yoo and me. Under GEPIK rules all English teachers are supposed to have a Korean co-teacher but as my school is so small, I don't .I teach all grades, parents and teachers but I don't teach the GEPIK curriculum which means I can't work with other GEPIK teachers. It's been daunting at first and given I teach 23 classes and have 18 to prepare from scratch, it's hard work. I've spoken to other teachers who teach the same three or four lessons the whole week. Discipline is the biggest problem, without speaking Korean or knowing how to write hangul, the best I can do is pathetically squeel anja (sit down!) or noon ga ma (shut your eyes) and then I'm out of ideas. At this stage, if the kids want to riot then there's nothing I can do about it. I've had some nightmare lessons; a boy almost fainting in class while I stood idly by, missing a minute's silence for the Cheonan disaster because I couldn't understand what anyone was saying and carnage in grade one class following a scrap. But I do think things are beginning to get better. I guess the most important thing is that I get on brilliantly with my colleagues. They've all helped me enormously and while my job may be tougher than most other GEPIK roles, I don't think I could have asked for a better team to be part of.
GOOD -
Drinking culture. When applying for a post here we were informed by our learned agents that we should reduce our already-laughable answer to the units of alcohol consumed question to two. This meant we enjoyed one pint a week. We're now of the opinion that this would reduce our chances of gaining employment in Korea. When I first met my principle (post-spit), he asked me, via translation, if I liked to drink alcohol. I said I did, but in moderation. He looked disappointed. Three weeks later, all the teachers were sitting in a classroom at 4pm eating meat, sinking shot of Soju, downing cans of beer and sipping rice wine. My principal would not let me stop eating or drinking. This is the Korean way. I've never seen a nation so fond of alcohol as they are here, and in particular their national drink, the aforementioned Soju, which tastes like a kind of past-its-sell-by-date vodka and is consumed with every meal. Interesting fact - the red bit of the Korean flag is actually representative of the colour of half the nation's faces on a Friday and Saturday night.
BAD
Touchy feely culture. In Korea, non-gay (aka straight) women will walk hand in hand; a little odd, but not staggeringly strange.
Straight men will also hold hands or hug each other; again, it wouldn't happen in Glasgow but not earth shattering
In school, I've seen two little boys hug each other and then kiss each other's heads; I've been informed that even for Korea this is a little odd but not as unusual as it would be in Scotland.
"So, Jim Davidson," I hear you roar, "what's wrong with that? Why's this one of your bads?" Well, I'd advise you to have a public shower and leave a soapy sponge sitting behind you. You'll see why then. No thank you.
BAD -
Gepik orientation. I feel this deserves a mention of its own. Now I must first of all stress this is by no means a criticism of GEPIK, who must have spent a good few bob putting us up in a pretty nice facility in the middle of the Korean countryside, provided a good few useful lectures (particulary for new teachers like me) and generally worked hard to provide a platform for us to meet other elementary teachers in the area. But that's just it, some of the other teachers.. While I met some great people I bonded with instantly and will definitely meet up with again if I haven't already, I met several disconcertingly odd exhibitionists who made me question, well, life in general. The demo lesson section was David Brentastic, while the less said about Handsome Ho (sic) and the team building session, the better. A rather large part of me died that night;
"This must be what it feels like when an incest survival group meets", Brian, our friend from Birmingham, when five final night survivors met up in Suwon for a curry post-orietation.
GOOD -
Social scene. It would be wrong to end this entry with anything other than a positive because, despite my moans, there's no doubting Korea is a fantastic place to live and work, thanks in no small part to the social scene. Koreans like to have a good time and unsurprisingly Seoul is pretty much a 24 hour city. The expat scene is thriving and most in this area descend to Hongdae, a studenty suburb, or Itaewon, a foreigner haven packed full of American soliders, at the weekend. I much prefer the former, although the latter is like the city's Sauchiehall Street; despite your best intentions, you know you'll be back at some point. Whatever you want to do you're never short of options and there are constantly Facebook groups cropping up inviting us to events across the country, so much so, the hardest part is often choosing what to do. This weekend we're probably heading to the bars of Byeongjeom on Friday and then Insadong in Seoul on Saturday for a traditional celebration, staying over until the Sunday.
So yeah, I may not have found the Korean Tennent's as of yet (although the number of Korean drongos would suggest it does exist), but it's still a good life nonetheless.
2010년 5월 11일 화요일
2010년 4월 28일 수요일
Teaching
On the last blog entry I didn't get an opportunity to talk about my job, teaching English to first, fourth and sixth grade students at Geumbok Elementary School in Dongtan. Both Paul and I work as ESL teachers for the GEPIK programme, which covers public schools in the Gyeonngi Province, the area surrounding Seoul. Any public school programme is South Korea is very competitive to get into as the conditions are much better than Hagwons, the private English schools.
I was pretty surprised when I turned up at my school on my first day to discover I was to receive no training. Instead I had one day of observing classes before standing up in front of a class of forty kids the following day to teach! Gulp! However, I have a Korean co teacher in the class at all times to help communicate the lessons to the kids and deal with classroom management so it wasn't too bad.
I have struck it very lucky with my co teachers, Yun-ok and Hae-kyoung. They are both lovely people, very laid back and supportive. As I teach most of my lessons with Yun-ok as well as sit beside her in the office, not getting along with her could have made life very difficult. Thankfully, she is great. She even visited Edinburgh a few years ago so she loves looking at photographs of back home.
Geumbok is a big school so I only actually teach around five lessons a week to different classes. I am pretty lucky in this sense as it means I only have five lessons to prepare. The actual content of the lessons comes from the English textbook which is generally very boring so it is up to me and my co teachers to come up with games and powerpoint presentations to make it a bit more interesting for the kids. There is no textbook for my first grade lessons on a Friday so I have to come up with the material from scratch, a task I found very daunting at first. When I asked Yun-ok what to do with the first graders she gave me a few songs to sing with them and told me that was enough. Twenty minutes into the forty minute lesson, I had sung all the songs with them several times and was beginning to break out in a cold sweat. For the next set of classes I used some materials online along with Paul's first grade book to come up with some presentations to show them involving numbers and sums.
At the moment, my main challenge with teaching is classroom management, particularly the first and sixth graders. The first graders are cute but they get bored very easily and it is hard to keep forty six year olds sitting in their seats, listening to what you are saying. The sixth graders are around eleven years old so they are practically teenagers, which means they can get very rowdy. It's okay at the moment because my co teachers do all the disciplining but I am very aware that without them, I would be screwed.
In general, I am really enjoying my job. I can't imagine any other position I could be in where I am greeting with enthusiastic waves and cries of "hello Maureen teacher!" every time I walk down the corridor. I am making sure I savour every minute of this incredible experience.
I was pretty surprised when I turned up at my school on my first day to discover I was to receive no training. Instead I had one day of observing classes before standing up in front of a class of forty kids the following day to teach! Gulp! However, I have a Korean co teacher in the class at all times to help communicate the lessons to the kids and deal with classroom management so it wasn't too bad.
I have struck it very lucky with my co teachers, Yun-ok and Hae-kyoung. They are both lovely people, very laid back and supportive. As I teach most of my lessons with Yun-ok as well as sit beside her in the office, not getting along with her could have made life very difficult. Thankfully, she is great. She even visited Edinburgh a few years ago so she loves looking at photographs of back home.
Geumbok is a big school so I only actually teach around five lessons a week to different classes. I am pretty lucky in this sense as it means I only have five lessons to prepare. The actual content of the lessons comes from the English textbook which is generally very boring so it is up to me and my co teachers to come up with games and powerpoint presentations to make it a bit more interesting for the kids. There is no textbook for my first grade lessons on a Friday so I have to come up with the material from scratch, a task I found very daunting at first. When I asked Yun-ok what to do with the first graders she gave me a few songs to sing with them and told me that was enough. Twenty minutes into the forty minute lesson, I had sung all the songs with them several times and was beginning to break out in a cold sweat. For the next set of classes I used some materials online along with Paul's first grade book to come up with some presentations to show them involving numbers and sums.
At the moment, my main challenge with teaching is classroom management, particularly the first and sixth graders. The first graders are cute but they get bored very easily and it is hard to keep forty six year olds sitting in their seats, listening to what you are saying. The sixth graders are around eleven years old so they are practically teenagers, which means they can get very rowdy. It's okay at the moment because my co teachers do all the disciplining but I am very aware that without them, I would be screwed.
In general, I am really enjoying my job. I can't imagine any other position I could be in where I am greeting with enthusiastic waves and cries of "hello Maureen teacher!" every time I walk down the corridor. I am making sure I savour every minute of this incredible experience.
2010년 4월 24일 토요일
Annyeonghaseyo! Hello and welcome to my blog.
My name is Maureen. I am 25 years old and currently living in South Korea where I work as an ESL (English as a second language) teacher. I feel a bit silly saying this as most people who read this blog will know exactly who am I and what I am doing but I suppose I better clarify these facts incase it is read by strangers.
I have decided to keep a blog for several reasons. Firstly it is more convenient than e mailing everyone with my news and photographs. Secondly, when I was back home in Glasgow, Scotland, pondering the idea of moving to South Korea, I frequently scoured the internet looking for insight on what it is really like for a Westerner to live and teach here. I couldn't find anything particularly useful so I decided that, if I did take the plunge, I would keep a blog for other potential teachers to take information from. In retrospect I don't know where I was looking because practically every foreign teacher I have met out here keeps a blog. I am hoping that including the words "teaching ESL in South Korea" in the title will make it easier for people looking for information on this subject to find me.
So, where to begin. This Monday, I will have been in South Korea for three weeks. So much has happened already. I have more stories from the last three weeks than I do from the last ten months living in Scotland. I have been so busy I haven't had a chance to sit down and let my friends and family back home know what I've been up to. I suppose I better begin with a bit of background information about me and my boyfriend Paul, who is also out here with me working as an ESL teacher,
Paul and I met at university in Glasgow, our home town, in 2003. We were both studying English, Journalism and Creative Writing. After graduating, we worked as journalists for a year and a half but dreamed of travelling the world. Slowly but surely, we managed to save up enough money to fund the trip of a lifetime and, in January 2008, we left Scotland to make our way round South East Asia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and Central America with a six month stint of working in Australia in the middle. We returned in June 2009 with tons of great memories, satisfied our itchy feet had been scratched for now. Immediately we began to apply for jobs and planned to settle wherever we could find work.
However, things didn't quite work out that way. We returned bang in the middle of a recession, unemployment in the UK a record high. The internet was well and truly finishing journalism and reporters were being laid off left right and centre. We realised it would be daft to move back into the industry so we applied for press officer and communications roles, competing with every journalist in the UK who was desperate to change careers. In ten months I got a grand total of two interviews. So did Paul. I haven't actually counted how many unanswered job applications I have in my e mail sent box but lets just say there are a lot. I joined a recruitment agency but even office temping work was few and far between.
Probably the turning point for me was when I temped as a receptionist at a flooring company in Govan (extremely grim area of Glasgow) and the manager told me to apply for a role as an administrator. The woman who previously did the job began to lecture me about how stressful it was and how the company needed someone particularly skilled and intelligent to manage the customers and delivery men (implying all the while that I wasn't quite talented enough to manage this dynamic role). I suddenly had a vision of myself in Govan spending my days stressed about laminated flooring. I had began to consider South Korea as an option at that point and I think that conversation just cemented it.
Paul's "aha" moment came when he went for a job as an administrator at a law firm and he said the interviewer could barely string a sentence together due to her lack of brain cells. He didn't get the job as she said there were better candidates.
I would like to point out that our lack of luck in finding at job for ten months is not a reflection of our experience or ability. I walked into a journalism job straight after uni with no experience, as did Paul. Instead, it is a reflection of the truly grim economic situation in the UK.
So that is why we decided to become teachers in South Korea. No, not because we felt the need to become better people. Not because we felt we wanted to inspire a generation (some actual answers we heard from fellow teachers at our orientation last week). However, in all seriousness, although our decision to move here was inspired by our employment situation back home, when Paul and I worked as journalists, we often said we wished we were doing a job that actually made a positive difference to people's lives. Journalism sometimes did but more often that not it was a negative effect we were creating.
So South Korea it was. We sent off our cv to several differenct agencies but the only one that really pursued jobs for us was "Reach to Teach" based in Taiwan.
The application process was extremely labourious. I can't remember every detail as I appear to have blanked it from my memory. Let's just say it was long (we originally got in touch with our agency in October 2009) complicated and expensive, requiring lots of trips to the post office. We needed our original degree certificate, an official copy of every class we took at university in an envelope sealed with the university stamp, a criminal background check which had to be sent to London to be apostilled, two detailed sealed letters of reference and loads of other things I can't even remember. Of course, bureacracy made the whole process much more complicated than it should have been and there were many frustrating moments along the way (probably the best moment was a man at the passport office in Glasgow telling Paul that because his passport is quite tatty, he could potentially be arrested at the airport.) But we got there in the end and were eventually offered jobs at GEPIK, the public school system in Gyeonggi, the province surrounding Seoul.
Our recruiter Gillian from Reach to Teach (anyone reading this who is thinking of using this woman's services please DON'T) told us that because we are not married we could not get an apartment together. However, she assured us because our application was a joint one, our schools and apartments would be so close together we could easily live in the one place. She told us that is what all ESL teaching couples out there do and it wouldn't be a problem at all.
As we grew nearer to our leaving date, we asked over and over for the addresses of our apartments and schools. Gillian said she couldn't give us them then told us they were twenty minutes apart. Ok, twenty minutes, we thought, We could handle that.
So, on April 4 2010, we packed our lives in a 20 kg suitcase and boarded the flight from Glasgow to London Heathrow to Seoul., Paul worrying all the while about the state of his passport. As I mentioned before, it was pretty tatty and had not scanned in the last few countries we had visited. He was advised by Gillian not to get a new one though as his passport number was on all his visa details. However, we had not actually been knocked back from any of the countries we had visited with it and his teaching visa was stapled on to it so we thought we would be okay arriving in Korea.
So we were pretty shocked when, going through customs, Paul was hauled into another room for about 30 minutes while I hovered around outside anxiously. Apparently the guy just tried to scan his passport again and again. Eventually he let him out and we made our way downstairs to collect our luggage.
We were then met by two different men, one holding a board with my name on it, another holding a board with Paul's name on it.
Eh? We tried to explain to the men that we were here on a joint application and should not be separated but they couldn't speak a word of English. One of them phoned someone from Paul's school who told us to go with the two different men for now then we would meet up later.
I was then driven to my apartment and met by a Korean woman and a Korean man. The woman turned out to be a teacher at my school and the man was the manager of my apartment block. The first thing I asked the woman was where Paul was.
"Balan" she replied.
"Where is that? Is that near here?" I asked her.
"No," she laughed. "It is one hour and twenty minutes on a bus."
Needless to say, the rest of the evening was one I would rather forget. I had no internet, no phone, no idea where I was and no idea where Paul was. I hadn't slept in 24 hours. The teacher woman (whose name turned out to be Hyo-Jae) took me to a nearby department store called Homeplus and told me I had better buy things for my apartment. I wandered around in a daze putting duvets and pillow covers in my trolley. Paul's co teacher, who was with him, then phoned Hyo-Jae, so I finally got to speak to him. He said he didn't have a clue what was going on but was about to go out for dinner with his co teacher and another South African guy who also teaches English as his school so he would try to get in touch with me later.
Paul then told me he was just shoved on a bus by himself from the airport to his school and told to listen for the driver shouting "Balan". He had no idea where to get off. When he did, he was standing in the middle of nowhere for ten minutes before the South African and another Korean guy at his school turned up.
After I went back to my apartment, I knocked on the door of a Canadian girl across the hall who I had seen earlier on. She was very kind and let me use her internet. Paul still wasn't online so I sent him a message and told him he should just wait until the next day before coming over.
The next morning I got up early and was taken into my school by Hyo-Jae. Firstly I met the Principal and gave her some shortbread, whisky and a Ki Sung-Yong mug as a gift. I then watched some English classes taught by Hyo-Jae and the other native English teacher, an American guy called Chris. I was then taken to a health clinic for my medical which involved a blood sample, urine sample and chest x-ray. I had only had a few hours sleep in two days and still hadn't spoken to Paul. It was very bizarre to say the least.
After the medical, I was driven back to my apartment. I used the Canadian girl's internet to find out that Paul and the fellow native English speaker at his school, the South African guy whose name was Willem, had my address written in Korean and were planning to come over to see me. So I went back over the hall to my apartment and sat by the window looking out, just in case the taxi dropped them somewhere else in the street. They arrived a few hours later and told me it had taken them ages to get over; forty minutes in a taxi to neighbouring city, Suwon, then a subway stop to where I was. Paul said he was just going to stay the night at mine then get a taxi to school the next morning.
Needless to say, it was a grim night. Our schools appeared to be miles apart. It didn't look like it was possible for one of us to commute. Our only hope was a bus Paul's co teacher had told him about. It went from my apartment to his school but there was only one an hour and we weren't sure how long it would take. If it wasn't doable, we were going home to Glasgow to face ten more months of unemployment or maybe even more. Not to mention the fact we would lost the money we had spent on our flights as you have to be employed with GEPIK for six months to get the tickets refunded. Grim, grim, grim. I don't even like thinking back to those few days because they were among the most stress filled I have ever had.
We were absolutely furious with Gillian from Reach to Teach for lying to us and assuring us we would be placed close together. We spoke to our GEPIK coordinator who told us she informed Gillian and some other toe-rag called Jason from an agency called Asknow, that our schools were far apart but they assured her Paul and I knew this and were fine with it. Absolute bullshit. It emerged that Gillian had simply plucked the "20 minutes" figure from her head.
I had read lots of warnings about recruiment agencies online, about how they are all complete liars who will tell you anything. However, I had only read positive things about Reach to Teach and at the beginning of the process they seemed to be the most competent. As time went on however, communication began to get a little shaky. Gillian would suddenly suddenly say something like "yeah so when you go down to London to get your Notice of Appointment" we would respond "wait, wait, back up. London? What's a Notice of Appointment? You didn't tell us about this "then she would say" I most certainly did "etc etc. Things like that happened quite a lot during the recruiment process.
Even more irritating, at our GEPIK orientation last week we met quite a few couples who had got apartments together! We wer assured by Gillian this was not possible unless we were married.
Anyway, back to our initital problem. A couple of days in, Paul got the bus from my apartment to his school. It only took 40 minutes. As there was only one an hour, it got him in half an hour early but it was doable. Hooray! We could stay in South Korea after all! A huge relief for us as we genuinly thought we would have to go home which would have been a devastating disappointment for us.
I better go now as this post is very long and it is late here. The next time I will talk more about my job and our life here in South Korea.
Oh and the title of this blog? It means, hello, goodbye, see you later, nice to meet you .... It is said with a bow as you see a fellow teacher in the corridor, as you leave a convenience store; it fits prety much every occasion. The drawl of "annyeonghaseyoooo" will be one of my overriding memories of my day to day life in South Korea.
That and kimchi. But more on that next time.
I have decided to keep a blog for several reasons. Firstly it is more convenient than e mailing everyone with my news and photographs. Secondly, when I was back home in Glasgow, Scotland, pondering the idea of moving to South Korea, I frequently scoured the internet looking for insight on what it is really like for a Westerner to live and teach here. I couldn't find anything particularly useful so I decided that, if I did take the plunge, I would keep a blog for other potential teachers to take information from. In retrospect I don't know where I was looking because practically every foreign teacher I have met out here keeps a blog. I am hoping that including the words "teaching ESL in South Korea" in the title will make it easier for people looking for information on this subject to find me.
So, where to begin. This Monday, I will have been in South Korea for three weeks. So much has happened already. I have more stories from the last three weeks than I do from the last ten months living in Scotland. I have been so busy I haven't had a chance to sit down and let my friends and family back home know what I've been up to. I suppose I better begin with a bit of background information about me and my boyfriend Paul, who is also out here with me working as an ESL teacher,
Paul and I met at university in Glasgow, our home town, in 2003. We were both studying English, Journalism and Creative Writing. After graduating, we worked as journalists for a year and a half but dreamed of travelling the world. Slowly but surely, we managed to save up enough money to fund the trip of a lifetime and, in January 2008, we left Scotland to make our way round South East Asia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and Central America with a six month stint of working in Australia in the middle. We returned in June 2009 with tons of great memories, satisfied our itchy feet had been scratched for now. Immediately we began to apply for jobs and planned to settle wherever we could find work.
However, things didn't quite work out that way. We returned bang in the middle of a recession, unemployment in the UK a record high. The internet was well and truly finishing journalism and reporters were being laid off left right and centre. We realised it would be daft to move back into the industry so we applied for press officer and communications roles, competing with every journalist in the UK who was desperate to change careers. In ten months I got a grand total of two interviews. So did Paul. I haven't actually counted how many unanswered job applications I have in my e mail sent box but lets just say there are a lot. I joined a recruitment agency but even office temping work was few and far between.
Probably the turning point for me was when I temped as a receptionist at a flooring company in Govan (extremely grim area of Glasgow) and the manager told me to apply for a role as an administrator. The woman who previously did the job began to lecture me about how stressful it was and how the company needed someone particularly skilled and intelligent to manage the customers and delivery men (implying all the while that I wasn't quite talented enough to manage this dynamic role). I suddenly had a vision of myself in Govan spending my days stressed about laminated flooring. I had began to consider South Korea as an option at that point and I think that conversation just cemented it.
Paul's "aha" moment came when he went for a job as an administrator at a law firm and he said the interviewer could barely string a sentence together due to her lack of brain cells. He didn't get the job as she said there were better candidates.
I would like to point out that our lack of luck in finding at job for ten months is not a reflection of our experience or ability. I walked into a journalism job straight after uni with no experience, as did Paul. Instead, it is a reflection of the truly grim economic situation in the UK.
So that is why we decided to become teachers in South Korea. No, not because we felt the need to become better people. Not because we felt we wanted to inspire a generation (some actual answers we heard from fellow teachers at our orientation last week). However, in all seriousness, although our decision to move here was inspired by our employment situation back home, when Paul and I worked as journalists, we often said we wished we were doing a job that actually made a positive difference to people's lives. Journalism sometimes did but more often that not it was a negative effect we were creating.
So South Korea it was. We sent off our cv to several differenct agencies but the only one that really pursued jobs for us was "Reach to Teach" based in Taiwan.
The application process was extremely labourious. I can't remember every detail as I appear to have blanked it from my memory. Let's just say it was long (we originally got in touch with our agency in October 2009) complicated and expensive, requiring lots of trips to the post office. We needed our original degree certificate, an official copy of every class we took at university in an envelope sealed with the university stamp, a criminal background check which had to be sent to London to be apostilled, two detailed sealed letters of reference and loads of other things I can't even remember. Of course, bureacracy made the whole process much more complicated than it should have been and there were many frustrating moments along the way (probably the best moment was a man at the passport office in Glasgow telling Paul that because his passport is quite tatty, he could potentially be arrested at the airport.) But we got there in the end and were eventually offered jobs at GEPIK, the public school system in Gyeonggi, the province surrounding Seoul.
Our recruiter Gillian from Reach to Teach (anyone reading this who is thinking of using this woman's services please DON'T) told us that because we are not married we could not get an apartment together. However, she assured us because our application was a joint one, our schools and apartments would be so close together we could easily live in the one place. She told us that is what all ESL teaching couples out there do and it wouldn't be a problem at all.
As we grew nearer to our leaving date, we asked over and over for the addresses of our apartments and schools. Gillian said she couldn't give us them then told us they were twenty minutes apart. Ok, twenty minutes, we thought, We could handle that.
So, on April 4 2010, we packed our lives in a 20 kg suitcase and boarded the flight from Glasgow to London Heathrow to Seoul., Paul worrying all the while about the state of his passport. As I mentioned before, it was pretty tatty and had not scanned in the last few countries we had visited. He was advised by Gillian not to get a new one though as his passport number was on all his visa details. However, we had not actually been knocked back from any of the countries we had visited with it and his teaching visa was stapled on to it so we thought we would be okay arriving in Korea.
So we were pretty shocked when, going through customs, Paul was hauled into another room for about 30 minutes while I hovered around outside anxiously. Apparently the guy just tried to scan his passport again and again. Eventually he let him out and we made our way downstairs to collect our luggage.
We were then met by two different men, one holding a board with my name on it, another holding a board with Paul's name on it.
Eh? We tried to explain to the men that we were here on a joint application and should not be separated but they couldn't speak a word of English. One of them phoned someone from Paul's school who told us to go with the two different men for now then we would meet up later.
I was then driven to my apartment and met by a Korean woman and a Korean man. The woman turned out to be a teacher at my school and the man was the manager of my apartment block. The first thing I asked the woman was where Paul was.
"Balan" she replied.
"Where is that? Is that near here?" I asked her.
"No," she laughed. "It is one hour and twenty minutes on a bus."
Needless to say, the rest of the evening was one I would rather forget. I had no internet, no phone, no idea where I was and no idea where Paul was. I hadn't slept in 24 hours. The teacher woman (whose name turned out to be Hyo-Jae) took me to a nearby department store called Homeplus and told me I had better buy things for my apartment. I wandered around in a daze putting duvets and pillow covers in my trolley. Paul's co teacher, who was with him, then phoned Hyo-Jae, so I finally got to speak to him. He said he didn't have a clue what was going on but was about to go out for dinner with his co teacher and another South African guy who also teaches English as his school so he would try to get in touch with me later.
Paul then told me he was just shoved on a bus by himself from the airport to his school and told to listen for the driver shouting "Balan". He had no idea where to get off. When he did, he was standing in the middle of nowhere for ten minutes before the South African and another Korean guy at his school turned up.
After I went back to my apartment, I knocked on the door of a Canadian girl across the hall who I had seen earlier on. She was very kind and let me use her internet. Paul still wasn't online so I sent him a message and told him he should just wait until the next day before coming over.
The next morning I got up early and was taken into my school by Hyo-Jae. Firstly I met the Principal and gave her some shortbread, whisky and a Ki Sung-Yong mug as a gift. I then watched some English classes taught by Hyo-Jae and the other native English teacher, an American guy called Chris. I was then taken to a health clinic for my medical which involved a blood sample, urine sample and chest x-ray. I had only had a few hours sleep in two days and still hadn't spoken to Paul. It was very bizarre to say the least.
After the medical, I was driven back to my apartment. I used the Canadian girl's internet to find out that Paul and the fellow native English speaker at his school, the South African guy whose name was Willem, had my address written in Korean and were planning to come over to see me. So I went back over the hall to my apartment and sat by the window looking out, just in case the taxi dropped them somewhere else in the street. They arrived a few hours later and told me it had taken them ages to get over; forty minutes in a taxi to neighbouring city, Suwon, then a subway stop to where I was. Paul said he was just going to stay the night at mine then get a taxi to school the next morning.
Needless to say, it was a grim night. Our schools appeared to be miles apart. It didn't look like it was possible for one of us to commute. Our only hope was a bus Paul's co teacher had told him about. It went from my apartment to his school but there was only one an hour and we weren't sure how long it would take. If it wasn't doable, we were going home to Glasgow to face ten more months of unemployment or maybe even more. Not to mention the fact we would lost the money we had spent on our flights as you have to be employed with GEPIK for six months to get the tickets refunded. Grim, grim, grim. I don't even like thinking back to those few days because they were among the most stress filled I have ever had.
We were absolutely furious with Gillian from Reach to Teach for lying to us and assuring us we would be placed close together. We spoke to our GEPIK coordinator who told us she informed Gillian and some other toe-rag called Jason from an agency called Asknow, that our schools were far apart but they assured her Paul and I knew this and were fine with it. Absolute bullshit. It emerged that Gillian had simply plucked the "20 minutes" figure from her head.
I had read lots of warnings about recruiment agencies online, about how they are all complete liars who will tell you anything. However, I had only read positive things about Reach to Teach and at the beginning of the process they seemed to be the most competent. As time went on however, communication began to get a little shaky. Gillian would suddenly suddenly say something like "yeah so when you go down to London to get your Notice of Appointment" we would respond "wait, wait, back up. London? What's a Notice of Appointment? You didn't tell us about this "then she would say" I most certainly did "etc etc. Things like that happened quite a lot during the recruiment process.
Even more irritating, at our GEPIK orientation last week we met quite a few couples who had got apartments together! We wer assured by Gillian this was not possible unless we were married.
Anyway, back to our initital problem. A couple of days in, Paul got the bus from my apartment to his school. It only took 40 minutes. As there was only one an hour, it got him in half an hour early but it was doable. Hooray! We could stay in South Korea after all! A huge relief for us as we genuinly thought we would have to go home which would have been a devastating disappointment for us.
I better go now as this post is very long and it is late here. The next time I will talk more about my job and our life here in South Korea.
Oh and the title of this blog? It means, hello, goodbye, see you later, nice to meet you .... It is said with a bow as you see a fellow teacher in the corridor, as you leave a convenience store; it fits prety much every occasion. The drawl of "annyeonghaseyoooo" will be one of my overriding memories of my day to day life in South Korea.
That and kimchi. But more on that next time.
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