Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Movin' to Korea...gonna eat a lot of Kimchi

Summer 2005

After graduating from the University of Manitoba in May 2005, I had an exciting summer, including a research position which brought me to Colorado for several weeks, my brother Kyle's marriage and the subsequent cruise ship honeymoon that my entire family attended with my bother’s new wife’s family, followed by a bike trip from Vancouver to San Francisco, with Tom. In October, after returning home from the cycling adventure, I left Canada on a much longer adventure- destination: Seoul, South Korea!

Fall 2005

Tom and I arrived in Korea in October 2005. After lugging about 500 pounds of luggage (yeah, I have no discretion I guess when it comes to packing for a year away) from Osaka, Japan to Seoul, Korea in one day (no joke) I found my new apartment and started a new chapter of my life as an English teacher in Seoul.

Too much luggage??

There are approximately 250,000 foreigners living in Korea teaching English. It’s pretty insane how much time and money parents and children funnel into the whole academy system, from an extremely early age, primarily to give them a competitive edge when applying for university- 12 years later!! I mean, children who are enrolled in extracurricular academic programs will undoubtedly benefit form the extra help, but the quantity of time that these kids are required to spend is truly mind boggling- I have a feeling that a 6-year-old Korean’s schedule is sadly a lot more rigorous than the average Canadian university student! Anyways, one of the kids’ many academies is English, and for the lucky ones, they get to spend their parent-mandated daily hour of English class with me!

From November 2005-6 I worked at an English academy called Michigan Campus, where I taught kids ages 6-18 various levels of English. Other than the 75 minute commute each way, I loved this job- the kids were wonderful, and generally extremely well-behaved, and I had a lot of freedom, in terms of class content, reading material, and student evaluation. I heard a lot of horror stories about my boss from other employees, including how he spit in one man’s face, but I later found out that his reaction way in response to the employee pinning my boss against the wall with a desk- yeah, there are a lot of weirdos here... Other than a sketchy boss, which is apparently all too common, my three Korean co-workers, the secretary, and my students made for a great year at the school.




Highlights from Korea this year were....
  • Gorgeous fall colours in Seoul
  • Ice-fishing festival in a northern Korean town
  • Fire festival on Jeju Island, south of mainland Korea
  • Singing at nori bang (private karaoke)
  • Hiking in Seoraksan National Park
  • River hiking
  • Trip to Geumgung (Diamond) Mountains in North Korea!
  • Trip to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea)
  • Night skiing at Yongpyong Ski Resort

Tom and I doing some hiking in Bukhansan


Skiing at YongPyong in January 2007