Since I’ve been in South Korea, I get about 2 or 3 emails every week from people asking me how did I get here and what my life is like now that I’m here. I answer each of these emails personally with whatever comes to mind at the time. I do it even if I barely knew them because I know how much I appreciated it when the people I knew did it for me. But now I’ll do a post for everyone who may have been too timid to send an email or a facebook message.
I’ve been here for almost 3 weeks and it has been amazing. I feel like everyday gets better than the day before. Every weekend is filled with more excitement than the weekend before. When I finally crawled into bed Tuesday night (Monday and Tuesday were a holiday), I couldn’t believe all that happened since Friday. I may get back to that later.
In order to teach in Korea, you need any Bachelors Degree from any 4-year university. Mine is in Computer Engineering. If you have teaching experience, you’ll get paid a bit more. The school pays for your housing and my school pays for my lunch.
The work hours, class size, age of the students, and number of classes will differ depending on the school. I work from 1pm-8pm. I get in at 1, go to lunch at 1:30, start teaching at 2:30, and finish my last class at 7:20pm. Some of my classes will have 3 kids while others have around 10. I know a guy who works from 9-5 and has classes with 30 kids. I teach elementary school kids and I have 3-5 classes per day.
My school has a set curriculum that I have to follow which makes it easier for me since I never taught before. I also had a week of training. A few people I’ve met say that they started teaching 15 minutes after getting to the school on their first day and others have to figure out what they’ll teach the kids. That would’ve been a mess if I was in that situation.
Now on to the fun stuff…
This past Friday I met up with a guy who lives near me and didn’t know where all the foreigners go to party. Then we met up with the guy I met the weekend before who showed me where to go. We went to the usual spots and I took pictures at the bars and met some new friends.
Saturday, I went to Seoul to hang out with a friend from back home. We met up with one of her friends and went to a New Years festival and a flea market. I made it back to my city in time to have dinner with my recruiter and a few people she knew. I met a guy there who is into photography (like I try to be) and is also a cool dude. We went to a temple Sunday to take pictures and he taught me a lot about photography.
Also on Sunday, another friend from college came to my city. He, the cool photography guy, and I went to a bar and to a noraebang (karaoke) with some people I met Friday night. We stayed out for a ridiculously long time singing songs while I filled up my 4gig SD card.
On Monday, the fellas and I wanted to go to Seoul to see what we could get into but all of the train tickets were sold out! We decided to go to Busan instead. We had no idea where to go or what to do once we got there. I called a few people and was told to go to Haeundae. The beach is there but it’s still freezing in Korea now. We went to a bar around the corner from our hotel and talked with an older Korean couple for most of the night.
That’s the edited version of what all happened in this past weekend. Names were omitted to protect the guilty.
If you have any questions about life in South Korea, leave a comment or send an email to Jermil.Sadler@gmail.com.
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As I sat in the comfy leather seats at Chicago’s O’Hare airport waiting to board my flight to Tokyo, Japan then Seoul, South Korea, I called family and a few friends of mine. Two of my friends told me they were nervous for me and were surprised at how calm I was. Up to that point, I hadn’t thought about being nervous. So I took some time to figure out why people would be nervous in my situation and why I wasn’t.
