Here's a map of South Korea - that's Jinju on the south side - about a half hour from the beach. Niiiice. So that's where I'll be for the next year.
And man oh man, it doesn't even seem like I'll be gone for that long. None of this has really sunk in yet. Buut it's gonna happen pretty soon. All I have to do is pack and then it's time to go. Woof. But I am pretty excited about going - new places, new faces, new jarb - all good things.
Since my last post I found the job after looking for about three weeks, then I signed a contract and just recently finally got my visa stamped in my passport. It looks real legit. But ever since signing my contract I've been running all over the place, saying my seeyalaters to friends from Vancouver to Seattle to Bellingham to Vegas. And it's all been awesome.
A lot of people ask about the job and Korea and stuff so Here are some of the details of the job:
I'll be working at a private, after school institution for the next year. Parents pay for their kids to go there throughout the year, where their kids can take extra classes in math, science, English, taekwondo(sp), etc. All of these schools (including the public schools) prefer that their English teachers are native speakers such as myself. They hire us by the truck loads. So many over there. Literally all you have to do is have a four year degree and be from an English speaking country.
It took me a solid three months to get all my documents and whatnot together for this job - FBI background report, notarized degree. But now it's time and I'm ready to dust off that passport and get some staaamps out East.
Other deets: I'll be teaching kids from age 8-16. My hours are 1:30 - 10:00PM. A little on the long side, but still a decent deal. I think I'll teach six classes a day. We get weekends off, ten vacation days per year, and we get national holidays off too.
No Korean in the class! Dat's right - no sprekenzi that Korean in this class bc I, your teacher, do not speak any of it.
Everybody asks me, "do you speak Korean?" No. No, I do not. "How does that work?" Well, a lot of people speak English over there and schools are fine with the fact that you don't speak it - gets the kids immersed in the English.
Others ask, "why do you want to do that? Why would you want to teach in Korea?"
Why the ef would I not want to teach in Korea?
But really, Korea provides more money and benefits for foreign teachers than any other country in the world. Look it up. No one comes close. I got thems college loans to pay off and Korea allows me to pay those off AND travel the world at the same time.
Benefits: I get my round trip airfare paid for by the school, free apartment, 50% paid insurance, pension (Korean 401k), severance pay of one month at the end of the contract, and a decent salary of 2.1 million Korean won / month. I'm a millionaire. That comes out to about $1900 per month. Not much, but it's crazy cheap to live like a king out there.
And I get to live and work in Korea for a year, which is pretty cool.
The city I'm going to live in seems pretty cool. Population: 300,000. Weather: just like the PNW, minus the incessant amount of rain. Spring is on the way and I'm pretty excited about that. Soon they'll have their annual lantern festival, which looks unreal. google that ish. There is a good amount of other foreign teachers there, so I'm expecting to meet a lot of English speakers/new amigos as soon as I get over there. I've read that the city is really clean too, so it's the opposite of my last apartment's location - Las Vegas. Sick nasty. Other than that, I have no idea of what I should expect of my new city.
Crazy that this is happening. And I mean, I've been planning on doing this for a while and I've been waiting for months now, but all that time has really been flying by. Usually when I spend an extended amount of time back here in Vancouver I am pretty ready to gtfo, but this time around it's been awesome, seeing friends pretty often, traveling up to Seattle, spending time with the fam - again, all good.
Side note: I'm excited to finally use my degree. Every single job I've had since graduating in 2011 has required just about zero education. Now things are changing, lookin up!
That's about all I have for now. I'll write again soon...from Koreeeea
And if I didn't get to say see you later, then, well, I'll see you later, I'll probably miss you, and don't worry, I'll be back in a year, which isn't that long. They go by pretty fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment