Jumping In

Leaving for South Korea has been one of biggest decisions I’ve made in my life. Taking off from SFO almost three weeks ago, all I could think as the plane ascended, flew, and landed was, “This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous.”

And this is ridiculous. But in a good way.

I’ve planned to teach English in a foreign country since high school. It started with a blog about an ESL teacher in Japan who's name escapes me. Overall though, from what I can remember, it was an entertaining and inspiring read. The blog completely engrossed me in the day-to-day life of an ESL teacher in modern Japan, and it just struck me as something truly worthwhile in doing...the idea of immersing oneself in an entirely different culture (without having to spend exhorbant amounts of money to do it!).

Over the years that blog has been stuck in the back of my mind. As I grew closer to finishing my Bachelor's, I read various online forums (mostly the Something Awful forums and Dave's ESL Cafe) about other people’s experiences and became more and more convinced that this thing was for me. I’ve always wanted to travel, but not as a tourist. Seeing the sights and landmarks, while interesting, are not the truly fulfilling experiences that a foreign country has to offer.

I guess I crave something dramatic and different. I crave something challenging, something that’ll (hopefully) mold me into a better, or at least more aware, person.

I figured it would be best to go on this little “adventure” fresh out of college. It’s the easiest time to get away and live somewhere else because your obligations are at its lowest. No marriage, no career, and overall no “settling down” on a particular place to start a life. Since high school, and as time went on, it became more and more apparent that I needed to do this. It became a list of reasons that grew as circumstances changed in my life.

It started as simply wanting to go. Then, it became an economic reason. Jobs are few and far between in the States, and while I’m guaranteed a job at home working after school programs for a couple hours a day, it's just not enough. In Korea, right now, I’m guaranteed 2.0 million won per month, rent free. If you do the conversion it’s really not that much in USD, but considering the cheap cost of living here, combined with the fact that I'm not paying rent, I am saving quite a bit of money.

Another reason to the list is that I’m 23 years old. I want to “see the world” and do adventurous things. I have literally not been outside the country (Vancouver, Canada doesn’t count) and, as much as I love California and the Bay Area specifically, it gets old. As I’ve mentioned earlier though, I don’t want to be a tourist. I see too many of my peers doing that kind of thing. Vacation in Europe, seeing the sites, taking a shit load of your typical pictures and getting wasted 24/7. That’s all well and good, but to me it’s not satisfying enough. It’s not the whole picture. There’s more.

Another reason is personal that I won’t get into too much. But let’s just say we’ve all felt the need to escape for one reason or another. Please bear in mind that if you’re reading this and you’re a friend it is certainly not you that I’m generalizing about. It has more to do with the past couple of years and all the events that have transpired, coupled with what I’ve had to deal with growing up and my utter tiredness of putting up with, well, the current bullshit.

I know that sounds very general but I’m trying to stay away from the emo writing for once. It’s all I did back in high school and college when I wrote and it’s just not that interesting. I also don’t think I have the gall to bear my soul on the internet for all to see anymore.

Anyways. So why Korea? To be honest my first choice was Japan. But, being caught up in the clusterfuck that was my college education, I neglected to read the fine print on the JET application. It read, “deadline is NOT the post mark date.”

So yeah, in a nutshell, my application went in late, which meant I pretty much had no chance of being accepted. JET doesn’t fuck around. It has been getting pretty competitive over the years and will probably continue to be so as the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) industry becomes more popular. I almost didn’t even go to Korea because of the dramatic increase in applications this year (due to the recession, more on this later).

But yes, why Korea. Well to be honest I didn’t know a WHOLE lot about it before flying over here. I’ve read plenty of forums about people living here as TEFLers, but as for culture, language, and etc. it was all a mystery to me. Which was fine, to be honest. Given the reasons above I’d have gone to any developed country that would have had me. Plus, me being me, I sometimes like to do outrageous things like live in a country for a year that I know little about.

I’ve actually learned a lot so far. Despite the many strange, even annoying, things here, there are many admirable features about South Korea. For one thing, it is considered the “economic miracle” in recent history. Starting out with basically nothing after the Korean War, this country has become as developed as they come (or at least nearly so). The subway system (here in Busan) is awesome. You can go anywhere in the city for about a dollar. It’s fast, it’s air-conditioned, and it’s clean. There are high rises and roads being built everywhere, and I mean literally everywhere. One thing that’s nice, at least here in Busan, is that despite the country becoming more urban, the landscape is still very green. It might have to do with the fact that the entire Korean peninsula is mountainous (so all the cities are basically pocketed between these green mountains), but there’s just something, well, Korean about seeing a whole bunch of farmland then BAM six high rises 30 stories tall in a row. I guess it’s a testament to how fast this place is developing.

And the people? I think I’ll leave that to a later entry. Let’s just say that, despite this country being practically a mirror image of the U.S. economically, it’s a near opposite of the U.S. culturally. The reasons are endless: from the way one interacts with strangers, to the way teachers and other authority figures are treated, to the way small things like shaking a person’s hand has all sorts of rules attached. It’s something I’ve been learning and trying to integrate into my lifestyle so I don’t come off as just another jerkoff foreigner.

But yes, Korea has been...interesting. The experience so far have been what I’ve expected. Not so much in content but in generalities, if that makes sense. I’ll touch on this later, but let’s just say that culture shock is beginning to set in...I think.

I will be uploading pictures when I get the chance. There are quite a few. I intend to stay pretty up-to-date with this. There will be a lot to talk about, I’m sure.

An-nyeong-hi-gye-se-yo for now.