Volunteering at Mulmangcho.I miss my hair this color. (2014) Getting ready to depart Korea has left me with a lot of emotions. I have spent the last 4 years of my life in this country, and for better or worse, I have grown a lot as a person. There are a lot of things that I will miss and not miss about Korea, but as I’m winding down I thought why not close out this…
My main school during last year was a small middle school in 옥계. I really enjoyed the school a lot and I was very lucky to get a chance to fully experience the 회식 (Hweshik) also known as a work dinner. Many people do not enjoy these, but I really enjoyed them. Actually it was always really nice food I would never buy for myself and that deserves its own post. But today I am…
At my new Elementary school I have a connecting classrooms after school class. It sounds like a mouthful, which it is. One of the themes is to connect the students with pen pals in other countries and to share their culture. We also teach the students about other cultures and the like. I took a census as to what they want to learn. One of the things I need to prepare are pen pals in…
I have a good friend I have met here that volunteers a lot and I was always inspired by him. One day I happened to notice that he was going to volunteer on an event on facebook and I thought to myself, why don’t I sign up as well. I was a bit apprehensive about volunteering by myself in a foreign country at first but this experience at the Aemin Orphange made me feel more…
I was approached to see if I was willing to help a local high school prepare for an English Speech Contest. I figured why not, I have the time and it would be fun to experience working with high school students. The school is about a 40 minute commute from my current school and I go and help out between 6 – 9 p.m. The first day I went to this school I thought I…
One of my goals when moving to Incheon was to take Korean classes again. There were classes being offered but they were further away so I opted to try culcom (culture complex) in Bupyeong. It was really easy to sign up via their website. I learned about Culcom through a friend and have found it to be a more informal setting. For now this is okay with me as it is pretty flexible. The one thing…
Bittersweet goodbyes. Wangsan Middle School is my smallest school with 20 students. I only go to the school once a week to teach classes and I don’t always see my students every week. There was a two month hiatus after my coteacher was in an accident and a substitute teacher took his place. I had learned to recognize most of my students names but unfortunately with the absence of not going I forgot almost all…
So I didn’t really go anywhere exciting for summer vacation. As in I didn’t leave the country or end up on some island with nice beaches. Luckily for me, I didn’t book such a vacation, because my foot still doesn’t let me walk more than a few hours at a time without swelling a bit and then I need to rest and it goes back to its slightly swollen self the next morning.
Visas are a complicated mess only if documents do not come to you quickly. Another bonus is working with recruiters that truly care about you and how you are doing through the whole process. My first recruiter is a friend now and called me up after I told her what had happened before, and she said I needed to change my visa status a.s.a.p. before starting my contract or I would not be able to…