Why I am going

I am 33 years old.  I have been thinking about teaching English in Asia since I was around 19.  I didn't get my bachelor’s degree till 1999, so it’s been the past 10 years that I actually met the requirements to do it.  I thought about it on and off, I always decided against it.  Things in my life were going well, or I thought they would be going well soon, so I would say maybe I will do it someday.  Teaching English is completely unrelated to my career, so after I had started my career it was kind of hard to say I am going to stop and totally change directions.  On and off, always thought of a reason not to do it.  Last time I thought about it was one year ago, I was going to apply for the JET program.  Decided not to do it because it I didn’t want to leave the career I went to school for even though I was getting burnt out.  A year later I’m totally burnt out, I need a change in my life.  Being in a state of feeling I have nothing to lose, combined with my desire to have no regrets about not doing the things I want to do in life , I decided I should go for it.  20 years from now I don't want to still be wondering what it would have been like if I had lived in another country for a while.  If it sucks (like grad school did) at least I can say I tried it. 

My friend went there in June.  I had always wanted to teach in Japan, but Korea is a cheaper place to live, and there’s a lot more job options if you are applying from the US.  I don't have time to wait another year to maybe do the JET program.  Thinking about it, and talking to my friends about it, I decided I should do it a couple weeks ago. 

I've been to Korea once, 2 years ago, and I'll be going again at the end of Sept, for business-ish reasons.  I'd be going next month even if I wasn't planning to teach.  But since I have decided to go teach, I am going to see if I can schedule interviews for while I am there, instead of doing them on the phone.  I hate talking on the phone. 

I wanna go to Korea

So I have decided I want to go to Korea to teach English.  I'll go into my reasons for making that decision later.  I found a recruiter I read good things about that works with hagwons (private schools for extra studying after school) and public schools.  I’m going to apply at a hagwon since they aren't hiring for public schools right now.  I haven't contacted them yet.  I finished my resume and cover letter this weekend, and I will email it to the recruiter Sunday night.  I haven’t started collecting all the documents they want.  I’ll start on that soon. 

1st post

Like every other westerner teaching in Korea, I am starting a blog to document my experience.  If you are thinking about teaching English in Korea hopefully this blog will give you some idea what it’s like.  I can't guarantee that this blog will be interesting, but it will be honest. 


It's 2011 and I'm in Korea and I make this first post.  I wrote all this stuff as it was happening, it's just being posted long after the fact.