Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Coldest Winter


Fog stumbled in over the hills today...

Haha just kidding. Although it did, and it made me wonder about this Berkeley that has such breezy springs, mild autumns and dry winters. So why the sad summers?

Monday, June 22, 2009

So, uh...Why South Korea?

1. The threat of nuclear attack excites me.
2. I'm actually half-Korean.
3. I love pickled cabbage like nobody's business.

Actually, number 3 is pretty true.

I've been asked the "Why South Korea" question a lot lately so I thought I'd address it here. For those of you who don't know, I'm going to teach English in Seoul, South Korea for a year. I like to travel and have never been to Asia so I started looking into teaching gigs in the East. What I found was interesting: there are tons of jobs for inexperienced college grads in Korea.

While many people flock to Japan to teach in their JET program, Korea has steadily built up its EPIK (and GEPIK) programs for teaching in public schools, and recruitment agencies have sprung up everywhere hiring for private schools (called hagwons). Because there is such high demand for English-speaking teachers and because of the relative popularity of the JET program, Korean teaching jobs (1) pay more, (2) cover round-trip airfare and sometimes housing, and (3) accept a very high percentage of applicants.

So I applied to a couple of recruitment agencies and was accepted. The next thing I know, I'm being offered a job teaching at a hagwon. I might blog more about the differences between public schools and hagwons later (or at least what I've heard about them) but for now I'll just say that my hours are pretty sweet (4-10:30 pm) and my vacation time is pretty awful (7 days, unpaid).

I know what you're thinking: "Whaaaa? 7 days unpaid vacation in a year? I'd kill myself!" But wait, it gets worse...Not only is it 7 days, but they must all be taken consecutively which means that it's really 5 weekdays and 2 weekend days I'd already be getting off. Sounds pretty awful, no? AAAnd I can't take any vacation until after the first 6 months. Sucks. So to battle moderate clinical depression I came up with an ingenious (read: sketchy) plan to make it better. And it is this plan that makes me giddy with excitement about my 12-month adventure to Korea.

Sunday, June 7, 2009


(Today college ended. FML)