환영합니다!
When I moved to Korea in 2017 to teach English, I had no expectations for the role that experience would play in my life. If you had told 22-year-old me, struggling to say my address to a taxi driver in Korean, that 7 years later I would be doing a Ph.D. in applied linguistics and…
This is a bad story with a happy ending. In the end, I'm writing this post from an apartment that I love, looking out over the mountains. But the process, the getting here part was bad. This is the apartment hunting in Gwangju, South Korea story. But first, a bit of context. When I lived…
What to Expect From Your First Semester Teaching English in Korea My kids have officially finished their final exams for the semester and we are now in the this weird two week limbo where they still have to come to school, but won't actually be tested on anything we teach them. Basically we…
Continue reading ➞ What to Expect From Your First Semester Teaching English in Korea
A Visit to The North Korean Border and DMZ in Paju About a week ago I got a message from one of my Korean friends in Seoul asking if I wanted to come on a little road trip to Paju. Paju is a small city north of Seoul that seems to be famous for having…
(Warning, this is more just a stream of consciousness that found its way out of my brain rather than a cohesive thought.) In a very bizarre turn of events my culture shock in Korea hasn't been from the food or the language. Most of what has happened, has happened somewhat according to my expectations. I…
I like to take pictures of streets. And looking back through all my old photos to start writing this post, I realize that this is kind of a recent thing for me. I traveled a bit in high school as well but it wasn't until university that I really started to fall in love with…
This is my view as I write this post, upstairs from a cafe in Gangnam. And even as I write this I don't really believe that I'm here. It's weird to have loved a country from afar for so long and to finally be here. It's weird that I know so much about this city and…
Continue reading ➞ Korea: First Impressions of a Country That Doesn’t Feel So Foreign
I made my official decision to move to Korea during Thanksgiving break of last year. This came at the end of a long internal battle between the side of me that felt like I'd be cheating on my first true love, South America, and the other side of me that increasingly knew that Korea was…
Continue reading ➞ How People Respond When I Say I’m Moving to Korea
Hours and Miles 