환영합니다!
I have loved Japan from afar for a long time. Thanks in part to my sister who started randomly studying Japanese for fun when she was about 10 years old, and partly due to the fact that one of the best summer's of my life was my first semester teaching English at the ELI where, by…
Continue reading ➞ Tokyo Day 1: Shibuya, Harajuku, and Omotesando
It starting to see like every time I go to Seoul anticipating a relaxing weekend just hanging out friends, I end up packing roughly 1 million things into one day and practically walking across the entire city. Yesterday was no exception. And just to clarify, I'm definitely not complaining. I'm really grateful to my friends who…
Continue reading ➞ Seoul for the Day: D Museum “Youth” and Itaewon
For anyone thinking of coming to Korea to teach, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed by sheer number of options that exist. There are hagwons where you can teach adults at night, or kindergarten during the day, or businessmen early in the morning. There are public schools where your classes will probably have at…
Continue reading ➞ The Virtues of EPIK: English Program in Korea
It's currently Sunday night a bit later than I should be awake given that I need to be up bright and early tomorrow morning. Mondays are not my easiest days. I have two of my most difficult classes on top of the fact that no one wants to do much thinking at all on Monday's,…
April 12th marked two months in Korea for me. Teaching is unpredictable by its very nature and so even after 9 weeks of it, I still don’t feel like I know what to expect from any given day. What I have learned, however, are which classes to be excited about and which classes to…
Continue reading ➞ Korea Month Two: Spring, Co-Teaching, and a Weekend in Seoul
I started collecting the funny little phrases that I've heard thought my first few weeks at school. And while I'm sure there are many more to come, here are just a few things my students have said to me. "Teacher, is that your real face?" "Yes." "Ohhhh natural natural." "Teacher real eyes?" "Teacher first love?"…
Yesterday I decided that it was high time I dusted off my poor camera who has been waiting patiently to be used since I moved to this city. I realized that I hadn't used it once since I'd been in Korea and so Saturday became, "get some good pictures of this city" day. Which turned into a…
Newton's third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And it occurred to me tonight, as I sit here at 10:00pm utterly exhausted from a long Monday with an hour or two of lesson planning still ahead of me, that the same principle applies to teaching.…
So the protocol here is that all of the native English teachers have another Korean English teacher from the school in the room when we are doing our lessons. Their degree of involvement from any point after that completely depends on your situation. I feel incredibly lucky to have the co-teachers that I have,…
As of March 12th I have officially been in Korea for 1 month. And as of two days ago I have been at my job for three weeks. In the grand scheme of my Korean experience this is almost nothing. But you know how they say that a persons first 5 years are the most…
Hours and Miles 