A Year Later

Like most things in life, I had a plan for this first blog return post to publish on the day I arrived back in America last year (August 26th). However, I ended up getting sick with whatever was going around my work and just tried to take it easy the last week. Anywhooo, it’s been over a year since I left Korea and returned to the US. And in turn, over a full year since I last posted on this blog. I was planning to retire it once I finished my adventures in Korea, but then missed the deadline to cancel my WordPress renewal and here I am, with another year of subscription lol. So I thought, “Why not write more about my time in Korea, even if I’m no longer there?” As such, please expect more posts in the following year that I have this domain name. I will try my best to write about my experiences in Korea.

To be honest, I was very bitter when I left Korea. I had all these plans for my time there and then the pandemic hit. While I’m glad Korea took the pandemic seriously, it also seriously put a damper on my fun plans in the country. I held on to that bitterness when I got back and anytime someone asked me how my time was in Korea, I would always say something like, “It was great… until the pandemic hit!” And while that’s mostly true due to the larger freedom to travel around the country, it’s also not the complete truth. 

I did enjoy Korea. It might feel like I’m trying to convince you (or even myself), but I did have fun there. It was an incredible experience and one that I will treasure until I die. I got to experience a new culture, ate incredible food, and made friends that I will not be forgetting anytime soon. I think if I hadn’t gone when I did, I would continue thinking of Korea through rose-colored glasses. In reality, Korea is like any other country. It has amazing, wonderful people who will leave an impression on you forever and it has incredibly horrible, nasty people that really should just never go out in society. It was good for me to have that “fantasy” broken down, because it’s really not healthy to view other countries as “utopians” when they’re anything but. It was also a good experience being a minority there. I will, of course, never understand the scope as to which minorities feel around the world, especially in America, but I honestly think everyone should experience what it’s like being a minority outside of their home country.

Before I get too off-track, I will start with a brief summary of my time in Korea and what led me to going over there. During my senior year of college, (and honestly before that) I realized I didn’t enjoy my major as much as I thought I would. The admins weren’t very helpful in showing me options other than med school and research, so I felt like there was nothing for me out there. I knew I needed a break from school, which also turns out is super scary suddenly not being a student. Like what do you mean I have to be an adult ALL the time?? I also knew if I was not continuing my education, I needed to work. I wanted to travel. And I wanted to experience something new. I had a brief encounter studying abroad the summer before my junior year and I thought it might be interesting to do something like that again. And eventually I came across a blog about a girl teaching English in Japan and becoming so good at Japanese that she was translating a solely-Japanese manga (Japanese comic book) into English. I thought “That is soooo cool! I wanna do that!” And thus began my interest in teaching English abroad.

My roommate and I were both in the same boat—graduates with no interest in our majors, and both interested in anime and K-pop. So we began exploring our options and as we took our TESOL summer course, we got acceptance invitations to both Japan and Korea. After a hefty pro-con list, we settled on Korea. Took the week-long orientation course somewhere in Seoul. Got our city placements. Started teaching in Korea.

For 2 years, I was teaching English at an elementary school in Donghae, Gangwon, South Korea. In my next post, I’ll go into more detail about the city itself. For those still reading, I hope you enjoy hearing more of my adventures!