Acceptance

My hunt for finding a job was not as easy or as quick as I thought it would be. I spent an entire month applying for positions, which at first started very casually. However, once the job offers were not flying my way, the applications became a bit more frantic. Every moment that a new job was posted on a number of international job forums, I was ready to send my resume and photo. I must have applied to nearly 150 different schools and not a single one would grant me the opportunity to even interview. Disheartening, I know. Japan was turning out to be more of a white whale then I had expected or even wanted it to be. Instead, finding a job was like finding the perfect pumpkin in a giant patch to carve into a jack-o-lantern, it’s there, but you have to make damn sure that you look hard to find it. What I had to realize that my perfect pumpkin was in a different patch all together.

I expanded my search because Japan was not providing the results that I needed in a reasonable time frame based on the effort put forth. Steve, my aforementioned best friend, teaching and travel buddy, had to do little to convince me that our search was not going well either. Our new found focus would now be focused primarily in finding a position in South Korea.

Now, what must be understood is that Korea was not a random choice. Both Steve and I had sent a single application there while we were still in the phase of applying to teach in Japan. And both of us had heard back from and gotten interviews from schools. Another factor involves the amenities that Korea offers which surpass that of nearly every other school in most other countries. Aside from decent wages, schools offer flights, housing, partial medical, severance pay and 5 weeks paid vacation (Only two of the five weeks vacation are by choice, the rest are Korean national holidays).

And so I began applying with the same fervor that I had spent getting a job in Japan. It felt strange. It was like I was cheating on something that I had committed myself to. Only this time, things started to happen much smoothly and much more quickly. Steve and I decided to expand the search on September 1st and already by September 7th I was involved with a number of schools. The biggest reason being for the quickness of the process is that I applied for the help of a Korean agent, a service not readily available in Japan. What the agent would provide me with is a language bridge between myself and the Korean hogwans (schools) as well as a number of private job opportunities. It is a free service that is provided by the hogwans to help overseas applicants, such as myself, find a job much more easily.

Well, it worked.

My new agent, Julie, who lived in Korea, found me a number of jobs to interview with. My first interview was quite an interesting experience. I spoke with Julie on the phone, who had great command of English, so I dim-wittedly assumed that my interviewer, who worked in a hogwan that taught English, would have equal understanding or better. I think I gave away the ending here. The man I spoke with was very difficult to understand and I had asked him to repeat himself a countless number of times. Although in an ESL handbook I had acquired described similar cacophonous experiences, I continued to think that an ESL teacher should be able to understand any amount of broken English. I thought that I had bombed the interview.

Afterwards I received an e-mail from Julie, stating that the interviewer was very impressed with me and was looking to offer me a job. Ah…really? After my first interview I had only taken one more on the phone before I received the contract for the first position, confirmed that the hogwan had a good reputation, asked Julie a bunch of questions and then finally accepted the position in a city called Sangju.

Although, I had flip flopped my decision a few times regarding where exactly in Korea I wanted to be (a metropolis or a big city), my final destination of Sangju is a city with about 150,000 people and located about 30minutes by train from a metropolis known as Daegu (3 million people).

Now that I have accepted a position, there are still a few things that I need to get taken care of before venturing off to live in another country. Right now acquiring my teaching visa and buying a plane ticket are my main concerns. My contact begins November 1st, which means my tentative departure date for my 15hr non-stop flight to Korea is October 30th. Look at that, I’ll be home for my sister’s 20th birthday.