(If you are extremely uninterested in the Korean education system, scroll down until you see pictures. They're down there, I promise.)
Back in the spring, when I was trying to figure out what to do with the next year of my life, I applied to several teach-abroad options. Korea and Japan have government-regulated systems of placing foreign teachers in public schools, called EPIK and JET respectively. Both programs are respected and reliable, although JET is much more selective. The main problem I had with JET was that they can send you anywhere--they ask where you'd like to be placed, but often ignore that preference entirely. They were also obnoxiously inflexible and unforgiving, and frankly the whole program had a rather crotchety vibe that really put me off. The EPIK program accepts applicants on a rolling basis rather than on merit, and the program coordinators are helpful, flexible, and easy-going--the complete opposite of JET's.
I also applied to several hagwons that I found through Hopkins' career database. One turned out to be either a scam or a position writing college admissions essays in English for Korean students trying to get into American universities--which is fraud as far as I'm concerned, and not something I was willing to do. The other hagwon I applied to was specifically looking for graduates of Ivy Leagues or equivalent universities, but didn't give many details about the job. The owners of the hagwon were an American/Korean couple, and they sounded very nice during the phone interview. It wasn't in Seoul, but in a small city an hour northeast of the capital. (Spoiler alert: this is where I ended up.)
Government placements are generally very safe, secure positions with decent pay, fair hours, and about 30 days of vacation time. Hagwons vary widely. Franchise hagwons are chains with multiple locations, are well-established, and tend to be secure positions. Entrepreneurial hagwons are typically single-locations schools run by a single person or family, and range from respectable institutions to shady fly-by-night businesses that could shut down at any time. For both types of hagwons, pay is typically higher than at public schools, but there is less job security and about half the number of vacation days. Of course, if your shady hagwon goes out of business, you might not get paid at all. Mothers often shuffle their children between hagwons (for reasons I don't quite understand but I'm sure has something to do with the Korean idea of 'saving face') so class sizes can vary from day to day.
Fortunately, I got very lucky and ended up at a well-established and respectable hagwon! The hagwon I work at has been operating for 10 years (they just celebrated the anniversary a few days ago!) and the classes are stable, meaning that I have the same students all the time. I am in the process of taking over the classes taught by the hagwon owners, because they're leaving for America soon and will be gone for more than a month. I teach three classes five days a week, plus a Saturday class every other week.
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| My classroom! |
I teach a class called Special Elementary from 4:30-5:50pm, which is mostly second to fourth graders, with a few fifth and sixth graders mixed in. I have 18 students in that class and they're all wonderful. They're so darn cute!!!
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| These are sticker boards, which we use as a reward system. |
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| Some of my cute students' faces! |
From 6:00-7:20 and 7:30-8:50 I teach two Mastery classes, which are the highest level students. They're middle-schoolers and frankly their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary far surpasses that of many American high school graduates. (Even my elementary kids are learning words like ravine, glacier, and consequence.) They're a lot of fun because they understand humor--usually the last skill acquired when learning a foreign language--and they've got spunk. Every other Saturday I teach a basic Spanish class for two hours, and almost all the students in the class are my Mastery students.
I also have another class where I'm the student: Korean class. I've only been going for four days, and I can't really say much yet other than "I go to the restaurant. Are you going to the library? Yes/No." But it's a fun challenge.
Okay, okay, enough about school.
FOOD TIME.
Korea is full of restaurants. Literally half of the businesses here are restaurants. Most are always empty and closed at least one day a week, so how they stay in business is something of a mystery to me. One of the nice things about eating Korean food is that you can usually tell which restaurants are good because they all have glass windows--just pick one with lots of people inside! Another good thing about Korean food is that even when it's mediocre, it's still pretty tasty. (Except for sundae. Eugh.)
If you're wondering what the bad things about eating Korean food are, here are the biggies:
1) It's very messy. Have you ever eaten a noodle dish with chopsticks? The broth goes everywhere. (Fortunately, most restaurants provide aprons for this reason.)
2) It's hard to decide what to order when you don't understand Korean.
3) Once you understand what you want to order, it's hard to order it when you don't speak Korean.
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| 검자탕 = gamjatang. |
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| Yummy vertebrae meat. Surprisingly delicious! |
We picked the restaurant because it was crowded. It's apparently something of a neighborhood staple, and we were pleasantly surprised to find one of our fellow teachers, Peter, inside with his wife! Thank goodness, too, because as I previously mentioned, it's difficult to figure out what you want and how to order it.
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| Peter helped us order fried rice for our leftover soup. Thank you, Peter. |
Peter is older than the rest of us--he's married with a baby, for Pete's sake (see what I did there?)--and he's kinda big-brotherly so by Korean custom, he is our oppa/hyung, the Korean words for 'big brother.' Koreans have lots of social respect structured into their language, and it can vary by gender. The boys call him hyung, but because I'm a girl, I call him oppa, which sounds exactly the same as what they yell in Greek restaurants when they light the saganaki (fried cheese) on fire. Those who don't live under a rock also may recognize the word from "Oppa Gangnam Style," the viral hit song by Psy. If you haven't seen the video I highly recommend it, it's a charmingly satiric take on the opulence of Korean pop culture.
Oh, come on, just watch it. You know you want to. You're already singing it in your head anyway.
Anyway, Peter was a good oppa, and he shared his makkoli with us. Makkoli is a Korean alcohol that tastes a little bit like beer but differs in that 1) it's made from fermented rice, and 2) doesn't taste like carbonated stale horse pee. And it's served in bowls instead of cups.
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| It looks like milk. |
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| Excellent oppa! |
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| It's customary for younger people to show respect to their elders by not looking at them while drinking... ...but I think Eric might be taking it a bit too far. |
There's one more good thing I can say about Korean food: it's nearly impossible to screw up. I've fallen in love with dakgalbi, the signature dish of Chuncheon (the city where I live), and I've taken it upon myself to perfect my dakgalbi recipe so I can make it when I go back to America. To make 'authentic Korean food,' all you have to do is take the core Korean ingredients and throw them in a pot. You never have to measure anything because no matter what, it's not going to taste bad.
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| This is professional restaurant dakgalbi... |
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| ...and this is my homemade dakgalbi. |
My recipe has a lot more tteok, because I have come to love rice cakes. I use a combination of standard boring tube-shaped tteok and fun star and heart shaped tteok--have I mentioned how literally everything is Korea is adorable? My washing machine has an actual melody it plays when the load is finished, and there's a specific and catchy 'train song' that plays when a train arrives at the station.
But I digress. Once I get my recipe a little more perfect, I'll put it on here. A few ingredients, like the rice cakes (tteok) and the hot pepper paste (gochujang), might have to be ordered if there's not a Korean market near you, but this stuff is cheap and delicious. SO DELICIOUS. The more I eat it, the more I love it!
Cheers,
Ashton
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