Day 1: Airports and Airplanes

Sitting in the airport in Tokyo during our layover, I can't help but marvel at the miracle that is human language. We take for granted that we can make arbitrary sounds and have other people understand them. That is, until that doesn't work anymore. There are going to be so many new and amazing things this year, and language will be among them (and not just because we're teaching it). I hope I am able to pick up some Korean this year, but it will definitely be a challenge since we're not allowed to speak Korean in our classroom or even allow our students to speak it.

I guess it might be useful to give some details about what we're doing. I know we've gone into detail with some people but I'm guessing that some people who want to read our blog just know that we're teaching English in Korea for a year, and not much more. So here goes.

We're about to board a flight from Tokyo to Seoul, where we will spend one week in training. Until after that, we won't know exactly what our classes or schedules will look like, but we do have a rough idea now. We'll have this coming weekend to recover from jetlag before diving in to training. Our hotel is in the Gangnam area of Seoul (yes, the one that has a song named after it). Hopefully we'll get to explore the city a bit during the week.

After training is done we'll be getting sent south to Geoje island, which is the second-largest island in Korea after Jeju. The island is connected to Busan, Korea's second-largest city, by a series of bridges and tunnels. It takes about an hour and a half by bus to get from the Busan airport to our island. Geoje is about 150 square miles (about the size of the city of Detroit, or 2/3 the size of Chicago) and has about 250,000 people living in various villages around the coast of the island. It has a big shipbuilding industry and there are a lot of foreigners from around the world who work in the shipyards.

Geoje island in South Korea

As for what we know about our work, we'll both be teaching elementary schoolers. Our hours will be roughly 2-9pm Monday-Wednesday, and those hours include both teaching hours and office/grading hours. It's a cram school, meaning students go to their normal school and then come to our school afterward for extra English learning. The students are divided by English-language ability and are with a Korean teacher for 45 minutes and then with us for 45 minutes.

If you're curious about more details, so are we! This is about the extent of what we know so far, so as we experience it we'll keep everyone updated. Also, Geoje looks to be really beautiful from the pictures we've seen, so hopefully we'll be posting some once we get there!