English Teachers Desperately Needed in Ulleung-do

The two EPIK teachers on Ulleung Island (120km east of the mainland) will be leaving soon, and EPIK is looking for one elementary school and one middle school teacher to take their spots beginning in March 2011.

The perks, above and beyond the regular EPIK contract benefits, include

• a 500,000 won monthly "rural" bonus 
• 10 extra days of vacation
• relocation allowance 
• resident ferry rates - 5,000 won one-way
• north korea would never, ever attack you

For more info on the position, the island, or the people you would be replacing, check out their blog: http://notanothertourist.blogspot.com/2010/12/wanted-teachers-in-ulleungdo.html

Mid-term Time

It's that time of year again, when EPIK teachers across the country breath a collective sigh of relief and hagwon teachers shoot collective evil eye darts at EPIK teachers. Exam time! For high school teachers at least, this means half-days of little or no work supervising students as they write their mid-terms.

Though for many of us EPIKers, the start of exams actually spells the end of easy street - the week before exams most of my classes are canceled to give teachers an opportunity to catch students up on material yet to be covered in the curriculum. Sometimes students will choose not to have class at all, opting instead for a period of "self-study".

This morning students took their English exam. I snagged a copy of the 1st and 3rd grade tests, and thought I'd share some of the exam Qs with you here, just in case you were wondering what Korean students are actually supposed to be learning. This will also give you a good idea of the disparity between students' "testing level" and their "speaking level." Though most people would say that the latter is a more important skill when it comes to language, it matters little to Korean students, since it's not on the test.

The majority of my students, even some of those in high-level ("testing level") classes, struggle to put a single sentence together. One common scenario takes place each day as hey line up outside of the classroom door. They look at me with blank faces, pointing at the door and motioning for me to open it. I pretend I don't understand, and invariably one of them will yell "Door!" or "Open!" I gaze back at them blankly, and say "What door?" or "You want me to open what?" They continue to mumble to each other until someone finally steps up and says "Open the door, please," at which point I unlock the door and let them into the classroom. Sometimes they will forget the "please," and depending on how long it has taken them to form this simple sentence, I'll let it slide.

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Here are some sample test questions from the first (fresh/soph) and third (senior) grade mid-term exams. Go ahead, test yourself!

1st grade sample Q's:

8. According to the following passage, why don't Calvaria tree seeds germinate?

In some cases two species are so dependent upon each other that if one becomes extinct, the other will as well. This nearly happened with trees that relied on the now-extinct Dodo birds. They once roamed Mauritius, a tropical island located in the Indian Ocean. However, they became extinct during the late 19th century. They were over-hunted by humans and other animals. After they disappeared, the Calvaria tree soon stopped sprouting seeds. Scientists finally concluded that, for the seeds of the Calvaria tree to sprout, they needed to first be digested by the Dodo bird.

1. As the seeds were too old to sprout in desert.
2. As two species are so dependent on each other.
3. As the Dodo birds ate all the seeds of Calvaria tree.
4. As the Dodo birds roamed Mauritius, a tropical island.
5. As the Dodo birds did not digest the Calvaria tree seeds.

14. Which underlined word is incorrect?

A highway was 1 built through our suburb some months ago. After that, the noise at our sports field was so unbearable that 2 complaints led the authorities to hold a public hearing. I outlined ow the noise 3 affected our games, and ended by telling officials the only time it was quiet enough to play was between 4 pm and 6 pm. One official 4 eyed me doubtfully and said "I don't understand that. Traffic is 5 smoothest between four and six." "You're right," I said. "That's when it isn't moving well."

18. Which of the following underlined phrases is incorrect?

New Zealand is 1 a little larger than the UK. Its largest city, Auckland, has over one million people living in it. 2 In area, though, Auckland is about twice 3 as big as London, England, which has a population of 7.2 million people. You can see easily that Auckland is 4 less crowded than London. There are fewer cars, too, but more boats. In fact, Auckland is called the "City of Sails" because more people own sailboats there than in 5 any other cities in the world.

3rd Grade Sample Q's:

Page 1: Definitions. Select the appropriate word from the word bank below to fit the definition.
Word bank: network, prosperous, contraction, progress, utter, emit, grab, cultivate, let go over, expert, intense, stagger, habitat, instinct, puzzled, organize, sink, surge, disturb...

1. Which option below refers to a different person?

A teenage boy played 1his new rock album for his father, who was a classical music fan. The father declared that this was terrific music, and 2he began to explain why he found it artistically admirable. Rather than being pleased, the boy was annoyed. "Can't I have anything to myself?" 3he asked. 4He wanted, in the matter of music, to feel that 5he was the expert and his father was taking it over. In the matters of music, clothes, or ways of talking, the parents' purpose may not be to control but to feel solidarity with their children. Yet the children may experience their parents' moves to accept or imitate their behavior as a power-based invasion.

10. Choose the number where the selected sentence would be most appropriate.

However, these superficial judgements are usually revised after a longer exposure to the foreigner's speech.

We judge a foreigner's knowledge of our language by the number and sort of mistakes he makes. ( 1 ) We are inclined to think he knows our language quite well if he does not make many mistakes. ( 2 ) It does not usually occur to us that he may be avoiding taking risks and confining himself to doing only what he knows he can do right. ( 3 ) A person who does not have expert knowledge probably judges a foreigner's ability in his language by how good the foreigner's pronunciation is or by how hesitantly he speaks. ( 4 ) He tends to assume that poor pronunciation is equal to a general lack of knowledge of the language, and that broken speech is confined to those who do not know the language well. ( 5 )

23. Choose the appropriate selection to fill in the blank.

Children don't need all of their time schedule. I am a stay-at-home mom with an eight-year-old and a six-year-old. I don't schedule play dates. My girls don't go to dance, gymnastics, piano lessons, or sports camp. They don't want to, and that's fine with me. They play outside in the daytime and do absolutely nothing structured: they go for walks, ride bikes, go to the beach, a park, or a picnic. My acquaintances worry for them, but they need not. My two girls always stay curious about the things aorund them. Sometimes they give an ingenious solution to a problem others can't imagine. I think this could be achieved _______.

1. by playing competently with peers
2. by expressing their negative feelings
3. by interacting positively with other peers
4. by getting the opportunity to think on their own
5. by going to sports camp which attract their interest

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These are just a few of the questions on the midterm, which is written collectively by all of the grade's English teachers (except me). Most of them choose passages out of the textbook and re-word them to confuse the students. Some of the teachers run their questions by me before submitting them, to ensure that they make sense. Others don't, with sometimes hilariously confusing results. On one exam, a teacher wrote a question in which the student had to choose between "immigrate" and "emigrate" in 5 different places. The way the passage was worded, either word would have worked in every single instance. Luckily another teacher brought the question to me before the test went to the printer, and we fixed it.

Identities!

This week my lesson isn't as thrilling as $100k Pyramid, but it's still going pretty well. I call it "Identities."Lisa gave me a set of "identity cards" that she made and used last week. With the class separated on opposite sides of the room, half of the class gets a new identity (Karl, Jessica, Juan), and the other half gets a piece of paper. I tell them that they need to meet five new people and get to know some things about them, and we review questions they can ask to get to the specific information, like:

Birthday: "When is your birthday?", "When were you born?"

Place of birth: "Where were you born?"

Age: "How old are you?"

Hobby: "What do you like to do in your free time?", "What are your hobbies?"

etc.

As basic as this sounds, it's really tough for a lot of my students to formulate these questions without a prompt. If I ask them how they would ask someone about their siblings (and trust me, I explain the word "siblings"), they look at me with a blank face. "How many..." I say. "How many..." they repeat. I can see the wheels turning in their heads, churning through all of the English rules and formulas they've learned in the last 10 years. "How many brothers and sisters..." someone will say, after 2 or 3 minutes of silence. "Right," I say finally, "How many brothers and sisters do you have?"

After reviewing the questions, I pass out the identities and ask them to mingle and write down responses for up to five people (depending on time) before sitting back down. Once they are seated on their respective sides of the room, I tell them I want them to introduce me to the people they met. "Who did you meet?" I'll ask one student, who will look at their sheet and say, for example, "Karl." I'll look across the room and should "Where's Karl?" If they aren't paying attention this quickly gets everyone to look up. "Karl" raises his/her hand. "What's up, Karl?" I'll say. Back to the first student, "Tell me about Karl." They look back at their card. "He birthday is December nine." "His birthday is December ninth," I have them repeat. I review the use of personal pronouns (he/she) and possessive adjectives (his/her) and write examples on the board for them to review as I go around the room and ask different students to respond.

Koreans, in general, have a big problem with the difference. As one teacher told me after class, they first have to think of the gender of the person they're referring to. Then they have to think about the function of the word (adjective, pronoun) and finally the correct format for the gender and function. Though the Korean language does have pronouns and possessive adjectives like this (그 = he, 그녀 she, 그의 = his, 그녀의 her), my co-teacher told me that they're rarely used when speaking - they are only used when translating English directly into Korean or in the written language. Instead, they more often use the general word for "person" (사람), which carries no connotation of gender.

I can't fault the students for their own failures when it comes to speaking - the system of English education in Korea has stacked the odds against them. Their class lectures are conducted almost exclusively in Korean, the only exception being when a new vocabulary word is introduced, and even then it's sandwiched between lines of Korean, so it remains trapped, effectively, within the language structure of Korean. Students have difficulty developing a separate identity for the English language within this framework.

I also read recently that such different languages (grammatically, phonetically, etc) as English and Korean require over 2,000 study hours in order for a native speaker of one to gain proficiency in the other. More similar languages, like English and Spanish, or Korean and Japanese, require only about 360 study hours to reach the same level of fluency.

In any case, I feel like I'm starting to get a read on my students and can control them better. It makes a world of difference in the way they behave and how much they participate. I think at first I was more concerned with making sure the students had fun - one of our objectives as EPIK teachers, after all, is to cultivate interest among the students - than trying to make them participate. I think the students started to sense this, the same way that a dog smells your fear, and they started to take advantage of it. I can't say exactly how my attitude changed, but now I have no problem kicking a student out of the classroom after a few requests to participate. If they aren't interested in the activity we're doing, I'm not interested in having them in my class. Usually, after kicking a student out of a troublesome class, obnoxious students will reveal themselves to be nothing more than sheep in wolves' clothing - they roll over and purr, or do whatever sheep do to display defeat or obedience.

I was expecting some difficulty with "Identities," since it's a speaking activity and requires a certain amount of unsupervised conversation. Surprisingly, as long as the students have a reference point for questions, they are perfectly willing to participate in the activity. Sometimes I'll catch them taking shortcuts - saying "Birthday" instead of asking a question - but I'll remind them to ask questions and wait for them to correct themselves. With a little bit of encouragement they begin to see how easy it is.

It also helped that one half of the class was pitted against the other - I told the ones with identities not to reveal the answer unless the other student spoke in English. The classroom setup only improved the situation - since friends sit next to each other, they can't ask each other the questions. They have to talk to the students on the other side of the room. Whereas a good friend would just turn their card around and let you copy all of the answers, those other students don't have a problem holding out the answer until they hear some English.

More Orientation

Here are some pics of what our daily orientation life has been like:

Our crib.
























The can. Like Kenya, the open bathroom is also popular in Korea, with no separation between the shower and the rest of the room. Everything is tiled so cleanup is really easy. You just splash water everywhere. I really like this setup.
























Lisa in the laundry room. She's pretty much fluent in Korean, so it was a cinch. (It helped that the Maytag washers had instructions in English.)















The cafeteria. It's really shiny.



















Breakfast. Yeah, that's kimchi and cornflakes. The Koreans don't touch the cornflakes - it's strictly for the Westerners.


















Lunch/dinner. It is always a healthy serving of rice, some soup/broth, kimchi, fruit salad with mayo, and some noodles or meat.



















The campus coffee shop - pretty swanky. I had read that access to coffee was few and far between in Korea. So far that has been thoroughly disproven, with not only a plethora of good coffee shops, but also coffee dispensers on almost every corner. I'm crossing my fingers that this trend continues.


















I wanted to post a video of our Class Leader, Grissom (he told us that he chose his English name because CSI is his FAVORITE show), because he's hilarious. His English isn't the best, but he makes up for it with enthusiasm and animation.


Here is a video of one of our class sessions: Songs & Chants. It was led by a very charismatic elementary school teacher, who needed only a few claps to turn a room full of supposed adults into giddy schoolchildren. Most of our sessions were very blase - this was one of the only spirited classes.

Orientation continued

On Saturday we went to Korean Folk Village. It sounds like a cheesy amusement park type of place, and probably would be in America (i.e. Tombstone, Arizona) but they do a good job of giving off an authentic feel while maintaining accessibility. They basically transplanted a bunch of traditional homesteads from the countryside, ranging from peasants' straw-roofed houses to noblemens' sprawling estates (complete with concubine quarters). They have also employed a lot of artisans to demonstrate and sell traditional (many of which could also still be considered contemporary) artifacts like straw baskets, silk garments, and forged iron tools.

This woman was in one of the peasant's homes, spinning silk into thread from silk worm eggs. It was fascinating. She was boiling several dozen eggs at a time, and would stir it with chopsticks to draw up the threads, which loosened from the heat. She strung them through a small hole in the opening of the wooden apparatus at her feet, through her hands, where she funneled them into a single thread, and onto the spinning contraption to her left, where the thick, firm threads were wound into a skein of silk.

One of the Korean guides said something to her and she picked up one of the eggs with her golden chopsticks and pierced it, pulling out a small golden brown silk worm larvae. She offered it to me in her palm. I motioned towards my mouth, asking if it was for me to eat, and she nodded. So I ate it. It tasted much like you would expect a stewed bug to taste, with very little crunch but a slight, unpleasant aftertaste reminiscent of moth balls. Apparently silk worm larvae are a popular snack among Koreans.

The whole park was very tranquil. There was a Buddhist monastery complete with an actual practicing monk.

Many of the trees were wrapped with what looked like straw leg warmers, which is, in fact, what they turned out to be. The guide told us that the trees would get cold and die without their booties.

The biggest attraction for us was the performances in the afternoon - traditional farmers' music, a tightrope exhibition, seesaw acrobats, and equestrian feats. I was particularly interested in the tightrope act, since we had just seen some pretty impressive moves in the King and the Clown the night before, and I thought they would be even more impressive in person. Indeed, I wasn't disappointed.

The musicians, led by an old chubby man who never stopped grinning, beat a variety of drums while dancers marched around them with long tassels attached to a rigid stick on their hats that would spin as they turned their heads. They all had seemingly boundless energy.















The acrobats were two very petite girls who, despite their diminutive size, would send each other flying on the other end of the seesaw with every jump. They mimicked each other in the air, beating drums or doing flips.


















The highlight for me, though, was definitely the 70 year old man on the tightrope.He would flutter his fan and walk or run or bounce across the rope. He made it look really easy.


































One of the annoying things about EPIK orientation so far has been doing everything with 400 other people. When we all got back on the 10 buses to take us back to Dankook University, we were told that one person was missing, so we had to wait. 30 minutes later we left, supposedly without him. Later, Lisa and I sat with him at dinner. Turns out he was on the bus the whole time, fast asleep.

EPIK Orientation Day 2

So far they've been sensitive to the jetlag suffered by 400+ people and have given us ample free time - too much, apparently, for some people. Two teachers have already gotten in trouble for sneaking into an empty dorm room and pushing the beds together, scratching the brand new wood floors. The dorms are segregated by gender here, as they supposedly are in any Korean university, specifically to prevent, um, "distractions." (I am only wondering WHY they needed to push beds together? A post-coitus covert cuddle?) Koreans also have great care for their floors, since the heating system runs immediately underneath it, but particularly for sanitary reasons. They always take off their shoes before entering a living space.

Two other teachers came back from town, drunk off of soju, at 3am. Since the dorms close from 1am - 5am (a fact that EPIK heavily publicized when we first arrived), they stood outside banging on the doors and yelling until a security guard finally let them in. Apparently a huge breach of cultural etiquette.

We spent today in class. An elementary school teacher came to talk to us about the Korean government's curriculum for teaching kids, and walked us through the government's website for teaching english, as well as a provincial website with videos of model classes.

The second session was entitled Listening, and I expected to catch up on my Hangul lessons during the class, but it turned out to be really entertaining and enlightening. It was led by Walter Foreman, a Canadian-turned-Korean who had dyed brown hair and a good inch of grey roots. I was clearly skeptical. But he opened his PowerPoint presentation with an ACDC song, and apologized that it wasn't louder. "It's already on 11." (Spinal Tap, anyone?) He was a really engaging speaker, and gave us some good exercises to help our students improve their listening, comprehension and analyzing abilities. He also mentioned that he posts EVERYTHING to his website, including activities and powerpoints, which may turn out to be a good resource.

In the afternoon we had our class meeting (we're divided into classes based on the province we are heading to), where we filled out our applications for a bank account and a cell phone. Apparently past EPIK classes had to take care of everything on their own once they got to their schools (getting their Alien Registration Card, a medical exam, bank account, cell phone, etc), but this year they decided to make it easy on us and just take care of everything here. It's nice. We should have our cell phones by Thursday.

At night they showed a Korean movie in the cafeteria - The King and the Clown. It was really good, and funny, though it got pretty morbid near the end.

EPIK orientation - day one

Technically, though we arrived yesterday, today was the first day of orientation. We're staying in the dorms at Dankook University. They're really nice - everything seems brand new, from our plastic-wrapped office chairs to our shimmering gold-embroidered bedspreads to our paper slippers. Every room is accessible by a touch pad dead bolt, the code for which we had to program when we arrived. Everyone has a speaker in the corner of their room, which EPIK admin uses to wake us in the morning and deliver important messages to us ("the X-ray bus is down, it will reopen at 2pm"). It's very Big Brother.

11am this morning Lisa and I (and the rest of Group 3) went for our Medical Check. Height & weight. Vision test. Blood pressure. Urine collection. Blood test. Hearing check. It was all very efficient, though the sanitation left something to be desired. Urine samples were taken in simple paper cups, sans lids, and delivered back to a lab technician who PH tested them, poured some into a test tube, and put the remaining urine on the floor under his desk. Later another tech came by and started combining the contents of different cups. They seemed to be unsure of how to dispose of all the extra.

The X-ray bus, which was apparently used to test for TB (isn't there just a pinprick test for this??), was broken, so we all had to come back at 2pm with "all cotton clothing".

We have had several (joking) conversations already about how this "orientation" feels like a giant extermination plan. There are 500 teachers here, all filed through giant lines like cows at a slaughterhouse, living in otherwise empty dorms with rooms which lock electronically. Our buildings are locked from 1am to 5am. And did I mention that our towels and coffee cups smell like gasoline?

Not to worry, though. It is all very sanitary, I'm sure.

We've also been taking side bets as to when the first eggs are going to crack. A LOT of these new teacher trainees are venturing away from home for the first time in their lives, and Korea seems like a much more difficult country to assimilate in than Kenya was, especially without the support system that Peace Corps provided.

Here's our schedule for the week:

Friday, Feb 20
Medical Check-up
Welcoming Dinner

Saturday, Feb 21
Explore Korea
Secondary/Primary school introductions
Listening (?)
Class Meeting
English Camp introduction
Task Based Learning
Korean Movies (I'm pretty excited about this one)

Sunday, Feb 22
Korean Cultural Experience (Korean Folk Village in Yong-in)

Monday, Feb 23
Same as Saturday's program, in a different order.

Tuesday, Feb 24
Surviving in Korea
Speaking
EPIK Life
Co-teaching
Reading/Writing
Songs & Chants (oh, boy)

Wednesday, Feb 25
Same as Tuesday's program, with
Model Lessons & Making Lesson Plans
Preparation of Lesson Presentation
Korean Movies (!)

Thursday, Feb 26
Lesson Presentations
Meeting with Provincial Office of Education Supervisors
Korean Traditional Music & Dance Performances
Farewell Dinner

Friday, Feb 27
Load luggage
Questionnaire & Closing Ceremony

the waiting game

lisa and i submitted our 2nd round documents (background check, letter of recommendation, diploma copy, transcripts, and full application, along with the appropriate apostilles) to the EPIK recruiter two weeks ago, and he forwarded them onto korea. now we're waiting, and it's killing me. i can't stand depending blindly on someone else. if i can talk to them, face-to-face, or at least on the phone, then i can get a play-by-play and i know where i stand. if i know where i stand, then i know whether i can do anything about it or not. if i can do something about it, then i'll do it immediately. if not, f*$# it. i'll move on. but since i already bought our plane tickets for february 16th, moving on isn't an option i'm willing to consider quite yet.

once we hear back from them with our employment contract, we can apply at the embassy for the E-2 visa needed to teach in korea. but we can't do anything until we hear from them. i gotta admit, i was kinda stressing out yesterday and badgering the recruiter about it. but after finding out that it only takes 2-3 days to process the visa application, my anxiety has subsided. i'm gearing up to go.

the devil in the details

when lisa and i first decided to teach english in korea, i spent a lot of time on dave's ESL cafe, a forum for english teachers worldwide. there is a large korea presence on the site, and a korea-specific forum, so it was a great source of information on just about everything. there is also a section for job postings, which are usually from individual hagwons - private schools - around seoul. i had heard from jefferson and read in a lot of forum posts that working for a hagwon is pretty much a giant crapshoot. many of them are shady organizations that just try to give you the run-around and stiff you here and there on your pay. some of them are OK, but there's no way to know until you've signed your contract and are already working for them. there are several hagwon blacklist sites that try to notify potential employees of the complaints against particular schools, with descriptions of their crimes, but there are so many hagwons to choose from. it would be impossible to vet all of them before choosing one.

in april or may, lisa came up from VA beach to attend a career workshop at the peace corps headquarters in DC (a quarterly workshop that i had attended back in january). the final evening of the workshop is reserved for a job fair, and RPCV-friendly employers attend. one of the employers was from a recruiting agency that placed teachers in korea, particularly with a large private franchised school called CDI. we talked for a while and he encouraged us to apply. neither of us wanted to leave the country right away (lisa wanted to stay stateside for the summer at least, and i had recently started work at the mobility agenda), so we took his card and told him we'd be in touch.

eventually lisa got a job at peace corps headquarters in DC and moved up here with me. she would be working for a political appointee - the director of one of peace corps' larger branches - and we figured that late january, as a new president is sworn in, would be a convenient time to depart. conveniently, in july, my boss informed me that she had taken another position in cincinnati and would be leaving in january as well. since she pretty much IS the organization, it was a sign that time would be ripe for a change.

so with our timeline fairly well set, we set about looking for a place to teach. CDI remained an attractive option to me - higher pay than most, evening classes, cookie cutter lesson plans, and good teacher supports - but we kept searching. posters on dave's ESL cafe ripped on CDI often, charging that they were extremely strict and offered practically no vacation time (one week of unpaid vacation per year, compared with almost a month of paid vacation at public schools), but i took the criticism with a grain of salt. most of the people who spend their days posting to forums like that are bitter and jaded and have little good to say in the first place. the teachers who enjoy their jobs and their lives tend to be outside living them.

in october we spent an awesome long weekend in denver with some fellow RPCVs from kenya. as it turned out, good friends of ours - another couple - had decided independently to teach in korea at the same time. they had already applied to EPIK (English Program in Korea), a government-run program to get native english teachers into public schools. i had heard of it, but had looked into it only briefly - the pay was much less, which was a sticking point for me at the time. i have student loans to pay off, and would rather get it done sooner than later.

but talking about it with them got us thinking, and i did more research into EPIK. the vacation and time off was much better than CDI (14 paid holidays, 14 paid sick days, and 21 days of paid vacation), which would give us more time to pursue other interests and to travel. the money thing was still an issue for me, though - CDI teachers, from what i gathered, had the potential to make $1000 more per month than their EPIK counterparts. but they would work their asses off for it.

this back-and-forth in my mind revealed a lot to me about what i wanted. much of my motivation to move to korea is the same as my original intent in going to kenya - to live simply, (relatively) free from the rampant materialism of the US and the overwhelming obsession with money. even in a year i have noticed ways in which my kenya mentality has been changing, thanks to TV, high speed internet, fast-paced advertising (and life in general), and the 24-hour political and financial news cycle. i want to get away from all of this.

i want to do more in korea than just worry about money. and i want to do more in korea besides just teach english - travel, eat, write, learn korean, travel, eat. plus, at EPIK i would have enough time off that i could tutor students outside of class if i decided the money was crucial. teachers get $25-40 per hour for tutoring. this may sound hypocritical after what i just said - but money is still necessary to live. i don't mind making money - i just don't want that to be my primary motivation to do anything.

that reminds me of a guy i met in kenya as extras on the set of a german miniseries. justin was a brit who was on the final leg of a five-year bike trip around the world. he loved biking; for him the trip was more for the joy of riding than for a love of travel, as if traveling were just a necessary afterthought of riding his bike. he said he biked until he ran out of money; then he would stop for a few months and save up until he could hit the road again. it cost him around $2,000 per year to live this lifestyle. i asked him once why he didn't just bike for a living - get sponsored or try out for a racing team or at least work in a bike shop. he said he didn't want to taint his love of biking with a pursuit of money. he said if he relied on biking for his income, he wouldn't love it as much anymore. he would be required to "work" even on days when he didn't feel like it, and would come to resent biking as though it were forced upon him rather than his own personal choice.

while i don't necessarily agree that it has to be that way, i understood his point. i don't want the need for money to overwhelm my desire to do something i love - to be forced into it, i suppose. that is perhaps even more true for something like teaching english, which i've never done before and which i don't know yet whether i'll love or hate. but for now, i decided, i'd rather not take that chance.

so that's how lisa and i reached the decision to go with EPIK. it took about 8 months to get to this point, but i'm not complaining. the timing will be convenient for us, and we've had a good time in DC to date. it will be nice to be in the area for obama's inauguration as well, though i'm sure the swarm of 4 million in the city will quickly convince me that it's about time to go again...

on the road again...

you know, before i left for kenya i fully expected it to be something of a break, a two-year stint to learn something about myself and god and the world before i came back to sell out or join the rat race or get a real job, whatever you want to call it. i wanted to be in the US - it's where my family is, where my friends are. it's where i feel comfortable most of the time. it's where i call "home".

but while i was there i met a lot of volunteers who didn't look back, who, for different reasons, didn't plan on returning stateside after their peace corps contract was through. some just wanted to get out of america, away from narrow-mindedness and elitism and ethnocentrism and, let's face it, bush. others liked the romanticism of life as an expat (and rightly so - it can be damn cool). but most still thought of america as home, as a place they would end up eventually, and they just wanted to get a few good stories out of their time abroad for their friends back home. (if you think this is some kind of self-analysis and confession...well, you may be right.) the ones i admired most were of the rare breed who live in every moment as if none other mattered or existed. they embraced kenya and the peace corps without a second thought, because that was a fact and there was much to be learned and loved besides.

my point is that they really got me thinking. i didn't really know WHY i wanted to come back to the US, aside from the fact that my friends and family, etc. are here. don't get me wrong, that's a huge factor, but i'll (hopefully) have my friends and family wherever i go. it's so easy to communicate with people now that the people who mean the most to me will never be that far away - emotionally, at least. i tried to change my focus to live like this for the remainder of my time in kenya, and i think i succeeded. i finally came to think of my house and village in kenya as home.

and i came to think eventually that it didn't really matter where i was - home is a state of mind.

with that said, for at least the next year, my home will be in south korea.

lisa and i will be leaving in mid-february to teach english in public schools with EPIK for at least one year. we requested to be placed in Gyeongnam-do (also called Gyeongsangnam-do - see highlighted area on the map), a southern region of the country, and were told by both our recruiter and our interviewer lastnight that we should get a placement somewhere in that area.

several months after i was sworn into peace corps, i remember talking to my friend jefferson, who was teaching english in a private school (hagwon) outside of Seoul at the time. he encouraged me to come over (i was considering leaving PC for various reasons), and i seriously considered it. in the end, clearly, i stayed in kenya (luckily, or else i never would have met lisa), but visions of working and living in south korea were etched into my mind.

when i left kenya, i left lisa there - she had 9 months left in peace corps. when she came back early (thanks, post-election violence!) she moved up to DC with me, on the condition that we leave for south korea at the end of our 6-month lease. well, our lease is up at the end of january, so this works out just about perfectly.

i'm really stoked. i've started taking korean lessons from the rosetta stone software (thanks julia) and pawing through as many guidebooks as i can find. lisa and i also bought our plane tickets, so we know our actual departure date - february 16th! i wasn't planning on buying our tickets this early, but i found a deal i couldn't pass up - $650 from BWI to Seoul, including taxes & fees (www.cheapoair.com)!

i'll post more later, with more info about EPIK and the work that we'll be doing. but for now, i've got a bit more work here - at home - in DC to finish up.