October 19th, 2017
I have officially completed and survived my first month and a half in Korea! 2 weeks at the National Orientation, 2 days at the Provincial Orientation, and finally 3 weeks (almost a month) in my town at my school. I would like to say: Korea has been treating me well!
When I first got my placement at the National Orientation, I had my first mental breakdown… the reason is I’m the only person in my Gangwon group peers to be placed in Inje (the most rural of them all). Most of my peers are placed in the cities and travel to school on a daily basis, they are placed in Wonju, Chuncheon, Hongcheon, Samcheok, Pyeongchang etc. You can see how devastated I felt when I found out I’m the only scholar in Inje! I didn’t know the language that well, I don’t know the culture that well, and I have to live by myself in a place that is the most rural out of all the placements!
The second mental breakdown happened when my mentor teacher brought me to my town (Sangnam 상남). I guess I had the expectation of being in Inje Town where it’s big and there’s a lot of stuff, I didn’t realize I would actually be near the school (in a town that only takes 15 minutes to explore). However, this breakdown subsided the moment I realized how nice everyone in my town is.
Everyone here would try to help you the best they can, they don’t care that you are a foreigner, they don’t isolate you because you are a foreigner, they are so nice to you and tries to make you feel at home! (I am the only foreigner in this town, and I don’t look like a foreigner :P). I feel like my experience might be very biased as numerous people have told me that I look Korean. For the length of time I have already been here, I have gotten, on numerous occasions, the statement “She looks Korean but she doesn’t speak Korean”.
The best of all, I don’t have to pay for transportation to go to school, I simply have to walk 3 minutes and I am at school! (I use the supposed transportation money to go travel around Korea) All the teachers at the school are great and all the staff is so nice! They take the time to talk to me because they want to learn English, and since I want to learn Korean we kind of have a language exchange thing going on. Haha.
The third and final mental breakdown was a real breakdown (in the middle of my room, bawling my eyes out). I was enjoying my time in my place (studying Korean mostly) when one of my students rang my doorbell [I was very surprised]. Her family lives on the floor below me and her mom is our school’s part-time kindergarten teacher. She is the sweetest thing ever! She tries to make sure that I am well and that I am eating well. She got her daughter to bring me a bag of fruits and she always gives me bread just to make sure I am taking care of myself! When she found out that I don’t have internet connection in my apartment, she wanted to help me connect. Most of all, she would use a translation app just to talk to me, even though it takes a lot of effort!
To this day, I am still touched by her kindness and I am very glad that I got placed in a very rural place. Everyone here is so nice and just enriches my experience so much more! So If you decide to go through with talk, and you get placed in a rural place like me… I would like to say that you have hit the jackpot, my friend. If your goal to come to Korea is to learn more about Korea, you have hit the jackpot!
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