Bigger than this

The past couple of weeks have been a stumbling block for Lance and I. We have wonderful, supportive friends on Jeju Island, but I can tell you for sure there is nothing scarier than finding yourself jobless in a foreign country with no hope for job security at home. Don't get me wrong, Lance and I had enough saved to get home and pay our bills for a couple months, but then what? Joannes? Sam's Club? I can't do that again. I didn't go to the best University in Florida to do something so...empty.
So the good news. We have a job. We're signing the contract today. It starts on March 24th. We've only missed 3 weeks worth of pay and Lance and I have both picked up side work while we've been on the island. We're doing just fine. I promise.
The bad news is that the job is in the middle of nowhere Korea. The closest town is about half hour away from where we'll live. You can find it here. It's a coastal city on the western coast boarding the yellow sea. We're going to be living ON the coast. I guess that's a perk. Lance and I are preparing to be kinda lonely. Care packages will be welcome! The school is brand new and it has a branch is Seosan, so because of small class sizes we might be asked to commute into Seosan. However, it's a large chain school so we'll be paid every month and we'll have nice housing, suitable for two people this time.We've been told there will be a free shuttle into Seosan and Seoul daily, so that's also kind of nice. Also, it looks like Seosan is cow country, maybe we can get some good steaks? Maybe?
If I'm being honest, I'll tell you that this school would have not even gotten a second look three months ago when Lance and I were looking for work. However, after working the job for a year Lance and I will have saved enough money that we'll be in a better situation to come home and have the time and resources to go to grad school or look for a different job elsewhere. This is the right decision for us right now. This is how we're going to take care of each other. We're doing just fine. I promise.

Fire Festival and a little hope

Last night Bethany and I went to the famous Jeju Fire Festival with a couple of friends.  When we moved to Seoul we were really disappointed that we were going to miss it this year after we had missed it last year, but as a bright side of our misadventure, we finally were able to see it and boy was it amazing.  We took a free shuttle from the city to the Oreum (small mountains all over Jeju) that they were planning to light on fire.  When we arrived we were greeted with large crowds and many street food vendors.  Korean street food is delicious and very diverse.  We immediately got a corn dog with french fries in the batter, it was awesome.  We walked around and looked at some of the exhibits they had on display.  They had many wind chimes that were made from recycled materials, horses, and a stage with singing, dancing, and just general entertainment. Bethany was roped in by some adjashis (Old men) and given some fish and a shot of soju.  Before they lit the hill we sat down in a large tent and had some roast pig and Korean vegetable pancakes.  Finally it was time to light the hill on fire. Lighting the hill on fire, along with pyres full of hand-written wishes-- signifies healing and good luck for the new year. On the stage they called up everyone who was born in the year of the horse (Mom and dad it's your year) and they were given torches.  They lit the torches and walked towards the base of the hill. There was a fire work display and then people lit the pyres that people had written their wishes on.  Soon the entire hill was on fire.  We were fairly close and the heat that was coming off the hill was a welcome sensation since it was freezing cold.  We watched the hill burn for awhile and then it was back to the shuttle bus and then to town.  All in all in was one of the most amazing experiences I've had in Korea.

On a side note, Bethany and I are looking for work.  We are currently being inundated with recruiters in our search to find a job.  We have several interviews today and even a few offers already.  One of the recruiters even has epik positions (public school) starting in April, and May.  I don't think we'll have trouble finding a new job, the question is whether or not we can find the right job so we don't end up at a school like the one in Seoul.

Plan B

Sometimes plans are laid out so nicely and so precisely that it's hard to say when and where they came undone. Our journey to Seoul lasted an entire week. I spent most of the job feeling like a failure because I wasn't able to cope with how bad the job was.
Lance and I were given a really terrible apartment, which we had to clean and when we tried to fight back against the company breaking our contract we were accused of 'being negative.' The ways the job was terrible have been told and retold now about a million times, and documenting them here and now won't do anybody any good.
Lance and I knew going into the job that there was a chance it wouldn't work out. We even created an easy out for ourselves by not accepting any payment to help us get to Seoul. We owed the school nothing and we knew that we might need an out when we took the job because Hagwons (after school academies) are notorious for breaking the law and sometimes abusing their foreign staff.  So by day three, when the director told us that moving into a permeant apartment was getting pushed back by a week again, we'd had enough. Instead of going to the hospital to get a health check up for a visa we walked away from the job. We packed our stuff and flew back home.
Home for now is a little island in the pacific. We've found great friends on Jeju who have done more for us that we could possibly imagine or ever thank them for. Everyone in our life has been so supportive and helpful.
Lance and I are now in the process of getting on a D10 visa which will allow us to stay in Korea for up to 6 months while we look for work. We have seriously contemplated heading stateside to figure things out, and that might happen still, but for now we're going to try again on the job front. We're going to see what we can find and cross our fingers that this one will be better. Hopefully, with the love and guidance of our friends, we'll be able to find a better school this time around.
Everyone at home, please don't worry. We're okay. We're doing fine. Things will be okay for us because we have each other.

P.S. We finally get to see Jeju's fire festival tomorrow! We missed it last year because we were new in town and we thought we'd miss it this year because we'd be in Seoul. Maybe it was meant to be.

Seoul: A Learning Curve

Duk (chicken) Galbi in Myeongdong shopping district

Lance on the corner of Seoul on the way our subway stop.
Can you see how bad the pollution is?

We arrived in Seoul on Thursday and after an exhausting day of traveling we met our boss and saw our new school. We're exploring Seoul and trying to carve out a corner of this big city for ourselves. So far we've enjoyed traveling by subway and eating all the Western food we lay our eyes on. (Subway, the restaurant, is right around the corner from where we live.) Shopping, transportation and lots of yummy food are all things we love about Seoul so far.

It would be amiss to say that everything is sunshine and daisies though. We met our new boss and he seems nice and the school is absolutely beautiful. We start Monday, so I'll try to give more detail about the job next week. Our living situation is not great. Right now Lance and I are living in a Studio apartment (or what Koreans would call an Office tel) that about 150 square feet including the bathroom. Because we're a couple our boss wasn't able to find us a two person apartment right away. He told us we'll move into a villa (with two or more rooms) on March 20th. Until then our boss is covering our taxi fair because we live so far away from the school. We're pretty far from the Subway stop but we're going to try and take the subway as much as possible, even if that means walking a bit further and waking up a bit earlier.

When we arrived the apartment was absolutely filthy. We spent all day (and quiet a bit of cash) cleaning up the apartment. It was pretty disgusting. I'm not at all happy with the other foreigner who decided it was okay to not even clean out the old food out of her tiny fridge or pick her hair out of the bathroom drain. The apartment has some furniture, a mini fridge and a microwave, but not much in the way of cooking utensils.  Which means we'll probably be eating out more than eating in. It's terrible because I have a mean hankering to make some beer cheese soup. I'll be holding out for March 20th I guess.

Most everything we own is still at the school, boxed up in a back room. We'll be moving it to our apartment on Monday, but I have no idea where we're going to put all our stuff in this tiny apartment. I'm a worrier by nature and how everything's going to possibly fit in here is stressing me out. We're supposed to get a full bed on Monday as well and I'm not even sure how that's going to work.

So I guess the moral of this story is that we're in flux. It will remain in flux for the next three weeks or so. Hopefully school life will be so good that home life won't matter. So far, we love Seoul (even if we miss our friends on Jeju). I hope that It will only continue to get better.

Crazy busy subway car during rush hour on a Friday night.

Soju toast to a new chapter of our life together

Farewell Jeju

It's been an amazing year, full of ups and downs and everything in between. On February 15th Lance and I celebrated our one year anniversary of arriving to Korea. In two days we will finish our contract with SDALI, and on Thursday we will be on a plane to Seoul. We've taken a position with a new kindergarten and, fingers crossed, it will be a better working experience than what we've had this year.

This post isn't a update about what's next for Lance and I (look for a post this weekend about that), this is a reflection of the past year. This is a goodbye ballad to Jeju Island and all the wonderful people we've met this year.

Living on an Island in a foreign country is an experience wholly different from anything I've ever done. I honestly don't think I would have been brave enough to take the leap if I didn't have Lance right beside me holding me hand the whole way. If ever there was an adventurer it would be my husband. His bravery and courage this year has gotten me through all the hard spots we encountered on our journey and taught me to see the bravery inside myself. I fall in love with him more everyday.

When we first arrived on Jeju Island Lance and I were both excited and worried. We had been promised a big city on the mainland, after all. English was more limited on the island and we spoke no Korean. We were separated from the other teachers we had met on the mainland and, as we soon found out, our schedule made it nearly impossible to socialize and some of the people working at our school openly disliked us because we didn't fit into the SDA mold.

I have to admit the honey moon stage with Korea only lasted about 2 months before I was begging Lance to come home. We had no friends, our job was pretty terrible and I felt completely isolated from everything -- my language, my culture and my home. It was hard to admit that failure to myself and it's even harder to admit that here, which is probably why these post became few and far between.

Luckily, by midsummer things started looking up. We made some amazing friends doing, of all things, board games. There are more games out there than I could have ever possibly imagined. We've met people from all over the world. We've shared Thanksgiving, we've gone on beach trips, we've played in Darts tournaments and together we've volunteered to help out this island that we've called home. We've worked with Orphans and we've cleaned up the beach. Lance and I have traveled all over the island and most of it is still a mystery to us.

This year has allowed us the chance to really see corners of the world we might not have seen otherwise. We spent a week is the summer in Busan, eating ice cream on Haeundae beach. We spent almost two weeks exploring Japan with some of our best friends back home. We've journeyed all over Jeju Island. We have fallen in love.

Now we stand on the brink of a new chapter. I know that I will miss the island and the wonderful people we've met here. I also know that you can only live life once and that I'm not ready to stop seeing the world yet. A new adventure awaits us in Seoul, and I'll be there to meet it with open arms.

Summertime blues

Summertime is winding down here in Korea, though its still ungodly hot. We found at last week that this months electric bill will be over 500,000 won! That's about $500. We were shocked because we only use the aircon ( that's what Korean call the AC) when were in the apartment. The aircon is shoddily constructed and its pipe actually goes through a portion of our sliding glass door that has been broken. The unit itself sits in our sun/ utility room that runs along one whole side of the apartment. The hot air gets trapped in this room and acts like a dryer for our clothes. Of course the AC unit has to work twice as hard to keep the inner rooms cool.

Suffice it to say we've been living without AC for the past week. We take 5-6 cold showers a day to keep cool and rinse off the sweat and grime. It's gross but the price of staying cool is simply too high. 

Lance and I visited some beautiful waterfalls at a place foreigners refer to as the ferry bridge. We've also been spending a lot of our time at the beach meeting new people from around the world.

Watermelon is officially unaffordable. :( 

My tiny Korean garden.

Friendships happen

So we've been living in South Korea now for almost 6 months and for all but two of those weeks we've lived our life on beautiful Jeju Island. Living in a foreign country has its difficulties, but there's something to be said about living on a tiny island off the coast of a foreign country were your language is rare and where foreign goods are rarer. 

Lance and I had our hopes set on Seoul when we decided we wanted to move to South Korea. We wanted city life, the subway and a ton of fresh new faces. We wanted to experience life in one of the biggest cities in the world. It would be a lie to tell you that we weren't a little disappointed when we were sent as far away from Seoul as possible to this remote island. 

The truth is that we were pleasantly surprised. Jeju is far cleaner and far more beautiful than Seoul. Life here is more relaxed and slower. We have seen some truly amazing natural wonders on this island. Jeju is more like home than Seoul could ever be.

However, lance and I have had to cope with the disabilities that come with inexperience. We're struggling to learn the language and its really crippling. We've tried to sign up for classes but they're hard to find on the island and our split shift class schedule really doesn't help. Everyday things are challenging because of this, such as going out to restaurants were food is often written. On the wall in Korean and there aren't any pictures. We have very kind people help us often, like the lady at the bank who helps us pay our bills, but we're not as self sufficient here as we were In the United States. I suppose that was to be expected.

Shortly before we left the United States my car was totaled in an accident where I was rear ended. I was pretty upset because I love that car, it had taken me there and back again through a lot of changes in my life. I took that car on adventures and driving it -having access to it-impacted who I am today. It was good timing though, because I was planning on leaving the car with my mom anyway while I was in South Korea and I was really looking forward to living life without a car. No insurance payments, no gas, no repairs. I wouldn't have to worry about parking and I could walk where ever I needed to go. The thought was liberating. Jeju is a car city. There is no subway, and while the bus system is better than what we have back home in Florida, it can't take you everywhere. Buses can be rough rides and taxis can be rougher rides and are expensive. There is so much we cannot do here because we don't have a car and simple tasks become for more involved without one. On shopping trips you can make many stops and simply store your purchases in the car, now we have to carry purchases from place to place or go home in between stops. Grocery shopping is an exhibition. It takes several hours to make a large trip and usually eats into a chunk of our weekend because we can't do much of anything during the week. Picnics and camping are made harder because all of your equipment has to be carried onto the bus . A lot of beautiful things on the island can only be reached by car. It's true, cars on the island a pretty cheap second hand, but the debate lance and I have been having is really whether to buy a car or to move to the mainland. Both have perks and both would cost is a fair amount of money.

The hardest thing about living on Jeju has been meeting people and making friends. You'd be surprised at how much you value spoken English when it's not everywhere. Granted, working a split shift is more than half the problem when it comes to meeting people. We can't stay out late because we have to be up at 6am nor can we do things early because we work until 8pm. It's a hard schedule to come to terms with. On Thursday nights we've been going to a board game club, we've done various events like saw a local play and also visited the foreigner market, we've joined a book club and we've purchased used goods from other foreigners on the island. We're trying to meet people but its been a slow trek. Finally I can say its starting to pay off. This past weekend we went to the beach (and turned into lobsters) we played pool and went out to dinner after. We've done all these thing by ourselves, of course, but connecting with other people around the world really makes you feel like you're a part of something. The horizon is bright and I think I'm finally coming out of culture shock. Even though we might still move to the mainland next year, I won't regret the time we spent on Jeju Island.