2 Years in Korea

The past 5 years continued...

While in Georgia I met many people who had taught in Korea previously and I also had a cousin there, so I applied to the EPIK program. After a month in Buffalo, I was ready to head to Korea in August of 2013. I lived in Gwangju, a city of 1.5 million people about a 3.5 hour bus ride south of Seoul. There is a national park (Mudeung) on the east edge of Gwangju- near where I lived- which was a great escape when the city felt too crowded. I taught at 2 elementary schools, both which were walking distance from my apartment. It was a great life! I was able to save money even while often travelling around the country on weekends and abroad on vacations.

Teaching in Korea was interesting, and my situations were quite different at both schools. Altogether, I had over 300 students a year so it was difficult to get to know everyone. Luckily I had a group of 30 students at 1 school for the entire 2 years multiple times a week, so I grew close and was able to do a lot of fun things with them. I also did 7 weeks total of camps (2 weeks of overnight camp, 5 weeks of day camp) which were some of the best teaching times there!

I tried to see as much as I could of Korea while I was there. Some of my favorite trips were to Seoul (often, to visit my cousin), some islands, and the mountains. Actually it's hard to say "my favorite" trips around Korea because really every trip I took-either with people or alone-was great. There's a lot to see around Korea and it is really easy to get around with their public transportation. I was very sad to take Greyhound when I got back to the US after riding on Korean buses for 2 years. 

Around Korea 

During school vacations I took trips to Cambodia, Taiwan, Japan, and China. Prior to coming to Korea, I had very little interest in East or South Asia. (And, well, before I went to Georgia I had little interest in Eastern Europe). I think a lot of that was ignorance- I had no idea of the diversity of cultures and food between and within the countries. I also thought of it as so foreign until I internalized that people are people and cities are cities and schools are schools no matter where you are. In college I never would have imagined that I'd spend time living in Asia. I don't know if I'll ever make it back to Korea, but more of Asia is definitely on my list.