Friday, February 1, 2008

BRB

Wow. There are people reading this blog from outside my circle of, well, me.

The public education teachers in Jeollanam-do province are in the middle of their winter break, something that looks like two weeks paid vacation on paper but is really one or two months depending on the individual school's discretionary usage of their native speaker. Fortunately I'm one of the lucky ones; I've been away in India, backpacking since the end of Christmas, and I'm back to fulfill my February commitment of three working days. Then the new terms starts in March.

I was contemplating a quick hop over to China, but the weather may put a hold on those plans.

5 comments:

Brian said...

Are you coming back for another year?

j.m. said...

No, I'm not returning but thankful for the experience in the same vein as what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. If anything, the Korean education system has taught me that being a Korean high school native speaker is not for me.

Brian said...

Hmm, well good luck to you, then. Based on what Alex has said before it sounded like you had a rough situation at school. You put together a really nice blog, though, and a ton of nice lessons, so thank you for that. Yours was the first informative blog about this part of the country, and I've enjoyed reading it. It inspired me to do one of my own.

j.m. said...

Thanks for the props Brian.

One of my first problem living in Mokpo was the disorganized resources available to foreigners (a welcome basket with a street map, bus schedules, etc. would be a good start). So I hope that other people find this blog useful -- at least the information is discoverable with Google.

And Jeonnam Jeil is an okay high school with better than average resources and a friendly collection of English teachers. Other native speakers envy me when I tell them I work at that school so I've been really lucky in that regard with one exception*.

But I'm not coming back since high school isn't really my thing. I've met a lot of excellent teachers here and they're the ones pursuing a career in teaching. I'm not a teacher, more of an academic nerd with a career back home that's been on hold for a while.

*If anybody reads this and is doing research on the school, feel free to e-mail me for more information.

Brian said...

I see. If you don't mind sharing, what do you do back home?