Mike B
- 2004-06-09
Great post Tim. I am currently in Mexico, but plan to be in Korea by September at the latest. I don't expect to make as much as you did, but at least twice what I make here, which shouldn't be too hard.
I am planning on learning some Korean, I'd have to say I could never survive anywhere without speaking some of the language. I spent about two weeks in Thailand years ago visiting a friend who was fluent in Thai, but I had to get to where he was and back to Malaysia under my own steam with zero Thai. Obviously I got by, but I can't stand the feeling of being completely outside of the surroundings.
Where I work here in Mexico there are people who after 12 months can do little more than order a meal or buy a bus ticket in Spanish; their only social life is with their workmates. Personally, I see enough of my workmates at work, weekends I'd rather see somebody else.
There are no decent bookshops within 4 hours of here, so I'm doing a bit of pre-learning Korean with stuff I can find on internet, but it certainly looks like being a bigger challenge than Spanish was.
Cheers
Mike B
Tim
- 2004-06-09
Thanks Micheal. I think I mentioned the money part simply cause I think that hagwon teachers are way underpaid and that there IS money to be made in Korea, though its really hard to earn with the way the system is set up. Also I may have been trying to express irony in that my only goal when I got there was to earn enough money to pay my tuition and my living expenses. I just tried to be a good teacher and I judged my success by the improvement of my students.
Sorry if I came off as money grubbing. Its funny, I never sought out the big bucks but it just seemed to find me.
Michael Joseph Beauchot
- 2004-06-09
Just wanted to say thanks, Tim. This post made for some of the most interesting and informative reading I have done in a long time. It is a bit ironic though that you start out with mentioning how much you earned and then said don't go to Korea for the money. But, hey, I am nit-picking now and I don't want to do that.
For me, Korea was a chance to see that not every place was as enjoyable for me as China was or as near death horrible as Turkey was. The money in Korea was very good ( not as good as what you made, but then I didn't work my rear end off like you did, either) and I managed to make a few good friends and managed to avoid drinking at all and found enough Western-style food (It's not ethnic prejudice - I love Chinese food but I can't eat the Korean cuisine without getting sick.) to live on.
My wife, whom I met in 2002 in China, is Chinese. She and I have both been hired by a Korean school and so I will be returning to the land of kimchi and hangul as my wife gets hat experience I first ahd in China - the first foreign country.
Should be fun to return.