A Korean Christmas!

Well  it's Boxing day and I have to say  this is definitely the least Christmassy Christmas I have had especially as we have been working today! It sis snow on the lead up to Christmas though which was nice.

Here in Korea Christmas isn't really celebrated, it is seen as more of a 'couples' holiday instead. Having said that we certainly celebrated on Christmas Eve with shots of 151, pool competions  and ending up in a Norae bang with about 10 other Koreans and a tamborine!

 We spent most of Christnmas day in bed having and then went out for a curry with a friend, very traditional.... the curry was great though!

Jacks Body

This is what the 12 years olds in Jacks class think of him!

Night out in Seoul

Last Saturday we went on our first night out in Seoul, which was brilliant, not only do you get free food when you order drinks but you can also get your own private room with drinks to order, amazing! We ended up just getting the  first subway back at 5.30, not too bad!

Our private booking room!

Free fried chicken!

General Update

I thought I would give you a general update on our first two weeks here in Korea. It has been very easy to slip into life here, everything is so easy and convenient, we live about 20 feet away from a huge supermarket, we are right next to the subway and about 5 minutes walk from our school!

The job has been going well, it was a bit daunting at first but we have got into the swing of things now, with a bit of planning most of the lessons have been pretty easy. The kids are mostly well behaved although by the time they get to us they have already been at school all day so they can be a bit sleepy! I particularly enjoy my classes with the younger children as they are chattier than the teenagers and they come out with some funny things!

A street in Seoul

There is plenty of nightlife nearby, our friend Elias has been showing us the ropes in Ilsan, a bigger town nearby with some cool bars and restaurants. Everything here seems to be open pretty much 24 hours, on Friday we had dinner at 12 at night before starting our night out, crazy! We had our first night out in Seoul last night which was great, it is a massive city so we have a lot of exploring to do!

Other news ... I have started doing yoga classes 3 times a week, I have never seen so many bendy people and Jack is looking into starting some kickboxing classes too.  We are having a brilliant time all in all, except I can't believe it is Christmas this week, not feeling Christmassy at all :-( I am sure we will find some other foreigners to celebrate with though!

Would you like a bigger bum?!

Walking through the subway last night in Seoul we spotted these in the window, I don't think we have this problem in the UK!

Inappropriate pet clothing

The Koreans, believe it or not love their little dogs and like to dress them up however I would not recommend dressing your dog up in this ...

Also while you are in the 'Pet' section of the supermarket, don't forget to buy your hedgehog!

Funny Moment 1

Hi guys, Jack here.

So just thought I would fill everyone in on a few funny moments I have experienced so far.

Firstly, the incident with the fly. So it turns out that Korean children seemed to be pretty wet when it comes to insects. In one of my first classes a large fly arrived announced and tried to start a disturbance, it flew round the class causing utter hysteria.
I could see this was some kind of test so I decided to grasp the situation by the balls before it got out of hand. I waited until the fly had landed on a student poster mounted on the wall and made the decision to end its mischief permanently. The closest thing to hand was an A4 hand out with the weeks vocabulary words. I approached the fly with the strategy of catching it in the paper and the screwing it up and putting it in the bin, what a hero, an idol of Korean children everywhere. Unfortunately all I managed to do was squish the fly into the poster and then smear its remains a good three inches across it. This triggered complete chaos which then took me ten minutes to calm the children down. Now every time I teach in that class I have to tell at least one child to stop pointing at the remains of the fly’s corpse and laughing. *sigh*

First night out!

Our first night out began in Ilsan at a Kalbi restaurant (this means they have a mini bbq in your table!) with Elias leading the way. Here we had our first bottle of Soju - 20% rice wine which you can buy in the supermarket, 2L for £3.00, bargain! It actually tasted surprisingly OK to me, not sure if this is a good or bad thing hmmm... Following this we went to a couple of cool bars where you can get cocktails for £2.50 and tequila shots for about 90p and so the drinking began! We ended up in a Noraebang (a karaoke room) luckily I can't remember the singing .... there is a bit more to this story but I will let Jack tell the rest!

Ilsan

First bar

Amazing bar full of vinyl where you can choose any song, if they like it they will play it!

Our duet!

The food

Food seems to play a big part in Korean culture and therefore they are very proud of their food. So Jack and I have arrived with open minds in terms of trying food (his more so than mine!). In the last week we have eaten out every night something we could never do at home! The street food is really cheap, costing about £2.50 for us both to eat. In the restaurants the majority of the food has been really good although not so sure about the national side dish Kimchi, but maybe it will just take some getting used too! Here are some pictures of our food experiences so far ....

Kimchi (fermented cabbage) and tofu, yum ...

Korean pot noodle!

Kimbap - like a sushi roll but wit no seafood

Enjoying Kalbi - barbequed meat

At the food hall in E-Mart - all this for £6.00!

Starting School

Well, we have just completed our first week at school! It has certainly been interesting, beginning on the Monday with teaching 6 classes! We have definitely been thrown in at the deep end however the school has been very supportive and the two other foreign English teachers have been really helpful. The kids we are working with range from about 9-16 in age although in Korea when you are born you are already a year old, so in the UK these kids would actually be a year younger! They are mostly pretty sweet and much more well behaved than your typical British teenagers. A few of the highlights include: starting work at 2pm, eating cake out of a cup with chopsticks for another teachers birthday, saying boobies instead of movies (one of Jacks highlights anyway), some interesting names including Albert, Michael (pronounced as Mihal) and Bishop for a girl! We have learnt a lot this week and I am sure time goes on we will get into the swing of our new jobs as English teachers. There is a lot more to say and many pictures to post but we won't have the internet installed until tomorrow, see you then!

Here at last!

Wow! I can't believe we have only been here four days, so much has happened since we arrived on Saturday. The journey was tiring but went without a hitch until we arrived in Korea and there was no one there to pick us up ... eventually we managed to us a payphone to contact some one who as it turns out was there all along, but with no sign! We arrived at our studio apartment in Hwa Jeong at around 10.00 pm, we are on the 15th floor so we have got  pretty good view! Most people seem to live in high rise apartment blocks as there are so many Koreans. The apartment (if I can call it that, it's more like one big room and a separate bathroom) is in a great location, there is a starbucks and a pizza hut right around the corner as well as loads of great Korean restaurant. We are also opposite a huge supermarket that sells everything that you could imagine from hiking equipment to 3 litres of 20% alcohol for £3 and spider crabs to Special K! There is so much say I will write a few separate posts otherwise this will end up looking like an essay!

The view from our apartment

Goodbyes!

Only 5 days to go! Over the past few weekends we have been saying our goodbyes to friends and family at various nights out and partys', including a memorable night at WHP and a Christmas themed weekend!! We are really going to miss everyone, wish they could come with us, thank goodness for the internet!

Just about to tuck into a pretty good roast dinner, even if I do say so myself!

Warehouse Project with random guy in the background!

Visas

This is just a quick post about getting your visa processed in the UK. When we first started looking into teaching English in South Korea I found that several websites stated that the a visa for teaching English in South Korea for UK nationals would be around £27.50 however this is not the case, it is in fact £80! Follow this link for more information http://www.mofat.go.kr/english/visa/apply/index.jsp or phone the consulate. We decided to send our visa to the consulate as neither of us live near London, this took around 2 weeks to process, this wasn't a problem as our job starts in December. Once we received our visa the recruitment agency organised for flights to be booked, so now it really is official, as of 2nd December we will be off to South Korea for a year, eeek!

Attempting to learn Korean!

In preparation for our year in South Korea we have decided to learn some of the Korean language otherwise known as Hangul. I have read that it is not essential to learn the language, but having travelled before I feel that locals always appreciate it when a foreigner  tries to learn their language. Also, having done some research I feel that it will make our time it Korea a little less challenging and more enjoyable. Starting to learn Hangul at first seemed extremely daunting especially when I realised we would have to learn the alphabet instead of just learning phrases. However, after following a few easy to follow videos, see: http://www.seemile.com/renewal/package_list.jsp?pkg_no=21  for some great Korean teachers) I found that the Korean alphabet can actually be learnt quite quickly, this doesn't mean to say however that I am any good at it yet! Jack and I feel we have mastered some of the basics but we are yet to see whether these will work in practice! Another great language learning resource is the Rosetta Stone programme if you can get your hands on it.

A Couple in Korea: My first post: Why write a blog?!

A Couple in Korea: My first post: Why write a blog?!: Having made the exciting but scary decision to go and teach English in South Korea with my boyfriend Jack, I began to research the applicati...

The interview!

At last we were asked to have an interview, arranging this interview was harder than I first thought. There is a large time difference between Korea and the UK often this means interviews take place early/mid morning. When one of you is working full time this is particularly difficult to arrange. I managed to organise my interview in the morning and Jack squeezed his in on his lunch break! The interview seemed to go well, the interviewer was very friendly. I followed some advice I had been given and smiled away to the phone! This took place on a Thursday, Friday came and no news, things weren't looking hopeful, I thought we would never find a job. Finally on Monday after a few hours away from the computer an e-mail was awaiting us saying we had got the job! Woo hoo time for a celebration!

Recruiters: Who and how many?

Recruiters aren't for everybody and there are other options when looking for a job in South Korea such as going straight through a school. As a couple however it is a lot more challenging to find jobs and I found recruiters tend to have more couple jobs. At first we only signed up with one agency following a recommendation from some one who had also taught in South Korea. However, I soon realised that in would be beneficial to sign up with more than one. Don't get despondent if some recruiters don't get back to you, I think I might contacted at least 15 in the end! We had some mixed responses, some we clicked with straight away, others never got back to us and some were really enthusiastic but never sent us a job! My advice to other couples looking for a job would be to maintain contact with those recruiters who get back to you and give them regular updates as to where you are with documents etc. until you have all the documents together they will find it hard to get you a job. They may also want you make a Youtube video so schools can listen to your accent, we did this although it turned out it wasn't really necessary and it won't be something I am posting on this blog! Some companies may encourage you to get a TEFL or other teaching qualification, I am sure this would be helpful but as we didn't have the funds needed to get one we decided to have a go without it. We now have a job so it is possible! Just don't give up!

Paperwork Paperwork!

After making the decision that we definitely wanted to teach English in South Korea, it was time to tackle the paperwork required for the E2 Visa. Most recruiters outline the paperwork required for teaching in South Korea, for example:  http://www.flying-cows.com/index.php/visa_process.html  and http://www.asknow.ca/visa.aspx . I would recommend getting these documents together as soon as you have decided that you want to work in South Korea, as I discovered, the process can often take a lot longer than anticipated.  We experienced some confusion with the following documents:

1. An apostilled/notarized copy of your degree - When I first read this I had no idea what  apostilled or notarized meant when I first read this! After a bit of research I found the website for the Foreign Commonwealth Office http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/what-we-do/services-we-deliver/legal-services/Legalisation/ . This website outlines how to get your documents notarized and you can apply via this website to get your documents apostilled. It's not free! First you need to photocopy your degree and get it certified as a true copy of the original by a solicitor or notary, if you know anyone who is a solicitor they might be able to do you  favour! You can then send this off to be apostilled.

2. An apostilled/notarized criminal record check - At first I thought I was covered when I saw this as I has several CRB checks for various jobs, however, they were all over 6 months old and therefore not valid! As you can't get a CRB check unless it is through a company based in the UK we weren't sure what to do next. I e-mailed a couple of recruitment agencies who told us to get a Disclosure Scotland certificate which you can get through their website http://www.disclosurescotland.co.uk/ .  We acquired these (again you have to pay), I then spoke to a solicitor about getting it notarized, who informed me that because it was an original it did not need to be notarized. We then sent these off to be apostilled only to get them refused because they weren't notarized! Very frustrating! In the end I took the Disclosures to a notary (your local one can be found via the FCO website) who certified the actual document as the original copy. This wasn't cheap so phone around to get an estimate before you get it done! This was then accepted and apostilled, yay!

Hopefully this post will help others who are struggling with their visa documents!

My first post: Why write a blog?!

Having made the exciting but scary decision to go and teach English in South Korea with my boyfriend Jack, I began to research the application process. This was daunting and almost overwhelming at first, trawling through the lists of paperwork required, the hundreds of jobs of various job boards and the many recruitment agencies. It felt at some points that we would never get there! Whilst scouring the internet for hints and tips I found many helpful blogs giving some great advice, many of these seemed to be written by single people often from America or Canada and I  found that being a British couple there were extra hurdles to overcome! So, inspired by other bloggers I decided that to write my own blog documenting our application process and hoping to help other British couples who are also embarking on this adventure. Of course friends and family are more than welcome to follow this blog if they don't find it too boring!