How does your work day start? Probably something like turning on your computer at 9am and grabbing that much needed filter coffee. All before you begin your 8 hours of answering emails, meeting monthly sales targets and avoiding your uptight bosses ever watchful gaze. As a teacher, my day is comparatively extremely different.

Ready for class teacher?
By 9am, I am well into my second period and my coworkers, or 'students' as we like to call them, arent privy to sitting quietly at their work stations and sipping a cup of coffee. Walking into my classroom I could find anything from students 'play-slapping', to girls plucking each others eyebrows. The atmosphere ranges from peaceful desk napping to high-pitched sobbing over lost boyfriends. 
Anything is possible.
For your work place, this would be something out of the ordinary or extreme, but for mine, the peace and the chaos is just the standard for the hour.
You better roll with it. Sink or swim, teacher.

What's your morning work routine?
Coming to Korea again has been an awesome crash course in thinking on your feet in the classroom, especially when you belong to 4 different schools at once.  I got on a plane in South Africa being fairly certain I would be at an elementary school this time around, but was surprised to find out that this contract would be at high school level again. I winced a little thinking of the 'typical Korean teenager' -  a body of ragging hormones, with a never quite satisfied hunger and nagging need for sleep. Why couldn't I have sweet singing grade 3's?

However, teaching these 'child-giants' has been an awesome surprise. Most of my student are quick-witted kids, who enjoy learning English and rise to the occasion every week. At a particularly high level school on Thursdays, I keep increasing the difficulty, and the students keep matching it, calling it too easy. I think I didn't realize how low level my previous school was until I got to teach in Haman this time around.

Although there are times when I get a little jealous of my elementary school teacher friends, who get to sing songs and teach fruit - I wouldn't trade the sarcastic, yet clever answers for the world.

Class presentation time!
"Byeong- Ju, why does your alien have no eyes or mouth? It's just a square?" (Me essentially remarking on his laziness).
"Teacher, because it is a superior race, they do not need to eat or talk, they are finished with that", replied my student with an annoyed air, rolling his eyes at my apparent inability to keep up with the intricacies of alien advancement.

Or better yet, when students challenge you. "Teacher, Mars is smaller than earth, not bigger - your thinking of Jupiter". I am forced to stop the lesson and google the size of Mars, in the middle of my ESL class - because this is so much more important than the vocabulary we have to learn.
For everyone's information, Nicky (her English name), is correct.
Mars is almost 3 times smaller than Earth. Nicky laughed and dived to the front of the class to make damn sure I gave her extra points.
"I know teacher...I KNOW" said Nicky loudly dragging me by the hand to the computer for points and simultaneously smacking her friend across the head for ever doubting her.

Discussing their aliens for a class on description.
This week has seen me teaching summer camp classes. Yesterday we ordered the whole class pizza's. I have never seen 16 students faces light up quite as quickly, as when they saw the Pizza Etang delivery man walk into school.  Watching them eat pizza was like watching a strong infomerical-type vacuum cleaner suck up even the tiniest morsel in its path. Or maybe one of those terrifying snakes who eat small animals whole. Regardless, I have learned that the Korean teenager eats swiftly and without hesitation. Blink and your pizza will be gone.

My Students devouring pizza at their English camp.
Regardless, of the teenager-ie chaos I face at work on a daily basis, I am also having the best time teaching them about the world. Here's to a long vacation and a new semester of crazy teenagers to come.

xx
Welcome to Gaya-Eup, Haman, my new home in Korea - 20 odd minutes from the coastal city of Changwon. The best set of directions I could give you is to drive away from Changwon until you see a giant watermelon slice suspended above the road. You see it? You think it looks odd too?
Well done... your in Haman!

A view of the river from Gaya.

Admittedly, at first I was a little shocked by my placement. Ever tried to google Haman? There really isn't much to find. Any photos I could see through a quick internet search, were of farm land and watermelons. Explaining that I would be teaching at 4 different schools, my co-teacher laughed and congratulated another fellow native teacher on a better placement than mine. I hadn't even arrived, and I was already worried. Where on Earth was I going?

On the way to Gaya-Eup

Looking back on it, I should have remembered the same stressed and lost feeling I had had on my drive to Yeongju, two and a half years ago. I had been fine before, I would be fine this time around as well. Sometimes this sort of thing just requires a little faith.

Jumping ahead nearly a month to the day, I can quite happily say I'm pretty settled in Haman.
I work at 4 schools that let me teach as I see fit and I get to change my scenery each day.  Most of the schools I visit are set against green rolling hills, with pot plants lining every hallway. My Thursday school rests along a riverside and my Friday one overlooks an orchard. To think, an initially preferred job in Seoul would have seen me commuting to work each day by subway.

Stairs up to my Friday school
Walking to the cafeteria during lunch break.
A view from the parking lot. 
A look out of my classroom window at the mountains and crops.
Luckily, my apartment is huge in comparison to the last one, I am going to buy a sleeper couch and dinning table with my first paycheck. I cant wait to make it more of a home. There are also 4 other foreigners in my building and about 12 in Haman alone. Its not quite as isolated as I had thought.

My apartment when I first arrived

This time I get a full on kitchen.
Whats more, it turns out that Haman is realistically only 20 minutes from quite a big city (greater Changwon) and Busan is only 45 minutes away. I have a scenic mountain view on the way to work each morning, but can also eat Pizza Hut and watch a 3D movie any day of the week. I think that's a pretty good compromise.

A view of Busan at night- a city 45 minutes away. 
Finally, and more importantly my faith has been renewed in wanting to be an educator. 3 months ago I felt totally lost in what I wanted to do with my life. Scanning through lines of coding and online task panels, there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Thankfully, coming back to Korea has made me realize that this is definitely where I see myself in the future. As a teacher.
I'm thankful that I made the difficult decision to come back after nearly a year away.

My English class at my Tuesday school.
A flower given by the students for teachers day.
Looking forward to the weeks ahead and finding out more about the area and an exciting few months ahead.

So sure that I was of leaving the land of morning calm, that I packed away my chopsticks threw away my animal patterned socks and made a pact to taste fermented cabbage for the last time. Moving forward to normal pizza toppings, a steady 9-5 marketing job. Back to where I came from.

A great two years it had been, as I waved Korea goodbye from a plane in the clouds. I had grown so much in this country and it was time to grow even more back at home.

Yeah.....maybe not.


Sometimes, I have learned, fate unexpectedly deals you a curve ball. It turns out, after 4 years of studying and a portfolio of work, that I dislike marketing and design – rather intensely. Furthermore, it turns out that I am not really qualified to do anything else. Which is quite a pickle to find yourself in as a not so new graduate.

I returned home to the familiarity and comfort only to find that staring aimlessly at the computer all day made me bored to tears. The fast paced deadlines and pressured agency style updates did nothing to inspire me. I missed children and teaching and laughing. Hiding in the toilets at work once again I contemplated, what was I going to do with my life? As I nibbled the almost raw corners of my finger nails– a nervous reaction that seemed to be in constant play from 7.30 till 5 each day. What was I going to DO? What if I died tomorrow and my tombstone read: “Claire – (2016) - who spent her life animating pop up web banners that at best irritate people who haven't bothered to install ad-blocker yet”

It turns out that a quarter life crisis, hits exactly when everyone says it will – at 25 and a half years old. All of a sudden my tall plans for success had come crumbling down and I was forced to realize that despite what my family and peers thought, I could not sit through a 10 hour -a-day job at the computer for the rest of my short life.



I sat there wanting to pull my hair out. How did people, normal people, manage to do this each day? I even googled signs of ADHD in adults to see if that was my problem, it wasn't. Sleep Apnea? Nope Thyroid imbalance? No luck. I was just stressed and un-stimulated of my own accord, no medical reason could be blamed. I couldn't even really hold it against my work place- they were just asking me to do the job I had been hired for. It wasn't really their fault that I found it laborious and overwhelming. I wasn't lazy, I just wasn't invested enough to come to work each day excited for what would happen. Most of all I just didn't want to feel like I was dragging my feet in the sand until I retired in 40 years time. I felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

So, I have made a decision.
Well, I made this decision in the work bathroom I suppose on a fairly stressed Monday morning, trying to dab away the tears. Something I had contemplated but hadn't had the balls to do. To many people in my opinion, spend their lives doing shit, mundane boring crap, because it covers the paycheck. Because then you can buy a new car. Because then your kids can go to private school. Because then you have stability.

Well, I don't need a new car. I don't have kids to send to school yet and I realize I don't desperately need stability at 25. So I waited for my one on one corporate style weekly meeting and resigned, still within my probation period. I would have labeled anybody else a 'complete flake'.

It got to the point where caring about what others thought needed to matter less than my happiness. I realize now that I am 25 years old. I have every right to take my time to be in a career that I love. Not one that just allows me to buy a new car. So I am going to do just that.

Next year I will be going back to University to Study a PGCE to qualify me as a teacher allowing me to do something I actually love. I may never be rich, but who needs money when they are too miserable to happily spend it? In fact it feels very good to put in writing finally the way I have felt these months and what my new path will be.

So this brings me back to Korea. Here I go again for a while. Because teaching makes me happy, passionate and enthused. Something I haven't been able to say a lot of lately. And whats more? I am proud of myself for sorting things out before I am 40 and too old to actually enjoy my decision.

So Korea, 1st of May you will be seeing me. Step one you may ask? Buy some more socks with characters on them. My collection has become so mono-toned these past months.