Vacation

 




Holidays in Mexico: Girls dress in skimpy outfits in a street parade for some saint no one remembers. Everyone dances and gets drunk. Holidays in Korea: Everyone spends eight hours in traffic to go home and honor their ancestors or observe how evil the Japanese were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I sound peevish or arrogant, my apologies. I think it's better that I give my honest opinion. There's things I like very much about Korea, but to me it's not a very pro-fun culture. This can be a difficult country for foreigners to accommodate to, as it's not a society which exactly praises leisure time or festive expressions of joy. If you are going to thrive here you will need to cultivate friends and interests other than retreating to your apartment and surfing, or sitting in bars. Not that there's something wrong with drinking in a bar— Koreans, like the British, have a good pub culture— but you need more to do in your free time or you can become unhealthy and cranky. One feature Korean cities really do shine at is night life, and when the sun goes down and the neon comes on, the downtown or shopping districts can be a fun place to mill around.

Try to get exercise. Try to get out of the city. Try to take advantage of the limited cultural activities there are, whether it's orchestras, museums, plays, or festivals. Try to have hobbies, whether it's some volunteer work, church, sports, or just walking or taking pictures. I do think that Korea is a beautiful country for photography. When the cherry blossoms come out all over the country in May the scenery can be stunning. Korea excels at places for hiking, for little fish markets or odd buildings or unusual plants or trees, and it's sad when foreign teachers get so miserable that they stop trying to enjoy these different things.

Holidays

I want to end on a happy note. What's one of the best things about teaching here? You can build experience on your resume and make some good money. You can make things better for people who want to learn. I've taught in North America too and I missed teaching classes of motivated people who all valued education. Generally, the students in Korea do not view school as wasting their time until they can begin their lucrative and glamorous careers as international models and hip-hop gangsters. You can meet some nice people or students and go out and have some fun. You can enjoy a new culture and lifestyle. You can get a good job in a society that doesn't sneer at your English degree and make snide remarks about frying hamburgers; for all the misgivings about foreigners with bogus qualifications, in general teaching is considered a highly honorable profession in Asia.

And instead of teaching in Thailand or Vietnam for peanuts, you can go there in style on your holidays. Places such as Bali, Thailand, and the Philippines are close by, and flights within southeast Asia are relatively cheap and aren't taxed to death and beyond and back and there again like Canadian ones are. When it's snowing or just plain blah in Korea, take your holidays (though book your tickets long ahead! I'm warning you). If you want to stay in the country, there are things to see within Korea as well, such as beaches and mountain parks.

There are numerous travel agencies in Korea which will have someone who speaks English to help the foreigner teachers who are going home for a visit or are heading for some surfing at a nearby resort. The best deals are to be found by having someone who speaks the language, as there will be far more sites and competition for your business. I would recommend, though, that you avoid the quickie Korean all-inclusive package deals. They are deceptively cheap, but corners will be cut as you'll be rushed around, you'll be pressured to buy expensive upgrades, and nothing can be sadder than eating stale Korean food with everyone else on the tour with so many wonderful, fresh local dishes tantalizingly out of reach. I've had much better luck buying flight & hotel combinations and making my own itinerary. For more travel advice you can see my photograph section.

Typically, your contract will have vacation time spelled out. It may vary from a few weeks to a month, and university positions may give you anywhere from a month to a whopping four months. Again, read the fine print. Because classes are out does not mean that you are on holiday. Korea, even if it is emerging from the third-world ranks, is still a country with a frustrating amount of "show-up-ism." Being at work is being productive, whether you are teaching or staring at your pencil sharpener. You may be required to have office time or to come in for extra administrative work or special classes. Still, compared to North America, you can get quite a lot of holiday time here.

One last difficulty: you might miss the place and the people while you're gone. I've given you the horror stories, but on the whole it has been a wonderful time for me. One of the greatest occupational dangers of ESL is that when the bug has bit you, it can be hard to give up teaching and go back home. Some of my co-workers in Korea never have. There are not many jobs in your home town which will ever be this interesting. When I came back to America, I experienced a bit of reverse culture shock. I missed not being able to telephone someone and have dinner delivered for free on a motorbike. I missed the politeness of store workers and students. One of my students here once said that living in Canada is "boring heaven." You can find yourself missing "interresting hell."