Name: MJG

Age: 22

Occupation: Teacher

Favorite Sport: Baseball

After graduating early from Penn in December 2006, I basically did nothing productive for the next five months. The desire to make up for that by doing something not only productive but also challenging and unusual coupled with the desire to travel and avoid working a desk job for as long as possible (hopefully forever) led me to get my TEFL certification from the Boston Language Institute in June.

Although I knew (A) no Korean and (B) basically nothing about South Korea, I chose to apply to positions there because (A) I had never been there and it would allow me to color it in on my map of countries I had been to, (B) they offered possibly the best salary and benefits in the world, and (C) I could.

In August I applied for positions in South Korea and heard back from most within a day. The demand for English teachers in Korea was and is extraordinary. Since almost all the job specs at every school were the same, I basically got to take my pick of where I wanted to live. Oh, that and I made sure I took a job where I worked afternoons so I wouldn’t have to leave behind my college schedule. Sweet!

So now here I am, spending a year in Hwaseong, South Korea teaching English. I work for K English, a private language school (hagwon) in the city of Dongtan.

I hope you enjoy my account of my adventures in the land of the morning calm!