Living in Korea

We love our apartment, we love our jobs, and we love Korea! Our life is excellent at the moment. We are LOVING it! It's pretty crazy too though...

The Korean education system is unbelievable, and probably not very healthy, and something we will certainly be researching. Education - and everything! - is very competitive, and so the poor kids are always studying. Not just studying, but seriously studying, like in-class type studying. They go to school, public school, in the daytime (like kids anywhere do), then in the evening they either go to language schools, or to another private academy to do extra tutorials on maths, science, social studies, or they go to both! Some of them are at school 7 days per week! We found out from some of our older students (16 year olds) that they start their school day (at their public highschool) at 8am, have 2 classes with a 10min break in between, then have lunch at 12noon, then back to class at 1pm, have 3 classes with 10min breaks in between, have dinner from 7-8, then another class from 8-10. THEN the poor buggers get on a bus and head the the academy (next door to us) and have a class from 10:30-1am, then get a bus home, sleep and get up again for school a few hours later. They get 3-6hrs sleep per night, and they're still friendly and beautiful, but they tell me they're tired when I ask (and only when I ask). They have classes with us on Saturdays from 2-4pm, and at the academy next door to us from 5-8pm, and on Sunday they only have the 2-4 class with us. We got to meet these kids, as this week and last week has been spring vacation from highschool... so they had the time to come to more English classes than just the weekend!

Unlike the poor Korean students, we have a cruisy life and an easy job. We have all morning to our selves - from when we get up, until 2pm when we leave to walk to work - to chill out, go shopping, sleep in, do Tae Kwon Do (well, that's certainly the plan for the near-future, anyway!), cook, read, watch movies... We walk to work, so we get exercise - at least 1x 50min of walking per day, and half the time we walk home as well. Our work day is 7 or 8 (the eighth is overtime!) 35-min classes per day, and the kids are mostly excellent, even the brats from hell are generally excellent and really funny. They all have English names too - some with names like Jean, Peter, David, Max, Christie, etc; some with misspelt names like Charls, Poul, and Adme (Adam); and then we have the winner names like Joji Bushi, and BBQ! Awesome.

Our apartment is beautiful and rent free! The general cost of living is relatively low, but it varies, ie a cab ride from our house to work costs about $3, a very small block of cheese costs $8, a 700ml bottle of vodka from the supermarket costs $4, and a watermelon costs $25!

There are loads and loads of tall apartment buildings, all identical and numbered. There are crops grown by the highways, next to canals, next to the airport, within a gap in the industrial area, by the trainlines... No land really goes to waste.

Getting around and communicating is easy enough. Lots of people speak English, and are keeen to practice their speaking skills, and people who say they don't speak any English, often have enough English to be able to say (in English!) that they don't speak it. Our workmates are friendly, and we have gone out for meals and drinks and movies with them! The Korean teachers' english skills vary, but there's certainly enough for us to feel connected. We have another native English speaker that we work with too, and there is (seemingly - we haven't really gone out much yet) quite a foreigner population in Ulsan.

Where we live (and apparently Korea in general!) is very safe. People have their stores with TVs on display out the front of the stores, andd then at closing time they tie the TVs to the table, maybe cover them with a blanket, and go home. No one steals the TVs. And lots of the stores, and all the bigger ones, are open 24 hours, so there are always lots of people about. Our boss assures us that it is safe for us to walk around Ulsan late at night, alone. We walk home from work, often leaving town at around 10pm and getting home around 11, through the city, then industrial areas, then farming fields... the kind of dark and secluded route that we would never dream of taking in Sydney!

ALSO there's a job going where we work if anyone is interested..!!? Free flights, free and really nice accommodation, great pay, cruisy and fun job, friendly workmates - come on! Come over!! Email us, or leave a comment on this page , if you're interested or want to know more. All you need is to be a native english speaker and have a bachelors degree (in anything)!

See some photos of our Korean life at: http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/Korea/Living%20in%20Korea/?start=all