My first-year back in Korea is almost over. It’s an understatement to say that this year has gone by too fast. 

Looking back one year ago, I was rushing to get all of my documents so that I could teach in Korea. 

Go to early this year in February, I was on a 14-hour flight to Seoul. After two hours of going through immigration, gathering my luggage from baggage claim, and transferring terminals by subway, I was on my way to teaching in Korea. 

When I came to Korea, I had no idea where I would be teaching. We were starting in Seoul for training, and I didn’t know anyone else in the program either. 

The TaLK (Teach and Learn in Korea) Program had two weeks of training when we first arrived. It involved two weeks of intensive classes for lesson planning, teaching methods, materials– preparing us to teach in rural areas around Korea. During the night we would also have Korean language classes to help us get around in our new communities. 

We also took the time to have fun as well. I can eat ice cream almost year-round and a few of my friends would end up at one of the neighborhoods on a daily basis to get different types of ice cream. 

The program also took us on a field trip towards the end of the training. We visited the National Museum of Korea. Since coming to Korea, I’ve been back to the museum once more and they have different exhibits of different parts of Korea’s history. After the field trip, we ended up going to a Korean restaurant in our large group to help close out training nearly coming to an end. 

On the last day, we received packets detailing where we would be teaching. After some quick googling on my city, I found out that I was heading to Boryeong. 

We’d be headed out the next morning with the other teachers from my province to meet up with our mentor teachers and get settled in our new homes. 

This last day was emotional for many of us. We were headed to different parts of Korea and wouldn’t be able to see each other on a daily basis again. 

Luckily this wouldn’t be the last time, as we would meet up throughout the year to celebrate birthdays and just hang out with each other. 

I want to keep this post short, so next time I’ll talk about how my teaching experience has been in Boryeong. Until next time, take care.