Starting in Autumn

After completing 11 months of work at Do Your Best Academy in Seoul, it was fall of 2012 and I was planning to return home upon completion of the final month of my twelve-month contract.  Then, one evening on my 15-minute dinner break at work, my supervisor called.  He said that a kindergarten teacher at a sister institute of ours had disappeared overnight and they needed someone new, fast.  Would I be interested?  Sure, I guess I’d be interested in learning more about the position.  

The next day at 10am, I went in to the kindergarten for an interview.  The CEO told me how great of a workplace it was, boasted about the building design, and continued to raise the monthly rate until I agreed to sign a 6-month contract.  (Money was not my primary motivation, but with student loans sitting on my shoulders, it admittedly did help.)  And so I started, the very next morning, as a homeroom teacher at Lanpus English kindergarten.  

After spending fall and winter teaching kindergarten, I dedicated spring to studying Korean at a language institute.  Late in May of 2013, I went home, reunited with family and friends, baked bread, and tossed coats onto conveyer belts.  It was Valentine’s Day, 2014, when I returned to Korea to teach English in a rural public school.   

Nine months in to my twelve-month contract, I was enjoying working at Yanggu Girls High School and planning to stay a second year, when I learned that my position would be eliminated due to nationwide budget cuts.  I could stay in the province, but I’d have to transfer schools. 

Having had a good experience in the little town I lived in, surrounded by mountains and decorated with neon street lights, I put in a request to transfer to the only position available in that town at that time, at a prestigious boarding-type high school that admits only the top-ranked students from around the province.  

And so I signed on for another year and transferred to Gangwon Foreign Language High School.  It was a challenging but rewarding experience.  I got to know the students on a more personal level, seeing some classes for as many as four hours per week.  I loved teaching a course based on a novel and enjoyed exploring literary concepts with the students.  I signed up to stay on.  

  With students at Gangwon Foreign Language High School  

I was just about six months through the next year-long contract when I got a phone call.  The head coordinator, who worked at a desk at the Gangwon Provincial Office of Education (POE), had decided at the last minute not to renew his contract.  He needed to find a successor, fast.  Would I be interested?  Sure, I guess I’d be interested in learning more about the position. 

Two days later, I answered my phone and listened to a voice tell me that I’d been selected for the part and an official announcement had already been sent out, meaning there was no turning back.  I was to start training the day after tomorrow. 

 The Gangwon Provincial Office of Education 

I spent tomorrow making phone calls to co-teachers and saying goodbyes to my students.  Most accepted the news in a disappointed, yet overall fairly matter-of-fact manner.  A few seemed confused and asked why their teacher must go so suddenly.  One boy fell to his knees, shouting, “Ahn-dwae!” meaning “no” in Korean.  Another complained that her previous English teacher, the current head coordinator, had been whisked away from teaching her in middle school three years prior, and whined that now the Office of Education was taking another teacher out of her classroom.  The next day, I began training for the new role. 

 My desk in the International Education department 

Now, I am nine months in to my fourth twelve-month contract in Korea (the third with this employer).  Four months have passed since I began working as head coordinator at the POE.  As I review my time in Korea, I realize how flexibility has resulted in transitions and how those transitions have resulted in difficulty and development.

I have not sought out transition while living in Korea, but I have been open to it.  I have not refused offers even if I believed myself incapable of fulfilling their demands.  Instead, I figured I could at least try.

 Esther's visit! 

I tried to teach kindergarten and found that keeping up with kids is tiring, but learned that most of the problems in the grown-up world can be solved by following the advice that adults give to children.

I tried to carry on conversations in Korean and felt the frustration of being misunderstood, but learned that progress takes time and mishaps should not be meditated on.

I tried to teach English in the countryside and realized how hard it is to commute to work by bus, but began to appreciate the increased observations that came with the slow in pace.

I tried to coordinate the 267 foreign English teachers in this province and got angry at the seemingly unfair bureaucracy underlying everything, but learned that there are pieces imperceptible at first glance and all angles should be considered equally.

 Sunrise over the East Sea 

Tomorrow begins 2017 and I do not know what transitions the year may hold, but I have come to see the good in trying.  There will be challenge, but change will come, and learning something new is likely to make it worth it.

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Thanks for reading :)

Ten Years Later

I got my Oregon drivers license on my sixteenth birthday. I had practiced for nearly a year, first in parking lots and later on the road. At times, learning to drive was fun; at times, it was frustrating.

There was just too much to take in. I remember having to switch seats with my dad once, as I was so scared that I refused to even attempt starting his stick-shift truck on a hill, with a car stopped close behind us.

Another time, I was concentrating so hard on the rules of the road, trying to recall the distinction between a school bus's yellow flashing lights and its red flashing lights, that I forgot about the road in front of me and smacked right into the back of an already-stopped pickup truck.

Driving practice was scary, stressful, and sometimes startling, but by the time my sixteenth birthday rolled around, I had put in enough hours to pass the test without any real trouble.

The freedom I enjoyed from that day forward was fantastic. When dad, having just gotten home from work, was disappointed that we were out of ice cream, but mom was too busy preparing dinner to go grab another carton, I volunteered to take the car, and was able to get to Safeway and back - with an ice cream flavor of my choice - in 15 minutes flat.

And, when I wanted to go to prom with a few girl friends senior year, but no one else knew how to drive yet and all of us were too embarrassed to be escorted by our parents, I could volunteer to take the suburban, and transport our friend group to the venue and back, in style.

Now, I find myself ten years later. I am no longer sixteen, but twenty-six years old.

For the last two years, living in Yanggu, I have walked a fair bit and hitched rides with friends from time to time, but have largely relied on the little blue-and-white bus, that comes by about once an hour, to get me into town and back home again.

Riding the bus is interesting. You see lots of people that you wouldn't see otherwise, and sometimes overhear amusing conversations as well. It keeps you patient, always having to plan and wait, and doesn't give you much of a choice but to live slow.

As you may be able to imagine, though, riding the bus has its hardships, too. Picture waking up late one morning and getting ready as fast as you possibly can, only to rush down the stairs, swing open the front door, and see the bus just passing your apartment. With the next bus not coming for another hour, you are left with no choice but to call a cab, which will cost you 7,000 won - as opposed to the bus, which would have been only 1,100.

Similarly, after work, you might walk the twenty-minute path into town and decide to pop in a grocery store while waiting for the bus, which doesn't come for fifteen more minutes. Suddenly, you look at your watch. Having been immersed in comparing prices and expiration dates on the various brands of milk, you lost track of time and now will have to either: 1) pay 7,000 won for a taxi (again), 2) carry your liter of milk as you walk home (which takes just under an hour), or 3) sit on the bench at the bus stop and wait 60 minutes for the next bus home.

Having experienced both the benefits and the frustrations of relying on public transportation to make my way around this rural region, I decided that, if possible, I'd really like to relive that fantastic freedom that I'd felt at age sixteen.

So, I began to look into purchasing a vehicle.

Before purchasing a vehicle, I would have to acquire a Korean drivers license. Exchanging my U.S. license for a Korean one would only require me to pass the written exam, but would also demand that I send away for an apostille, which costs upwards of $245.

Hoping to avoid that cost, I decided to take route two and simply go through the process of getting drivers license from the beginning, the same way any Korean person would.

I figured that, since I've been driving for ten years now and have even rented a car and driven around Korea a handful of times, it wouldn't be too tough. So, I caught the 7:00am bus out of town, arrived at the nearest "DMV" shortly before 9:00am, and got in line.

After watching an hour-long safety video, I waited in another line to take the written test. The questions had been translated into English. Some were a bit vague. Others were quite obvious. Others still, I didn't have a clue about. I guessed my way through and came out with a whopping 66% - that's 6% above the minimum passing score of 60%.

With a blue stamp, indicating that I'd passed, on my paper, I waited in line again and registered to take the "functions test." I was to take the test on a bright yellow, manual transmission, four-door passenger car at 1:00pm. Again, I waited. I hadn't eaten anything since the coffee and pretzel I'd had for breakfast, but figured I could last. After all, how hard can a "functions test" be?

 

When they call your name, you get in the car, alone. A GPS tells you what to do. The "functions test" consists of: starting the car, turning on the windsheild wipers, turning on first the headlights and then the brights, turning on either the left or the right blinker, putting the car from neutral, into a specified gear, and then back into neutral again, starting to drive down a straight, 50-meter course, but suddenly stopping when cued to do so, quickly turning on the emergency flashers, and then continuing down the rest of the straight, 50-meter course. Sounds simple enough, right?

 

Well, the problem was that I didn't exactly know what the "funcions test" consisted of before I took it. I expected that an examiner would sit in the passenger seat and tell me what to do. I did not expect a GPS to give me the directions one time, in Korean, and then start counting down from five seconds while I struggled to figure out if this was one of those cars like my mom's where you pull the knob down to activate the wipers, or if it was like my dad's where you twist the knob forward. It was like my mom's. But I didn't figure that out until I'd already spent my five seconds pushing and pulling and twisting the knob in all directions, accidentally washing the windshield at one point as well. The GPS boomed, "MINUS POINTS!"

 

Next were the headlights, which I succesfully turned on. But, the word for "brights" in Korean sounded to me like the word for "hunting," so I had no idea what the GPS was talking about and failed to turn my brights on. "MINUS POINTS!" the GPS shouted again.

 

I think I may have turned on the correct blinker successfully but, after that, I had to put the car from neutral, into reverse, and back into neutral. I did not know the word for neutral nor did I know the word for reverse, but I did know that I was being instructed to do something with the gears, so I shifted into every gear I possibly could in five seconds. I didn't make it into reverse before I heard, "MINUS POINTS!"

 

Finally, the GPS instructed me to begin the straight, 50-meter commute forward. I started. The GPS exclaimed, "Emergency! Emergency! Emergency!" at which point I stopped and put my flashers on. I must have been too slow. A voice came out, loud from the speakers at the top of the buildling where the test administrators sit. "YOU HAVE FAILED," it bellowed, and an instructor on the ground quickly escorted me out of the vehicle.

 

Talk about sad. I got in line for the last time that day and asked when I could schedule a re-test. They answered that I had to wait three days before retaking the "functions test." It was Thursday, so I booked for Monday.

 

Over the weekend, I watched YouTube video after YouTube video and familiarized myself with the process of the "functions test." On Monday, I went to the testing site again and, to my surprise, found a friend waiting to encourage me on my second attempt!

 

We rehearsed the steps once more before my name was called. I got in the car, ready to demonstrate my knowledge of vehicle "functions" with a newfound confidence. The GPS only shouted at me once, for turning on my left blinker instead of my right, but hey, I've been known to make that mistake with English directions as well!

 

When I'd reached the end of the 50-meter course, unfastened my seatbelt, and gotten out of the car, I looked toward the speakers at the top of the building where the test administrators sit.

 

"Congratulations on passing! Have a nice day!" it beamed - words, which, in light of the circumstances, entered my ears like music.

 

 

Having passed the "functions test," I was then qualified to take the road test. The road test is about 5 km, or 3 miles. There are four courses: A, B, C, and D. I got course C. It consisted of pulling away from a curb, turning right at an intersection, driving straight down a two-lane road, and making a U-turn. Fortunately, none of those prospects appeared too nervewracking, when I reminded myself that I had essentially been training for this for the last ten years of my life.

 

What I hadn't been training for, however, was parallel parking. After returning to the "DMV" parking lot, I would have to parallel park for the first time - ever. Fortunately, there was time to watch a few quick YouTube videos, and it turned out alright!

 

Ten years after getting my drivers license, I was granted a second drivers license - this time, on my second try, in a foreign country, driving a bright yellow car. 

 

 

Happy to have passed, but having no means by which to commute to work, which started the day after that day, I rushed to a used car lot, test drove four different vehicles, and chose one. I handed over the money I'd been saving and was able to drive the car home that day and get it cleaned up the next!

 

 

I ended up with a 2006 Hyundai Verna. It has a diesel engine and something like a chain instead of a timing belt, which apparently never needs to be changed. When I got it, it had just about 100,000 km (62,000 miles) on it. And, not only is it my first car in Korea, it's my first car ever! So, as you can likely imagine, it's all quite exciting. 

 

 

I'd like to thank my mom and dad who taught me to drive in the first place, and my friends who supported me on the long road to getting a second license.

 

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Thank you for reading :)