Bong-Rae English Experience Center

A couple of weeks ago, I was given a camera, and was set the task of taking pictures of the Bong-Rae English Experience Center (which is where I work) for our brochure. BREEC, as we call it, is still very new-- just opened up December 2008-- and our hope is that in the future other elementary schools in the Yeongwol area will send their students to our facility for a one or two day intensive.

So I thought, who knows, maybe some of you out there are interested to see where an English teacher in Korea is working. Maybe even some of you would get a kick out of seeing where I work. So I decided to post a few of the pictures for you!

First, the outside of the building (inside which, in fact, I am at this very moment):






Come up the stairs:



To our front door!




Inside, we've got a lot of goodies for visiting students (and for the students at Bong-Rae elementary, for that matter). First there's the library:






Then we've got tons of stations where students can, in essence, play make-believe in English. We give them dialogues, and they pretend to be doing many different everyday things, in semi-realistic surroundings. This could be, for instance, a hospital:




Or maybe airport security:




A produce store:




Or a hotel:




There are plenty of other stations, as well. We hand out realistic-looking passports (for the Republic of BREEC) to each class who comes through, which come complete with suggested dialogue. Once a student completes the dialogue (or, for younger grades, a simplified version) in the mock-up, we give them a stamp on that page of their passport.


Next is the Multimedia Room, where students can be on big-screen TV, and actually, by waving their hands around in the air, interact with the things on the screen!

I can't figure out how to convert the format of those pictures (which I didn't take, as they involve students actually interacting with the system). If there is any interest whatsoever expressed, I'll try harder to post some of these. :)


And there you have it: the workplace of a foreign English teacher at a small English Experience Center in rural Korea. I'm in Gangwon-do, the least developed province of South Korea... imagine how snazzy these places must be in other areas!

Getting a teaching job abroad

So, in the seven weeks since I've moved to Korea, I've gotten several emails/messages from people asking for advice on how to go about getting a teaching job abroad. The economy's tanking and people are nervous about the state of the world, but the ability to speak English fluently is still a very, VERY valuable skill in the global market.

I'm considering forming a web site or something, to help people get teaching jobs (or any jobs, really) in a foreign country. It seems a bit presumptuous to me, given that I've only done it twice, once for a couple of months (and that was unpaid) and now this one, but... I just seem to enjoy helping people get out here into the rest of the world. I spent a couple hours on the phone with Kat, and I loved thinking of ways to get her to another continent.

I think I know why, too. It occurred to me when Chris said that he could get me a job in Greece and was surprised I hadn't asked him when I was looking into jobs abroad this past fall. And I thought "Oh, wow, I should have done that! I could be in GREECE right now!"

And then I wasn't sure why I thought that. I'm in Korea. That's way more of a different culture, and there's no reason I'd think that a job in Greece was better than a job in Korea. So why am I like "Oh, I should have gone to Greece!"? Because I have such strong wanderlust that, no matter where I am, I'm imagining what it would be like to live somewhere else. Which is not to say that there's no point to my traveling, or that I'd be just as restless in Korea as in Philadelphia. I'm happy to be here. I love the fact that I'm becoming friends with Koreans who have never left South Korea, or the fact that the people who I consider actually from my culture includes Brits, Australians, and South Africans.

That I got to toast to Obama with Brits and Australians!

But I have wanderlust. I'm restless. So now I'm thinking of all the other places I could be visiting, and I want to go there.

So really, even though I'm already living abroad, I want to live vicariously through people who are going to other places.* And I LOVE making plans for travel (even though I know that often I won't follow through and will do something different instead-- that's half the fun, as long as you're seeing new things!). So I get to plan someone else's new life abroad and live vicariously through that. It's great!

I'd love to do that for way more people. Maybe I don't have enough experience to start up a website now, but maybe in a few years. I think I'd really, REALLY enjoy it.




*Which does NOT mean you shouldn't come to Korea, Kat. I would WAY rather have you here than live vicariously through your Germany experience.