Teachers Share their Experiences While Living Abroad!

For anyone living in Korea, or anyone of Asian heritage, people can notice that many have a layered and complicated relationship to Japan. Because of what I learned growing up, I never found myself interested to go there, but by some random chance, I visited three years ago while working at Chungdahm. I met this Japanese person who ended up being my best friend, and I am lucky enough to have seen the things and the people that I have there through and with her. She does a lot of resistance work with both mainland Japanese and Okinawan artists and activists who demand fair rights, justice, and truth. There are so many incredible people creating communities of care and liberation, and I feel so thankful to see what is happening on the ground, giving me a more complex perception of the cultures around me.

Traveling is the major reason I chose English teaching as a profession. I love to travel...and becoming an ESL instructor made my dreams come true, having traveled to 42 countries in the past six years. For me, this is an accomplishment - one I know will be a part of my identity for many years to come.

If you love to travel, engage with other cultures, learn new languages and see things you never dreamed of; then choosing ESL might be the right path for you! 

Gangneung is coastal city located in the eastern province of Gangwon-do. Amongst Koreans, Gangwon-do is a favorite vacation spot. When compared to Jeju-do, it is the cheaper and less foreign tourist filled alternative. It is most famous for Jeongdongjin, Gyeongpo Beach and Gangneung Olympic Park.

When you are teaching in Korea and have a 3 day weekend working for ChungDahm or April, it's always worth your while to take a mini vacation if you can afford it. Now that I am splitting my time between teaching ChungDahm and April Academy, I am getting more time off. Knowing that Lunar New Year would be coming up, my friend and I realized how expensive those tickets would be. So we decided to go on our trip the weekend before the major holiday. She had never been to Osaka or Kyoto so we decided to see if we could spend one day in Osaka and one day in Kyoto. My advice would be to not do it. A one day trip to either place is not nearly enough time to soak in what each city has to offer. There is so much to see and do in both places, you will not do either city its justice. Many teachers love to go to Osaka because it is only a 2 hour flight from Incheon International Airport (ICN) to Kansai International Airport (KIX). The last time I took this trip, we spent a full day at Universal Studios Japan (Osaka) and toured the following day. However, many teachers don't realize how close, how beautiful, and how historic Kyoto is. Here was my to-do list for traveling to Kyoto.

One of the longest breaks you will have as a ChungDahm teacher is during the Korean holiday of Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving). The other major holiday would be Seollnal (Lunar New Years). Whenever these holidays approach, I always take the time to leave the city. In times past, I’ve visited Malaysia, Manila, and Busan. We have had teachers visit Hong Kong and Thailand during this long vacation too. This year, I decided to take time and go to a place that I had been to before but never got a really chance to explore. This place I decided to go back to was Jeju.

This past week was vacation time for the April program at my Chungdahm branch. My itchy feet have been looking forward to this vacation for quite some time, and I was ready for a refreshing break. I took off to explore a small part of the beautiful and vast country of Mongolia. Prior to my trip I didn't know too much about the landlocked country; I associated Mongolia with it's nomadic people, Gobi Desert, and Ghengis Khan. I chose to travel there after reading travel blogs online and seeing pictures of Mongolia's wide open landscapes. As much as I love living in Seoul and teaching in Korea I was craving some recess from the concrete jungle as well as some fresh air. I also wanted to learn about nomadic culture, drink fermented mare milk and sleep in a ger. Mongolia definitely delivered. After my week traveling throughout Southern Mongolia I can't say enough about how wonderful a country Mongolia is. The people were SO friendly, the food was great, and the scenery impressive. 

Lunar New Year (Seollal) is one of the major festival/holidays in Korea and that is usually one of the only two vacations that ChungDahm teachers get while teaching English in Korea. Thankfully, for my branch, this holiday was celebrated for five days which meant...time to travel and leave Korea! Although airfare is extremely pricey during this holiday, I thought it would be better to go travel than to just stay in Seoul where most of the city would be shut down. Also, I decided to meet my parents who were on holiday in Thailand.

Before I give you my top 3 places to visit while you are visiting Thailand I first want to offer you some advice on traveling there and what airport you should fly into. 

The Lunar New Year is here, and that means it is one of the best times to travel while teaching English in Korea at ChungDahm. For the Lunar New Year holiday, my family and I decided to meet in Hong Kong and travel to Macau, the Las Vegas of Asia.

Macau does have direct flights from Seoul but it can be either expensive or limited because Macau has a small airport. Instead, we flew into Hong Kong and took the one hour Turbo Jet boat ride across the bay. After going through immigration, we took one of the many free buses from the port to one of the numerous casinos. We did not stay at a casino/hotel but we were still able to jump on one of the buses and walk to our hotel across the street.