Importance of English

Very interesting article in the Financial Times about how English has become the "world's lingua franca."

Surprised me that:

• "The majority of conversations in English today are between non-native speakers."
• "English speakers earn 25 per cent more than colleagues who don’t speak the language. This is the average. In Rwanda, in some jobs the difference can be 181 per cent."
• "Kent Holiday, chief executive of Eleutian Technology, a US-based teaching company, thinks the state and private English sectors spend $100bn on teaching in China, Japan and South Korea alone."

Definitely have seen first-hand the value placed on learning English in Korea. The article also stated that "English should be the 21st century gold rush." Big opportunities...

Gulp... trial by fire

On Monday we went to Poly School to check out our new apartment. The apartment is much smaller than Father's (not really a surprise), but pretty cute. It is located about 2 minutes from the Guro Digital Complex subway stop. (If you want to find it on the map, it's on the green line and called Gurogongdan. It's four stops away from our school's exit: Seoul National University.) The entire commute will take about 25 minutes, which is much nicer than the over an hour commute from Father's apartment.

The area seems to have a lot of high rise apartment buildings. We'll be living on the 4th floor. And we will actually have a kitchen/living room and two other rooms. The rooms are teeny tiny, but should serve their purpose. In addition, there is a loft area above, which will provide some great storage. (And a place I can hide from Mark since there's no way he can get around up there - hee hee.) We'll take some pictures the next time around, it just felt creepy to take a bunch of pictures of someone's random apartment with all their stuff in it. We can officially move in on Feb. 28th. Until then we will probably be commuting from Father's apartment, though in a few days we'll have a single studio previously used by one of the single teachers at Poly made available for us to shack in.

When we were at the school on Monday, we received some very sad news. One of the teachers got a call that morning informing him that his brother passed away, so he was catching the next plane back home on Wednesday. And the school desperately needed someone to cover his classes on Wednesday and possibly even Thursday and Friday (when we were supposed to be training). Sooo... Mark and Kim to the rescue! We're going to be teaching our first classes tomorrow with absolutely no training whatsoever. (Actually, one of the teachers tried to give us a brief overview, but it was more confusing than anything.) So we're going to show up at Poly tomorrow and completely wing it. We'll let you know how it turns out! Wish us luck.....

Gainfully employed

After waiting over 27 years, Kim and I now have an all access pass to the teacher's lounge. We have entered the lucrative field of education. Before long, we'll be living the high life.

On Sunday night, we finalized our contracts with Poly Institute in Seoul. Our branch will be located in Bongcheon-dong Gwanak-gu. The hours are longer than we originally planned on, but we're being compensated with higher pay. We'll be working from 9-7:30 with about 6.5 hours of that being actual teaching time.

The morning will be spent teaching 5-6 year olds and the afternoons will be with primary and middle school kids. It should be tiring, but a lot of fun!

{Pictures courtesy of Poly's website}

No rent..no way?

M: As Kim wrote in an earlier post "Would you rather...", she mentioned the dilemma that we're facing about how long our visit should be. If we choose to go with "Option B", we will try to find a job teaching English (ESL). There is an abundance of jobs in Seoul and the hours are not as demanding as in a business position. While teaching might not provide us with the international business experience on our resume that we were hoping for, it would provide us with more free time to explore Korea.

Preciously, Kim mentioned a message board, Dave's ESL Cafe, that we joined. The website is dedicated to foreigners teaching English in Korea. Through this site we learned that a typical ESL contract will provide you with:

• 2 to 2.5 million Won per month (roughly $2,000 to $2,500 in American dollars)
• Paid overtime
• Roundtrip airfare
• Apartment (utilities not included)
• Anywhere from 25 to 40 hours per week of teaching
• Medical benefits (not sure yet what these include or how they vary among contracts)

The free rent is what first caught our eye. Kim and I have been very worried about how we could afford both living in Seoul and paying our mortgage. If this is true, that would lift a huge burden off of us.

We have learned that the ESL business in Korea is very competitive and that some schools will make false promises to teachers in order to get them to sign a contract. So obviously, Kim and I will need to do as much research as possible before we make a decision like that.

I do believe that this information provided Kim and I with a little resolution about our decision as to how long our stay should be. Finding the right teaching job could subside most of our financial worries with our house here is the US.