(upbeat electronic music)
- Good morning, my name is Meghan,
and I am coming to you from Sokcho South Korea.
I'm excited to join you today and hopefully
share a little bit about my life in this town.
And a little bit about where I'm from and how I got here.
So to give you an idea of where I am,
this is the entire Korean peninsula,
and here I am in Sokcho, this is the DMZ,
and over here is Seoul.
I'm about two and a half hours from Seoul.
So I was born and raised in South Carolina.
I went to University of South Carolina
and I studied journalism.
I really am excited to share with you
because I am a little different from
your regular TEFL story.
I didn't graduate and go directly into teaching English.
I graduated and then I worked for about
five years in marketing and sales.
And then I really wanted to teach,
I've always kind of wanted to teach and I love travel.
So I did my ITA certification online
so I could continue working full time.
Okay so I am starting my second year now,
I just started my second contract two weeks ago in Sokcho.
I was here for a year, same school, same everything.
And prior to moving to Korea I lived in Morocco for a year
teaching English in Rabat.
Okay last tidbit about me and then
we're going to head off to school.
I work for EPIK which is the public school
program here in Korea.
You're going to hear about two types,
there's EPIK which is what I do public school,
or Hagwon which is a private academy.
You will see if you're looking into Korea.
I teach at an all boys middle school,
and this is one of my English classrooms.
This is not common, I'm actually
pretty lucky to have my own classroom.
So as I mentioned in my last post,
I teach at an all boys middle school.
It's a little crazy but it's usually pretty fun.
Most all of my classes are 45 minutes each
and today I have a long day with five classes.
So I will try to check back in when I can.
So EPIK is the public school jobs in South Korea.
You have to apply directly through the program
or through a recruiter for the program.
And you have to be really open to where you'll be placed.
(chatter in Korean)
Lunch is an hour and the kids normally come outside
and play soccer, as you saw
there's actually a tournament happening.
Or they play basketball or badminton or whatever they want.
Or they just hang out in their home classrooms.
And I like to sit outside when it's this nice.
(dramatic music)
Okay, super sorry that I'm just now talking to you.
I went downtown with dinner and then ended up having to go
help clean up at a friend's bar
where he let me have my 30th birthday party last Saturday.
So I'm here now and I'm going to help answer some questions.
So I was pretty concerned about gyms
when I was coming to Korea and looking at Korea.
Because weight lifting is something that I go into
like maybe four years ago, and it's my favorite type
of exercise and I wasn't sure if it was possible
for me to continue doing it here.
And the answer is Koreans value movement
and there are lots of exercise parks here,
plenty of places to run, there's pools,
and my gym I found took me a while,
but I even found a weight lifting friendly gym
in my small town, so it's possible.
Another thing people want to consider when they move
to a small town is if they want to get a car.
I'm perfectly fine without one.
Would've been nice today when I had to
carry all of that stuff, but I'm okay without one.
The buses and taxis take me everywhere,
but I have friends who have them
here too and it's very convenient.
To talk about EPIK a little more,
I told you you have to be open because you won't know
where you're going to get placed.
You can ask for a particular province,
but you'll kind of get put wherever they tell you to.
And you have to decide if that's something you want.
A reason that I stayed in Sokcho for a second year
is because I'm in love with this town.
You saw a little bit of the mountains, they're gorgeous.
We're right on a beautiful beach and we have two lakes.
It is a stunning town and the community here
is incredible, so I loved it and stayed.
Well that's it.
I'm about to go to bed, I hope that I gave you
a good idea of what a regular day in Sokcho is like.
Just working nine to five and then going to the gym
and having dinner and coming home.
Okay well fell free to shoot me any more questions
that you many have, and it was a pleasure
sharing my day with you and I hope it was helpful.
And I hope you have a good rest of your day or evening
or wherever you are in the world.
Thank you again for letting me share with you.
(upbeat electronic music)