(upbeat music)
- Hi, IG family.
My name is Jessica,
and I'm gonna be taking over your Instagram today.
I have been living in South Korea
for over three years now,
and it's been great.
I really enjoy it here.
I was in Anseong, Gyeonggi-do,
which is about an hour and a half south of Seoul
for my first three years.
And now I live in Seoul.
I just moved here a couple months ago.
So still working through the transition,
but I've been in this part of Seoul a lot
since I started in Korea.
So it's certainly not difficult to get around here.
So I'm gonna just go over
different things that I think you guys wanna know.
I'm gonna first put a thing here
so you guys can ask me questions.
And then
we'll see how that goes.
So make sure you ask me your some questions.
I will be happy to answer them.
I do have quite a wide range of--
I got sponsored and they did help with housing.
So my next video is gonna tell you a little bit about that.
Actually, after I show you my rooftop.
So I decided to take you guys
on a little trip to my rooftop.
Well, actually building's rooftop,
so it's not like my personal.
Unfortunately there's no seating up here,
but I love it up here.
This is my view, I'll show you the other side.
But, one of the way outs I can actually take to work
is there is a bike path down here,
so I can walk or bike to work.
Walking takes about an hour,
biking about 20 minutes.
Welcome to my rooftop,
this is called Yeongdeungpo area.
Might be a little loud cause there's a fan thing next to me.
But, it's pretty nice.
I wish I had this view in my apartment.
But it's okay.
So someone asked about school.
So let me give you a basic rundown
of how schools work in Korea.
There are two main routes that people go.
It's Hagwon or a public school.
hagwon is private academy.
Both schools almost always will sponsor your visa.
If they're not going to it's a little fishy
and they would provide housing.
If they don't, then they usually give you more money
but I really highly recommend doing that
because the way housing works here
is if you wanna get your own housing,
you have to pay about a $10,000 deposit.
And, then you pay a tiny bit each month
versus like a larger monthly.
So it is quite difficult
along with language barriers
to try and get a place on your own.
So like with anything there's pros and cons
to both private schools and public schools.
And I actually find private schools get a bad rap
but I prefer private for a few reasons.
And it's gonna be based on your personal preferences.
For me I don't want
a person in the room with me when I teach.
I want to know exactly where I'm going to be going
and things like that.
I will probably put a post
on my actual personal YouTube channel very soon
about more of the pros and cons.
But, you need to figure out what's important to you
and then determine which kind of school you want to go to.
The biggest thing is gonna be
just making sure you're doing your research,
If you're going Hagwon route,
especially to make sure you're answering--
asking questions, talking to current school teachers
and just being cautious
cause there are a lot of shady ones
but I've heard bad stories about public school too so.
But it's not all bad.
I'm gonna go ahead and start making my route to school.
I haven't got a bike yet,
so I don't take the bike route
which would be the quickest route.
So I gotta get a bike soon, I didn't need one in Anseong.
But there's a few other routes to get to school.
I can take a subway and then a bus.
Unfortunately, my school is kind of
a little more difficult to get to.
At my old school I took like a 10 minute bus
and it was really convenient.
This school, I had to take either two buses,
the subway and the bus,
or I can take a taxi,
which is pretty easy.
So yeah. I'm heading to the bus station now
and I'll answer some of your questions.
and definitely be a little difficult at first.
And it really depends
on which route you're going and your school.
If you're public school,
you do have like a two week training.
If you're a private, you might have training
or you might get thrown in.
So my last Hagwon I had one day,
not even one day,
I started teaching my first day and was not expecting it.
This Hagwon, I did have some training.
And so that made it definitely a little easier.
So it is very, very, very dependent on your school.
So yeah.
Korean and fall is so pretty.
And there are so many places,
not just in Seoul,
to go and check out some of the beautiful
fall foliage
and flowers
and pink muhly grass.
I love this little thing on my route.
So in Korea, they are really good about manicuring stuff
and having parks
and look, there's like a Rose garden.
So pretty,
and this cool building.
So for getting around there's buses everywhere,
Metro in a lot of places and train trains.
And I like those.
There are express buses that can take you
to different cities
and just regular inner city buses
that can take you to different cities.
You have your purse, your, your Google buses that are
for your specific area
and then buses that take you elsewhere.
And all you really need is a T-money card.
Sorry, that's one of the buses.
Bus!
And
with a T-Money card or cash card.
You can use that on buses, subway, and even in a taxi.
So here's my bus stop.
Oh, you can't see that in the thing.
There's a thing over here that tells you
like where the buses go.
It is in Korean.
Sometimes they have some English on it
and then this, you can't see
but it says the bus in the time until it comes.
So it's so much busier
than my little town and in Anseong,
where I used to live.
But anyways,
so subways will have English on the signs and stuff
that tell you where you're going
and more popular buses will have the English too,
but in general I do highly recommend
at least learning how to read the Korean alphabet
which is actually the easiest thing is the alphabet.
And it only takes you about two,
two hours
usually.
So try to learn.
I recommend.
You do not actually need to know Korean
to live in Korea and get around Korea pretty easily.
But I do highly recommend learning it.
That Koreans tend to be much more appreciative
when you actually make an attempt.
At least with little things.
I recommend learning the alphabet
so you can know what you're eating
and stuff like that and start to understand.
And that's one of the biggest reasons I actually
highly recommend not coming to Seoul
when you come first.
People come to Seoul and they get complacent
and they don't try.
And I have a lot of Korean friends
and they're often,
you know frustrated
that so many Westerners will come
and they won't even attempt to learn the language.
So while it's definitely not something you need to do,
I would try.
It's not too bad.
A lot of it's difficult,
but if you at least try
you'll be surprised how much more you get out of it.
People are more respectful.
They help you more.
And a lot of times I get free food,
especially at a restaurant.
So I just got off my bus.
My bus stops right there
to make my transfer
but I have about nine minutes before my bus gets here
and I love this park.
It's so pretty and so big.
And one of the fun things
about living in Korea is
they're very exercise focused
but most parks will have these kind of exercise equipment
that are free to use.
So if you don't mind exercising in public
it's really cheap to kind of stay healthy here.
So this is also really dependent
on what school route you take.
My old Hagwon was 1:00 to 7:30.
My new Hagwon is 9:00 to 6:00.
So public schools are generally
about 9:00 to 4:30ish,
5:00.
My afternoon hagwon was 1:00 to 7:30
but that's kind of unusual
it was really nice and chill and laid back,
and I really miss it,
but it was getting hard with Coronavirus
to be in a small town.
At first it was fine,
but a lot of people that I had grown close to
had moved away.
So it was a little difficult,
but still I really like living in a small town
and I think it has a lot of benefits.
And my current hagwon is a morning hagwon.
So afternoon hagwons are often 2:00 to like 10:00
or 1:00 to 9:00.
And morning hagwons have kindergarten in the morning.
So they're usually like 9:00 to 6:00,
9:00 to 6:30.
So yeah.
Once I get to school, I'll kind of show you.
But in the morning I teach kindergarten from 9:50
to 1:00.
And then in the afternoon I teach elementary students.
Afternoon hagwons are going to be
elementary and middle school.
So I taught elementary most of my day
and then middle school towards the evening.
Now my classes run about 40 well,
mine took about 40 minutes
and at my old class went about 50 minutes
my old hagwon
and I would have one and you have a little break in between.
And then, so you're not teaching the whole time.
And you'll also likely have periods
when you don't have a class at all.
But my bus is about to get here.
So I'll talk to you all when I get to school.
I do speak Korean,
probably a level three out of six.
It's not great, but I get by,
I used it with my old hagwon kids,
but it depends on the school.
Most hagwons say, or most schools say
no Korean in class.
Needed a little snack.
So I came to 7/11.
They have tons of stuff.
I got myself a triangle kimbap
and some
orange juice.
but they got tons of snacks.
I will say most
of their like chips and stuff are pretty sweet
but they have also lunchboxes
and different snacks.
And most of it is pretty cheap.
Way better than anything in America at a convenience store.
One of the other options for snacks
underneath my school is a Paris Baguette,
which is not my favorite place
but they have lots of sandwiches and stuff
and yummy.
This is one of my classrooms.
There's rules and stuff on the board,
weather and stuff like that.
Most of the classrooms look like this one.
And we have a projector.
At my last school, I had my own classroom
that I stayed in all day.
And that's where I did all my work.
But at this school I switch around all day
which is not totally bad.
And so I am going up to the teacher's room now.
So you guys can kind of see that.
Teacher's room.
I'm the first one here,
my desk is a little messy,
but this is where we kind of just do all our work
and prepare for our classes.
Here's my desk.
So I'm going to go ahead and get started preparing
for my classes
today is Wednesday.
So I also have art class today.
I can't show you guys my classes
but
I got about 50 minutes to prepare and have my snack.
And I will talk to you guys after work, probably
cause it gets a little busy and today I have art class
so I don't have a long break.
Maybe I'll talk to you in my break.
And then I'm visiting a friend after school.
But once I get home, then I'll show you my apartment.
Okay?
Talk to you soon.
Hey again!
So I am on my 40 minute break
in between my afternoon
and I finished my kindergarten this morning.
We had lunch.
They feed us here
because a lot of morning kindergartens you get food.
And I am just out on the rooftop.
I am chilling.
I have work to do that I sometimes do,
otherwise I just kind of enjoy the rooftop.
So I'll show you a couple of views of that.
In the subway, as you can tell,
when you're going to the subway
it'll tell you up here which station you're at
this is the one that's going to next.
And that's where it just came from
On the bottom it'll tell you what car and
number.
And that helps when transferring.
And then there's things everywhere
that says what's approaching,
what's coming
and there's maps like these on poles,
or at least on some of the doors.
That'll tell you you're at this station and the car
is going that way.
And it has Korean and English and Chinese or Japanese.
Japanese.
And it'll tell you where you can transfer.
So if you need to transfer a different line
where you can transfer,
You have signs up above
that'll tell you which direction go for exits.
And that's how you swipe in.
And then you'll have signs
that'll say which line you're at.
So that's the line four and line one
and which stations they go to.
And then there's always money machines
or ticket machines out here that you can use.
They have English options.
So like, Oh, I need a ticket
to some certain station
and you buy exactly how much you need.
And then after you're done,
you can get a deposit back like
50 cents, I think for the little card,
but you only need T-Money.
Had a long day,
but I'm finally home outside the front of my apartments.
I'll kind of show you that.
So here's my apartment,
a little tip is
if it starts to sing,
it's going low
but this is two buttons up here.
That's for a D battery.
So if you ever get locked out of your apartment
you can use a D battery here
to open this and change the battery.
Here's my kitchen,
my laundry,
my cookie
my microwave,
cooking stuff.
I opened this already, but this is the pantry
in the big storage
closet
where I dry clothes
because there's usually not dryers in Korea,
a desk that also has a desk
that pulls out this way underneath,
secret storage.
My view.
Bookcase.
This is where you'll find heating.
Usually you have to turn hot water on.
My apartment not so much.
Fridge and rice cooker that a room
a neighbor gave me
and my bathroom
which is a combined
thing
which is actually really convenient for cleaning.
And that's all.
Thank you for joining my tour.
I'll continue to be available
if you want to message and I'll respond.
Otherwise, check me at Instagram out
and check my YouTube out
where I'm going to be posting more
and more videos on helping y'all in Korea.
See ya later!
(upbeat music)