Daegu, Darling!

Ahh, so much to share with everyone. As you may already know I have been offered a contract with a school in Daegu. It is a starter school, catering to children between the ages of 3-9. I am thrilled. Round trip airfare is provided assuming of course I complete my one year contract. The start date is February 17th and while I might not make it for that exact date I will be there shortly after. The school is called Isponge. It is a medium-sized franchised private institution which has been around in some parts of Korea for 10 years. They adhere to a more holistic approach to teaching the kids English. In short I will be doing alot of talking and encouraging my students to be talking aloud, in English, in group settings. Their aim as a school is to take the fear out of speaking English from the very beginning. I have had many interviews with schools and recruitment agencies and one question stuck with me... why the push for so many native English speaking teachers. They have excellent qualified Korean English teachers. I asked on of the recruitment reps in my last interview and she replied simply 'competition'. Koreans are naturally competitive people and they have fallen back in the race to make spoken English vast in their country. The push to gather native English speakers has gone so far that the ministry of education in South Korea has a mandate in place to secure a native English speaking teacher in every single on of its schools across the country! Unfortunately their country has some remote spots and islands that probably, with only 20 students, will never see a foreigner. One upsetting thing I discovered is that an acceptable form of punishment for misbehaving students is to hit them... really old school mentality in that regard. Hopefully I won't fall into the habit! Joke.

Anyway, Daegu. A large metropolitan city with about the same population as Toronto. You can check it out in more detail here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu. Located inland, in the southeast corner of Korea it apparently is some crazy hub of medical and surgical research. Good to know, I am pretty clumsy!

In terms of immigration I have received all the documentation I need to get there I just have to get stuff notarized by a lawyer and the Korean Consulate. Pending some small details I should be there within 2 1/2 weeks!

Life is exciting again. Any questions ask, ask, ask... see if I can't recruit some more teachers!

P,L&H