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isitts
Joined: 25 Dec 2008
Location: Korea
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 Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 11:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Stalin84 wrote: |
The easy advice would be to just make friends my own age but that's hard seeing as how everyone my age is married, usually with kids and they don't have time for single guys any more. Or they're just knee-deep in their own long term clique and they don't want to have anything to do with a transient. All my friends who taught in Korea have returned to Canada for the long term and most are getting married/married/having babies. They also don't seem to respect me very much for going back to Korea as they saw it as a rite of passage into adulthood thing and not as a long term career thing (like if someone worked at McDonald's as a teenager and stayed working there after all their friends moved on) despite the fact I'll be making more money in Korea than they are here. |
Right. So just dry your tears with the money you're making doing a job with benefits that pretty much no job back home can compare to.
I didn't read this part of your post when I first responded...but, uh, yeah. That's rough. I went through something pretty similar with my friends when I told them I was going back overseas. I'd taught in Japan and then Taiwan. And after Taiwan, I did feel it was time for me to stop jumping from country to country every few years. I wanted to anchor myself in my hometown near my friends and find a real career, just like I'd been brought up to believe I was supposed to do.
I made an effort, but ultimately couldn't find anything that was suitable for me. And I saw that most of the things my friends and family "had" didn't have much value to me. After all they were just "things".
And getting a "career" and starting a family as if these were items on a checklist seemed too conveyor belt like to me. I just couldn't do that and still respect myself. 
Then the economy went into the crapper. When I saw the postings online for working in Korea, it was a godsend. The only fulltime work I could find...and in a field I had experience in. But my friends were furious with me.
It was a sadistic choice, but, um, as one of my more understanding friends said, "You gotta do what you gotta do."
Something to keep in mind also, family and career are not restricted to your home country.
And having a career is overrated anyway. Transferable skills.
| Stalin84 wrote: |
I am a bit (more than a bit) worried about going to my new hagwon to teach adults and being the oldest teacher there and feeling alienated because of it... and knowing Koreans, all the students will point out that I'm "old" or "older" than the other teachers, regularly. Along with griefing me about being single (don't mind so much). |
They won't bother you so much. They'll ask you if you're married, but that's Asia for you. And if you're teaching adults, they may like that you're older so they don't feel like a kid is teaching them.
(By the way, they won't see you as older. I was 27 and 28 teaching adults in Taiwan and I had a new student walk out of my class when she found out how young I was.)
And anyway, some of those adults might be able to introduce you to their single friends. 
Anyway, as I said in my last post, don't try to live up to other people's expectations of you. Find your own way. |
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