Korean Job Discussion Forums

Mashimaro · Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Location: location, location

There is a thread on "do korean girls/guys bore you" so in the interests of fairness... are you really so interesting?

Just because you have a college degree, white skin (in most cases), have been to a few countries are you really so interesting? Or merely smugly secure in the fact you are better travelled and so much more intelligent than your korean friends?

dutchman · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: My backyard

I'm pretty boring. I wish Koreans would figure that out and stop trying to talk to me.

korian · Joined: 26 Feb 2004

haha as the author of that other thread i should put something in. what's boring or interesting is subjective to start with.

but being well travelled and having some life experience, to me, automatically makes you more interesting than most koreans. why? coz you've been out there, you've seen things, you've had your thoughts and ideas challenged and you've met people with different ideas.

that allows you to delve a little further into your own mind.

plus you have stories to tell and anecdotes to retell.

most koreans simply don't have that coz they've grown up in korea with a nationalistic education system and very few of them have been outside their myopic world.

so in that sense, to me, they are generally less interesting than people who have been about and travelled around. which is a lot of efl teachers.

so i guess i conclude that for the most part, esl teachers are more interesting than their korean counterparts. but as to whether they're interesting per se, that's entirely subjective.

katydid · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Location: Here kitty kitty kitty...

I kind of wish I knew more than English teachers here, yeah. We all have the same kind of gripes, we gripe plenty about them, and sometimes it feels like there's fewer than Six Degrees of Separation between all of us.

just because · Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Location: Changwon - 4964

Mostly, sadly yes.

After you've been here a few years and see the same fresh faces with the same stories (I call it the Canadian university production line - all look, talk and think the same) it gets boring.

However, i meet more than nough interesting people to keep me happy.

keithinkorea · Joined: 17 Mar 2004

What's it with all the generalisations. I have met some pretty interesting folks in Korea and some incredibly dull mundane ones. A mix of people as with most places-jobs you experience.

About 70% of my friends in Korea aren't English teachers anyway, so maybe I'm not the best one to make a comment. In a way I prefer to hang out with non teacher types- not that there is anything wrong with 'em- I find it more interesting to hang out with people my age and I'm 31 now and a lot of the teachers here are a bit immature and green.

It's not like I've been to a zillion countries myself but I like meeting people with different backgrounds and interests, as they say variety is the spice of life.

keithinkorea · Joined: 17 Mar 2004

What's it with all the generalisations. I have met some pretty interesting folks in Korea and some incredibly dull mundane ones. A mix of people as with most places-jobs you experience.

About 70% of my friends in Korea aren't English teachers anyway, so maybe I'm not the best one to make a comment. In a way I prefer to hang out with non teacher types- not that there is anything wrong with 'em- I find it more interesting to hang out with people my age and I'm 31 now and a lot of the teachers here are a bit immature and green.

It's not like I've been to a zillion countries myself but I like meeting people with different backgrounds and interests, as they say variety is the spice of life.

keithinkorea · Joined: 17 Mar 2004

What's it with all the generalisations. I have met some pretty interesting folks in Korea and some incredibly dull mundane ones. A mix of people as with most places-jobs you experience.

About 70% of my friends in Korea aren't English teachers anyway, so maybe I'm not the best one to make a comment. In a way I prefer to hang out with non teacher types- not that there is anything wrong with 'em- I find it more interesting to hang out with people my age and I'm 31 now and a lot of the teachers here are a bit immature and green.

It's not like I've been to a zillion countries myself but I like meeting people with different backgrounds and interests, as they say variety is the spice of life.

kiwiboy_nz_99 · Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Location: ...Enlightenment...

Having been here four years, and in the uni system for three, and being, shall we just say, over thirty ( Very Happy

) I don't hang with a lot of the classic one year Hagwon types anymore. I don't have anything against them, just doesn't happen. In my first year I did hang with those types, and there were some cool people there in Pohang. But I'd say 80% of them didn't interest me, or in other words I wouldn't have hung with them back home. But then I'm hard to please at the best of times, and while I'm very social and can readily mingle and be comfortably social with just about anyone, there are very few people that I want to bring into my inner circle, Korean, western, whatever. But I will say that I've been very lucky to meet some great people here that I'll stay in touch with for the rest of my life.

I don't think it's a matter of me being interesting and others not, that's a very self centred way to look at it. It's more like, I find certain types interesting, and certain types are interested in me.

In short, I'm a nut. If there are not generous portions of fruit and nut in your cake mix, we're probably not going to click ...

PS Oh, and I'm a human being too of course, which makes it so much harder to find others of my own kind ... Razz

peemil · Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Location: Koowoompa

Yeah... After you've been here for a while. They're all tossers.

You wouldn't talk to them at home or have a social life with them. So why would you here?

peppermint · Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 2:25 pm Post subject:

To answer the OP, and respond to the other thread as he seemed to want. I'd guess that to a Korean person most of us are rather dull, with our broken Korean, and the same old stories about travellling, yeah.

kiwiboy_nz_99 · Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Location: ...Enlightenment...

indytrucks · Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Location: The Shelf

kangnamdragon · Joined: 17 Jan 2003 Location: Kangnam, Seoul, Korea

I would not generalize and say most English teachers are boring or I am bored with them. I would say I get bored with a lot of the complaining, whining, and drunkeness. It is nice to meet an English teacher who is genuinely interested in Korea.

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004

I find the idea of ESL teachers boring: work late, drink every night, go home, sleep to 3 pm, repeat. But in general any ESL teacher I've met seems interesting enough. The older ones are better. They all have a story, some tragedy in their life.