How to lose a job and other advice

Last week was a very unfortunate week for me. I'm still kind of in shock that it actually happened. You know that old saying or is it a Bible verse?: "Pride always comes before a fall."? Well I believe that is a very wise proverb now and I had to learn that the hard way. 

Everything in my life has been going really well for a very long time at this point. I met the man of my dreams. I convinced him to move to my home state closer to my family so that we could settle down. We both got amazing jobs and started building a house. We are planning on having a baby next year and going back to school. I started working out and trying to get in shape. I've connected with some old friends and made some new ones. I have just been on top of my world and I started to reclaim my teenage philosophy of, "Nothing bad can happen to me." Things are great and they are only getting better. 

To be honest I got kind of cocky and when people get that way they generally get reckless. I started writing this blog and lots of people were reading it. I thought, I just know someone is going to give me a book deal soon. Then I had to meet some immature bitch so she could come and stomp all over that! 

This story actually started when I met this girl. (And I still won't use her real name in case she has special powers or is such an expert stalker that she can hack into my computer or something). I mean it's possible, because this girl is obviously completely batshit. So we'll call her Dani. At first glance, Dani looks like you typical state worker: She's obesely overweight, her hair is in desperate need of a straightener or a perm. (Just something to fix that frizzy mess) as well as either highlights or please dye it back to your natural color for goodness sake because the first 3 inches of your hair is brown and the rest of it is frizzy platinum blonde! She always wears ratty Kackis and a some sort of hoodie to work. You know people who work for the gov't are supposed to look professional right? Most of the time this girl wears tennis shoes and those are strictly forbidden by our dress code, but you don't see me even saying anything to her for that. She obsessed with cats. (You get the picture.)

So when I first meet Dani, it's because she is a mutual friend of the girl who got me my job. She works in a completely different department, but the first day we met, we had a nice conversation, and I thought she was cool, despite her appearance. I thought, someone who cares that little about what they look like has got to be a laid back, nice person right? She works in a totally different department, but on the same floor, so I asked if she would like to come to my book and wine club sometime. She told me she would love to do something like that and I was like okay great, "I"ll send you an invite." I added her as a Facebook friend and I thought we were cool. 

Time goes by and realize that Dani rides the train to work in the morning and in the afternoon too. To give you a picture of what this looks like I live like 5 min. from the train station, so I catch the train there and then when you get to downtown, you can either walk 10 minutes to your building or take a shuttle to your building and vice versa in the afternoon to get back to the station. I really like to walk, and I don't mind walking by myself. I mean I have traveled by myself to a bunch of different countries, so walking downtown Nashville is nothing right? WRONG. I swear the sketchiest people in the world lurk there! I walked a couple times by myself and I got sexually harassed. 

Side Note: What do men think they are going to accomplish by sexually harassing a woman as she walks down the street? Do they think one day they are going to be saying these positively disgusting things to a woman way out of their creepy leagues and the woman will turn around and be like, "Awesome, I love a disgusting guy who probably will never have a real job or hanging out the window of his friend's crappy car. Let's go into that alley and you can do whatever you want to me?" If you are one of those guys and you are reading this. Please grow up and buy some class if you have to. 

So anyway after getting harassed as I walked down almost a whole street. I was like I'm not going to walk by myself anymore! I'll either take the shuttle or walk with someone else. The only person on my floor at work that rode the train besides me was that Dani girl and this older lady. The older lady was actually very nice and willing to walk with me, but she only rode the train on and off. So I asked Dani if she would ride the train with me. She looked at me and with a fake whiny voice, she said, "I just never know what time I'm going to leave." The train leaves at the same time everday! ouch... So I looked at her like, are you kidding me?? I said, "You know Dani, I don't really care what time we leave, as long as we get to the train on time." She said, "If I can remember." 

I got to thinking about it. I usually went out to go get coffee with a friend that I worked with everyday on my break. One day my friend Shayla and I went to get coffee. We saw Dani and she acted like she didn't see me. Then after that I noticed she never asked to walk with me to the train and if she saw me she wouldn't even try to say hi or anything, yet she walked with everyone else in the building wherever. It was like she was blatantly trying to send me a message without saying anything.  I told Shayla, "I know that girl doesn't like me. I have no idea why though. I've only tried to be nice to her in every way possible." Shayla said, "Isn't it obvious why she doesn't like you? You are much prettier and have a much better figure than her." She said some girls are just petty that way. I still thought maybe I was overreacting, though. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. 

Not long after that, I sent out a mass email about Wine and Book club. I asked to see if anyone/everyone was coming that month. Most everyone said they were coming. I totally forgot that she was on the list. But she very rudely wrote, "I don't think I'm going to be able to be apart of this." and left the conversation. Then I knew for sure this girl is jealous and petty and has it out for me. But what can she do except just keep being a bitch. I've done nothing to her, so if she wants to dislike me that's her problem. I'll just act like she doesn't exist and forget about her.  That's exactly what I did. I forgot she existed. I had forgotten and let the whole thing go. Not long after that she added me as a friend on my book website. I thought about not accepting, but I was like whatever. 

I started writing this blog and a lot of times, I can't remember some of the things that happened five years ago and I wish I would remember details a lot more, because the details are what make the story great. Well while all of these things were happening with this Dani girl, a totally different girl that worked in the next cubicle was driving me insane. She compared herself to me constantly and she would listen in on my personal conversations with everyone in the office and come over and comment on them right after. She would invite herself to go with me every time I left my cubicle. She even suggested she come over to my house so we could workout together on the weekends. I could tell from the beginning, this girl had a lot of issues and was a pathological liar. I did not want to hang out with her and would find myself writing people emails and never talking out loud. This girl got so bad that I went to ask my supervisor if I could move my cubicle to the other side of the floor, but my supervisor said that she thought that it would only cause more of a distraction. So I thought, I'll just have to grow some balls and tell this girl off in a professional manner.

In the meantime, I thought, Oh my god, this would be an amazing story for my blog, and I should write it all down now so I don't forget anything that happened with her. So that is exactly what I did. I wrote down everything this girl did and all of my coworkers reactions to her. I did not use real names or places. I didn't send any links to this story, but I did post it to my blog. Now, I know THAT is the Stupidest mistake I have every made in my life!!!! I honestly didn't think any of my coworkers knew that had a blog or any of them would care enough to read it if they did. I'll make a confession. I never read blogs and if I do, I just skim them for info and that's it. I mean I don't even read my best friends' blogs. Sorry friends. I just never get to it. 

BOY! Was I ever wrong, in my thinking! Not only did coworkers read my blog, but the girl that hates me for no reason reads it and then she makes the connections and prints it off at work and spreads it around and then somehow it gets to my director, even though I didn't use anything that could prove I was talking about anyone at work. The blog had absolutely Nothing to do with her!! She doesn't even work in my department!

The only person with integrity at work. A guy named Christian, comes to me before it all goes down and said, "Jess, people are reading your blog." You should probably delete it. He said, "Dani, just came up to me and said, so I guess you are a big flirt." Which is something I wrote in my blog. I was like "Oh my god." I started hyperventilating and I deleted the post. I told him I was sorry. "People at work weren't supposed to read that and even if they did I didn't think they would make the connections or bring it to work." I was so upset. I wanted to cry and throw up and go home. I began to worry more and more. I went straight to my manager. I told her that I had written something and I felt like an idiot. She said, "I think I know what you are talking about." I was like "OH NO." Then I knew it was too late and was sure I would lose my job then.

So we went to talk to the director and she said that she didn't think my method of venting was a very good one. She said she could make assumptions as to who I was talking about. She said it caused a disruption at work and because of that policy I was to be suspended for a day a half, but she wanted to see me on Wednesday because I was an excellent worker and I did a good job.  I told her thank you for not being harsher and took my punishment. I walked by myself to catch the train. I was so disappointed in myself for being so terribly stupid and naive. I vowed to make everything private and never trust anyone again. 

The more I thought about, the more I thought, This is so unfair. I didn't bring that to work. I was just writing a ridiculously funny story and who knows if I just made the whole damn thing up? I didn't use anything real. Those events did happen, but how do they know who I'm talking about unless they think the same thing? Why didn't that miserable petty bitch get into more trouble than me? She is the one who brought it to the workplace! Everyone would have been none the wiser if she hadn't done that to me. Of course, I posted what happened on Facebook, so that I could warn everyone else. I will never trust any of my coworkers ever again! 

When I went back into work after my day of suspension, hardly anyone would talk to me except to answer in short answers. My superiors didn't treat me any differently, but I could definitely tell who was told that I "wrote about them" and who wasn't, by how nice they were to me. I mean I can't say how I would act if someone told me that someone else wrote about me. I am almost positive that people have written about me before, but as long as they didn't use my real name and didn't write anything bad or even if they did, who really cares? I had no intention of defaming anyone at all, and I hope anyone who knows me wouldn't have to question that fact. Also, if I write about you, you more than likely deserve it. Anyway, I was thinking this will all get better and blow over. I wanted to talk to my director and tell her that I didn't think things were handled even-handedly. 

I had a conversation with my director that day to tell her how unfair I felt the situation was. She said the other side was handled. I wanted to be like, "NO, it wasn't, because that girl is still here! Nothing happened to her!" but I didn't want to make things worse on myself, so I just said, "Okay." But before I left, she said, "I must tell you that it may not be over." I was like, "Why can't it just be over?" She said, "Someone else is reviewing this." I said, "Well I really hope that you and whomever else, take into consideration that I did not bring that here, I was never unprofessional in the workplace, and I deleted it and went straight to my manager as soon as I found out that someone else brought that here." She said, "Okay, thank you." 

So I told a couple of people my story. One girl that worked with me and had been promoted from my position before I got there, said there was no way they would fire me because they needed people too bad right now to process retirement. She also said, "Oh that's why the director came around and said,"" I just want to reiterate the policy that you are not allowed to be on Facebook at work or print off any personal material."" So that's how the other side was handled....She told me to just keep doing well at my job and by the time the summer's over, everyone will have forgotten about it. 

I went into work the next day, trying to stay positive. I put up inspirational quotes around my desk. I kicked ass and got all my work done. I had to ask for more work and was very focused. My husband and my friend came to have lunch with me that day and really brightened my spirits. Then at the end of the day, my director requested that I come into her office for a "discussion" with the HR lady. I knew then they were still going to fire me. I tried praying, but I knew it was no use. So I just went in there and I said, "So what is the reason?" The HR lady said, "TN is hire at will, fire at will, so we have just decided to not continue your 6 month probation that you are on when you first start working here. We don't have to give a specific reason." I told them that I hoped that if any new employers called them they would only comment on my work ethic, because if they ask any of my managers or supervisors they will say that I was excellent at my job. They informed me that the only information they could give was the dates that I worked there. My director said she wished it hadn't come to this, but it was over her head. So I asked if I could resign instead and I did. 

I thought since I don't work there anymore, maybe I should really confront that terrible, miserable girl that made this happen. But one of my good friends, who kind of has a super power for reading people. (unlike me, obviously) said that would be the worst thing, because this girl was obviously stalking me, because I didn't even make that post public. She might get a restraining order against me or something! The only things I have ever seen this girl post on FB are how she has been trying for like 5 years to have a baby and can't, so she and her husband are paying for all this fertility stuff. Secondly, she posts about how she's on all this medication and has to go to the chiropractor for her back.(I used to feel sorry for her, but now I'm beginning to think maybe bad things happen to her, because she's a bad person) And finally she always "checks in" to church every Sunday. So this girl (and these are just my thoughts, I'm apparently nowhere near psychic) in her  mind has probably justified doing this to me  in her sick "Christian" mind as doing "God's work" or something. My blog is about my sexual and drunken experiences overseas. I don't try to hide that, those things are part of my life. I am obviously very happy even though I don't profess my faith in anything all over the place. So I really can't and I'm going to quote my friend, "Compete with that kind of crazy." 

So in summary, I've decided to continue to just be happy. Apply my ass off at every company and/or school until I get something good. I have privatized everything. I will be nice to my future coworkers, but I refuse to trust any of them. I don't know and will probably never know what drives people to become petty or catty or whatever else, but I will avoid such people in the future. Nothing good can come of that, no matter how nice you are, apparently. I am a firm believer in Karma. I think what you put into the universe will come back to you way worse. I just really hope I get to hear what happens to this nasty person. 

Teaching at EV

My life at English Village was really fun and I had met tons of friends from all over the world. The teachers there were from South Africa, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the US. Above  are some pictures of my apt. when I first moved in...which is a little bigger than a walk-in closet, but at that time I was pretty happy with it. 


In a typical week. I would teach 3-4 classes a day of course. My subject to teach was Movie Making. So we gave the students these little cameras. They had to get into groups and choose a genre of film: Horror, Comedy, Drama, etc...then they had to write their scripts all in English. Then they would go and act out there five minute films. It was a lot of fun at first but to teach the same exact thing every hour and a half, it got super boring.


 For me, it was a little hard at first because well to me all of my students looked exactly the same (I don't think this anymore), but on top of that they were wearing all the same uniforms and I could not pronounce their names for the life of me. So a lot of times, I wound up saying, "Hey YOU, do this." A lot of times they were very pleasant to teach, but they were mostly teenagers. So they were quite rebellious. Even Asian teenagers are rebellious at times! We would catch them with cigarettes. They were always cursing in Korean. Some of them absolutely refused to answer any questions in English. 

All Matching Uniforms!

We had some rules for them there. One of the rules was: No Spitting. I know, should this seriously be a rule? Well, in Korea, it has to be, because mostly all older men smoke. They smoke because they get free cigarettes in the military. I mean you can imagine how much excitement they get in military. So I guess I would take free cigarettes too, if I were in their position. So in Korea, it is totally acceptable to hock up a lung on the streets, right in front of you. So the teenage boys, learning from their fathers, would just spit anywhere. That's disgusting. So we had to make a rule and teach them that was unacceptable and completely rude. 


When I first got there, I didn't know any Korean. My first words were "Anyonghaseyo", which means "hello" and "Kamapsumnida", which means "thank you." Of course teaching teenagers, I quickly learned all of the bad words in Korean as well. Like I learned how to say: bitch, dog-baby (son of a bitch), I fucking love it, bastard (bad guy)....those are just some of my first words. One day a girl came up and told on one of her friends. She said, "Teacher, he called me Beyonte" I went up to my co-teacher,Park, and asked what that meant. He just started laughing and said, "It means pervert." I finally got to the point where I could be like, "I know what you are saying!! If you say it again, you are in big trouble!" I really wonder what they said to me before I could understand...maybe it's better that I will never know.


One day in the movie making department at English Village, Maisey and I were teaching were teaching together. One group of boys decided their genre was going to be "pornographic." They took their cameras into the bathroom and took videos and pictures of their genitals. Well Maisey and I had no idea what to do. We went to get the head teachers to take care of it. Our head teacher Richard and a guy who worked for admin. named Jun. (Both Korean men of course) came in and said a ton of mean stuff. (you could tell by the facial expressions on the boys faces.) Then they made the boys do these ridiculous calisthenics. They had to raise their arms or there knee for like 15 min. 

Teachers goofing off with movie making props.

Students filming their "action film." 

When Richard and Jun left, the boys looked at Maisey and I and said, "Teacher, they called us dog babies." We asked Richard about this later. He said, "Well yeah, I did, because they deserved it." I mean I would be fired in five minutes in America if I called a student a "little son-of a bitch" right? That's not the only questionable things they did. I swear teaching with some of the Korean teachers was like teaching in the 1950's in America. Well, I mean I assume so because of my parents stories growing up. But I've had teachers just scream at the students, hit them in head. I've heard students come to my class and say, "Teacher, we love your class because you don't hit us." I think this is changing more and more, but when I first got there, that is definitely how it was. 


Although, I think Koreans actually have it better than Chinese students because they told me they get beaten not because they didn't do their homework. They did their homework, but they did it incorrectly. Their parents find this totally acceptable because unlike America, the teachers are really, really respected. I was talking to my husband about this one day. He said yes, that happened to me growing up and if he saw one of his teachers to this day, he would have a hard time not beating the complete shit out of him, because this teacher hit him because he was walking on the wrong side of the hallway. 


There was also a foreign teacher I taught with from Canada. He had been teaching in Korea for like 10 years and he took advantage of the fact that teachers didn't really get in trouble for little abusings like this. He would be really mean, and grab the children really hard. He would trip them on purpose. I had a really hard time teaching with him and I reported him as did other teachers. He finally got fired. 


One thing that I really learned from teaching middle school students was they kept me hip. I knew all the cool music and shows. In Korea, they have a genre of music called K-pop.(Korean Pop, yes I know you could have figured that out, but people have asked me what the K stands for). Anyway in Korean pop songs, a lot of times, they sing the verses in Korean and then they sing at least a couple lines if not all of the chorus in English. When I first got to Korea, I heard a song on the radio they said a lot of stuff in Korean and then it said, "I so sorry, but I love you." strange...no? This is now my favorite boy band in Korea, Big Bang.


Three of the actors I worked with there formed a "Boy band" called The "EV BOYZ." They made an amazing song and video about Korea called "Kickin it in Geumchon." If you're interested you can watch it. Just go to YouTube and type in "Kickin it in Geumchon". Hilarious! You will laugh out loud I promise. Everything they say is absolutely true especially my first year in Korea. They also have another smash hit called, "AEI love you", about dating a Korean girl. So go now and watch, for a good laugh. I tried to include the link...but I'm obviously an idiot, because I couldn't get it to imbed in my blog.


Another thing that kind of weirded me out when I first started teaching, was the amount of affection I saw between middle school boys and Korean men in general. I would be teaching my movie making class and the boys would be playing with each other's hair, holding hands, lying in other's laps. Old Korean men, especially when they were drunk, would just be walking down the streets holding hands.


I went out with the girls one night and we went to Geumchon. There was a bar there called "Posse." It is mentioned in the Geumchon video by the EVboyz. Anyway, we were all hanging out on the roof having some soju cocktail. Remember I warned you about soju previously. Well they have a cocktail, which is even more deadly, which is flavored soju mixed with juice. Well across the way there were some military Korean boys sitting at a table. One of them looked like he was waving at me, so I waved back at him. Well I learned a valuable lesson that night. In Korea if you wave someone over with your palms turned upward, it's like waving an animal over. So to politely wave someone over, it's like waving goodbye here. So these military guys came over and had a few beers they were sitting too close for comfort. 


After that we had some nicer looking Korean guys come over and say, "Hello, we are having a bachelor party, we were wondering if you guys would come over and join us." We didn't want to be rude of course, and there was free booze involved. We joined them and we were all talking. One of the guys started hitting on me. He wasn't actually not that bad looking, but as he was flirting with me, he had his other hand on the inner-thigh of his buddy, who was a man. So I was like, "I'm really confused. You like me, but it looks like you may be gay?" He said, "Oh no, no, he's just my friend." I did not hook up with that guy. I don't think I'll ever get his hand on the guy's inner thigh image out of my head and him thinking, "that's totally normal. All men do that with their friends." This has created such a complex within in me that every Korean guy I have dated and even my husband, I have made them promise never to touch their friends in any of the ways that I have listed above. Of course my husband is so proud and he is always like, "Korean men don't do that, you are making this up." I would swear this on a Bible and I have witnesses to boot!!


Okay so back to Korean men...finally, right? Just kidding, I know not everyone cares so much about Korean men. I just happened to catch the yellow fever and couldn't shake it. 


Alright, on one of my previous posts, I had met a very hot bar tending Korean man with big muscles and nice hair. I swear he must have took so much time getting ready and so much gel every morning or night getting ready. He got my number and we had planned a date. That Sunday, I went to Seoul, to meet Aaron, the bartender.  We went to an Italian place. This  was a cute little dollhouse-looking place. He only ordered chicken breast and I ordered a huge plate of pasta. I was like seriously, you are not going to eat pasta? He said he couldn't. He works out three hours a day. He said Korean women said he was fat. I said,  "Well, Korean women are bitches, because you look good. I just want you to know that I am never going to be as skinny as Korean women and I hope you are okay with that, because I enjoy eating whatever I want, but if YOU want to work out for three hours that’s fine with me." That’s about all we did that day was lunch and talk, but we were going to meet again soon.  


I wasn't sure if I really liked him or I just liked that I had a cute almost Korean boyfriend and I could be like "Hey look at my boyfriend...he's so hot." But I was going to try to make this work. Plus, there wasn't really anything else going on with me at the time. 

P.S. I got permission to use his picture...see what I mean with the hair...lol

Next time, I will move on to how I accidentally started dating two Korean men at once. 

First impression of Korea: English Village pt.1

I know if you are like me, and you are still reading this blog, you are sick and tired of me not getting to point at hand, which is extreme craziness that happened during my travels and how I met my Korean husband already. Please try to hang in there. Sometimes I have to start at the beginning to really figure where I'm going. I promise next week will be a bit more entertaining.


So before I went to Korea, I was still obsessed with Japan. I made this deal with myself that I would sign on for one year and if I hated it, it was only a year. I remember before I took a job, they do phone interviews once the recruitment agency accepts you. This one job in Daegu that I was thinking about, the person that did the interview was very rude and one of their questions was, "Why did you graduate from University in 4 1/2 years instead of 4?" I was like, "Well I took summers off usually, so it took me that long." I'm sorry but why does it even matter as to how long it took me to graduate, as long as I have my degree? They asked a couple more questions along the same lines. As if I wasn't down enough just being unemployed at the time... What pissed me off even more is when I learned that the foreign staff, most of which have been there less than a year, is usually who the Korean director has do the interview. I know because I've done a couple myself my third year. But then another School called me called "English Village" 


English Village in like a camp that provide short-term English immersion for mostly middle school students. It is designed for them to improve their English and become aware of the Anglo-American culture. So for Korean parents, instead of sending their children to study abroad, they can send them to this place and they can learn what it's like to be in a foreign country and speak only English. All the teachers there are native English speakers. Although I had my doubts about a few of them. People always, "Well how can you teach Korean students, if you don't know Korean?" The answer is I had an Korean co-teacher who could obviously speak Korean, and they were only supposed to speak English. They could speak Korean for clarification only. Honestly, though I had my doubts that some of them could speak English.


 English Village is like no other place on earth. Usually whole schools in Gyeonggi province would come for a week and stay in "Hotels" with a house parent to make sure they didn't sneak out at night. 


A typical week at English Village would be the teachers would pick the students in their homeroom class up in the morning. They would have several classes throughout the day. These classes included, (at least when I was there): Movie Making, Advertising, Drama, Music, Art, Science, and Cooking. Each night they would have a special activity like playing a game, or watching a movie, or having a dance party. In Homeroom, they would go to special fake places built around campus. We had a fake police station, bank, clinic, post office, and airport terminal. The students would have to memorize dialogue that they would use at such places. Like purchasing a plane ticket or going to the doctor. The students would have role play with these such dialogues that the teachers mostly invented or found. So when whomever interviewed me about this place, and I first heard about it, I immediately accepted and turned down the other rude ass place. Plus, I made more money at this place.

Speaking of money, when I first got to Korea, the Korean won was a little bit higher than the dollar. I got paid in Korean won. I literally saved like $1400 a month, because I had no car payment, and no rent. I only spent my money on food and beverages, shopping, and the occasional taxi ride. When I got to English Village, I didn't even pay for my utilities for the first couple of months. I got a free TV, DVD player, microwave, and internet all year. For the first couple of months, I even had free air-conditioning and gas. After I moved to Seoul later on, I really didn't know how amazing I had it in English Village. That, however is how Korea works. They will provide a lot more for you if you live in BFE, as opposed to Seoul, because everyone wants to work in Seoul and not right across the border from North Korea or in some place where it takes more than an hour to get to Seoul. 


Before I left for Korea, I started to read all the information I could on it. I had just taught fifth grade at that time, so I was pretty familiar with the Korean War and all that it entailed. I also learned that the Koreans and the Japanese do not like each other, because the Japanese had occupied Korea prior to WWII approximately 1910-1945 and had raped their women and tortured them. They did human experiments on the Koreans. That is one way that the Japanese have developed some of their medical knowledge. So at that time, I was like, "Okay...note to self, don't talk about how much you loved Japan to the Koreans. As I traveled more I found that there are many many countries that hate Japan for their occupations in their country.  


A lot of people ask me how my father felt about me moving to Korea to teach English. He was actually okay with it. I have to give you a little background. My dad is one of those overly protectives. He didn't let me do a lot of things and go out with friends when I was younger. I'm still kind of bitter about some of those things, but in hindsight, he probably saved me from getting into trouble. When I got to high school, he eased up a little, but to give you a few examples: When I was in high school, he would not let me drive my car an hour and a half to Nashville. When I was applying for college, I had thought about going to UT Knoxville. My father told me he would basically disown me if I went there, so I had to go to Tennessee Tech which only 30 minutes from his house. When I was at Tech, I had an opportunity to go to Brazil to live for the summer. I practically had to throw a screaming fit and threaten to have my mother sign the consent form, and she would've because they are divorced and hate each other....he finally gave in an signed. Once I started to work and pay my own way, I started to travel more. I had already been to Spain and Italy on one spring break, which he was against initially, but then when I graduated, he actually gave me the money to go back to Europe as a graduation present. I was kind of shocked by that. My father knew I had had a terrible year teaching and he wanted me to do what made me happy. 


Okay, so I made up my mind, had my dad sit down and talked to him about it. He drove me to the airport. I remember. I was anxious and nervous and I almost missed my flight from San Francisco because the huge airport was so confusing and my flights were so close together arriving and departing. They had to hold the plane and I was running so fast with my stupid heavy laptop. I was the last one on the plane, but I made it. I remember thinking, this is it. I have no idea what is going to happen with my life now.


I have to tell you that the weekend before I left to go to Korea, I went white water rafting with my church. I thought that is what gave me tonsilitus when I first got to Korea, but later found out that it was just Korea. I would later get it about ten times. I got every single time that I arrived back in that country due to pollution, I think. It worked out being okay every time, because in Korea. I could have a doctor's visit, a shot, get examined and medicated for $10. I'm not exaggerating. I almost fell over the first time I discovered this because just before I left the states, I had to pay a $30 co-pay (this did not pay for any of my meds) with "good" insurance, just to get someone to examine my foot. 


When I got to Korea, there was a little man waiting outside the gates with a sign with my name on it. He spoke no English. We had to use body language. I got into his cab van with all my luggage. He pointed at a bunch of things on the way to English Village. I just nodded and smiled. I have no clue about anything he was talking about except the word, "Seoul".


My first impression of English Village was, "This is a pretty surreal place."  It is way out in the country, in the North part of South Korea, across the river from North Korea. Along the interstate on the way there called the "Ja-uro."  They have guarded barbed wired fences and guard posts set up all along the river. It is very close to the DMZ. 

Before you get to the entrance, you will see a life size Hollywood sign that says, "English Village" at the entrance, but then it also has an exact replica of Stonehenge. You walk in and it is literally a little village. You will find some security guards at the entrance, and of course the fake airport terminal. Past the airport terminal is a gym, with a soccer field and a pool. You walk through these castle doors and you find a few "Western" restaurants. They had a gift shop, a convenient store (that was way overpriced), a Mongolian restaurant, a book store, a restaurant that was fast food called, "Meister", across from that was sub sandwich shop, and a coffee shop (my favorite place), then there was a bakery, then you had an UK style pub (where lots of residents spent most of their time). Above all the restaurants was where all the teachers lived. We live in these very colonial style looking apartment buildings with little fake mailboxes out front and everything. The building where all named after planets. My building's name was Jupiter. They also had teachers apartments above all the restaurants. Down below that, there was a huge Theater. English Village doesn't just employ teachers, they also employ what they call "Edutainers", which are actors who write words, music, and star in plays in which they teach "one day visitors" English. We also had a talent show at the end of every week and this is where all the students who participated would perform.  In the Theater is where we also had movie night, and game nights with the students. Surrounding the theater were all the classroom buildings and also all of the fake places like the bank and the clinic and such. There was also an Italian restuarant somewhere in the mix there. Although, there was actually a real bank there, where all of us foreigners went to withdrawal our money from the ATM and also send money home to our countries. Beyond that there is a building called City Hall. This is where all the Admin. works and where we all would clock in. If you walk on through you will see an outdoor Amphitheater, and then the Hotels where the students stay. It also has a huge fountain somewhere in the middle and a trolley on tracks with a conductor.


Now that I've given you an idea of what this place looks like, I feel I should tell you this place is extremely popular among Koreans, particularly famous Korean actors and pop stars.  They were always shooting commercials, modeling, or shooting videos and TV shows on site. I guess, because it looks like it's not actually in Korea. It was very cool, but also kind of stressful sometimes because when your students would see these famous people (and of course I didn't who  half of them were at the time), they would go bat-shit over them and there was no controlling them. 


When I first got there, I met my head teachers, Dean and Aaron.  I will have to go into more gory detail about all the people I lived with thereand all the crazy things we experienced  in my next post. (thank goodness, I'm not using anyone's real name, please no one sue and also all the people I'm going to really go in gory, entertaining detail about never ever read this and don't ever assume I'm talking about you, even if you are so paranoid that I am)  Congratulations if you got through this one. :)

P.S. Just because someone was a ridiculous lunatic years ago, doesn't mean they still are. I totally understand that, but I need to use you for my story for who (and I'm not talking about you) you were then...There I think I've covered all my bases...hopefully?