People keep asking us how we’re adjusting to being back in the US. Well, it is and isn’t what I was expecting. First I’ll mention how it was when we first arrived to Korea. We adjusted very well to our life in Korea; we made (wonderful) Korean friends, learned the language and did “cultural” things as often as we could. Our life in Korea was wonderful. If we could keep our job and Korean way of life, but be near our (American) close friends and family, we probably wouldn’t hesitate to live there forever. Life in Korea as a foreigner is amazing.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some very different cultural things that if you don’t have a lot of patience, will be very frustrating. For example, personal space, or lack thereof. You’d get on the city bus and even though the bus was completely empty, someone would come and stand right next to the seat where you are sitting. Also, the fact that older women or “adjummas” feel like they have the right to shove and touch anyone whenever they want. And, in the work environment there is no such thing as saying “no” to your boss. Even if you have previous plans, if your boss/principal decides he wants to have  a company/school dinner after work you HAVE to attend, no excuses. And not to mention all of the last-minuteness that causes everyone to run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Korean people are so nice. We never experienced any kind of racism or were ever treated unfairly. If anything, we feel like we were sometimes treated better than Koreans. We were often given “service” which in Korea means to be given extra things. There are countless times when we were given extra drinks or extra meat at bbq restaurants. We were never charged extra for things and people always took the time to make sure we were doing things right-like checking out at grocery stores. The only time we were ever treated badly was when we visited Bangkok, Thailand. Our taxi driver overcharged us a good amount of money when we arrived to the airport and hailed him to drive us to our hotel. Once you get use to the constant staring by men, women and children, Korea really is a wonderful place.

Leaving Korea was really hard. Three years is a long time. You can really settle down and have a schedule in that time. Not to mention the countless amazing friends we had to leave, most that we will most likely not see for a few years. We made great Korean friends and great “western” friends. I’ve never had such a well-rounded group of people in my life!

With all that said, being back is the US has been great, but hard. The first month back seemed as if it was a vacation, like if we were just going to be back in the US for 3 weeks like we did each year.  It was weird being in California knowing that we weren’t going to go back to the land of no Targets or Chipotles. It was a weird feeling knowing that we didn’t have to eat at our favorite restaurants as often as possible because we weren’t going to get to taste it again for a year. However, it was great knowing that it wasn’t going to cost us $1,200 each to fly to see our families...not to mention the 11 hour flight!

Then we got to Austin. We moved into our apartment, which is a mansion compared to our Korean apartment, and this apt is only 800sqft. The layout is much better and we have a “normal” bathroom and a full-sized oven! Even though we have this “normal” bathroom, Nick still prefers our Korean bathroom where he could be showering one second and brushing his teeth over the sink, the other.

The day after we arrived to Austin we rented a car and went out in search of a car to buy. We were able to buy the car we’d been having our eye on for a few months, a 2008 Dodge Caliber AND we were able to buy it in cash! So we are still debt free.

Old friends and new friends in Austin have been great, but without a work schedule, it gets pretty boring during the day waiting for everyone to get off of work. We have all day to run errands and our friends only have their after work time to do that, so it gets a bit frustrating to wait all day to play with friends and then be told that they’re busy because they have errands to run. But when we do hang out, it’s great. However, keeping up with friends in Korea is really hard because of the time difference.

We wanted to take our time to adjust to Austin life and getting settled into our apartment before we started looking for jobs. So after a month of that, we started applying to jobs online. We couldn’t have picked a worse time to look for jobs; we started the week of Thanksgiving. I’m looking into administrative jobs. I’ve been contacted twice, but no jobs have been offered. At first, Nick was spending his time creating his 3d animation reel, later he started applying to the many studios here in Austin. He was contacted by an artist in another state to do still 3d images for a project he’s working on, so he’s been busy doing that now. Now, one month later (three holidays later) we are still jobless. We are hoping that now that the holidays are over, HR will be picking up again and calling the resumes that have been piling up over the last month. In the mean time, we are trying to appreciate all this free time that we have. There is no rush to get a job, we were able to save enough money to not have to work for a while, but it would be nice to not see our saving slowly drop.

Being here for “the holidays” was nice. It was our first time to be in the US for it in 3 years. We no longer felt left-out when people were talking about thanksgiving dinner and Christmas decorations. It was great seeing Christmas lights on houses and going to Christmas parties.

We’ve been thinking about possibly taking a trip to another state because we realized while in Korea that we’ve seen a lot of the world, but not much of America. Now really would be the best time to take this trip because of the time, but what if a job offer is made and are requested to start immediately?

This was a lot longer than I expected it to be. I hope that next time I update it’s to say that I have an awesome job.

Hello GEPIK Teachers,

 We know that many of you have been inquiring about the recent changes in GEPIK for this year. This email will hopefully clear up some of your questions and will shed light on what's going on with GEPIK.

As many of you have probably heard by now, GEPIK will not be hiring and/or renewing teachers from May 25, 2011 to August 31, 2011. At this point in time GEPIK is working to restructure the program. During this three-month period, we will be working to streamline the program so that starting September 2011 GEPIK contract dates will be aligned. We are aiming to set contract dates for September 1st and March 1st so that the GEPIK structure will be more standardized. We do realize that many of you will be affected by this change, but please understand that we found it crucial to restructure our program to improve GEPIK, not only for the program itself but for our teachers as well. We have listed some FAQs below to answer some of the questions we have been receiving.

We hope this email will end the rumors that was been circulating, and we apologize for not announcing this sooner. GEPIK has reached its highest number of teachers last year (2010) as it was planned. From year of 2011, we will gradually decrease the number of teachers in our program. However, it is in our best interest to secure as much funding as we could to keep as many GEPIK teachers. 

As always, thank you for your support and contribution to GEPIK. We thoroughly appreciate the hard work that all of our teachers have put in for GEPIK.

Sincerely,

GEPIK Coordinators & GPOE

FAQs:

Q: Will there be jobs available within GEPIK during this 3 month period?

A: There are three places that funds GEPIK teachers:

1. Directly from GPOE
2. Half from GPOE and the other half from their respective city budgets
3. Strictly from respective city budgets

Schools that receive funding STRICTLY from their respective cities will be able to still renew/hire teachers during this period.

Q: How stable is my contract? Will my school let me go early before my contract ends?

A: You will get to finish your contract for the full 365 days that you and your school signed on for.

Q: My Principal said they cannot renew me because they cannot pay my salary. What does this have to do with restructuring the contract dates?

A: It is up to your school to secure any extra budget to cover for expenses.

Q: What changes will there be after the restructuring of the program?

A: GEPIK is aiming to have all contract dates to start either March 1^st or September 1^st. We are also planning to send GEPIK teachers to an orientation before they begin working at their schools.

Q: How can I found a job with GEPIK in the future?

A: Contact recruiting agencies. We have attached a file with a list of agencies that recruit for GEPIK.

Hey guys, Nick and I sent out Christmas cards a few weeks ago. This is a copy of the "update letter" that i mailed out... 

                                                                                                                                                                           October 2010

          안녕하세요! (Hi!) Just wanted to update you all on how we’re doing. We just started our third and final year contract. As of now we’ll be heading back to the U.S. October of 2011.

          We are still enjoying our life here in Suwon, South Korea. We have been at our same schools and apartment ever since we arrived here in October 2008. It has gone by so quickly for us that it feels like we just arrived. We have made a lot of great friends here that we’ll miss a lot when we leave. But we’re so excited to get back and not be a 12 hour flight away from our family and friends.

          We’ve had a lot of fun adventures since being here. We’ve traveled to several places within Korea. For example, our first winter (January 2009) we went to the southern part of the country and went to a bamboo forest and a beautiful green tea field. Then, during the summer, (August 2009) we went to Jeju Island, “The Hawaii of Korea” to spend our 2 year wedding anniversary. We spent a great week there relaxing and exploring . We saw an awesome lava cave, a teddy bear museum and a waterfall.

          Last winter we went to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a week and had a wonderful time. In Thailand we were able to ride elephants, zip-line through trees, rent a scooter and trek through rice fields. A few weeks ago we travelled to Ulleungdo, which is an island off the eastern coast of Korea. We hiked a lot, got to hang out on the beach, saw a lot of beautiful cliffs and bought dried squid, the must-have delicacy of Ulleungdo.

          This coming winter we plan on going back to Thailand. However, this time we want to go to a beach city and relax by the crystal clear water. Thailand’s best weather is in winter; the temperature is in the 80’s. Then, summer 2011 we’ll finally visit Japan!

          We’re still not completely 100% sure where we’ll move to once we leave Korea, but there’s still 1 year left to think about it. We’ll have a lot of expenses once we move back. We sold Nick’s Civic over a year ago, so we’ll have to buy a car. We may even support Korea and buy a Kia Soul! We’ll also have to get furniture and other house items because we got rid of almost everything we had after we left Abilene before coming here. It’s going to be so much fun furnishing our new place!

          We’ll try to keep everyone updated as October approaches to let you know about where we’ll be moving and about welcome home parties. In the mean time, here is an address that you can send mail to (if you so please):

Maewon Middle School

812, Maetan 4 dong

Yeongtong Gu, Suwon City

Kyeonggi Do, South Korea

443-374

(Address the letter to Jennyfer Hester or the administration office may get confused. We get all our mail to my school)

           We hope to hear from you soon. We wish you all a great holiday season and look forward to seeing everyone when we’re home for good in October 2011!

                                                                             With Love,

                                                                                      Nick and Jennyfer Hester

www.xanga.com/ricekrispie18  <---Jennyfer’s blog       

www.xanga.com/rockyourteeth   <--- Nick’s blog

 I decided to go through ALL of my Korea blog entries and pick out the most informative entries for people that want to come teach in Korea. So below are links to different entries in my blog. But feel free to read more than just these….the links below are just ones that I found MOST informative. You’re welcome! You can also search for me on Facebook (Jennyfer Hester) and send me a personal message if you have specific questions you want to ask.  

Soyon is awesome!...she took our pictures on Saturday and she's already edited about 15 of them! here are the pictures that we have so far.

Life update:

            About 3 ½ months until our 2^nd year contract is up. We hadn’t officially announced that we’ve decided to stay another because it still needs to get approved by both of our schools. My school has agreed to have me stay another year, but the Vice Principal from Nick’s school has been out of the office for the last like 3 months (some sort of training) so she doesn’t even know that we want to renew. She should be returning pretty soon, so we’ll know after that. We’re hoping to go home for 3 weeks so that we can have enough time to visit family in CA and visit friends in Texas for a few days. We’ll be visiting some time in August.

In about two weeks it’ll be finals time again. Normally finals time is a great time for the foreign teacher. We don’t write or correct final exams. And the normal English teacher for the students is the one who administers the tests, so we just hang out in our offices and do whatever. Sadly, this year GEPIK organized a 3-day teacher training session the same week! So I only get 1 of my 3 free finals day off. Awesomely, Nick is going to the training too. This will be my second overnight training. It’s pointless for teachers to go more than once to the trainings. They talk about the same things every time. I rather be at school doing my own thing than listening to people complain about their schools. If you hate your schools so much, just leave the school, people.

A lot of our friends are gone right now because it’s summer. Most of our friends are teachers at an International school. So they’re on American school schedules. So, they have a 3 month summer vacation! Unlike Korean public schools kids that only get 1 month off.

Even though Korean kids have 1 month off for summer and about 2 months for Winter vacations, foreign teachers still only get 20 days total per year. So most people take 2 weeks off in the summer and 2 weeks off in winter. So what are you doing the rest of the time when the kids aren’t in school but you’re not using a vacation day? You’re either teaching a summer camp or sitting in your office “planning”. It’s nice, but I gets old fast. You have to keep yourself entertained.

It’s hard to keep up with my blog now because we’ve been here almost two years here…and some things aren’t as surprising anymore. I’ll try to be better.

    So, we’ve got about five months left in Korea! It feels like October 2008 was just yesterday. Like, arriving at 11pm to our awesome apartment here just happened last night. We’ve had such a great time here. I can’t think of a better situation that we could have been in these last 2 years. For the most part our schools have been wonderful and we couldn’t have chosen a better city than Suwon.

            Whenever I look at the Feedback Log on my Xanga I always get really excited and weirded out at the same time because I see that people in Hawaii, Virginia, Washington and France have read my blog. I don’t know anyone that lives in those places!

            Like I said on my Facebook status a few days ago…I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the fact that it’s ok for men to wear super tight pants and hot pink cardigans. I think that’s the main reason why I can’t find Korean men attractive (other than the fact that I’m married!)…it’s because they dress prettier than me and not to mention wear tighter pants than I do! Am I jealous of their bedazzled jeans?... maybe.

These last two weeks I’ve been giving my Korean/American Differences PowerPoint. It’s been really fun seeing the kids’ reactions to things they thought all students in the world had to do. My Korean kids thought that American students also went to “hagwons”. Hagwons are Korean private schools. They are school for after school! So after kids get out of public school at 3pm they rush over to their “hagwon” (maybe they bought a snack somewhere or got to change out of their public school uniform, maybe not) and there at the hagwon they’re in a classroom with less children where they can get more attention from the teacher and they get extra help with  whatever subject that particular hagwon emphases in. Most hagwon’s are to help with English. But Korean children also go to Math and Science hagwons. Sadly, the kids go to these hagwons daily. Often they don’t arrive home until 9 or 10pm and then they still have to do their public school homework! I think this would be a perfect system is the poor kids weren’t so overworked. If they only went to the hagwon once or twice a week and they didn’t’ have to stay there until 9. I think the US could learn a little from the Korean education system. I bet if a jr high Korean kid and jr high American kid took the same math or science test the Korean kid would kick the American kids’ butt…no doubt. Does the Korean kid have a life?....no. Does the American kid spend too much time eating Cheetos and watching Nickelodeon?….yes. If both countries took a little bit from the others’ it would be wonderful. Both countries have a lot to learn about each other. This gives me an idea. I think I’m going to write an entry about the differences between Korean schools and American schools and I’ll let you guys decide which is best. I’ve got midterms coming up next week, so I’ll have lots of time to write it.

First week of a normal schedule. There are three grades at my jr high (7/8/9). This semester I’m teaching 7^th and 9^th. So far I’ve only taught the 9^th graders and they’ve behaved very well. I know that soon that’ll change, but it’s really nice for now.

After being here for almost a year and half… I think I’ve finally perfected how I like my classes to be. For the first time that I meet each class I prepared a PowerPoint where I present all the rules for my class and a list of English classroom expressions. A lot of times the students don’t know the most basic of instructions. Like, “Take out a sheet of paper” or “If you need help, raise your hand”. So, I made a PP describing each expressions and I showed it to them last week. This week we’re taking a quiz on all the expressions. They have to match the English expression to the Korean translated expression. I was honestly surprised that they did so well on the quiz. Most of the students missed less than 5. A lot of times when I ask if the students comprehend something they just say yes, even if they don’t understand. So it’s really hard to know when the students actually understand…unless they’re staring at me with that blank face that I’ve come to recognize as the “I have no idea what you just said”.

            It’s starting to warm up since we’ve come back from our vacations. There have been some random days where we only have to wear a zip-up jacket and it’s fine. I’m excited for Spring. I’d never seen a more awesome Spring as last year when we were here in Korea. There were lots of new flowers that I’d never seen before.  Cherry blossoms are great. And there are tulips everywhere! But that wont be for at least another month. Spring is also great because Nick and I both have bikes and we like to ride around town after dinner.

            Samsung has their world headquarters here in Suwon…it’s only a 5-10 minute bike ride from our house…so we like to ride up there in the Spring because they decorate the surrounding area really nicely.

            These last 3 weeks have been really nice. Relatively slow at school and it’s been nice that we have a lot of food that we brought back with us from CA. We’ve been eating flavored rice and sloppy joe’s (seasoning packet) and chocolate Teddy Grahams! We figured that seasoning packets are thin/light enough that we don’t have to ration them and our parents can send us some in an envelope when we start to run low. We made “Mesquite” flavored chicken the other day and it was amazing!...too bad we only had 1 packet of the seasoning.

We’ve been looking at jobs and apartments in Denver. We plan to move there after we finish with Korea in October. We have a few friends that live there…but mostly is just seems like a nice city to live in. Since experiencing snow here in Korea we’ve come to realize that it isn’t as bad as we thought it was. Growing up in California we never new drastic weather (really hot or really cold) so being in Korea has exposed us to both of those. I much rather have cold than humid hot weather (Texas and Korea), so Denver seems like the best place to live. Even in the summer it’s nice. In California in the middle of summer it’s easily over 100 F. As you can see, in Denver it doesn’t even hit 90. Perfect!!! Yeah it snows a lot and you have to buy snow chains, but snow is so pretty!

            I’ve found one particular apartment complex that I’m loving right now. One of my friends that live in Denver now is going to check out the neighborhood for me…but so far it seems perfect. It’s low rent and it has a gym and indoor pool and laundry place.I've read a bunch of reviews online and there isn't anything significant that would make me not want to live there. example 1) pool is kept a little cold. 2) an old manager was really mean. but she's not there anymore. Everyone else's reviews are really good. Most of the people said that they've lived there for years.

            Well, almost time to go home!