The end of week two

Above is the Google Map version of the area in which I live! To take a look just type in Sau-dong, Gimpo-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea in Google Maps.

It is hard to believe that it is already the end of my second week here in S.K. Time sure has flown by! As of now I still know nothing, where to eat, what to eat, how to order, I am pretty much handicapped if I want to eat something besides the 2 weeks of chicken and eggs I have at home but on a positive note, I have become more familiar with the area that surrounds my apartment, now I can venture beyond the supermarket, my gym and my apartment.  Since I am still phone-less I refuse to travel outside of my safe little city. Okay, well technically I am not phone-less, my recruiting agency, Korvia, provided me with a phone to use until I am able to obtain my own. The reason I say I am phone-less is because they gave me a phone from the early 90's. We all remember those slide up phones, where you have to text using your number pad and the ring tones are a various selection of popular songs from the 90's (mine is Celine Dion My Heart Will Go On) that are barely interpretable because they sound like they are recording of elementary school flute players.While I am extremely grateful for the free phone, I absolutely hate it. It has not only put in perspective the trouble my mom has when trying to learn how to do something new on her computer, as simple as it may be to me it pretty much is a foreign language to her (and most of her generation), it has also shown me how dependent I am on modern technology.  I feel so incapable of reprogramming my mind to use a phone that doesn't already think for itself already! What's the point in thinking when you have Siri?* When I got the phone it already had 10,000 KRW on it (a little less than 9 USD), I still haven't run out of time, just to show you how little I use it. It took me 5 WHOLE minutes (and I am not exaggerating) to send a text that was maybe 15 words long, where with my awesome iphone I could have typed a dissertation in that time and ALL 15 of those words were in capital letters because I have no idea how to take the caps off. So, I am phone-less and as for now I can just pray my ARC card comes soon so I can happily utilize and abuse my dependency on modern technology again.

#CHEERS2MODERNTECHNOLOGY

*Siri is the iphone's "intelligent personnel assistant." Basically Siri is the iphone if it were a person. You can ask her to do anything on your iphone and she will do it for you.

Hello Gimpo, Korea

I have finally arrived at my new home, Gimpo, Korea and to say the least and speaking less than a week in, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. Upon arriving in Korea I have witnessed a country that is in the middle of modernizing itself. Infrastructure is being rebuilt, bridges, buildings, schools, roads ext.... are all under construction or have been reconstructed into beautiful architectural pieces. The atmosphere of the people is intoxicating. Between being extremely proud of who they are and what they have become, they are also very kind and thankful for the thousands of foreign teachers that are in their country helping them. I have been given free fruit, people have been patient with me and my "western ways" and my co-teachers and other fellow teachers have warmly opened their arms to me ensuring that I am comfortable, safe and able to get out of my apartment and around the city. My apartment is a studio, small but cozy, in a great building with all western teachers from all over the place. My bed is my only complaint. It is hard, I almost rather sleep on a rock! But other than that, I have no complaints.  A woman from South Africa has kindly taken me under her wing a little bit and has shown me around and she lives just across the alley. My next door neighbor is this Englishman, who off the bat was awesome. A complete type A personality and took me partying my first weekend, my kind of guy! I have met many other westerners on the street, we have ( I am just becoming familiar with it) our own little tight knit community, everybody takes care of each other, something my Mom would be pleased to hear. But as of now I must go. More once I obtain internet.

#CHEERS2KOREA

T-Day (Travel Day)

"The great courageous act that we must all do is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams."

-Oprah Winfrey

It has always been my dream to live abroad. The idea of it was always so intoxicating, being a foreigner in a completely new world, surrounded by a language I did not speak, living in an unfamiliar environment with new types of cuisine, hobbies, customs, religions ext.. and now it is finally happening, I leave tomorrow for my new life but it still hasn't hit me. I have shed a few tears saying goodbye to some of my friends and family but that glass shattering I am MOVING to Korea hasn't come yet, right now I feel as if I am taking another one of my world adventure trips. But none the least I am excited to see what Korea has for me. 

Until I settle in my new home,

#CHEERS2THEBEGINNING

Moving On

“Well, now

If little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you

Little by little

If suddenly you forget me

Do not look for me

For I shall already have forgotten you

If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life

And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots

Remember

That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms

And my roots will set off to seek another land”  -Pablo Neruda

If you asked me what I would be doing now 6 months ago my answer would have been, in love with ____ ( i'll spare him) teaching in ____ country (obviously with hewhomustnotbenamed) and living happily ever after. Ask me now what I am doing and it is moving alone to South Korea, still to teach but nowhere near where I thought I would be. It is funny how things change so quickly and so fast. How although you can have your mind set on one goal, one person or one thing and in the blink of an eye it can all change. My Mom on multiple occasions has recited the quote "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince," and because of her I have been extremely cautious of these frogs in my short life. I have witnessed what they (the "frogs") do to people, how they can build one person so high up and then destroy that same base and leave them crumbling to the ground without any regards or care as to what happens to that other person. But I too let my guard down and allowed myself to succumb to these false lies, promises and dreams that were told to me. I too allowed myself to live in a fairytale of happy endings and joy to instead be dropped like a bad habit and through this experience I have learned it is not WHAT happens to you but rather it is HOW you deal with it all, the pain, the hurt, the deceit and even the happiness and good times, how do you take these and apply them to yourself and who you are? Do you learn from it and take these experiences and make yourself a stronger person? Or do you allow yourself to wallow in self pity? For me myself, I have taken my pain, pain that still somewhat resides, and have decided to move on with my life to discover the good that I know the world has, whether it be the love the fairy tales speak of, the success we all dream of achieving, the content that many spiritual leaders have displayed or whatever else our hearts desire, I am on a mission to find.

So with that, it is official, I leave August 30th for my new life/journey.

#CHEERS2MOVINGON

One month away!

I am officially one month away from my departure to Korea!  All of my paper work is in and now I am just waiting for my VISA number :) Departure date is believed to be somewhere between August 29-31. I am sooo excited but the preparation for leaving is extremely tedious and stressful. How in the heck am I supposed to go through and select the most important items from 23 years of crap that I have managed to accumulate and get them to Korea? I have going through all of my athletic t-shits, sweatpants and sweatshirts but that is hardly a dent in all of the stuff I have. I wish I could just teleport everything because right now I can not imagine leaving any of my shoes (I have tons of shoes) behind or clothes (3 closets full) on top of the fact that I need to shop for "professional" clothes to teach in. Packing alone will be an adventure. Any advice on how I should pack? What I MUST bring vs. want to bring but won't really need? Help me out here PLEASEEE :)

#CHEERS2mylastmonth

getting TESOL certified

Last weekend was my first 2 classes (of 6) of my TESOL course and to say the least, I LOVE IT. First of all my professor is awesome. He is a big man who is full of personality! His love for teaching English pretty much OOOZES out of him as he teaches us. He is getting me very excited and anxious to begin :)! The material in the class interests me which is a first for school and I honestly am beginning to believe this is the job that I will wake up every morning excited to go to. Although I am on 1/3 of the way through my class, I feel that with this and my experience coaching, I will be more than prepared to tackle my own class room! Counting down the days:)

#CHEERS2mylastmonth

The beginning...

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”- Beryl Markham, West with the Night

And this is exactly what I am doing. In less than a month I am leaving everything that I know and love and am moving to Gimpo, South Korea to teach English. As of now I am not sure how I feel. Living and teaching abroad has been something that I have wanted to do for many years but now that it is finally actually here I have become a ball of mixed emotions and those that know me know that I can be emotional. I am excited of course for the journey that I am about to pursue but at the same time I am terrified. Terrified to be alone, terrified to leave my home, terrified of what is to come. But then I am happy, how many people take this risk and uproot and move abroad, start over, immerse themselves in a new life?  But my happiness is accompanied with sadness, specifically sad because I am going to be with out those that I love the most, I will miss family gatherings, "beff-friend" bonding, my nephew learning to drive, my niece starting middle school, my mom taking down the corrupt employees of the  SUHSD, talking basketball with my dad, spending time with my sisters.. the list goes on and on... But I am going to do this, despite my fear and sadness I know that ultimately this is what I want most. 

#Cheers2NewBeginnings.