EPTHere's the thread from 2004 when I was still very much into progaming, it was a great experience:
http://teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=1&topic_id=14090
Originally I was going for 3 months with a friend that I've never actually met irl but have known through vent for, oh...I don't know say around 4 years. He's a white guy and older than me but very interested in Korean culture. I have a really close relationship with a lot of people in my vent server because we've stuck together for years and anytime I've met someone irl it's been a great experience.
We were basically going to go to chill and have a fun time going to tourist attractions that even I hadn't been to in a while. I wanted to go with him to re-live my heritage through visits to historical places. Anyway, this plan fell through because of real life things he had to take care of.
At that point I wasn't really going to go to Korea anymore simply because I had so many built up expectations that had been crumbled. Going alone would have been boring, I thought because my family in Korea are all extremely busy and few are well-off so I would just have been a bother. There were some other things that ruined my summer plans before they even began but I won't go into that here.
Anyway, my oldest uncle lives across from an elementary school and I got a job for 2 months there teaching English to the children. I'm probably gonna get a lot of rekrul-inspired comments in the replies but tbh I don't really care. If you really wanna know how I feel, I think Rekrul has a really skewed view of Korean life even if he's lived there longer than I ever have. Just an opinion, if you wanna give me the English teacher jokes I'm all for it.
I wasn't going to do it simply because my heart was really into going to Korea to meet up with my friend but after consideration it actually provides valuable experience for me in what I want to hopefully do as a career. You see, originally I wanted to go into the field of law, maybe something like corporate law where I would be able to travel or work for a Korean company. The undertone was that I was a Korean-American who could translate. But the more I thought about it, I really enjoyed being able to translate.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm not the most proficient in Korean. I'd say I speak at a highschool level and read/write at around a middle school level [if we were to compare it to schooling system in the States ] This is why I didn't do translations for TL as much as I would have liked to in the past. I also only just completed my freshman year at college so it's not like I'm really accredited either. I'm doing this because I have the opportunity.
You know people say that you should try to find what you really enjoy doing in life, and try to make that your job/career? For the longest time I always thought it would be something like games or computers but recently enough I realized my choice would probably be translating. Even when I was a little kid and I translated between fob children and my teachers I loved that feeling of being able to connect two people who previously couldn't understand each other without me. I also feel like I'm above-average at bodily/emotional perception and because of this I can deliver nuances better while translating.
To answer the question of why I'm posting this in blogs....well I guess that can be traced back to a few weeks ago when I ordered the TL shirt [ which is awesome btw ]
I thought to myself, I never really connected with any of the ' known ' people in TLnet or really got along with a lot of members. I'd say I've been around for a while and I have a lot of posts compared to most but I never felt like I really belonged at TL. But I guess when I bought the shirt I questioned myself as to whether I would ever really wear it. The answer was yes because 1 the design was awesome and 2 because....well TL has always been the only forum I've visited and also allows me to look back at myself through old posts and replies. It's pretty awesome.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. I don't really know what to expect of this job. I have no idea what English curriculum is like for Korean elementary school students...my best guess is ABC's and stuff like that. The thing is though, korean schooling is really rigorous so I should probably overpredict. Either way I see it as hit or miss. I don't know if I will be provided with textbooks or if I will have to come up with my own lessons for the kids. I mean granted, some of these questions will be answered when I get there and meet the teachers/principal but I still feel nervous.
At the moment I'm thinking that I don't have enough 'dress/nice' clothes to come to school every day as a teacher LOL. Also korean school is 6 days a week, although I hear saturday's are now becoming bi-weekly.
I'm also going to try and get in better shape and just basically reset my life a bit while in Korea. Because of things I'd rather not get into I have been depressed the past 6 months more than I have ever been in my life. I think getting away from my daily schedule of getting online to play games and not really doing any hard labor will do me some good. I don't really see visiting starcraft matches as a priority anymore like I did back in 2004 simply because I've not followed the scene much at all and it just seems way too daunting nowadays. There isn't really a personal connection that I felt with players before like Yellow, Nal_rA, Nada, Boxer, Oov, Reach etc... I mean more than likely I'll probably end up going to some live matches...but not if it's really out of my way. I'll be depending on you guys to help me with the schedules!
Anyway, if you actually read all of this you're probably bored, but I appreciate it.
