English Program in Korea, or EPIK, has essentially two roles, so far as I can tell. The first is to be a recruiting company. They advertise around the world, giving an impression of a standardized, nationally run program. They then process applicants and pay airfare to Korea. Upon arrival, EPIK takes on its second role, which is the brief training of the new teachers. It is at this mandatory, ten day orientation that it becomes very clear that EPIK is not at all a nationally run program. To be fair, when signing the contract it is made quite explicit that said contract is between the teacher (in my case, me) and the Office of Education to which said teacher is going (in my case, Gangwon-do). But the true extent of the decentralization of the program is made quite clear when you’re at orientation for a whole week before you can meet with your provincial coordinator and actually have a chance at finding out more about where you’re going than just which province it’s in. Only later to discover that all this coordinator knew was which county you’re going to and that he was blatantly wrong about which town in that county. The experience I speak of is of course my own, and the culmination of it happened Friday as I was riding in the car of my co-teacher, who had come to meet me at the Gangwon-do Education Center, and was driving me to my new home. He was telling me details of a town with a name that was most decidedly not the Jeongseon I was expecting. I remember like it was yesterday (or, at least like it was 5 days ago) that the Gangwon-do coordinator told me I was going to, specifically, Jeongseon town, not just a broad assignment to Jeognseon county. But loandbehold there I was, riding along with some town named Gohan looming large enough in the conversation that I had no choice but to reckon that thereto I must be going. And hereto I have come, to find out that while Gohan loomed large in that conversation, it does everything else pretty small indeed.
But before I tell you what little more I can about where I am, I want to say a few more things about how I got here. I’ll spare you too many details about the flight over and such, except to mention the part where the weight of my shoes, which I had strapped to the outside of my backpack, pulled open the zipper and caused everything to fall out, including, most unfortunately, my external hard drive and my laptop. The external hard drive appears to be broken, as does the hard drive inside my laptop (although the rest of the latop is OK). I made a back up of the internal drive onto the external drive that very morning, but, when all my data was in one proverbial basket and that basket very unproverbially came open, I now find myself thoroughly fuct. I have low hopes of finding anyone who can fix a Mac around here. Somehow, having uprooted myself to the other side of the world, losing all that data feels like just another thing I’ve had to give up to come here, and so does not bum me out as much as I think it would have back home. What does bum me out is not having a fully functional computer of my own.
Technological tragedies aside, I arrived at Incheon International an hour early, found the EPIK counter. They bought all the already arrived teachers dinner and then we loaded our stuff onto a truck and ourselves onto a bus – or a “limojin” as they seem to be called around here – the last of four buses to collect teachers from the airport over the previous two days. A very nice three hour nap later and I arrived at about 12:30 pm at the Korea National University of Education. , outside of the city of Cheongju. We all registered, got a guidebook, a map of the Cheongju area, a map of our province, a textbooky thing to go with the many lectures to come, and our very own stainless steel EPIK mug. I lugged my gear to my dorm room on the third floor, waking up my roommate, Patrick from Newcastle, took a shower, passed out.
The following ten days were a mixed bag indeed. We were tightly scheduled between classes and three cafeteria meals, which evenings thankfully freeish. Freeish because we were required to sign out and back in should we be leaving campus, with a curfew of 11:00 pm. Luckily the curfew was not strictly enforced! Most of our lectures turned out, in my opinion, to be fairly well-intentioned but useless. Our lecturers were some EPIK staff, some local Korean teachers, and some veteran EPIK teachers. I liked the lectures that were very on-topic and that gave a lot of good, practical advice and ideas to use in the classroom. Unfortunately, many of the rest of the lectures became dominated by the same people asking the same questions over and over and over again. All of these questions were legitimate things to be worried about, like visa issues, tax issues, housing, transportation, etc., but it was obvious to me very early in the program which of these questions I could get an answer to at that point and which I could not. The former I quickly resolved, and the latter I just gave up on, knowing I’d find out when I got wherever I was going.
Because of so much wasted time I think the EPIK office is wasting a lot of money on having so long of an orientation, all the material given to us, the food, the housing and the field trips must cost them a lot of money. On the practical side, I’d love to have all the good lectures over five days, and have them give to money saved to each teacher as a nice bonus. On the personal side, orientation went by damned fast. It hasn’t been long since I graduated and I sure haven’t forgotten how to turn my brain off during bad lectures. Outside of the lectures, I actually had a good time. It’s easy to make fast friends with people who have a similar background and who are all similarly in a strange country embarking on a very similar sort of adventure. A day and a half in Seoul and plenty of nights out and I’d say orientation was well made the best of. I was getting very anxious to move on to the next step, but now that I have so much to do to get my life here in order, on top of the responsibilities of a real job, I’m missing this past care-free week and a half.
Now here I am, feeling rather alone, in this tiny town of Gohan, Jeongseon county, Gangwon province, Republic of Korea. Just that I’m in this town at all was one surprise, but there’ve been others. For one, due to a current housing shortage, they’ve put in me in an official residence at one of the elementary schools I will be working at. My commute on Fridays will be unbeatable! I tried my best to expect the very minimum housing promised in the contract, and so I was extremely happy to see my new place. I’ve got two rooms, a small kitchen, a bathroom. Brand new appliances: TV (big). , microwave, a minifridge and a full-sized refrigerator (?!).
, and a washing machine (the buttons on which I spent about 15 minutes deciphering and labeling in English with sticky notes this morning). .
An enormous new dresser,
and a brand-new queen sized bed (I guess they expect me to find a girlfriend). No cookware as yet, and while no was cookware ever promised, it sounds like they’re going to be buying me some soon.
My good fortune in housing is due to another good fortune; the local housing shortage is due to the large number of construction workers who are building a ski resort right outside of town. The local economy used to be entirely coal-mining, I have been told. Around ten to twenty years ago all the mines closed, and everyone left. My co-teacher explained that this is why they have a two elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools with very small numbers of students and in such a small town. A while back, in an attempt to revive the local economy, the government gave a special exemption and allowed for the construction of the only casino in Korea in which Korean nationals are allowed to gamble. This casino is called Kangwon Land and it’s only a few miles up in the mountains from Gohan. I have yet to check it out, but from what I’ve read it’s quite big, and they have branched out to include a large resort and a golf course. Kangwon Land is currently branching further to include a ski resort, slated to open this December. From the the girls’ high school and middle school, which I visited yesterday and which is higher up on a hill, it’s possible to see some of the ski runs and ski lifts. Needless to say, what with the turn-off up to the resort literally across the street from the elementary school that is my new home, I think this should be a pretty good winter! . But, this isn’t even the end of the good surprises. Local teachers are allowed to use some of the facilities at the Kangwon Land staff housing complex, just a few minutes walk from my home. I’ve been granted access to the gym and the swimming pool, and plan to check them out soon. I have, however, not been granted access to their internet room, apparently the previous English teacher, one Mr. Parker, abused that privilege and has set a poor precedent for all gringos.
While the director at the Kangwon Land employee housing might not trust me, everyone else has been really nice to me so far. Just on my way to this internet cafe I stopped for some noodles. I got to talking to a guy working there, in his small English and my teensyweensy Korean. He was wearing a Burton snowboards shirt, so I asked if he snowbaorded. Turns out he’s a snowboard instructor and now I have a snowboarding buddy. I think he said he could get me a discount on a season pass to the new resort. On top of that, after lunch, they refused to let me pay! Next, I was a little confused trying to find this internet cafe again – I had a card with some minutes left I wanted to use up. I asked someone, and they forced me into their car and drove me here. Finally, just now the guy next to me noticed I was almost out of time as he was finishing up playing some Starcraft, and he gave me his card with 28 minutes left on it. I’m getting worried that there’s some awful conspiracy to be nice to me!