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Other entries in Seoul

Summer is blowing by

Wow, is it August already?!?! Where has the summer gone?

Since I returned from my time off between jobs, life has hit the non-stop lane and I find little time idle in front of a computer. What time I do have online is spent trying to stay on top of the work I get from the Red Cross or keeping up with the odd email. But now I'm on vacation (the Korean version - which is a 4 day weekend and meant to be my summer break) and so rather than spend a day or two stuck in traffic going somewhere, I decided to lay low and as such, I get to drop off some online news.

There's much afoot in life. I don't really have much inclination to be stuck far from everyone I know and love without serious benefit coming of it. And that's certainly the case in Korea. The days are long and I spend a lot of time moving from place to place, but there is certainly progress being made in many small areas of my life. If I could find a way to be any more productive on the bus in between things, I'd have eliminated all downtime. That said, I enjoy perusing the newspaper and keeping abreast of the issues of the day. Otherwise, I busy myself with teaching (of which I do a lot), studying (which I also do a lot) and volunteering (which, if you add them all up, there is a lot on the go). Allow me to explain.

Work is work, but when you're teaching there is more to it. I make friends with my students which means that invitations for lunches and dinners arise. These casual outings rarely remain fun lunches but extensions of class. I also end up investing in their progress which involves my making every effort, inside the classroom and out, to equip my students with the tools to speak English more proficiently. I take as much as I give from each student, especially those that make a sincere effort, so it is ultimately rewarding. The tough part is that I teach adults and we are less able to acquire language as easily as when we were younger, so the effort has to be that much more significant. I do find, though, that as I personalize my effort to each person, they respond and I'm actually making progress with more of my students than less. That's a good thing. It also pays off, literally, in terms of the aforementioned meals and the network of private teaching, which is much more lucrative than the standard classroom gig. I am quickly learning, though, that the time taken to move from place to place can be more tiring, at times, than the actual work. So I continue to teach, and learn, about language and being a professional. Good stuff.

My language work doesn't stop with English. As a necessary requirement to my longer term goals of work with the Red Cross or further study, I have decided to make a formal investment in languages myself. The language instruction industry in Korea is well setup and for a learner at the higher levels, classes are held exclusively in the other language. This means I can study French here for half the price of classes at home (I'm doing 5 hours per week now for $100/month). I'm also gearing up to write the TOEIC/TOEFL equivalents (these are standardized exams that quantify language ability in English) in French. Should be further good experience.

And as if studying French wouldn't be enough, I have undertaken a more aggressive approach to an Asian language, but funny enough, not Korean. I have a reasonable working level of Korean - such that I can function in most things I need to deal with. But I am dating a Japanese woman and while she can speak English fluently (and fortunately, her family can, too), I do feel that I have to make an investment in her language for the sake of our relationship. So now as a part of my daily correspondence with her, I receive another little language lesson from Reina. She's been an English teacher - and is doing that for the summer in Tokyo - and so she's a good place to start. Slowly but surely I find myself able to integrate the odd phrase into our conversations. It's no simple undertaking to tackle a language, something I understand more today than I ever have before. But this one has got to be done. So I'm a language nut right now.

Outside of languages, I'm making as much time as I can for the Red Cross. I work in two capacities with the Korean Red Cross: the first is in the International Relations Department where I'm always working on lots of little projects. Right now we're midway through a major revision of the English website for the organization. I've also drafted a report on the reunions of families separated by the Korean War that I'm waiting to have proofed before we move on to publishing (!) it. The other group I am involved with is the KRCIV (Korean Red Cross International Volunteers). We are a group of foreigners and Koreans alike who work to fill holes where we can with disaster preparedness for the KRC and do fundraising on the side. This has taken up three full days in the past two weekends and it looks like I'll be off all of the next weekend to visit two RC hospitals in the South of South Korea (part of this past weekend involved my getting to sleep outside, which made two days of labour well worth it for the tradeoff of waking up surrounded by trees and not concrete!). If there was ever a doubt as to the relevance of the work that I'm doing here, though, it faded quickly this past weekend when the leader of the KRCIV got called up to duty in Bangladesh to respond to the flooding there. There are crisises in the world and people need to respond to them. I'm in a good place to be learning many of the necessary skills and building relationships with people who are working in the industry I'm heading for. Now it's just a matter of putting the time in to earn my wings.

With summer passing so quickly, it would almost be totally lost if it were not for the weekends. For as busy as I am through the week, I find my weekends to be entirely my own. This means I have time to take on the Red Cross activities I mentioned earlier but also to get out hiking (for which Korea is a top notch locale) or explore a little more of the country. Reina is coming to visit from Japan at the end of August for just over a week and while I won't have any time off, we'll still get out of town to see some of the countryside, I think. That alone is looking to be reason enough for a good hard long summer. I don't let any moment pass without something good happening. There's lots on the go but that's a good thing.

With my now having spent 7 months here - more than any other country besides Canada - I'm finding the investment of time and effort here to be paying off in terms of the development that I receive. I'm so lucky to have found many of the opportunities I have, but there is no shortage of work on my part to make these chances turn out for the better.

But for now, I have to go and trudge along. I have a lesson to get to and it seems to take longer in the 35 degree heat.

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