A little change of plans, and progress!

Well, a couple things happened.  First, I got a call from my recruiter today (the person who got me the job).  She explained that the school had to change the location of where I'm going to live.  Instead of being in the small rural city of Gwangju, I'll have an appartment in the larger city of Bundang.  It's got nearly 500,000 people in it as opposed to Gwangju's 30,000 however it's still only considered one of Seoul's suburbs.  You see, Seoul's just really freakin big.  Anyway, this means I'll have roughly a 20-25 mile commute between my home and school.  I was kind of worried about this at first, but I've been told that Bundang's way more hoppin' than Gwangju, so I'm sure it'll be awesome!  I'm still trying to find out if it'd be close enough for me to get to work via motorcycle.  That'd be pretty cool.  Descriptions of Bundang say it's got a really pretty river running through the middle of town, so I'm pretty pumped to check that out!  Maybe...swimming?  Hopefully it'll be cleaner than the old Chicago River...

Second, I just sent all my documents to Korea!  If you're wondering how to say that in the native tongue... 나는 서류을 Fedex으로 송신했다!  FYI--that sentence was brought to you without the help of translators.  All these hours of studying the language are starting to pay off maybe. 
But what this means, is that now I just need to apply for a visa, and I'll be totally good to go!  Wooo boy am I getting excited.

K-Pop

Holy mackeral! I've been checking out Korean culture the past few days, and I've come to one conclusion:

Koreans know how do make pop music. Check this out:

Just another cliche travel blog...

So I graduated from college in December. I got a job teaching English over in Korea, and that means I'm leaving the country and probably doing some additional traveling. Obviously, that means I need to make one of those "travel blogs" that seem to be all the rage these days. Sure sure, I know it's been done like a million times already, but whatever--I'm fine following the norm sometimes. Plus, let's be realistic: The travel blog is a good idea! This way, the next time you're grinding out the old 9-to-5, you've got someone to live vicariously through. Plus, ya'll know I talk a lot. Seems like a win-win, eh?

But moving along, let's get serious: Why Korea? (Specifically South Korea. I hear it's the friendlier of the two..) Well honestly, after I graduated, I only knew two things. First, I wanted the get the hell outta America. Sure sure, it's a nice country, but I want to see what's out there. I also really want to dive into another culture and be a total stranger that has to work to fit in. Second, I wanted to teach something. See, I'm a big fan of exploring the world, but I also want to try to make it a better place, and teaching kids is my preferred method.

With these two requirements in mind, I really didn't care where I went, cause everywhere I looked seemed cool. One of my friends from the Purdue Cycling Team suggested I go teach in Korea, since he was doing the same thing a semester before me. It sounded good, and he gave me the contact information of the recruiter for the job, and bam! Just like that, I got a job teaching elementary school in a small town called Gwangju about an hour and a half south-east of Seoul. Sometimes life just falls into place like that, and it's always a beautiful thing.

Anyway, the Korean term doesn't start until March 2nd, so until then I'm getting ready to go abroad for a year or two (we'll see I suppose), and performing a self taught crash course in the Korean language. Things are going well, and with some luck, I'll be decent enough at the language to have broken conversation with my students (boy I hope so anyway!). A huge goal of mine is to become fluent/conversational in Korean by the end of all this!

I guess I'll be updating this thing sometimes, probably more and more when it gets closer to when I leave, but until then--anyiang! (good bye)