The light at the end of the tunnel

After almost three and a half years of living overseas I'm coming home. It has been a long and sometimes tough journey. There has been somethings that have happened that I never would have expected.

On June 6th, I will get on a plane to fly home. I'm excited and somewhat nervous about picking up my life in Oregon. In mid September my wife, Namhee, will join me after she gets her visa to live permanently in the US.

Leaving my school and my life here will be difficult. There is no doubt in my mind that I have had some great experiences, especially in the last year.

This is the first of a few different posts about my life in Korea and my experience as an Expat coming home later this month.

If you'd like, feel free to visit my photo album to see what I've been up to these last few years:

David's Photo Album

Incheon Free Trade and English Zone

This afternoon I attended a ceremony marking the dedication of the Incheon Free Trade and English Zone that is being built near Incheon International Airport. The city is investing heavily in developing a free trade zone called New Songdo City, as well as teaching English in the public schools.

Since the late 1980's, there has been a strong push to in Korea teach children English. For the most part, kids attend a hagwon (also referred to as a cram school) in the afternoon when they get out of public school. Typically hagwons cost anywhere from $300-700 a month (about 300,000-700,000 Won). Most families can barely afford to send their children to a hagwon and typically have an income of $20,000-30,000 a year (if both parents work).

Recently the government has been investing huge amounts of money building English camps (Washington Post article about the English Camp in Ansan) where children can go and learn English in a immersion setting. Similar camps have been built in Incheon and Paju.

The city is also heavily investing in English programs for the public school by hiring native speaking teachers to teach English and western culture. The long term goal being to increase the ability of people to speak English in time for the 2014 Asian Games, which Incheon is in the running to host.

I find it interesting how much money the government is throwing at teaching English as a second language. The main problem being that unless those that are learning to speak English continue to practice speaking English on a regular basis, it is difficult to improve their speaking abilities. Also, Koreans are afraid of making mistakes, therefore they are hesitant to speak English, even if they have the ability.

If your interested, you can also look at the pictures I posted of my classroom remodeling in two earlier posts, Under SiegePart I and Part II.

You can also visit the following websites:

Incheon City

Namgu-Office (The area of Incheon in which I live)

Nambu Elementary School (My school's website)

My photo album page on Yahoo Photos

Merry Christmas

As I sit here on Christmas Eve night at 11:15pm, I want to wish everyone and their families a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The weather here will be Sunny and 51 degrees tomorrow. We are heading into Seoul to have Christmas Dinner at a restaurant with some of our co-workers here in Incheon. There will be eight of us: 5 from New Zeland, 1 from Canada, 1 from the US (that would be me) and 1 from Korea (my wife).

I hope to post some pictures of the evening afterward, so please feel free to come back and look.

David

Under Siege

Ok, politics aside..this isn't funny. My classroom is under siege! We recently applied for a grant from the Incheon Board of Education to remodel our English classroom and recieved 14 million won (approx $15,000). The origonal arrangement was that the remodeling wasn't going to start until Winter Break, which is during the first two months of the new year.

So I was informed today they are starting tomorrow. Given the fact that things are done on short notice here in Korea it really should be no surprise. However packing up a classroom in a half a day is just crazy!

Update: Here are some pictures I took on Saturday of the construction in my classroom