Tag: living in Korea

Your pre-EPIK interview is a great head start for getting to grips with the EPIK process. Between gathering all of your official docs and binging on K-dramas, preparing for your EPIK pre-interview can be an easy thing to just slip your mind.

As a westerner, interacting with Korean students is not always easy and can present its own challenges. Teaching for the first time can be nerve-wracking on its own, but teaching in a foreign country for the first time brings about anxieties you never knew you harbored.

It’s no secret that Korea has been at the forefront of modern cosmetics. This is the country that brought us amazing facial sheet masks, snail slime moisturizers, and cushion compacts.

In the west, the sky is a brilliant orange fading to blue above. The sun has just slipped below the peaks of the low mountains of this southern Korean town. The color reflects in the ripples of the slow-moving river. Along the river, figurines of all shapes and sizes dot the water’s surface. As the blue sky above deepens with the fast-approaching night, the power goes on for the lights inside the lanterns, and the river takes on its own glow.

It was not the actual border, but it drew the southern boundary of the most ironically named place on the globe, the “De-Militarized Zone” or DMZ that separates North and South Korea.

October is here! So, bring on the pumpkin spice, cozy sweaters, and Halloween candy. If Halloween happens to fall on your list of favorite holidays ever, then you might be a little disappointed to learn that not every country is as zombie and ghoul crazed as America.

As we wandered the streets of the now-famous Gangnam district in Seoul, South Korea, we could not help but notice the strangeness of the dark restaurant windows and the quiet streets. In my seven months in Seoul, I have not witnessed such calm on a Friday night.

Last week we brought you the first installment of our teacher interview we did with Mary McCusker, a teacher that dropped everything in New Jersey to head to South Korea to teach English. Read the rest of her excellent adventure here.