Korea

Stop Whining and Start Grinding

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Dragon y Luna

Building your own skills is similar to building a character in an RPG (albeit far more complex and interesting). To improve your life, build your skills, and level up, you have to do some grinding. Read more…

Update from a Korean Work Camp

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Korea lanterns

Greetings from Yangpyeong County, South Korea.  I arrived here late Friday night after a 30-hour trip. As some of you know, I taught in Korea in 2009 before returning to Appalachia. Now I’m back on a six-week teaching contract. Forgive me if the title is misleading, but I couldn’t resist. I came here to work, [...]

Pros & Cons of a Nomadic Lifestyle

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Nomadic Lifestyle _ Moving Day

What is a nomadic lifestyle? What are the pros and cons of packing your life into ten cardboard boxes?

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A Day in the Life of a Korean Student

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Korean School kids

How does Korea end up with high marks in almost every educational category? They work their ass off. This article offers a brief glimpse into the typical day of a fictional student, and a couple lessons we can learn from this student. Click the title to read more…

15 Things I Love About Not Driving

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road rage

When the wife and I moved to Korea, we left a lot behind behind: our family and friends, a big apartment, the comfort of the familiar, and the very icons of our Americanity: our cars. We both drove late model gas sippers. We didn’t have a choice. In our town, like most other cities in [...]

Why Useless Skills Matter

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Korean street at night.

“Why would you bother to learn Korean? You’ll never use it when you leave here, it’s a useless skill.” When I heard these words, I rolled my eyes and thought the speaker had had too much soju. Later, though, I realized his attitude was a fairly common one. Many people see learning things like Korean, [...]

5 Things I've Learned in Korea

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As of yesterday, I’ve been living and working in Korea for six months. The wife and I arrived on a cold January night, given the keys to our little apartment, and started teaching the next day. Since then we’ve developed a tenuous grip on life here, crazy as it is. I’ve become more adept with [...]