Hello!
First of all, this will be a place where I want to share my experiences teaching English in Korea, but it will be more of a journal for me. If you know me, I have one of the worst memories ever, writing everything down to remember what just happened is my specialty (nah, not really). So this will be an opportunity for me to share and for me to re-read what happened =)
By the way please forgive me because I’m not the best writer, blogger, etc.. I will use this mostly for personal stuff.
My name is Trang, I am a Vietnamese-American who is teaching in Korea since the end of July (almost 6 months now). I was born in Vietnam, raised in a Vietnamese family which makes me bi-lingual. If you speak to me long enough, you will hear a bit of my fobby accent.
I shouldn’t be complaining about my life or family life, but I was really at the point where I needed to be out and live on my own. I love my family to death but I feel like I couldn’t grow - mentally wise, if I continue to live with my parents. I had to leave.
To tell you the truth, I have no idea what I want to do for the rest of my life. I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA in Asian Language and Literature (Japanese). So what am I doing in Korea? I LOVE Asian culture, everything about Asia, the history, writing, language, to pop culture and fashion.
During my senior year of college I applied for JET - Japanese Exchange Teacher and was placed on the waiting list. Yes, I was sad but I told myself it’s not going to stop me from going, living and learning abroad. God has a better plan for me. After graduation, I spent most of my life as what I call “stay-at-home-daughter”. I did everything a housewife would do, just I’m not the wife, I’m the daughter. I’ve been doing it for years that it didn’t feel like an extra job or anything. It just felt like regular chores.
Growing up, I knew I wanted to help people in some sort of way so in December 2010, I ended up signing up for the Nursing Program at Rasmussen and unfortunately not a program for me and stopped after one quarter. Then a family friend introduced me to a job to get myself by with.. being a waitress at a Chinese Restaurant by my house. I started working there to save up money and pay debts, student loans and such. At the same time, in March 2011, I was researching teaching English aboard and signed up for Oxford Seminar’s TEFOL/TEFL/TESOL 60 hour class. The class was held every Saturday and Sunday, ~8 hours a day for 4 weeks. It was intense but I loved it. After I got the certificate, Oxford helped me find a job in any country I wanted - I chose South Korea.
The process went so fast that I don’t remember what happened after. All this was happening when my family moved to a bigger house to accompany my dad’s brother and his family from Vietnam. We then, and till this day have 2 families living under one roof. The next thing I knew, I was celebrating my 23 birthday with my cousins at a sushi bar, then my good-bye party. It was so overwhelming and everything was happening so fast and I was sad to not inform a lot of people of my leaving.
At my good-bye party, surprisingly more people came than I expected since it was a last minute thing. (I bought my plane tickets 3 days before departure). Close friends and family members came and I really felt blessed to have them in my life. One thing I remember well is when our family friend sang a Vietnamese song about father-daughter on a karaoke machine. My dad held me tightly and I remember trying to keep my tears in but that didn’t work, I bawled realizing I will miss him a lot more than I thought. To make things better or worse, they sang a mother-daughter relationship song. Again my mom held me tightly and we both bawled our eyes out. hehe
That night, my siblings and I took our last joy ride on our bikes around our neighborhood at ~ 2am. That was fun. Then it was time to say goodbye at the airport…..
