2 months down, 10 to go!

Rather than the usual "here's what we did last night/this weekend/at school" post, I thought I would write up something about our motivation to come to Korea in the first place. Although most people think it's pretty cool, there are always a few that inevitably say "why Korea? why anywhere but America?" and I would like to address those concerns. Not that they are particularly important, considering we are already here and settled in, but I also thought it might be nice for others to see exactly why we chose this lifestyle.

Aaron's list might look slightly different from mine, but my biggest reason is my student loans. I have over 60k in student loans and need to pay them back desperately. This seems to be the main reason for most of the English teachers here in Korea, though I have talked to some that came here to avoid paying student loans. That's right, they fled their home country and all responsibilities, including their debt. As mildly tempting as that sounds (debt free! just have to live in another country forever!) I am definitely not interested in that. I fully intend on paying off my loans on my own. I'm not even letting Aaron help me.

Conceivably, after graduating college, I would have found a good job (or A job) in my field, made a decent salary, and started paying those loans back. Of course living in Michigan (and now the whole U.S.) it was nigh impossible to find any sort of job in what I wanted to do, which was editing. Even in my last job, at the bank (which I loved and was easily one of my favorite jobs) I wasn't even cracking 20k a year, salary-wise. Combined with living expenses, car expenses, and general other stuff, paying off my debts looked like it was going to take me the full 20 years. With tens of thousands in interest. Really, that's just awful. At some point, Aaron and I are going to want to have kids; start a family and buy a little house out in the country somewhere (well, I want to be in the country, and that's all that really matters!) and I told him that in no uncertain terms are we going to have kids while I still have all those loans hanging over my head. And on my bank salary, we'd never ever be able to afford kids. Or anything, for that matter. He was working at U of M and not making much more than me, even after being there for 7 years.

So we were pretty much stuck, and we knew it. When we found out about the teaching opportunities in Korea, we thought it sounded awesome. Live in a foreign country for a few years, make a lot of money (our salaries should be about 25 million won a year, which, when we started doing research, was about 25k) and pay off our debts before coming back to America and getting settled somewhere NOT in Michigan. Now, granted, I know 25k a year is still not that much. However, living here in Korea, we don't have to pay rent and have minimal living expenses. So that 25k is almost all take-home pay. Meaning I can throw it all at my loans and watch them wither away while I rub my hands together and laugh in an evil fashion. Or something. And 25k a year is unfortunately more than we've ever made before. (sad!!) So we were really excited about it. I had whole charts and lists made out about how exactly I was going to pay things off and save money on top of that, and figured that after 4 years, I could have everything paid off and have maybe 10-15k in savings for when we get home.

Now, the exchange rate of the US dollar to the Korean won is awful. Not as bad as it was a month or two ago, but still not as good as when we first looked at Korea. It started getting bad after we were already commited here, or else we would have gone elsewhere, trust me! So my plans may not work out perfectly after all. But I can still save my money in Won for now, and convert it to dollars when the rate gets better. I'm still paying off the loans, and actually just paid off my stupid credit card last month, so now I can really go after those loans. I am actually really excited about it. (pathetic, right??)

Anyway, my secondary motivation is to learn Korean. Where better to do that? Granted, I was a little disappointed that we are not living in Japan (after all, I already speak some Japanese, and I liked it there a lot) but the cost of living in Japan is much higher, and we don't get free rent and all this other great stuff. So I will just content myself with visiting this summer. Anyway, learning Korean. I enjoy foreign languages, and hopefully, if I can become decent (or even fluent) in Korean after 4 years here, I could get a job in D.C....or something. I don't know yet. We're trying to plan for the future, but still have no idea what we want to do after Korea. We might not even want to move back to the US, we're not sure. Looking into Australia or New Zealand at this point. But who knows?

So those are my main motivations. I'll let Aaron post about his later (if he wants to), but hopefully this gives you a better understanding of why we packed everything up and moved across the world to a tiny country where we don't speak the language and teach, of all things.