Surprise going away party at Little Korea

Last Saturday, my fiance Jen, surprised me with a dinner party at Little Korea on the Corner of Claiborne Ave and Toledano St.  This is one of our favorite places to eat, and has some of the most authentic tasting Korean food in the city of New Orleans, complete with the latest  Kpop playing over the speakers and Kdramas on the big screen.  To top it off, waitresses Joyce and Sunni allowed me to practice my Korean with them.  Can't beat that!

Little Korea on Claiborne Ave and Toledano St

Quite a few of our friends showed up for the festivities including one of my sisters and Jen's brother.  We had a great time filled with laughs and delicious food, and it was topped off by a cake in the shape of the South Korean flag made by Jen herself. 

I've never been one for goodbyes and going away parties because I always feel more awkward than I probably should.  But Jen insisted that I have one this time to mark the end of one chapter in life and the beginning of another.  And she was right; I definitely felt a sense of closure as I prepare to move on to Jeju to teach.  What's more, it made me realize that I have some pretty awesome friends who have been with me through the good times and bad times.  I'm looking forward to visits from all of you over the next year or so!  You have a place to stay and food to eat, so what's stopping you!?

My Air Force background

So this upcoming September will mark three years since I've been discharged from the U.S. Air Force.  I enlisted December 30, 2002 straight out of high school because of reasons and had a pretty interesting career. 

My first five years were spent working as a medic/nurse, which I was damn good at.  But you know that cramped feeling you get when you're stuck doing something that you neither chose to do nor wish to do for the rest of your life?  Yeah, that struck me at about the four year mark.  I almost got out of the military at that point, but an opportunity fell into my lap at just the right time.

One of the Chief Master Sergeants who happened to be a patient in the clinic I worked in and I were shooting the breeze about my future plans in and out of the Air Force, and I told her about how I wanted to learn how to speak another language, and that the best idea would be for me to get out and go to college.  But she suggested that I could stay in and learn a language by retraining into the linguist career field.  All I would have to do is take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) and apply for acceptance to the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, CA.

So following her advice, I went to take the DLAB.  I was so nervous because it's impossible to study for the DLAB (though having a firm grasp of the English language helps); it simply measures your innate aptitude to acquire a language and the higher you score on the test, the more difficult of a language you qualify for.  The easier Romance languages are category I and the hardest languages like Arabic and Japanese are category IV.  My original language choice was Japanese, so I needed to score at least a 100 (the highest score is a 176) and to my complete surprise, I scored a 116!  Overcome with excitement, I submitted my application to DLI. 

A neat categorization of the most common languages spoken around the world.  Credits to Zidbits.com for the image.

I received some bittersweet news from them a few weeks later.  I had been accepted, but I did not get Japanese as my language.  Instead, I was assigned Korean.  I was overcome with disappointment because of two reasons:

1.  I had no clue about Korea and its people, let alone its language.  I chose Japanese because I grew up in Misawa, Japan and I was familiar with the culture and the language already.

2.  I was scared.

A few months later, I was on my way to DLI to spend 64 weeks learning Korean.  I will create a separate post about my experiences there and how I came to love the language and culture.  But for now, I'll finish by saying that my last couple of years in the Air Force were full of ups and downs, but mostly ups.  And looking back, I wouldn't change anything about it.  All things happen for a reason in our lives and my time spent in the military may be unorthodox to some, but it has shaped my past, my present, and paved the way for my future.

Jeju, South Korea

Okay, so I've finally found it within myself to post my very first blog entry.  Woohoo!

안녕하세요.  처음 만나서 반가워요.  나의 한국에서 재미있는 영어를 가르치고 여행을 하는 경험을 소개하려고 이 블로그를 만들었어요.
*Hello, nice to meet you.  I've made this blog to introduce my interesting experiences teaching English and traveling in Korea.*

For those of you who don't know me or even those who do and simply haven't heard the news yet, I will be leaving soon on my way to Jeju, South Korea, where I'll be teaching English to Korean children.  Jeju is a small island off South Korea's southern coast and is considered by many to be the "Korean Hawaii." 

Jeju is that red marker.

I've never been to Jeju, but I did spend some time living in Hawaii and I find that nickname to be a bit of an exaggeration because Hawaii only has one season and that season is Perfect.  Apparently, Jeju-do (the '-do' after Jeju means island) has four seasons (사계절), and a very wide range of temperatures, which leads me to believe the "Korean Hawaii" moniker to be a bit overstated.

Regardless, the island is one of the most beautiful places I've ever researched.  Here are a few pictures courtesy of Google images:

Even though it has a more temperate climate than Hawaii, it is nevertheless a beautiful place and I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to spend the next year living and working there.