Weekly teacher gatherings in Yeonggwang

Getting together with other English teachers is very important to me. There isn't a lot of English spoken by the staff at either of my schools, so it helps to be able to have a few good conversations during the week. On a good night we'll get seven western teachers and perhaps 1-2 Korean friends. On slower nights it may only be three of us, but it's a pretty faithful group.

We are currently on a schedule where we gather on Tuesdays and Fridays. The location rotates for our Tuesday dinners, but we typically meet up at 7 PM. After dinner we usually head to Storm for a few beers. We usually go to Pizza Club on Friday's and then to a bar afterwards for trivia. Friday gatherings start at 7:30 PM for dinner and we play 25-question trivia at 9 PM.

More on the Friday games. The trivia game covers a whole range of questions. The winner from the previous week makes the questions so the topics vary widely. We also have (or have had) teachers from Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States so that can influence the questions.

Getting western products from Costco

A fellow teacher was kind enough to share this VERY important web link. http://www.ezshopkorea.com

I haven't used this service myself (yet) but they will ship Costco (and some non-Costco) products to you if you are teaching in a remote area and don't have easy access to Costco. They clearly mark up the prices some, but considering the cost in both time and money to get to a Costco, they are providing a much needed service.

How can I contact current teachers?

If you have applied for or have been offered a teaching job in Yeonggwang then you no doubt have lots of questions. Feel free to post them on this blog or contact me directly. My email address is jleonard518 (at) gmail (dot) com. Try to remember to put something like 'Questions about Yeonggwang' in your subject line if you can. I will ask the other teachers if I cannot answer your questions directly.

Thanks,
Jim

Where is Yeonggwang?

ESL TEACHERS: Yeonggwang is in a rural part of South Korea. There are less than 150 words about Yeonggwang written on Wikipedia, so you can probably guess it's prettty small. Yeonggwang is within the Jeollanam-do Province on the southwest coast. If you're looking at a map of Korea, follow interstate 15 straight south.

I guess the first distinction I should make is that there is Yeonggwang county and Yeonggwang the town (Yeonggwang-eup). I don't actually know the population of either, but hopefully one of my fellow teachers can post that information.

I live in Yeonggwang-eup. The nearest city is Gwangju which has over a million people. There is an express bus that will get you from Yeonggwang-eup to Gwangju in about 50 minutes. There is an E-Mart (Korea's equivalent to Target) near the bus terminal in Gwangju so I have often gone there to do some shopping for things you can't find in Yeonggwang. A little further from the bus terminal is the downtown area called Geumnamno. Geumnamno is home to a few western-friendly bars such as The Speakeasy, The Crazy Horse, and The German Bar.

Yeonggwang is just under 4 hours from Seoul. From the Yeonggwang express bus terminal you can take a bus directly to Seoul's main bus terminal for 23,600 or 16,000 Won (think of the price difference as a first class bus vs. a second class bus). So, you can reach Seoul, but it's a long way for just a day or even overnight trip.

Teaching in Yeonggwang, South Korea

ESL TEACHERS: This is my first post to this webpage. My goal is to share important information about teaching in Yeonggwang, South Korea. I currently teach in Baeksu, a small town near Yeonggwang. Most of what I write should be relevant to the rest of Jeollanam-do province.

Good Luck,
Jim