A New Chapter

When things aren’t going well in my life, I tend to try to downplay those things for my family and friends back home, and when I don’t have anything positive to say, I tend to not contact them until I do.
That is pretty much the reason that this blog hasn’t been updated in about 6 months: Things were not going too great.
That is also the reason why I am updating it now: Things are finally starting to look up!

To summarize the past 6 months of my life in their entirety would be both extremely difficult and extremely boring, so let me try to cut to the chase:

Life in a foreign country is hard.

If you’re reading this blog, you might have some sort of romantic idea of living abroad, especially living in Korea, with your oppa or your noona and your k-drama life, but let me tell you once more:

Life in a foreign country is hard.

As I discussed in my previous post, the final semester of my academic career here at HUFS was quite the roller-coaster ride of emotions, and it was only after tapping into reserves of willpower that I never even knew existed that I managed to successfully finish my thesis. The end result, Using Mentor Texts to Develop the Creative Writing Ability of EFL Learners in a Korean University Setting, was certainly something I’m very proud of. I created my own writing curriculum, firmly built upon existing research and revolving around the idea of analyzing and discussing engaging literary passages and using the ideas taken from those passages in assignments to help students improve their writing quality. As it turned out, it was fairly effective, although obviously my little class of 6 students wasn’t nearly enough to say anything for sure.

I received a 95.7 (out of 100) for my thesis, and graduated in August.

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Usually, graduation is supposed to be an extremely happy moment, and, well, it was, for the short while that it lasted. I had worked my ass off for about 3 and a half years to get to the point where I would hold that diploma in my hands, so obviously I was going to be happy. However, by now I was also very intimately aware of the ticking clock in my back ticking down to me leaving Korea behind forever.

Let me explain first of all how emigrating to Korea works:
It doesn’t.
Unless the Korean government some day decided that ‘your kind’ would be useful for the country.
I’d like to add that I honestly think this is a great idea and I kinda wish my country would have these draconian immigration laws as well. However, it makes it pretty difficult to make a living. You’re not able to get a long-term visa for anything that you didn’t study for, but in my case, I couldn’t get a long-term visa for teaching English because I’m not from a native English speaking country. Initially, this requirement was waived for people who graduated in TESOL from an accredited university in Korea (like I did), but that exception was recently changed to only apply to those who both graduated from a Korean university and are married to a foreign national who is or has studied engineering. 
Yep, you read that correctly.
If I wanted to teach English, I would have had to get married to a foreigner who happened to be studying the thing that the Korean government likes. 
I know it sounds like a bad joke, but unfortunately it’s completely and totally true.

As a result of these well-thought-out and totally not inane rules, I was obviously extremely stressed out about my future. Hell, I seriously started balding in the past 6 months. I wish I was kidding.
Thankfully, the NIIED (National Institute of International EDucation) provided me with a ticket home after completing my studies, so I could take a month and a half off to leave all these thoughts behind me and just enjoy my time in the Netherlands; visiting my friends and family. 
Since this is more of a catch-up post, I think I will elaborate on this time later, but suffice it to say that it was absolutely amazing to finally be back in my own country after 4 years of being in Korea.

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Words can’t describe how great it was to see my friends again, to know that they were all doing well, even better than before, and to see my family, who, when I was younger, I used to always want to spend as little time with as possible, but as I grew up realized more and more are the most important thing I have in my life. I have to admit, after coming back from that amazing trip, it was hard to see a future in Korea. In the 4 years that I was here, I had forgotten how amazing it is to live surrounded by people who love you, who would do anything for you, and who would always be there for you. Going back to the Netherlands after such a long time helped me realize how important family really is, and how difficult it is to live apart from them – even by choice.

But regardless of my melancholy, I had decided to start working on bettering my life. Life in the Netherlands – with its clean air, healthy food and early bedtimes – had made me realize I needed to do something in order to live a happier life, and the first step to that was finding a job.
Of course, I had been looking for jobs on and off for months already, but things aren’t easy for a TESOL graduate who legally can’t teach English. Still, with renewed vigor I went at it again straight after coming back from my trip, and one of the ‘long shot’ methods I had thought of (in addition to, for example, e-mailing Dutch companies randomly) was to visit the International Job Fair in COEX the weekend after I got back.

To be completely honest; I had expected a lot from this fair. I’m not sure why, but I thought that this thing was going to be filled with hundreds of employers vying for my attention, and I would apply to a dozen jobs and hopefully land a few interviews.
Of course, reality was far from that.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have recommended this fair to anyone – there were hundreds of times more applicants than jobs, and most of the jobs were in sectors that were so obscure I wondered why the companies had even opened their booths (of course, this didn’t stop dozens of clueless foreigners to stand in line for them at all). I ended up applying to only three positions: two with gaming companies, and one with a translation agency.

After the disappointment of the fair, I was back into my usual rut of applying for jobs online and trying to ignore reality as I played the one video game that had come out in the past 6 months: Pathfinder Kingmaker (which is amazing by the way).
However, then something unexpected happened:
One of the companies I had applied to actually asked me to come by for an interview.

The position was Community Manager at a mid-sized mobile game company – something I had very little knowledge of, but a lot of interest in. I knew that, with my background and work experience, I had a very slim chance of making it, but because I was so excited about being invited for a job interview for a job I would actually really enjoy having (about 98% of all job interviews I have attended in my life were for jobs I couldn’t care much less about) I decided to just do my very best and prepared for a few days, reading up about issues and techniques related to community management, preparing for possible questions, and trying to come up with a way to say “I am really, really nervous, so could we do the interview in English instead of in Korean?” without sounding like an idiot.

When it was finally time for the interview, things went surprisingly well. I had prepared a lot, and luckily the Marketing Manager allowed me to answer her Korean questions in English so I didn’t feel that much pressure. I felt like I managed to say everything I had wanted to say, and my interviewer seemed pretty happy with my answers.
After the interview, there was a one hour test, which dealt with certain situations a Community Manager could run into and asked you to respond to them. It was slightly more difficult than I had imagined, but I managed to finish it (mostly) on time and felt pretty good about it.
However, one thing that put a damper on my mood was the fact that, more than just being strictly a community managing job, the Marketing Manager had mentioned that ASO (which, at the time, I didn’t even know the meaning of) would also be a large part of the job. As I had no experience with that whatsoever, and made a fool out of myself on the subject during the interview, I thought for sure I would have blown my chance.

That is, until I was called back with an invitation for the second round of interviews. I was elated, and to be perfectly honest I was already imagining myself working at this company. It was a really nice company, actually, and very un-Korean in that they try to avoid working late, they offer breakfast, lunch and dinner at the office, about 60% of their office space is ‘lounge spaces’, they supply 2-hour lunch breaks during which employees can do whatever they wish, have flexible working hours and even have ‘game days’ once a month on which everyone comes in to the office just to play board games together. Obviously, I was super excited. I thought being invited to the second interview made everything from there on out nothing more than a formality – I had already talked to the Marketing Manager, and they had seen my performance on the test, so it must mean that they just want to talk to me a little bit before offering me the job, right?
Wrong.

The second interview was with the CEO and COO of the company. That’s some serious shit. Whereas I was already nervous talking to my would-be direct supervisor previously, talking to the heads of the company is something I didn’t even imagine I’d have to go through. And whereas the Marketing Manager had somewhat put me at ease during the interview, this time I got the impression that my interviewers were extremely unimpressed with who was sitting in front of them. I had been researching ASO (which means App Store Optimization, by the way) and the company’s portfolio of games ever since I had heard I was invited for the second interview, and I answered my interviewers’ questions as well as I could, but at the end I felt like I ended up in another ‘close but no cigar’ situation. I even ended up sitting in a nearby bookstore for a few hours contemplating the entire interview, Googling furiously for ‘Interview faux-pas’ and ‘Signs an interview went poorly.’

Turned out that feeling like an interview went poorly doesn’t necessarily mean the interview actually went poorly, because I was called a few weeks later with the message that I got the job!
You probably cannot understand reading this, but at that point, it was very hard for me to wrap my brain around that. Hell, I’m not even sure if I’m 100% cognizant of the idea even now.

I?
I got the job?
I got the job?
I got the job?
Me?

The few weeks since that day have been a flurry of taking care of numerous things. Getting a full-time, long-term job meant getting a real visa, getting a job far away from where I lived in Seoul (Pangyo Techno Valley, to be precise) meant I had to look for another room, and moving to another room meant doing lots and lots of packing.

I’m hoping to show you my new room in my next blog post, and I’ll tell you a little bit about my new city as well. I’m moving out next monday, and I’ll be moving out of Seoul and into a city called Seongnam. In reality, both it and Seoul have been expanding so much that they are nearly touching, so although geographically it doesn’t feel much like moving to a new city, the fact that that entire city has been built from the ground up about 10 years ago makes it very different from where I live now – but more about that later, as I said.

For now, I just want to conclude by saying that yes, the past few months and even years in Korea have been anything but easy. Living abroad in a foreign country is not easy. I worked hard, had financial problems, had difficulty learning the language and adjusting to the culture, had problems with visas and foreigner-unfriendly rules and procedures, and honestly felt depressed a much larger portion of the time than I had ever expected I would.
But things got better.
The planets finally aligned, or Lady Luck finally took pity on me, or perhaps it was my own actions that finally turned things around – but things got better. 
Now, when I don’t post anything here for a long time, know this: It’s not because I don’t have anything positive to tell you, it’s because I’m working my ass off.

My company has taken a huge gamble on me, and I’m going to do everything I can to make them happy that they did.

See you next post, and if you take anything away from this post, let it be this:

Life in a foreign country is hard.
But you’re the only one who can make it worthwhile.