A Leap of Faith

Greetings from South Korea!

Last year around the month of May, I was thinking to myself "Self, why aren't you doing the things you actually want to be doing, like traveling?" to which my reply was, "Oh yeah, I have student loans."
But then, I thought some more and realized, my student loans won't be paid off until I'm somewhere in my late thirties or early forties, and by that time I won't really be that free to travel anymore. I'll probably have kids, or be worrying about putting money in a retirement account, or have health issues to spend money on. It was then that I decided I couldn't wait around for the 'perfect time' to travel. I needed to take action.

I took a cue from one of our college friends who had moved abroad to teach English. I read his blog, looked up other blogs, researched qualifications to teach abroad, and came to the conclusion that this could really be a plausible thing. One blog post in particular struck a chord with me. It was a post about not being satisfied with the status quo:
(check it out here: http://nathanvandermost.com/reflections-observations-rants/)

I approached my husband about the idea of moving abroad to teach English, and he immediately thought I was nuts! But slowly after the course of a month, the idea started to seem not so crazy after all. Neither of us were particularly happy in staying at our jobs, and we didn't really have anything to lose. Our motivation to wake up every day had waned to almost nothing.

Why South Korea?

"Why South Korea?" you may ask. Well, it was quite shallow at first. I had read somewhere that Korea pays the most to foreign teachers, and since we would still be making loan payments abroad, this seemed like a logical choice. Then some time later, we were talking with an old family friend who just happens to be from Korea. She told us a bit about the country, and most importantly put us in touch with her brother who still lives in Korea. We started to Skype with him and practice the language. More and more, we could feel the pull to Korea.
We knew someone there, I had always had a strange obsession with all things Asian, and it paid the most, what could be better?

We decided to give it a try. We had nothing to lose!

We prioritized our to do list, and found the best TEFL class we could find that was in close proximity, and within a decent price range. We decided on I-to-I TEFL, and began our online courses right away. They say the online portion is 120 hours, but we sped things up a bit, and made it into a competition of sorts as to who was further along. We were certified by July, and started looking for opportunities.

By September we had signed a contract with a hagwon and prepared for our move abroad.

So, if you're thinking that you aren't satisfied with your life and need to find a way to travel while still making money, let me assure you that teaching abroad is in fact a viable choice. It's a lot of work to get started, and you will feel immensely stressed at times, but you can do it! What's the worst that could happen? Sometimes, you have to take that leap of faith.

 Stay tuned for more about what you need to do to get started in this process!