Em in Asia!

My Experiences Living and Teaching in South Korea

My Baller VP

January19

I think during Christmas time my vice principal bought new sunglasses. Well, to clarify they’re sunglasses that attach to his glasses, meaning he doesn’t need prescription sunglasses. Because they’re clip-ons, they look sort-of like aviators, and I think he’s proud of them because for the last few days he’s been wearing them non-stop. Maybe it’s just that he’s scared of losing them, or maybe he enjoys looking like part of the cast of Top Gun, but for the last few days everytime I see him he’s wearing them, either with the suglasses part down when he first walks in, or with them flipped-up so that way he can see indoors.

My vice principal, by the way, is one of the nicest men I’ve met to date in Korea. He speaks a little English but now that he knows I can speak some Korean he’ll speak to me mostly in Korean. He also saw that I liked to drink tea, so on two seperate occasions he’s given me black tea from a nearby famous mountain called Jirisan (which, is not only very nice of him, but it’s difficult to find black tea in Korea) and a giant jar as big as my head filled with yuja tea (kind of like orange jelly – you take a spoon of it, mix it with water, and voila! citrus tea).

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One Comment to

“My Baller VP”

  1. Avatar January 19th, 2012 at 10:06 am M Barron Says:

    1. I optimistically read part of this as “looking like Tim Gunn” the first time around.

    2. I am drinking 유자차 right now, hooray.

    3. Have you been to Jirisan yet? I never ended up going last year, and I would like to see some pictures if you go.


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 안녕하세요! My name is Emily Potosky and when I started this blog I had received a 2010 – 2011 F*lbright grant to teach English in South Korea.  I then decided to apply to renew my grant, so I am now staying in Korea until July 2012. This blog is not an official F*lbright Program blog, and the views expressed are my own and not those of the F*lbright Program, the U.S. Department of State or any of its partner organizations.

I graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a degree in Philosophy Pre-Law and Classical Civilizations, and found myself 3 months later teaching English at Sapgyo High School.  The town that I taught in, Sapgyo, is a small town of 12,000 people, an ”읍” (eup) rather than a “시” (shi – city), and though it was sometimes hard teaching in such a small town I really enjoyed the unique experience of being the first foreign teacher Sapgyo had ever had. I lived in Yesan county (예산군) which is significantly bigger (40,000 people) but is also considered rural by Korean standards.

During my second grant period (2011-2012) I decided to chang schools and I currently teach at Changpyeong High School which is located in Changpyeong-ri, Damyang County (담양군), Jeollanamdo. Changpyeong-ri, by the way, is much smaller than even Sapgyo was.

This blog is meant to serve as a reflection not only of being a Foreign English teacher in Korea, but also of living as a foreigner in rural Korea.