What I known and what I thought I knew

I am almost 6 months into my one year contract teaching in Korea.
Almost.
But I'm desperate to round the numbers and tell myself that I am halfway there. Halfway there is still a month away.

It's not that I want to get out. It's not like I'm ready to get out of South Korea and not look back. I am enjoying my time here; my weekends and my trips. There is a lot planned for the next couple of months and a lot more planned for when the contract is actually over: I have mountains to climb, a winter (a real cold winter!) to tackle through, and two more trips set before the year is over. It's just that weeks are long and once again I find that my job is getting the best of me.

You think you learn. I wrote about this before, about not letting a job taint your experience abroad. And everyday I remind myself to not let it happen. And maybe it's harder because it's happening at the present moment; or maybe this is just something that I am not cut out to be.

But then I remind myself of something I know and some other things I wish I could've kept in mind at the beginning of this adventure: 

1) I know that I am a good teacher.

    I know I can bond with my students, and  I know that I can do my job professionally and         enjoyably. I've done it before. 

2) The private schools in Asia (in my personal experience and from what I have gathered from other teachers) is first and foremost a business. Meaning that money will always come before education. I once had a serious conversation with a previous boss about this, about how uncomfortable it was for me to realize that my students were just dollar signs and how I didn't believe that you could form a balance between the two: the business side and the education side. He argued that he believed that these two sides of a private school could easily go hand in hand, and that I should try to see how education benefits from business and the other way around. He did admit that it was hard to achieve this balance and he'd only really seen it briefly throughout his 8+ years of teaching experience.

3) With that in mind, schools in Asia, private schools specifically, will see foreigners as an asset. Your professionalism or your experience is secondary and maybe, sometimes, if you're unlucky absolutely worthless.

4) It's all worth it. The bullshit and the stress, it really is worth it.

I decided to write this because I recently had a conversation with a good friend. She asked me if I would recommend coming to teach to Korea.

It took me a moment to answer straight away. 

I would say it's not for everybody. I would say you come to work and not necessarily to adventure 24/7. I would say everybody should give it a try. But I would say be careful. Do the research, read contracts, and be assertive.

I won't let this beat me.
Not this time.