To Inspires and Express Human Emotions

My name's Amanda. I'm 24, and I'm on a worldwide adventure! Detailing my adventures as an ESL teacher in South Korea!

[this-too-too-sullied-flesh]

me trying to get published: another update

hey here’s how to read my book for free!

now i must ask a quick favor…think you can read it by next thursday, june 14th? it reads very quickly, swear! if not, no sweat. i’ll still love you! 

since my initial post, i’ve learned some things about the selection process because jess, my partner, is the best internet stalker detective i will ever meet.

anyways, turns out june 14th is pretty much the cutoff for impressing the editors with how many people have finished and rated my book. and we’re so close to my lofty goal of number of finished readers that i’d wanted for august!

so if you have the time to read a charming little book about some cool kids set in the early 60s that tackles feminism & women’s agency, sexual repression, entitled males, racism, the boxing world, and the damage inflicted by gossip, this may be the book for you!

consider passing this along to anyone and everyone! and if you do read my novel the fever, please tell me what you thought of it! even if you didn’t like it. i rely on good concrit to improve my writing!

and check out the moodboards and art some people have made for jack & bex! like this aesthetics one by @initiala:

if these aesthetics please you, you just may like my book. amanda captured the feeling perfectly!

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

thank you 4 the quick replies... I think I'll give it a shot with what I have planned in mind for now. I hope it won't be a bother to contact you in the future (just in case) ps. really love your posts/blogs, even if it might have been old stuffs :)

It’s not a problem at all, honestly! I know it’s a really confusing and difficult decision to make, so having more people to talk to definitely helps!

I’d be more than happy to help however I can if you have questions in the future.

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

I see... I kind of had a brief idea on the difference. if I'm going to take TOSEL and since it's pretty broad, would it teach me all the thing I need to know compare to TESL & TEFL? I'll be graduating in 2017 and what I was thinking is...

gain some ESL teaching experience (and money saving)for a year or two first then teach abroad (I live in Canada)... do you think it would be a good plan to start like that?

Well, there’s plenty of opportunities to teach in Canada! One of the options I was looking at was northern Canada, so I’m going to hazard a guess that means Nunavut. I didn’t get very far with that one, mostly because I hate the cold and living somewhere that’s cold for 9 months out of the year didn’t sound like much fun.

TOSEL or TESOL will cover all the basics. It’s probably not going to go as in-depth as needed -- again, I don’t know for sure because my certification course qualified me for all three. I believe, but don’t quote me on this, that there are some TESL/TEFL combo courses, which would make things infinitely easier for you as well.

I also think it’s a smart idea to get your feet wet at home. Having a good grasp on the teaching part is about 75% of the battle -- and even then it’s going to change from culture to culture, because parents want different things and administrators want different things, etc. So if you’re confident in your teaching abilities, you’ll be more than halfway there, and it’ll come across in your interviews as well. (and the interviewing process is a nightmare)

Not only that, but you’ll still have kind of a safety net. You won’t be learning to teach and learning to live on your own and learning a new country/culture/language all at once. And if something goes wrong -- and that does happen -- then you won’t suddenly be stranded in a foreign country and have no idea where to go next from there.

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

hello, I came across a post from you in TESOL tag... I'm just wondering... say i want to teach ESL in Canada and internationally, what would be the best course I should pick between the three (TOSEL, TEFL, TESL)? Thank you! <3

Hi! Gosh I haven’t used this blog in ages, I’ve been back in the States for a year.

I would honestly try to choose a course that certifies you as two, or even all three. My certification is for all three and it simplifies things a lot.

It sounds like you want a TESOL certification. TESOL courses tend to combine the ideas of TEFL and TESL, and allow you to teach to speakers of other languages living in an English-speaking country, or to people living in their native country and wanting to learn English. However they tend not to go very in-depth into many topics and some people find a TESOL course lacking.

TEFL certification is for teaching English solely internationally, to speakers of other languages in their home country. You’d live there and teach them.

TESL is if you wanted to live at home but still teach English to speakers of other languages. So usually students studying abroad, temporary workers, or recent immigrants.

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

Tokyo pt 2

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

Tokyo, part 1

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

Kyoto part 2

Nishiki Food Market and Gion Corner

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

Fushimi-inari Shrine in Kyoto

Kyoto part 1

[initiala]

Don’t let anyone tell you a Shinto shrine at night isn’t a creepy-looking place, because dang.

Place: Itsukushima, Hiroshima, Japan

Photos by: me

[initiala]

A few weekends ago at Mudfest we somehow drunkenly convinced this guy to take out one of the octopuses that would eventually be turned into food so we could  hold it.

It was so fucking weird.

Enjoy my blue tongue as I freak out because it’s trying to stand up in my hand because it’s pissed off.

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

A quote from Mudfest this weekend:

Me: "This tastes so good."

Herina, a Korean coworker: "You know why?"

Me: "No, why?"

Herina: "MSG."

*laughter, high-fives*

I will have a better write-up of Mudfest sometime, I'm a bit overwhelmed with side projects that I need to/want to get done before I leave in two weeks (!!)

Yes, for those who didn't know, I've decided to come home early. There's too much not going well with the job and it's just making me unhappier. Time to come home and get better (in many ways!)

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

Turn down your audio, the bus is a bit loud here.

This is from a few weekends ago when I went to the DMZ. Almost immediately after exiting Seoul city limits, there's barbed wire and guardposts along the Han River, to watch for potential spies being sent downriver.

It's hard to think sometimes that I'm living in a country torn apart by war, but only 60km away is a brutal reminder about how serious it still is.

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

One of my students decided to set off the fire extinguisher today. Happily not while we were in class, but just before class.

However, my girls didn’t know the word for it, so they just came up to me screeching “AMANDA TEACHER!! JOHN, FIRE!!”

Cue me panicking, and then seeing the particles floating in the air like smoke and trying to find the source… and then realizing it was the dry chemical fire extinguisher.

And people wonder why I’m both sad AND glad to be leaving this job…

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

Some of my boys had some odd questions today.

They started off normal enough, like "Why are there deserts", which I knew the answer to (global air circulation patterns, also mountains)

Then it went to "If a policeman in America shoots a thief, does he go to jail"

Which evolved into asking about what would happen if something happened to Obama, and the presidential succession line and what would happen if the assassin managed to get out of the States and into Korea. And about the FBI and the CIA (I had to explain the FBI as like, the President's police, because "federal police" was a bit too high for them)

(answer: he's a lucky bastard if his face is known and he gets that far, and that if Korea didn't extradite the guy it'd mean bad news bears for multiple reasons)

Then they asked why 9/11 happened, which I somehow managed to summarize in five sentences???

We topped it of with "Obama's the leader of the military, right? What happens if he orders his generals to kill him" and I genuinely had to be like "I have absolutely no idea, and I don't ever want to find out???"

Like... kids worry me sometimes with their questions.

(though it was kind of nice to realize that I did, in fact, know the answers to most of their questions, no matter how bizarre they got)

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

Hi, I was looking at one of your posts and i just had a quick question about TEFL: What kind of degree should i get if i wanted to teach English lets say in the Dominican Republic? Will a liberal arts degree do?

You just need a bachelor's degree to teach overseas, in addition to the TEFL/TESL/TESOL certification. I work with lib arts people, engineers, lawyers... My degree was in journalism and meteorology!

However, if you want to teach at an international school, or an American school overseas, you need an actual teaching degree in addition to the TEFL/TESL/TESOL certification. You're abiding by the same rules there as you would if you were teaching in a school Stateside.

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

I went to the DMZ this weekend. It was crazy. Like... the 3rd Tunnel part was such a tourist-trappy kind of place, but then you go to the JSA and you're slapped in the face of how completely and utterly bizarre and intense it actually all is.

Anyway. I figured out how to make photo collages.

[anyounghaseyosamanda]

One of my more advanced classes, yesterday we were doing "if you could build a house anywhere, where would it be" and someone said "On France" and I corrected them and they were really insistent that their entire house be on top of the country of France. And then it built into on top of Canada, and on top of Australia... except the boy who was absent, the girls said his house had to be small and inside Russia.

It has reached the point where they do know the difference, and how to change it, and they do this now specifically to fuck with me because they think it's funny when I splutter.