{"id":195646,"date":"2022-08-01T09:15:05","date_gmt":"2022-08-01T07:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/out-and-about-an-email-from-south-korea-2-2\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T14:51:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T12:51:34","slug":"out-and-about-an-email-from-south-korea-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/out-and-about-an-email-from-south-korea-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Out and About: an email from South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Out and about <\/em>we talk to people who currently live or have lived and worked abroad. This week, we talk to Hilde Conradie who lives in South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hello Hilde, please tell us where you live and why there.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\uc548\ub155\ud558\uc138\uc694 (annyeonghaseyo)! I currently live in Daegu, South Korea. I am an English teacher at a kindergarten here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapting to a new country can be challenging. What was the strangest thing for you to get used to?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, one of my biggest challenges was shopping. In South Africa, we were used to walking into a store and grabbing eggs and milk, but here I came home and found the dozen eggs had already been boiled and the milk was made of soybeans. If you\u2019re lucky, you will find an English word or two on the packaging, but most product labels are Korean. You end up spending hours in the supermarket to Google translate everything and marvel at everything we don’t have at home. Funnily enough, it has become one of my favourite pastimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us a little more about your work. What does your typical day look like? Is life more peaceful there and do you have more time to relax\/travel?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am a teacher at an English nursery school. My class has eight four-year-old students. (According to the Koreans, they are five years old because they believe a human being is already one year old at birth.) My day starts at 09:30, usually by greeting the children in my class and singing along a few English songs. Afterwards, we have \u201csnack time\u201d, during which the children have milk and a snack. Then we have three classes, varying between phonics, drama, storybook, maths, arts, gym and science. After the three classes, we have lunch consisting of traditional Korean food, and then two more classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After school, the little ones attend an after-school program while I spend the afternoon in the school library helping primary school children learn to read and testing their understanding of what they read. My working day ends at 17:45.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friends and I often go out for dinner at night. Eating out and visiting coffee shops is an important part of Korean culture, probably because the houses are too small to entertain. So, there is always a new place we want to test out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life in Korea is very comfortable. Everything works. It\u2019s clean and safe. The public transport is fantastic \u2013 you can get anywhere by bus, train or taxi. This makes it easy to visit another town over a weekend quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n