Health Care Costs in South Korea

So, I finally got real vacation time while working here in South Korea. I went to Busan and Jeju Island last week, so the next couple of weeks, I will spend going to different doctors and specialists that I've been putting off for most of the time I've been here. In the last 3 days, I have been to the allergist, the acupuncturist, and the dentist. I have really good private health insurance through the university, so the cost to me is minimal, especially when compared to the cost of health care back in the States. However, I would like to point out that national health insurance is almost the same, if not the same, as my private insurance, when it comes to the cost when I visit any doctor. 

Allergist checkup: ₩ 6,300 ($5.66) [versus $20 co-payment through Kaiser Permanente in California back in 2010]
Allergy meds: ₩1,900 ($1.71) [versus $10 co-payment through Kaiser Permanente in California back in 2010]

Acupuncturist first time visit: ₩5,700 ($5.12) [versus an average of $75 - $125 for first time visits in the U.S.]

Dental checkup: Free [I think these were about $100 with my insurance, but I can't remember]
Dental Scaling: ₩13,300 ($11.96) [versus an average of $1,000 back in the U.S. I don't know how much it would cost with my insurance, but I usually had to pay 20%, so maybe $200]

I'm gonna have a couple of fillings replaced in the near future. What I have now are the metal fillings and I'm getting them replaced with tooth-colored fillings because I don't like the look of the metal ones. Those are not covered by my insurance because it's considered cosmetic. Those are going to set me back ₩150,000 ($134.85) each. I just read online that those can cost up to $300 each. 

I love the affordability of medical and dental care here in South Korea! AND I can choose to go to whatever doctor I want to go to! It's awesome!

Naptime Stretching for the Young and Gimpy

After being at this school for 2 months, I have come to this conclusion: My work schedule seems pretty easy, and for the most part, it is (for me). I love working with little kids. I have a sort of goofy and weird personality that sometimes only pre-k to early elementary kids seem to understand and appreciate. The most difficult part of my day for me seems to be nap time. Sitting quietly in a room with 22 sleeping kids can be torture. I don't mind putting them to sleep. Do any of you have 3 year old kids? Or if your kids are older, do you remember when they were about 3 years old and how difficult it was to get them to sleep? They have too much energy to go down gently. They squiggle, squirm, and fight the sleepies. They even try to hold upen their eye lids with their tiny fingers. It's funny to watch them and a challenge to finally get them to sleep. I don't mind that. What I DO mind is the quiet time while they're all sleeping. If I could, I would use the time to continue preparing my art lessons. But I can't do that because they're all very light sleepers and any tiny little noise wakes them up. So, what have I chosen to do with the quiet time? Stretching. My body has not been as flexible as it used to be since my motor bike accident in Taiwan and I've decided to use this time to work on my flexibility. So far, so good. I still can't bend my right knee properly and I think my rib cage was thrown out of whack when I slammed into that taxi cab (it now does a weird cracking/snapping sound when I stretch), but hopefully this will help. Here's hoping!

Score!! The Best Job I've Had So Far.

So, if you know me, you know that I just scored about the best flippin' job that I could hope to get in Korea. I have spent the last two years working for hagwons, which are after school academies like Kumon or Sylvan Learning Center in the U.S., and I was extremely frustrated by the working situation there. I was a "teacher", but I was not allowed to actually teach the kids correctly. 

"But Marisol, you're a teacher! What do you mean you weren't allowed to teach?" Well, there's a huge difference between the Korean school of thought on education and the western one. In the U.S., for example, a good teacher is someone who can get his or her students to think. A good teacher is someone who can get his or her students to not only read and remember facts and dates, but to understand what it all means. Aside from that, a good teacher is someone who can teach his or her students to question everything without being a jerk about it. "Who wrote the book?" "Why did that person write the book?" "What did that person want me to learn?" "Did that person have any hidden agendas?" "What does this mean for me and the rest of the world?" A good teacher is someone who can get his or her students to apply the information they have learned to real life situations. That kind of thing. 

Korea, on the other hand, has a very different definition of education. Korea is all about memorization. They think that the best way to learn is to open a book, read it, and memorize everything that's inside it. It's not necessary to understand it, but it is imperative to remember all the facts within the book and to do it quickly; quick enough to pass all the tests that the schools give to students and with flying colors. It's an absolute information overload for the kids. Because of that, I always felt that I was not allowed to truly teach my students anything. Whenever I tried to teach them anything, I was slowed down by the sheer amount of work that the kids were expected to do. They had, for example, vocabulary books that they had to do as homework every week. In the U.S., kids are also give vocabulary word lists, but they are given usually (for elementary students) about 5 words to learn for every story that they learn. At my last hagwon, however, the kids were given on average 40 vocabulary words to memorize from every story. THAT'S WAY TOO MUCH! Especially because they had about 1.5 to 2 weeks to do it before they were tested on them. It was ridiculous and frustrating. I tried talking to the head teacher and the hagwon owner about it, but they simply told me that the parents wanted us to give the kids a lot of work and since they were paying, we had to do whatever they wanted us to do. "Don't worry about teaching. Just make the parents happy." 

Needless to say, I was miserable at that job. I lost a lot of hair, which has never happened to me before in my life. I got physically sick. My back was full of knots from all the stress. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be a student here. Being the "teacher" was bad enough. 

So, I think the universe (and I) finally decided that I'd had enough of compromising my integrity as a teacher. I was able to get a job at a university where I'm working with preschool students! It's a dream job for me right now. I work with kids, I have my own classroom, I am allowed to actually teach, not just make the kids memorize everything, I get treated with respect by my coworkers, bosses, and the parents, AND I get paid more than the university professor get paid! It's awesome! I'm so happy at this job! My life has gotten exponentially better since I scored this job. And it kinda just dropped into my lap. I had been looking for a university position because I had heard that the working conditions are much better there, but I was having no luck. Then one day I got an email from a guy who said he heard I was looking for a job and he thought there was a position opening up at his university which might be a good fit for me. Turns out that this guy was one of the people in charge of hiring foreign teachers, so I had a good in for the job! I also had a few other friends who worked at the same university and they all vouched for me and I got the job so fast that I didn't even know what happened. 

So, my life is much better now. I feel like a real teacher now. What's the point of me blogging about all of this? If you work hard, even if you are faced with a shitty situation, and you continue to strive for something better, you will eventually get what you want because you've earned it. 

Happy Friday, everyone! ^_^


**Thank you very much to all of those people who submitted my resume into the university and helped me get this job.

Wanderlust - Epiphany in the Mojave

I was driving down the Mojave Desert listening to something staticky on the radio. I was heading towards Los Angeles but was at least an hour away from the nearest town, if you don’t count the few trailers or random shacks that dot the landscape. I had just dropped off a couple of new friends at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas an hour earlier and I was enjoying the red lights that bejeweled the road ahead of me. A random tumbleweed blew across the two-lane highway, narrowly avoiding being hit by the cars. I could hear a lady singing a sad melody, so I switched the station and finally settled on a Spanish one that was playing livelier music that always reminds me of my mom. I looked right towards a sea of darkness. I looked left, same non-view. The only things guiding me through the darkness and solitude of the desert were all those red lights… And yet, I couldn’t help but smile in amusement and self-surprise at my most recent adventure. 

I had been gone from the U.S. for a little over two years. The last time that I visited Los Angeles was six months into my stay in South Korea, so I was really getting antsy to see my family again. I needed time with my mom, I missed my brothers and sisters, and I really wanted to see my friends from my old neighborhood. So, in mid-December, I boarded a plane from Incheon, Korea to Guangzhou, China to Los Angeles, U.S.A. If you’ve ever seen a globe, you’re probably thinking, “Why the hell would she travel backwards before she headed to L.A.?” Well, it was the cheapest flight that my school could purchase, so there you have it. I had a 5 hour layover scheduled in Guangzhou, which sounded like a terribly long time to wait at an airport, but after waiting at the immigration line, it ended up being not such a long wait at the terminal. I was excited when I finally boarded my second flight because I had requested a window seat. But, because I asked for it late, the only window seat left was right by the emergency exit. I took my seat and, since I had a twelve hour flight ahead of me, I decided to be friendly with the two guys sitting next to me. “Hello,” I said, and we began small talk about the emergency procedures. Eventually I found out that they were tourists from Australia. They were going to be in Los Angeles for a week before heading to Las Vegas and then Miami, so I told them that maybe I could show them around L.A. a little bit. 

When we got to L.A., we parted ways and, after visiting my family, I decided to send them a message on Facebook. We ended up having an amazing few days in L.A. These guys were cool and it was really up my alley to meet new people and go have awesome travel adventures with them. We were all over the place! We went to Santa Monica, Universal Studios, and Saddle Ranch. They wanted to see what real LA people do, so I took them Christmas caroling in San Fernando, to the LA Fashion District, to Carney’s in Studio City for chili cheese fries, I introduced them to the Gingerbread Latte at Starbuck’s, and took them to Walmart (a favorite for them). I taught them how to say, “You don’t know me! You don’t know my life!” like an American and they taught me how to say, “Oi!” like an Aussie (or like one of the sea gulls from Finding Nemo. Lol.). On their last day in Los Angeles, as we were sitting at a Denny’s in Hollywood at 3 a.m. after I had helped them with a few glitches in their travel plans, one of them propped up and said, “Come with us to Las Vegas!” I immediately, and reflexively, said, “I can’t go to Vegas with you guys!” “Well, why not?” says the other guy. “What else have you got planned for this weekend?” I paused and finally said, “You’ve got me there.” It was a moment of impulse. I love those moments.

Every time I tell myself that I can’t possibly do something that to other people may seem crazy, a little voice inside me says, “Why not? You’ll regret missing out on the opportunity.” 

So, as soon as we finished our coffee, I took them to their hotel, went home, slept for an hour, jumped out of bed when my alarm went off, took a shower, got ready, picked them up, and headed off with them to rent a car for an epic last minute road trip to Las Vegas with these two awesome Aussies. Now, because they’re from Australia and I’m American, they relied on me a lot to get them where they needed to be. But, because I’ve been away from the U.S. for a while, I got us royally lost on our way to Vegas. We drove around in circles for a little bit somewhere in San Bernardino County, but we did finally get to Las Vegas, albeit an hour later than intended. Las Vegas was amazing! I’d been there before, but it was even more fun this time because I had been away from the U.S. for two years and I was getting to be a tourist, also. Gambling at the Mirage and the Bellagio, free drinks while they gambled, partying at 1 Oak and Tao, champagne brunch buffets, people watching, and SO MUCH SHOPPING!!! It was an amazing two and a half days in Las Vegas. When it was all said and done, I dropped them off at the airport so that they could go on to the rest of their trip, but not before they promised that they’d be back in L.A. in a couple of weeks and that we’d hang out again. And so began my four and a half hour drive back to L.A. through the Mojave. 

I’m sitting in my mom’s living room, now. The fireplace is on and I’m drinking hot Chocolate Ibarra. I’ve been back in the U.S. for almost three weeks and I can see why so many of my family members and friends have been asking me non-stop, “Is it good to be back home?” “Are you glad you’re back?” “Is it hard to get used to living in Korea?” “Do you ever miss home?” “Are you really going back?” I understand where they’re coming from. I can see how it has to seem weird to even think about leaving the place that you’ve lived in your whole life. “Home” is a sacred word. It’s a sacred place. When people think of “home”, they likely think of a place near their family members; a house that they can nest in and make themselves comfortable. But for me, it’s a word that no longer bears that meaning. Not for now. It took the solitude of the Mojave for me to realize that wanderlust has too strong a hold of me. Driving through the desert that weekend made me realize that I am living the life that I want to live. There are many things that I still want for myself, but right now, this is exactly what I love. The freedom to move around - to do what I want and go wherever I want with whomever I want - is exhilarating. Sometimes this life style gets a little lonely and, while it would be nice to have someone to share my life with, it is not something that I want to do if it means having to settle down somewhere and losing this freedom. Home, for now, is wherever I set my backpack down.