Alright, here we go. Months down the line and two updates in and you still have no idea what I’ve been up to RECENTLY. Let me tell you, I’ve gone back to my roots and am abroad. This will probably the last time I’ll “go abroad” as I don’t plan on settling in the USA. Where I’ll end up, who knows, but where I am now is certainly not it.
As always, I’m getting ahead of myself. There just so much to tell, and so little at the same time. The past 11 months have passed by shockingly fast and yet there is this pervasive itch that nags at me, claiming it also hasn’t gone fast enough. Some of the reasons behind that will be revealed in the article. So, without further ado: 2022!
February 2022
What a strange month that was. Honestly, I can’t recall much of what happened. Clearly, mom had died and the effects of that were still taking effect. Josie was spending a lot more time up from The City than normal, primarily out of interest to foster a strong family bond after loosing one of our most influential members. She wasn’t the only one, of course. Amber’s work schedule shifted around a little to accommodate getting Josie, and we all made suggestions here or there regarding spending time together. Sometimes that was in the form of having dinner together at Panera Bread, sometimes it was stopping at a card shop to pick up a memento that will forever hold sentimental value in relation to that time and the gaping maw left by the passing of mom. I remember those small adventures well, at least.
We were also very worried about dad. We all love our father, but he’d gone through so many titanic shifts in his life in the course of maybe 3 months – retiring, wife sent to hospital a week later, needing to shoulder all her medical paperwork in addition to taking on what she used to handle herself, getting COVID, etc – we weren’t entirely confident he could handle this latest blow without entirely breaking down. There are a lot more details surrounding this than I’m going to go into with this blog, partially as I don’t think it’s fair and is heavily biased toward my own perspective. Bottom line is the situation was pretty touch and go for a time, mistakes were made, but many of the problems created from the continuous disturbances have to some extent been resolved or are on the right track.
I was also lucky enough to meet Lawrence while he blew through NYC for a time when I went to pick up Josie. He was a guy I’d met around a year into my time in China through the first company I worked at. We hung out a few times over the first year after I met him. Something like a cross between a drinking buddy, coworker, and therapist. That final year in China he was a strong and important friend who helped me deal with a great many hardships.
When I left originally for The Journey, he was one of the last friends I saw. We kept in touch while I went everywhere you’ve seen on this blog, and he went off to Vietnam. At the start of the pandemic, he was there, and I had to quarantine in an AirBnB during which time we talked quite a few times about the opportunities it brought us – a slowdown, time to think, time to plan, etc. We all know how that has turned out and my feelings toward it all, but regardless, he has been an amazing person to check in on while also getting advice of my own. I’m lucky to have him as a friend, and I was lucky to see him so shortly after mom passed as well.
I also brought Josie up to CNY from NYC for one last weekend before I left. That was another interesting experience. Recall, if you will, that my windshield wiper hose broke on my way back when I went to the South Korean embassy. To be safe, I took the other car this time. Well, on our way back we hit an ice storm just south of Scranton. This led to the windshield wiper – on only the driver’s side – overextending due to lack of friction and breaking something under the hood, preventing it from actually wiping. That was freaky. Took us several hours, two mechanic stops, and an inquiry at a AAA for options before we found ourselves out of luck! The break would cost several hundred dollars to fix, and we didn’t have the time based on my schedule.
As luck would have it, though, the storm stopped! We were, more or less, capable of heading back home. Once or twice I had to stop to clean off my side of the windshield? Also, the headlight on this car broke too! What strange coincidences surrounded me. We made it back alive, and by September both cars had been fixed.
One more weekend of family, and then Amber, Josie, and I drove back down to NYC where I had a flight to catch at JFK bound for… SOUTH KOREA!
NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 2021
For this I need to take a small detour back in time. My friend Keri, who has been featured on this blog before, had been working in South Korea since the Fall of 2020. In October 2021 she found herself with a brand spanking new job she was pretty happy with. Around the same time, I happened to be looking for work and reached out. I also did that in the Spring of 2021, but I foolishly chose a different path and it pushed everything back by months… But she was advertising her new job to me. Deciding to give it a shot, I applied.
It started with a resume (what job application doesn’t) which seemed to really impress those reading it. Moved on to an interview which took almost two weeks to set up. That was a sign I didn’t catch at the time, but between a sick mother and a kindling desperation to reenter my profession, I didn’t focus too heavily on it. I was looking at other jobs at the time and was feeling pretty pressured to accept some of them. For better or for worse, I stalled all the applications until I could have this interview and get a response from them.
Had the interview and that went great! I did so well that they requested a short demo lesson (not uncommon). That was really nerve wracking. I hadn’t had a lot of input on how the school structured lessons despite asking both in the interview and before recording. I decided to go with what I know and did a rushed five-minute set-up to a Hero’s Journey module that would last several lessons. I made a list of notes explaining certain choices and laying out where I would be bringing the lessons in the future. I was pretty proud after having not been in the game for two years at that point. Sent it along and I was told same day “Best fiction demo video we’ve got so far imo.” Let me say, I was fairly excited and felt strongly I was a shoe in after that sort of message and the feedback I got from the interview.
A week later and with virtually no contact – except for Keri who reinforced the very positive reception my candidacy garnered – I received an email. Can you guess what it said? If you said “You’re hired!” then you’d be wrong! At least initially. Instead, it was filled with initial praise for how well I did, followed by:
“After we got your demo video and saw it I had wanted to hire you based on that combined with the interview. However, we ended up interviewing somebody else who to put it bluntly was better.”
Oh geez, oh man. I appreciate bluntness but damn, that’s about as blunt as it gets. I would later read this message to someone else at the company and they were shocked but not surprised. It’s just how things get communicated there. To be fair, there was other context in the rejection that included a desire to assist me in finding work. That help didn’t really keep in mind the context of time frames and the crunch that created on the situation after leaving me hanging for a week. It also wasn’t aware that, after getting my very positive feedback, I essentially rescinded my candidacy in all other positions.
I let them know. I responded, at first, as professionally as I could. There was a pretty good rapport built out of the few conversations both through email and the interview, so after doing my due diligence as a professional I went off script and let them know just how much I thought the entire situation sucked. I distinctly remember being at the gym at around 11pm at night, exercising with all the pumped-up energy that goes along with believing I’ll get hired and will soon be getting back to building my own life. Which was followed by getting that email in the middle of my lifting and feeling the world crumble beneath me. I tried hard to work it off through various exercises – as you do – only to have the sorrow of loss drain me entirely. I put all of that into my response email.
On top of mom still being in the hospital with unknown future prospects, this development was pretty devastating. I don’t personally enjoy being any less than 100% authentic and I figured that if I wasn’t going to get hired, I might as well let it all out. They were surprisingly receptive and understanding and still offered to try and get me some contacts. I went to bed just about as despondent as I possible.
That’s not the end. I awoke with a powerful sense of “what’s the point?” What was on my phone? An email. Turns out, that other person who “to put it bluntly was better” was only using the position we were unwittingly competing for as leverage for another job. This company did in fact want to hire me now that their first choice got the leverage that they wanted.
I remember being a mixture of stunned, annoyed, and still a little insecure. I’d spent a little over a week being told I had a really good chance at the position and believing for the first time in years that I was a really good teacher who deserved to work. They demolished that belief in a single blunt email, told me very clearly (which honestly, I do appreciate) I just wasn’t it, and within twelve hours had their hand forced into rescinding their rejection. So, I’m not your first choice and yet you still want to hire me because you have no other option…
I thought pretty hard about saying no, whether the fact that I didn’t was the right choice is up for debate. I wasn’t a fan of being jerked around like I had been, but I also thought that wasn’t good reason to turn them down. We’re all second-best or worse in a majority of the things we do, and this was no different. I also needed the money… badly… and this was effectively an opportunity to undo the poor opinion I’d developed for myself. I said yes.
And thus, ladies and gentlemen, I was hired by Twin.kle in South Korea.
February 2022 – The Korean Half
I did some tests, I sorted my paperwork, I boarded a plane, I flew to Asia, I went through customs, and I stumbled my way into quarantine. Quarantine at that time was 10-full days in total isolation except for the Covid tests you need to go out and take. They took me from the airport in a specially designated taxi to the address given.
My quarantine location was a very small apartment provided by the company. There was a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchen that was also the mudroom. I want to say the bedroom was 10ft by 8ft? The kitchen 6ft by 4ft. And the bathroom was roughly 5×5. This place was small, but it did the trick. Twin.kle got me enough food and supplies to make it through just fine.
I also played a lot of video games. Magic: The Gathering Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty released while I was on the plane ride from the US to SK. After getting back into MtG around three months earlier, having nothing to do but play the online Magic: Arena suited me quite well. More on MtG later.
At the end of February and quarantine, I moved into my now-apartment. Originally, I was supposed to move in immediately after landing. Welp, the person I was replacing happened to get covid in that time which meant I couldn’t move in, which is why I had the AirBnB for quarantine.
This was actually rather fortuitous for me. Turns out the person who’d lived there before didn’t have any form of wifi and Twin.kle – who rents and provides the apartment – didn’t have a clue. When I moved in, I was frightfully turning off my airplane mode and racking up international charging fees after miraculously getting in contact with folks back home to bother Sprint until they let it happen just so I could keep in contact with my job, or anyone else for that matter.
I’m not entirely sure where the oversight came from that would have let someone fresh off the plane step into a 10-day isolation quarantine without any kind of internet to contact anyone including contact tracing programs, but this sort of sets a tone. Luckily, I had a Starbucks nearby, and for around two weeks, my mornings were spent there coordinating things both back home and with my job.
The last week and a half into February, I began training. Come March, I’d begin work.
March 2022
Twin.kle is simple and can be summed up fairly easily. Three levels of student skill level, at five different grades (not including Kindergarten), with eight students in a class. They come two days a week, one for fiction and one for non-fiction. Students have a minimum of three textbooks and a novel they must bring every class.
Classes are three hours long. In those three hours they are expected to learn the following: Vocabulary (including a test on vocab from the previous week), Writing, Reading Comprehension, Novel Comprehension, Critical Discussion, Grammar. The order is not set, you must endeavor to get to everything in that time frame, and while students work in class the teacher is expected to grade all the work from the previous week. You also need to summarize student progress daily in a personal message to parents. You’re not allowed to hold on to the textbooks to grade outside of this 3-hour time, except in rare circumstances.
Teachers are given a lot of leeway on how to conduct class but doing things too differently will get you a talking to. Teachers have two of these classes a day on average with 30 minutes for lunch in between. You need to be there at least an hour before your first class. You can come in early (likely at certain times of the year) and you can stay late to finish everything you didn’t (pretty common), but they don’t pay you extra and the work must get done.
How would I summarize Twin.kle curriculum? Quantity over Quality.
But beyond that I don’t really want to elaborate. At least… not YET. Originally, I wrote a significant amount of details here, but I spent about a month of hemming and hawing over whether that was the proper decision while I’m still employed there. I’m told by a few people I simply don’t like the Hagwon system. Rest assured, I’ll give some more details once I leave Korea and can look at everything in the rearview. You know, to wrap my head around it all. There’s always a chance my perspective will have shifted slightly by the time I leave.
Beyond just starting that new job, several important things happened that would set the tone for my first few months in Korea.
1. I reconnected with Keri!
Keri has appeared on the blog before as the person who met me in Thailand to cook some damn good Pad Thai and curry while she was studying in Kunming. She was also the person who introduced me to the Chinese Scholarship Program that I began and had to leave back in 2020.
We met while in Shanghai all the way back in 2017 and it’s surprising to think we’ve known each other for nearly six years at this point.
As an ambassador, Keri was stellar. She had taken a lot of time to get used to her life in Seoul. By the time I arrived, she’d really started to be the master of her own destiny, which is great! She brought me a care package while I was in quarantine after first getting here and did so again later on when I actually caught COVID. For the first two months or so, we were strong drinking buddies just like those Shanghai days! She would bring me to this cool bar called Arugam that was sort of a weekend home for a while. Their drinks were amazing, and the staff were really fun. Only problem? Drinking in Shanghai, for the most part, was free. Here in Seoul, drinking comes at a premium. I’m talking NYC prices! At least, when you convert purchasing power too.
Oh yeah, this was also the month that I turned 30. Woo. It didn’t feel too different from all the other birthdays, and without mom to make a huge deal out of it like she always did some spark was missing. Keri, our friend Helena, and I all went to Haidilao and some drinks. But as far as memorable on the birthday scale? I’d have to go with not very.
2. I found my way to RollingDice.
This requires some explanation that I have been promising for about three articles now. It has everything to do with a well-known card game called Magic: The Gathering. Probably the greatest table-top game ever made, and a franchise that is also crossing the 30-year mark as of 2023.
The year is 2003! (20 years, my god!) I think. I can’t remember specifics. My sister was dating someone who would become an important role model in my middle and high school years. He’s a great guy and was so at the time too! Those two and their other friend who was always around were always hanging out at my parents’ house and doing things – as late-age teenagers tend to do. Being kind, they often offered to let me hang out and play with them. And one day I noticed them playing with these funky colored cards that had a ton of words on them and cool art. I asked, and they started telling me all about Magic: The Gathering.
I don’t want to go into the specifics of that game here, but I will link several nice videos that explain the game fairly well. The first deck I ever had was gifted to me from my sister’s boyfriend. I still have the vast majority of those first cards and went out of my way to find and use the original lands when constructing my modern Commander deck. This act of kindness was the start of my Magic story.
Fast forward to around 2009 and the end of the Alara Block. I was getting out of the game for some reason. I’ve wracked my brain but can’t figure out what the reason was I left the game for. If I had to guess, it was girls. My senior year of high school was when getting a girlfriend took up a lot of my brain space, and it carried on into college for obvious reasons.
I would have some exposure to the game as the years carried on. One of my best friends from that time kept me up to date on the progression of the story and lore – something that was always the most important to us when it came to the game. I also tried to play the game once during college with the Gamer’s Club and they were so shockingly rude that I never went back. I kept all my cards, but overall, I simply wasn’t paying attention and wasn’t playing.
Then I met Kyle. You know Kyle well by now. When we met up in Thailand and proceeded to travel, he told me about his personal love for Magic and I thought that was cool, though I didn’t get back into the game.
Kyle and I would go on to live together in Kosovo where he would spend some of his free time playing Magic Arena. Took me about two months and intense burn-out from Chinese classes with little fun to do on my schedule at the time before I asked him to show me that game. I played it once and got so anxious I uninstalled the game. Something about being away from the game and just how much it had changed in the course of 11 years.
Went back to the States. Go involved in a relationship and played Yugioh Duel links for whatever reason! And then as I decided to drive back from California to CNY at the end of 2021, I stopped off at my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Mobile, AL. There, me and Jon bonded for hours over this, that, and countless other things. One of which was Magic! He showed me Magic Arena, and I decided I could pick it up again if I was going to have some free time at Mom and Dad’s while looking for work.
This, ladies and gentlemen, was my official return to Magic: The Gathering. Right about twelve and a half years since I got out of the game did I get back in. Kyle would visit in December 2021 and look through my old Magic cards to help me make a very simple Commander deck for the game.
Fast forward again to the month I’m supposed to be talking about and, while looking for things to do in Seoul, I stopped by a gaming shop I’d read about online named Rolling Dice. Technically, RD does other board games, and you can sometimes see people playing those at a table or two when it is slow. But on the weekend, the shop is PACKED with people playing Magic. Most of those people are nice and friendly while always willing to have a game of Commander. But it was here that I would meet my main friend group here in Seoul:
Details pending! I will be posting a “People From The Journey” article detailing who they are soon. For now, just know they’re good guys and I’m glad we get to hang.
Intermission and Pace-Quickening Explanation
Here is about where I’ve decided to speed this article up. It’s been months since I’ve gotten a proper update out and with each passing day more and more things happen that I could put in. So, I simply need to blitz through the remainder in order to start writing more regularly and concurrently.
Those things regarding Magic: The Gathering are staying in despite their lack of brevity because, well, I play a lot of Magic. I mean a lot. So much so that as of late I’m forcing myself to avoid the game and do just about anything else with one of my weekend days. While I could remove some of it, I’d rather just touch on the important parts of that here on out and avoid talking about it much further.
I’m still going month by month, but I’m only going to mention the most prudent aspects of the story.
April 2022
Two things of note:
1. Cherry Blossoms – They were really pretty.
2. Keri had a birthday too! Dinner was Brazilian BBQ (which I always love), and Brunch the next day was this unbelievable platter with endless mimosas. Overall a great time for us bunch!
May 2022
This month with actually packed full of some pretty amazing things. We had a week-long vacation at the beginning of the month and a few of us at work decided to form what is now referred to as the “Yangyang Gang??” We, well, went to Yangyang and Gangneung to chill on the beach, climb Seoraksan, eat local food, and throw ourselves off a cliff with a zip line.
The beach was cold (but fun because of fireworks), the mountain had a great view, the food was O.K., and the zipline was one of the coolest things I’ve done here in South Korea.
I also had one of the strangest coincidences in my life happen. As we headed off to hike Seoraksan and pass through its entrance, I noticed a pretty girl staring at me quizzically. She’s not Korean and as far as I could tell at the time not someone I had ever seen in my life. It’s not like she was interested because I hadn’t shaved all week and was thoroughly in vacation-slob mode. I marked it down as “Strange” on my Weird-O-Meter and carried on. Had a lunch a little way in and there she was, staring again. I ignored it, finished eating, and went through the official till where I saw her again.
Within two minutes of stepping inside the park, me and this woman are within earshot of each other. She turns, points a finger at me with the palm facing up and asks “Chad?”
What?
In 2013 I studied abroad where I met all my sorely missed Brazilian (and other) friends. Among our group was a British girl named Misbah. We interacted from time to time, and I have Facebook correspondence records from then, but we hadn’t spoken since October of that year. I recalled her name, but frankly hadn’t thought about her in nearly 9 years.
Well, at this nature park in South Korea, we’re face-to-face while she confirms it’s me, I’m getting thoroughly mind-blown at this very odd 1-in-4 billion chance meeting (I have no idea the actual probability), and both our friend groups are deer-in-headlights confused beyond all belief. Even now I sit here stunned to think of how strange that was.
Misbah and I would go on the following weekend to hangout all throughout Seoul – but mostly at Changdeokgung Palace and Jongmyo Shrine – while I helped her with her own blog and vlog. It was a really nice afternoon catching up and finding out all about this old friend, and I hope she enjoyed it at least half as much.
The Yangyang Gang?? also went to Gyeongbokgung Palace and dressed up in Hanbok to explore. The highlight for me was, as always, the history of the area. In particular, I liked my learning about the development of Seoul from the 1950’s onward. The entire trip, however, was pretty cool.
June 2022
Not much happened. I biked for 30km from one end of Seoul to the other just to see if I could. Then I walked around a lot where the Han River and Jungnangcheon Stream meet. It was a cool day.
July 2022
July 8th I had COVID-19. It wasn’t so bad. I was achy and tired, but had food and an AC. I was also exceptionally fortunate in the fact that Twin.kle allowed me to work from home on some Research and Development. They CAN be cool from time to time. I don’t like R&D unless it’s something mentioned in my job description, but I’m pretty grateful I was in a position to still get paid while needing to isolate.
At the end of the month, however, we again had a week off from work. I decided to do as I once did and travel! Not internationally, unfortunately, but I made it to the mysterious island of Ulleungdo Island. I got delayed a day because of some of the choppiest water I’ve even been on (the boat was flying 3-5 times), but I saw a different part of Gangneung I appreciated a lot because of the endless coffee shops.
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves about the location. Just know that I really enjoyed my time there.
Not many people go here when they could instead go to Jeju Island, but those who do typically make sure to stop off at Dokdo as a matter of national pride in their feud with Japan. I didn’t want to spend the $350 for a two-hour boat ride and 30-minute photo shoot, however.
After returning from Dokdo, I met about half the Yangyang Gang?? in the city of Sokcho where we went surfing!
It wasn’t my first time surfing, but the session was far better than the one I had in Pangandaran years before. I also had an unbelievable hot dog prepared by the school we found ourselves at. We all decided to go back for more surfing sometime in September, but sadly a typhoon prevented that.
August 2022
This month was filled with amazing food and good times with friends. That’s basically it. Feast (literally) your eyes:
September 2022
Will be covered in the next article! Nothing much happened in Seoul during this time, it was mostly just me prepping to head back to the USA for a vacation and Mom’s funeral. They both deserve their own posts.
October 2022
October is when it started getting cold. There, again, wasn’t much of note going on other than it slowly becoming too cold for me to happily go biking once I got back. In response, I started an age-old activity of mine that started when I was in China: Deep Traveling.
Pictured above and below is the small town of Munsan. Why is Munsan a place worth visiting, you may ask? Who knows, it’s not a question I ask before deciding to go on a trip like this. I’ve always enjoyed going to obscure parts of the places I’ve found myself living or traveling. It is right on the border with North Korea and the DMZ, so you find some really interesting trench relics. Before going, though, I had no expectations on what I might find.
Why not go to Namsan Tower? Because everyone goes there. I don’t want to see where everyone goes, I want to see where they come from. The forgotten narratives of the common person, that’s what interests me! Everyone has a favorite coffee shop, a favorite grocery store, a favorite park, or even a favorite secret spot they tell no one else about. If I go to Gangnam I’ll see the commercialized versions of those, the ones everyone is supposed to call their “favorite.” If I go to a hometown no one has ever heard of, then I might just stumble into the real thing.
This hobby has brought me to many favorite places in my life. Kaili City in Guizhou, Dishui Lake, Zhoushan, the Chapel of St. Francis Xavier, Hua Pha, Pangururan, Lake Maninjau, and so on. Many of these places have shown up on this blog! Be prepared to find more examples of this sort of travel in the future.
November 2022
Like right now! November has been filled with the kind of strife best left to be shrouded in mystery for the time being. Currently looking for work in China, studying my Chinese, playing Magic (but slowing down), and worldbuilding when the fancy strikes. Below are some photos from a small neighborhood placed between a mountain and a river I biked along from my home (something like 15km? It was warm) called Seoksu 3 Dong.
But that’s where we will end this article! One week from this post, I promise I will update again in order to detail September and what I was up to then. After that I expect updates will become much easier, and more detailed than I made April through November. Stay tuned!