Gyeongnam

Submitted by I on 25 September 2006 - 12:42pm.

Tags:

Gyeongnam is located on the south-east coast and is below Gyeongbuk.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

arriving in the POE of Gyeongnam

Submitted by lizm on 17 October 2006 - 3:01pm.

was not a great experience. our poe supervisor (if that's what he was... i'm still not sure) didn't know that we were coming until just a few days prior to our arrival from orientation. needless to say, they weren't ready for us. it didn't help that they have their own provincial program, which is similar to epik... so we got "second choice" - i ended up in the city i asked for, but i was one of the lucky ones - most did not.

i haven't had a thing to do with them since they shipped me off to gimhae... and probably never will again.

the district is another matter. they're the ones that actually pay me and take care of paying for the apartment and filling it with furniture, appliances etc. they were pretty good about it - though i had no apartment for the first day i was here, it was my "co-teacher" that helped me find that and buy all the necessities. i later found out that i actually had a budget for this shopping, but he didn't tell me about it and instead skimped on a few things. i could have totally taken advantage and loaded up on lots of other things... like some people did. anyway, i pretty much have everything i need after spending my 300,000W settlement allowance. which, by the way, i had within a week of getting here. it took a little longer cause i didn't have a bank account yet, but i still managed to get it a lot faster than other people.

all in all i would say that my POE could be worse... there are always glitches and cracks for people to fall through, but gyeongnam was pretty quick to fix them.... my "co-teacher" is another matter...

lizm :)

Namhae-eup

Submitted by Ogedei on 9 November 2006 - 3:38pm.

Namhae-eup is a small county town and is on an island that is connected to the mainland via the Namhae and Samcheonpo Bridges. The people are quite nice and though Namhae County is dwindling as people move away to Sacheon-si and Jinju-si (the "big cities" here), Namhae-eup is the county's service center and depends on a mix of agriculture and tourism (as it's becoming more of a touristy place). For a town as small as this, there's a surprising number of foreign teachers - about a half dozen. I'm the only one here that is from the EPIK program and no one (even my three co-teachers) except for the principal has even heard the program; the other foreign teachers here were hired via "Footprints" and provincial programs. My experience so far is that I've been given a lot of support; the apartment already had basic furnishings when I first moved in (though it was quite dusty) and all of the extra things I needed for the apartment was paid for by the school, as I also had an allowance.

I actually chose Namhae as my first choice (Geoje-si and Hadong-gun were my second and third choices) and I'm quite satisfied with things so far. The provincial office did specifically ask if I had complaints about my situations on two occasions, which is a surprise since I've read from other's experiences that it's not always the case that the provincial office would take time to ask about your gripes.