TEARS & TEFL: Living abroad in your twenties

It all sounds thrilling, doesn’t it? Booking a one-way flight, hosting a goodbye party, moving to a new city, meeting new people, and discovering a new culture. Moving abroad can give you a new sense of autonomy. There are no expectations or preconceived ideas of who you are. You can be louder, bolder, or quieter even. You will grow and morph into something stronger no matter your experience. But there is another side to living away from home that TikToks and teaching vlogs skip over: the question every employer will ask you. How will you cope being so far away from home? There is only one right answer: I don’t get homesick. Which is usually a lie. Everyone does; it just depends on how big it latches onto you.

Simply: Life abroad isn’t for everyone. You sign an orphan contract for the indefinite future. You stare solitude in the face. Even textbook introverts find some nights too quiet, their phone too disengaged, and even go as far as to contemplate meeting people outside of their personal space. Time zones will haunt you; you’ll become a small square in an iPhone being passed around at family gatherings until the screen flicks off and you’re alone in your room again. You’ll miss birthdays, engagements, weddings and funerals. Time doesn’t stop. Your friend group continues, and when you go back home, life will have moved on. You’ll find yourself between realities. When I returned home, I thought of myself as twenty-four, even though I had aged two years. I had difficulty connecting who I was in England with who I was in Mexico. It was almost like another version of myself was in a different timeline. Three timelines to be exact. One in Korea. One in Mexico. One in England.

As years go by, your parents will say, “Well, I don’t know you anymore. I knew who you were before your travels but I don’t know who you are now.” Your only conversations will be via phone calls unless you’re lucky enough for them to visit. It’s a sacrifice. At twenty, it feels fun and exciting to be away from home. Until you’re close to thirty and start noticing your aging parents. Their wrinkles and fine lines are more pronounced, and their hair now has a touch of grey.

Your little brother ages ten years in the space of two. You’ve missed your grandma’s funeral and they’ve grieved while you’re just beginning to. The bubble has burst. It hurts, but it’s life. Despite this, it gives you a new perspective on how to spend quality time. So, when you go back home, you’ll stay at the family home and spend as much time as possible with everyone. You’ll stay up late watching old reruns of Top of the Pops with your dad, and you’ll sit in cafes with your mum until the coffee goes cold. You’ll see friends and not want to let them go as you never know when you’ll see them next. For every goodbye, there’s always the question, “Where to next?” You’re now the traveller in the friend group. 

Living away from home is chaos and beauty and amazing and despairing. It’s life, and it’s definitely not a holiday like some think. I have two experiences: Korea and Mexico. Both entirely different and almost the complete opposite of one another.

So, we need to go back to the beginning. Olivia, fifteen, moody and very bored in Maths. My friend, Julia, leaned back on her chair and told me about a K-pop group she loved: SHINee. Curious, I went home and typed their name into YouTube. It was different. Very different. Five men with questionable hairstyles, vivid makeup and gold vests singing about Lucifer. Then, I found the sidebar. EXO: Call Me Baby. I was perplexed. Fascinated. This time a ten member group. They seemed like robots. Their dancing was pristine. Their singing was heavily auto-tuned but catchy and in a language I’d never heard. This led me into a part of the second-generation K-pop world of Big Bang and 2NE1. I’ll stop there as this is gobbledygook for a lot of people. Let’s just say I entered a rabbit hole. I consumed everything possible on the internet about Korea: K-pop, movies, dramas, variety shows, food, history. I even started to learn the language.

When I turned sixteen I knew I wanted to move there. Not for a holiday but to live. After a quick scan of the internet I found out about EPIK-‘English Programme in Korea’, a programme that helps native English teachers move to South Korea. So that’s what I had in my mind and dreamt about. I got through university, graduated, and then COVID happened, so that put my dream on hold for a little while. In the meantime, I found a placement at a company and worked there for close to a year before moving. The process was long. Six months of applying, gathering documents, an intense 2 AM interview, buying the plane ticket, and hoping my twenty-four-hour COVID test didn’t screw up six months of prep and eight years of dreaming. It didn’t; I was negative, and then it still didn’t hit me that I was moving to Seoul, South Korea.

In the first month I entered survival mode. Previous teachers had warned all the new teachers at orientation that the first month is hell, and well, it’s close to it. You have this excitement of wanting to explore a new city but the ‘important stuff’ nagging at the back of your mind. Those being: Visa appointments, COVID registration, local health centre registration, bank account, Wi-Fi and phone contract—everything I hadn’t even done in my own country and in my own language, I was suddenly doing in broken Korean. If you’re lucky your school will help you out, attend appointments with you and translate any important information, but I did it alone and not without a few hiccups, but that’s for another time. The first week is stressful no matter what. Documents and officials are not fun. You need to be prepared. After that, it slows down. 

When you sign up to EPIK, it’s like signing up to the lottery. There are winners and losers. In my case, I felt like I had won the jackpot. I had the perfect school. I was welcomed, introduced to my ‘Handler’ who helped with all of the communication and translation in the school office. My students were lovely, my co-teachers had great communication and we worked well together. I was given an apartment in a good area; shopping was across the road, the train station was a five-minute walk away and my building was surrounded by restaurants. The area was quiet and close to a stream with beautifully maintained gardens. So, what was I missing?

A sense of community. Korea is cold. I heard someone once describe it as a masculine city. It is; it’s sharp, strong, powerful and cold. The people can be warm, but in the right environment. As a non-Korean, Koreans will be very interested in you, but from my experience and other teachers I have met, there is a line that is not always crossed. It’s just a different culture. If you’re standing in line at the post office, waiting in your building’s elevator, or browsing the aisle of a 7-Eleven, nobody talks to a stranger. I hail from the north of England, where strangers call out ‘Alright, Love’ to one another as they pass each other by and aren’t afraid to make conversation on lonely train rides. I was never one for small talk, and I thought I’d prefer the silence, but after a while I missed the sense of local community. Korea is a homogeneous society. Nobody likes to stand out. Some do. It’s happening. The younger generation are shifting, but there are still codes of conduct people abide by.

Most Koreans keep the same friend group from the age of five, and because of the lack of small talk, there is not much room to make friends unless on a night out. Lots of people move to Korea without learning Korean because they either don’t want to or they have the false idea that most Koreans speak English. Learn Korean! Not only out of respect for your adopted country but to communicate with new friends. You’ll find that most foreigners are friends with other foreigners. The other native teachers I met were kind and friendly, but there was no click. I always kept thinking: Why are the other teachers doing so well at making friends? I wondered if my introvertedness was getting in the way. Most of the other teachers I met were extroverted, loud, the centre of conversations, and willing to make friends with everyone. They loved to go clubbing, to meet new people, and chase new experiences. I was quieter. Introverted through and through. At the time, I was also anti-social media. I only had Facebook to contact people, and I barely used it. Most of the teachers I met in the first week had met up beforehand; groups had already formed at orientation, and it felt like if you missed one group hangout, you were left out of ten inside jokes and 100 text messages in between. I didn’t find my people. I found one or two, but they had already been living there for years and had other obligations and partners, so it would be months of loneliness until I met up with a friend for a coffee.

The first six months of teaching were great; I still had that buzz, students were eager to see me, they wrote me little notes and handed me sweets in the corridors. I shared an office with six other ‘subject’ teachers and even with my beginner Korean they always made me feel included and slowed down their conversation so I could understand better. I was what you would call a ‘Games Teacher’. I’d stand at the back of the classroom, and for the final ten to twenty minutes of the lesson, I’d play games with the students. After a while, this felt very monotonous and I found myself feeling more like a prop than a teacher. The students were all lovely, encouraging, and made it worth it, but did I see myself in the job for another year? No. It didn’t feel good, and I know, I know, most people would jump at the chance. But I wanted to do more. 

When September hit I found myself in a deep numbness I just couldn’t shake and so I pushed everything and everyone away. A part of me was incredibly disappointed in myself. I remember thinking if this was sixteen-year-old me I would be gobsmacked, bouncing off the walls, chasing each hour until the night slipped away. Everyone around me was so happy there. In October, I was presented with the deadline of another year looming. It took me about a month to give my answer. I wrote a list of positives and negatives, and sadly the negatives outweighed the positives. I felt a sense of relief when I told my Handler I would not be staying for another year. I told my friends, to their shock and horror, that I was the one leaving. The one who wanted it for so long. I think that was my downfall. I had expectations. Whether I wanted to admit it or not. Now as a twenty-six-year-old, I can say that I did. I had in my mind that it could be forever. I wanted it to be forever. The other teachers moved after a year or two of researching Korea and some came on a complete whim. I had eight years of waiting. By the time I moved to Korea, I started to question whether it was something I truly wanted at twenty-two, or if I was just living out sixteen-year-old me’s dream. I still don’t have a clear answer.

After telling everyone that I would be going back to England, I felt my whole body relax and I started to live my time in Seoul without any pressure, just to have fun. In my final months I travelled to a new city every weekend, I went out for dinners again, I spent nights in photobooths and bars, and explored more of Seoul. I didn’t take everything so seriously anymore. In my final week I started to contemplate my decision and if it was the right one. I went home. I cried on the plane, and the German man sitting next to me sent me a few sympathising glances. But the rush I felt to be back in my mother’s arms told me I had made the right decision. I say sadly. It’s more of a bittersweet ending, like a relationship you wanted to work but simply couldn’t. I make this sound like I hated my time there. I didn’t. I loved the first six months, I wrote postcards to friends and family saying I would be choosing to stay for a second year, I took photos of everything, walked around the city in awe, thinking ‘How do I live here?’ I discovered and witnessed a beautiful culture, I tried food that is my favourite to this day and I can’t wait to go back and visit my old neighbourhood. I was cared for by Koreans and felt their warmth. It just didn’t work out.

But if I hadn’t left in February of 2023, I wouldn’t have found myself in Mexico the following summer. What made me go abroad again? I knew I didn’t want to be back in England just yet. When I saw a job advertisement, I had a strong feeling, and I went for it.

My destination. Merida, Mexico.

Merida is hot. Unbearably so. I’m a northern girl, I love wearing big winter coats and having a scarf wrapped around me at all times. Yucatecos consider it cold at 24 degrees. In the UK, at that temperature, men strip down to jean shorts and women pull on their strappy tops. It wasn’t the weather that drew me to Mexico but the possibilities. I only knew very little about such a big country. Mostly the bad and only some of the good. I searched Merida and found beautiful cenotes, beaches, colourful dishes and exquisite architecture. I was intrigued. I remember the airport goodbye felt different. I kissed my parents goodbye and my mum told me through tears “Just enjoy it. It’s only for a year. Say yes to things, and be yourself.”

“It’s only for a year.” I smile fondly at that now. A year turned into two and now the indefinite future. So what happened? Immediate community. 

I lived in a house with six other teachers. We had our own bedrooms but shared common areas so whether we wanted to be or not we were forced together. It doesn’t mean you’re besties for life, but it’s nice to have someone there. I spent evenings on the terrace, talking for hours until the mosquitoes drained what felt like two litres of my blood, and I had to surrender indoors. Four of the teachers had lived in Merida for six months to a year and so they had their own friends, partners, and lives. The difference? Everyone was invited. Everyone is welcome. Parties, coffee dates, family gatherings. No one is left out.

The School? Long story. It had a list of faults, but it offered a free house and a visa, so many teachers stayed despite problems inside. I was the main teacher and taught adults and kids. The one thing the school was excellent at was allowing you to celebrate Mexican tradition. In Korea, the teachers would all wish each other happy Chuseok or Seollal and the following week I’d hear my co-teachers’ stories of their holiday. I loved to listen but a small part of me ached to witness it with my own eyes. In Mexico, I was no longer on the sidelines but an active participant. My students and I celebrated Día de Muertos by making an altar for passed loved ones. In January I cut into about four Rosca’s in a single day and so far, all my slices have been free of ‘little baby Jesus’.

I once heard someone describe Merida as a big town with lots of traffic. In a way it is. It’s a calm city. I’ve met travellers who think of it as boring after visiting the likes of Mexico city or Cancun beforehand. There is plenty going on, you just have to look for it: Street parties, markets, celebrations, festivals but it’s always a great place to find serenity. That’s what I found in my first year living there: Serenity. I lived just outside of Centro. I biked to school. I spent time at the Library. I went to Spanish classes. I sat in the sun. I ate cochinita on my breaks. I swam in the ocean. I made fresh organic food, spent time with the neighbourhood stray cats and allowed myself to relax. 

The important thing to note here is that I learned from my experience in Korea, so everything I didn’t do in Korea, I made sure to do in Mexico. I reached out to people. I found Facebook groups. I forced myself to ask for contact information. I joined painting and art classes. I met friends. I also fell in love. Through him, I saw a new side of Mexico. We explored states and magic towns together and I was granted a closer perspective to the Mexican way of life. It felt personal. After a year of living in Merida I felt like I had a life there. I was actually experiencing something beautiful. Looking back, I find it slightly outrageous to think that; if I wasn’t so unhappy with my life in Korea, I wouldn’t have the life that I have now. Funny, isn’t it? A failed dream led me to a new one. 

In Korea, I had expectations. In Mexico, I had none. Every experience is different. Sometimes the first year is hell, and the second is bliss and vice versa. If I could offer any advice to anyone thinking of doing a TEFL and moving abroad. I’d say live it like every year is the last. Don’t create expectations. Find alternatives. You don’t like the school? Find a new one. You’ve not met any ‘real’ friends? Search for them. Push yourself. Join Facebook/Whatsapp groups. Take up a hobby. Move to a different area if you hate your current one. Reach out to people. Call your family! Push yourself. Fall in love, even if it’s a whirlwind or the real deal. Be cautious of your time. Choose yourself. Be yourself. Let go.