As a recent graduate, the most common question I have gotten asked over the past couple months has been, “so, what are you doing next year?” What people do not expect you to say as an answer to that question is that you are going to be teaching abroad in South Korea for a year.

I’ve found that when I said this, I typically get one of two reactions . . .

Reaction number one: Wow! Not exactly the right time to be going . . . Please be safe.

Reaction number two: That is amazing! South Korea is a beautiful country. I taught there for a couple of months myself and loved it.

Reaction number one is a completely understandable reaction. Honestly, it’s the reaction I would have had myself talking to a recent grad a couple of years ago if they told me this was their after college plan. I knew close to nothing about South Korea a year ago and let’s face it, “Korea” as a whole has not been getting great press in the news recently. But I want to focus on reaction number two for the rest of this post, as the beauty of reaction number two is that it comes from somebody who has actually been there . . .or from someone who knows someone who’s been there. Every single person I have talked to who has been to Korea or knows someone from Korea has nothing but wonderful things to say. So why not Korea?

After I explain that I’ll be teaching in Korea, there is always someone who asks me, “Why did you pick Korea?” And in being truthful, I did not pick Korea out front. Korea kind of snuck up on me. I did not go into an international job hunt searching for a job in Korea, as I did not go in searching for a job in Cambodia, or Spain, or Brazil. I went in searching for a job, an experience, and a new take on the world. Limiting yourself in where you can go, and the outlooks you can get from those places and those people you meet, that is like building yourself a fence around your yard and saying- I am comfortable up until this point, but I don’t want anything else to come in, and I sure as heck don’t want to go out.

I’m not good with boundaries.

I don’t know what I’ll see in South Korea, but I know whatever it is, it will be unlike anything I have seen before. I don’t know what I’ll eat in South Korea, but it sure looks good from what I’ve seen online. And lastly, I don’t know how to be a teacher at an International School using IB curriculum, but I know I am going to learn alongside an amazing staff and other young teachers like myself. And anything else I pick up along the way in Korea, any language, any customs, any beliefs, those are things I could have only gotten by going there.

I could tell you about how I get paid better in Korea, or about how I’ll have a solid group of other english speakers my age, or about the professional benefits, or the relocation allowance, but none of those would be the reason I chose South Korea. Those are all the reasons you tell your parents on why this is a good logical and financial decision to get them to be okay with the fact that you’re leaving the states . . . But the true reason more then anything else is the mystery. Because I knew the least about this place out of the places I was offered, I chose it. Because I knew this was the biggest adventure, I wanted it. And just like any good mystery, I’m eager to begin the adventure of trying to solve it.