Stephen Jones
HR Coordinator for South Korea
Stephen smiles with his students
I was born in South Florida where I have lived my entire life except for my year abroad. I studied English at Florida Atlantic University. In my post collegiate life I worked in a Doctor’s office, wrote and spent 6 weeks as both a volunteer and intern with Bahamas Methodist Habitat working on a hurricane aid mission, and a myriad of other non-profit reconstruction projects.
I joined the EPIK program in August of 2009 and finished in August, 2010. I was stationed in Jincheon-gun in the province of Chungbuk, South Korea. Aside from the culture shock and difficulties of living in the Korean country side with limited Korean language skills, there was never a time when I regretted my decision to teach there. My year abroad was as remarkably, life-altering as it was adventurously, uncertain.
I remember my journey to South Korea was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I didn’t have my visa or plane ticket until two weeks before I was scheduled to leave, so I never felt like I was going for certain until then. I was left with less than two weeks to pack, finishing shopping and say good bye to all my friends and family. That process was something that was completely foreign to me. I hadn’t been away from home for more than a month before. How do you pack everything you will need for a year? How do you say goodbye to people that you haven’t gone more than a few weeks without seeing for 10 years or more? These were questions that plagued me, and that I had no real answers with any measure of the definite. I did my best anyway.
Very early on a Wednesday morning, I said goodbye to my cats, dragged my exorbitantly heavy luggage to the car, and drove with my parents to Miami International Airport. I said goodbye to my parents, and sat at the lounge in front of my departure gate. I was only half awake, and the realization that I was about to get on a plane and leave my country for a year eluded me..
..6 hours later I was sitting at another departure gate in San Francisco, talking to 6 or 7 other people who were also doing the EPIK program. I talked for awhile with a girl named Jessica, from Canada, and we got on the plane together, and we shared a moment where the realization that we were about to get on plane for a very long time and fly very far away from home, hit us both..
..11 hours later, dazed and exhausted I landed in the Seoul/Incheon International Airport. After three more hours of going through customs, collecting my bags, exchanging money, waiting in an endless line to check in with EPIK, and getting dinner, I had to get on a bus and travel another three hours. Then there was another hour of registering at JuenJu University..
12 months and one week later I was back at the Seoul/Incheon airport preparing for an 8 hour wait to get on a 9 hour flight to Honolulu and trying to put the last year in focus and retrospect. Over that year I’d been immersed in a culture that was completely foreign to me, teaching a language to students who didn’t naturally speak it. I’d gotten lost on one hike, hiked to the top of a mountain on another. I’d traveled to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Japan. I’d been successful in the classroom, and I other times had crashed and burned. I’d been sick, I’d been healthy. I’d been happy and I’d been depressed, but not matter what the conditions I was and am always happy that I went. I miss it often. In the beginning I was endlessly grateful for the opportunity, and at the end I’m indebted to the experience.
- Stephen Jones
Stephen@ReachToTeachRecruiting.com