Korvia Autumn Party 2015

Basically, I'm so bad at blogging that I decided to combine two draft posts into one thing.
I'm also so bad at remembering to document these things, that I've just stolen all the nice photos of me from Korvia's facebook page. Why bother taking photos when you've got paparazzi documenting everything? ;D

Also, I blog so infrequently that I wrote half a blog post about the summer AND autumn parties, before realising I'd already written about the summer party half a year ago. Oops.

SO. Here is is, the Korvia Autumn Party.

I retract my former statement, hahaha.
Nick and I decided to combine our trip to Hongdae for the party with one of our Once in a Blue Moon trips to the hairdresser, so naturally we looked awesome. I re-installed my full fringe out of nostalgia for the good ol' days when hair was thick and plentiful.

However, nostalgia is one of the worst inventions ever and rose-tints everything, cutting out all the bad stuff. My greasy forehead and lots of running around excitedly nattering to people at 100 miles an hour in the hopes they'll not notice I'm secretly bricking it means I ended up with a clumpy, hairy mess stuck to my forehead before it was even dark.

Turns out, that's exactly the reason I grew out my last full fringe. Sigh.

Anyway, we needed to arrive early since Nick had signed up to help take photos. I hadn't signed up to do anything, because I'm a poor excuse for a citizen, so I tried to take the edge off of my guilt by pretending to be staff. To be fair, I usually help out at the parties and all my friends were there as volunteers, so it felt weird to just sit around like some kind of dictator while everyone else works.

Vadering

I decided my skills as an anxious, introverted human shell would be most well-suited to meeting and greeting hundreds of strangers and helping them make their way to the party. Hence the sweaty face.

I mean, that mostly involved just standing at a table with some of my friends, saying "hello" to anyone that walked up to us or looked lost and not-Korean, and providing them with pens and stickers for making a name tag.

Also, since we were outside and upstairs (the party was at Mike's Cabin in Hongdae, which is a roomy, comfy bar in a building's basement. It's nicer than I've made it sound.) we decided to bring the party to us, by messing around with the photo wall next to us.

Once the stream of arrivals had died down, we called it a day and went in to grab food (pizza and crisps, courtesy of Korvia, thank you!) and find everyone else. There were some funny games, some presentations, some dancing, standard party fare.

I'm not very good at talking about parties, and I've talked enough about how great I think Korvia are at every stage of the application and transition process to Korea, so there's not really much else I can say other than it's always a lot of fun and I'm glad these parties exist. I'd never have met a lot of my friends here without them. </cheese>

This is the best photo because it looks like I broke my leg or something.

Korvia Summer Barbecue

Hello from your friendly neighbourhood BBQ assistants~

Another incredibly late pre-summer catchup, this time it's the Korvia BBQ!

For anyone that doesn't know, the wonderful Korvia is the company that helped myself, Nick, and hundreds of other people from around the world make the move to South Korea.

The barbecues and parties that Korvia throw for their recruits are there to let people meet the people that helped them share the bureaucratic deadweight that is trying to get work abroad, as well as other native English speakers that might also be in or near your placement area. It's a great idea to help you feel a little bit less of a tiny fish in a huge ocean, and is actually one of the things that really drew me to Korvia over other recruitment agencies when I first started my research.

I actually met a lot of my really good friends over here via last year's (and our first) barbecue. My idea was that if I volunteered to man the grill, I'd HAVE to crawl out of my comfort zone and actually talk to new people. And hey, it worked! Since then, it's always been fun to help out with setting up the venues, because it's basically an easy excuse to doss about with my friends before everyone else arrives. ;p

One of our main tasks was to set up the photo wall in the picture at the top, which was surprisingly difficult considering there were so many people trying to set it up. (And it all ended in disaster, RIP photo wall. I say that, I think we fixed it, but it DID fall on me, and I valiantly tried to leap out of the way like an action hero. Expectations vs Reality, I probably looked more like a kid faceplanting than Indy with the giant rock, but don't crush my dreams, okay?)

Ignore my sweaty mess and focus on Kiegan's dazzlingly adorable smile.

Our other task was to set up the food tables ready for the masses, and get the coals burning and ready for meat, glorious meat. Also: ASPARAGUS!!

The Korvia Summer BBQ!

Woo, it's been a while! In fairness, this is the longest-running and most consistent blog I think I've ever had (and, being a child of the internet, I've had a LOT of blogs...) so I'm not going to lie, I'm quite proud. It probably helps that my life is a lot more interesting now. Let's face it, "I went to a palace" is much better than "I slept for 13 hours then went on Tumblr" ;)

ANYWAY. Quite a few weeks ago now, Nick and I went to the Korvia BBQ. For the uninformed, Korvia is the recruitment agency we used to get our jobs in Korea. It's a great agency, with kind and caring staff and I don't think I'll ever be able to stop singing their praises. 

One of the many great things they do for their recruits is they hold a party or barbecue when the weather is good, to give teachers old and new a chance to mingle and meet some fellow English speakers. It's really nice when you're far away from home with very little in the way of home comforts. I'm quite lucky, because every day I come home to my own little slice of England, but for many people, especially those in more rural areas, I can imagine the homesickness can hit hard.

So, after doing some shopping in the morning (we wanted to buy a "thank you and happy birthday!" present for our lovely recruiter, Daisy) we hopped onto the subway and headed off for Yatap. Annoyingly, we had to take quite a convoluted route there, which meant that we ended up taking the same amount of time as some people that came from much, much further away! However, the subway here is very comfortable so I'm not complaining too much.

When we arrived in the right area, we found some helpful posters dotted around, and slowly the sound of very non-Korean voices drifted over. Yaaay~

Pictured above: the aforementioned sign, my plate piled high with lovely lovely food, and the obligatory photo of Nick eating and wishing I was doing something other than taking terrible photos.

Welcome! | いらっしゃいませ！| 어서오세요!

Hello!

Right, I'll try and keep this brief, considering most of you know me in real life (and thus should have a fair idea of what's going on with me at the moment), or have found me through a search (and thus should have the ability to read my little sidebar bio), haha.

Anyway, after what is fast becoming half a year of training, application, and stress, I am on my way to Incheon in South Korea, to teach English with my lovely boyfriend Nick (whose blog you can find here).

I've written a summary of how I came to have this job, but in the interest of shortness I've added a jump below (opens in a new tab). If you want to bail now, here's your chance! I won't judge you.