Expat Living at the Korea Herald

Okay, I know I've been MIA re real blogging these days, but I'm working a teaching job during my vacation that has me working like crazy. I have three day weekends every week for goodness sake! I've gone soft not just with my weight. I haven't worked this hard for extra money in awhile, and I won't do it again anytime soon. I'm going on vacation at the end of the month, so I had to find work within a very tight time frame, so my choices were limited. However, I'm trying to maintain my social life while I'm at it and it's keeping me busy.

The other reason is I'm one of the columnists writing for a new section for the Korea Herald called Expat Living. The website is really buggy, and has crappy pop-ups (so set your pop-up blocker). I'll just say that right now. If you've noticed, I've never linked to a Korea Herald article simply because the website makes it too difficult. Plus, with other sites that encourage links, there is no need to. As a result, I can't even link directly to this new section. Instead, I can direct you to the website and tell you the Expat Living section is linked in the "Weekly" section on the left hand sidebar. There just isn't much the editors can do re the website, so take your complaints to the webmaster.

My column is still yet to be named, but basically, I'll interview interesting people, mostly foreigners. They will be people who live here, people who've just stopped by for a visit, non-Koreans and ethnic Koreans. Basically, it will be people with some tie to Korea who are, in some way, interesting. The goal is to just show more than the stereotype of what foreigners do with their lives here in Korea. I found it to be very frustrating that during the time I wasn't working here people assumed that I was either a teacher or, since I'm a black American, was with the US military. No offense to either group, but I was in school thank you very much. There are other foreigners here doing other things too. Another goal is to show the reach that South Korea and Korean culture has worldwide because I find that Koreans can't wrap their heads around how or why people might be interested in their culture and they're not very good at selling it. On the other side, foreigners tend to have very pat and one dimensional assessments of the culture. So maybe my column can help from that perspective too. My first interview will be published in next week's section (I think...I'm still getting my bearings.)

So, if you've been wondering where I am, and that goes for people who read my other two blogs too, I'm just incredibly busy. Things won't get back to normal until sometime late next month.

Also, my friend Joe is a columnist. Here is his post on Expat Living. There are quite a few other K-Bloggers who will have columns in this new section. Click over to Joe's post for a few other names. It's quite exciting to be a part of it, so check it out if you're so inclined.

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