Five years ago I would never have dreamed that I would be where I am today. After graduating from the University of Alberta as a biology teacher, I moved west to Vancouver where I could replace snow for rain and porgies for sushi. I quickly fell in love with the West Coast, but discovered that my Alberta teacher’s license wasn’t transferable to BC. During my degree I had always dreamt of teaching overseas and now that I didn’t have anything to tie me to one place, my boyfriend and I started looking into different teaching opportunities.
He suggested Taiwan one night and I was taken aback as I had always considered Japan, Korea or Thailand…I didn’t even know where Taiwan was. I went home and starting searching on the internet. I was in awe of the images on the Taiwanese tourism website; lush forests of bamboo, mountains, beaches and bright neon lit cities.
We contacted Footprints and were more than happy to find out that they were based in Vancouver. We made an appointment and stopped by the office, mostly to have questions answered and concerns quelled. Ben, Jeff and Kara talked to us about their experiences in Korea and the exciting adventures that they had embarked upon. They gave us a taste of what would be waiting for us and shared their excitement regarding this life-changing experience we were about have.
We had decided that this place was for us. We left at the end of August and flew into Taipei at the hottest time of the year. My ankles had never sweated before! Orientation went by quickly and in no time we were in Kaohsiung getting ready to start teaching. I had the opportunity to teach at the largest preschool in the country with my own classroom, an amazingly helpful co-teacher, and 17 of the cutest kids I had ever seen.
The year went by quickly. We visited the Lantern Festival, Saw the sun rise over the mountain top at Ali Shan, spent weekends on the beach in Ken Ding and sat in hot springs amidst the bamboo forests on a drizzly winter day.
My trip to Taiwan opened up the possibility of going to other parts of the world and the next year saw me teaching in a small rural village in the centre of France. I was beginning to miss home though, and started applying to go back to school in Vancouver…not for teaching, but for Naturopathic Medicine. Another thing that Taiwan gave me was an introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine and I became increasingly interested in this and other forms of natural medicine. I was accepted to the Boucher Institute of Naturopathic Medicine and started in the fall, after two years of a very intense four year program I decided to take a one year leave of absence before finishing up. This found me back at Footprints (much larger than the last time I had seen it) asking about available positions at their office. Ben and I sat and talked and in a week I was offered a position in the ER department helping to fill teaching positions in the public school system in South Korea. Full circle.
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“I had been teaching ESL in Europe and Asia for four years when I contacted Footprints. Before I found Footprints, I was independently searching for a position in Seoul and I was extremely hesitant to pursue any of the contracts that I was offered. The schools and other recruiting firms that I came into contact with were offering contracts with suspicious clauses and inadequate housing. I knew that Ben and Jeff ran a professional service as soon as I spoke to them on the phone. I have since completed my one year contract in Seoul and can honestly say that everything went well from beginning to end. Although Korea is not always the easiest place to live, Footprints makes the transition so much smoother. Footprints is upfront, honest and dependable. I would highly recommend their service for anyone considering teaching abroad and would not hesitate to re-sign with Footprints in the future.”
