Screening Department Manager and Human Resources Specialist - Footprints Alumni
Recent graduate and would be teacher needs a job.
Has student loans.
"Will" travel.
That is how it all began, and there wasn’t really much more to it than that. A friend recommended that I apply to Footprints, and after being interviewed by Kara, Ben found me a job in Ulsan, South Korea, where I taught for a year and then extended my contract for another eight months.
During my stay in South Korea, I learned to teach and box, spent some time at the Mud Festival, and met a girl who gave me a great reason to move to the west coast of Canada.
We traveled Thailand together, and after returning to Canada for several months, I left for China to fulfill a goal of studying Mandarin.
I attended Xiamen University, in Fujian province. During that time I was able to explore an incredibly different country. I took the train all the way to Tibet, I traveled down the rivers of Guilin on a bamboo raft, and I hiked Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan. I learned that the taxi are clinically insane, that the food resembles nothing of what I had previously thought of as “Chinese Food,” and I got to personally experience one of the most misunderstood countries in the world. I taught at a local language school, and had a great time teaching adults, and listening to their views of their own culture, and mine. We had our differences, to be sure, but it was a fantastic experience.
My travels have been wonderful. I’ve made friends from all over the world, learned new languages, and climbed the Great Wall and the steps to the Potala Palace in Tibet (takes a long time with altitude sickness). I’ve been to Hong Kong for the Lunar New Year and I have eaten pineapple and drank Singha on some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
If given the choice, I’d do it all over again the same way.
Will Turner.
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“I'd like to start off by saying that my choice to teach abroad in Korea was one I know I will never regret! Footprints made it very easy to communicate with the school regarding details of where I'd be living and what I'd be teaching as well as taking care of my flight information. At the airport the morning we left, my boyfriend and I encountered overweight bags and extremely long lines at security, and we missed our flight by literally one minute. As we watched our plane pull from the gate, we just about lost our minds and any hope that we'd make the long journey we'd been planning for so long. We made one simple phone call to the travel agent, Claus, that Footprints set us up with. It was 6AM where he was on a Monday morning when we called in a panic. He said, "Stay by your phone," and we knew that he would fix this fiasco for us. Luckily, while Claus was searching for a solution, a woman from United Airlines was able to book us on another flight so that we would make our connection out of the U.S. to Seoul. We would like to thank Claus and Laina at Footprints for all their help in getting us to Korea!
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