More information is coming through about my trip to Korea to teach English as a foreign language for a month.

Flights are going to be pretty brutal in both directions; thirteen hours each way and leaving and arriving at awkward times, with a nine hour time difference to get used to. It’s a four hour coach trip from Seoul, where we’re flying to, to Jinju, where we’re based.

We’re getting en-suite, air-conditioned rooms as tutors, though the Koreans we will be teaching will be sharing accommodation, which I’m not so comfortable with. However everything else is pretty strict. The gates are locked at 11pm and before this is done they’ll be a roll-call of everyone to ensure everyone is back.

They’ll be six hours of lessons per day then some enrichment activities, and then while the tutors are then mostly free, the students will have several hours of homework to get on with.

Weekends are trips out to various places such as the local Buddhist temple (so, not just a touristy place, rather more genuine); that’s the only one I know about so far.

We’ve been told that we’ll have wired Internet access in our rooms, and there will be wireless Internet access too, because of course this is a country rather more teched-up than places like, er, Oxford University. So I imagine that a lot of people will take their laptops. Since there will be terminals available from which I will be able to access webmail, though, I don’t think I will take my laptop. This is because I think I might be able to learn more from the experience if I shut myself off from my ordinary life a little more completely.

So very much looking forward to things.