My First Job Offer!

People better start getting in line, the offers are flooding in!

Well OK not really, but I did get one offer and its still very very early. I woke up this morning to see an email from my British Recruiting Agency, Flying Cows Consulting, outlining a job offer and a contract. By the end of this post I'll have made my decision.

If I could post up word documents, I probably would, but here are some of the basics from the 5 page contract:

Location: Daegu
Salary: 2 million won per month (~$2000 USD) w/ overtime of 20,000 KRW per hour (~$20USD)
Vacation: 10 Vacation Days (4 fixed in summer/winter)
Student Level: Kindergarten to Middle School
Class Size: 7-12
Schedule: 10am-8pm
Classes per day: 5-7
Length of Classes: 40-50min
Teaching hours per week: 30
Housing: 2 bedroom/single
Furnishing: Fully Furnished
Distance from Work: 5-10 min
Airfare: Round trip Return Offered
Completion Bonus: One Month's Pay
Health Insurance: Offered
Training Program: Offered
Materials: Provided
Number of Foreign Teachers: 4
Number of Teachers: 1

The positives include that there seems to be more Foreign teachers, the late 10am hour is nice, the class size, round trip airfare, and the training program included. On the flip side - very young children (kindergarten), the late 8pm end time (think about traveling somewhere on a Friday night... 8pm isn't conducive), and the 4 fixed vacation days are not something I like either.

According to Wikipedia, Daegu sits in a basin in the center of South Korea, and collects a lot of humid hot air during the summer, and its drier throughout the year than the rest of the peninsula. I am not looking for that. Although, Daegu IS home to the Samsung Lions in Korean Baseball, which I hear to be a pretty decent team.

Today, after telling a friend about my good news and my trepidation, he said to me, "It might be better than Seoul, because I'd rather go to Denver than New York City." Which is a valid point (especially after having lived in NYC for a few years), but as we all know, there's nothing in the world quite like New York, so there can't be a comparison positively or negatively. Initially one of my main reasons for shying away from Daegu WAS the fact that it doesn't have an airport. BUT after some research I did learn that it does in fact have an airport. I guess being the 4th largest city in a country there would be one, but it mainly only flies to China from what I can tell, and I'm looking for a broader range of flying options.

Basically what it all boils down to, is if I'm going to be moving across the world to live on a peninsula, then I want to make damn sure I see water. I also believe that I can get more from an offer either in Seoul or Busan.

The verdict? Sorry Daegu, but you're out!