My pendulum of hope for Korea is back on the upswing – God, that was a terrible phrase. I need to stop blogging at 2.00 am.

Anyway, applying to a bunch of different recruiters has paid off, because I now have two companies talking to me, which is more than can be said for my original recruiter. One is Touch 4 Teaching, which yields precisely 4 Google results, and has been ringing me every single day with information they could easily email – which would also remove the problem of trying to decipher the Korean accent over an atrocious international phone connection. The other is EA & Partners, run by a Korean guy called Mike Jang, who’s been very friendly and helpful – but then, so were the folks at ASK Now, before they hung me out to dry. I’ve also received an email from a teacher at a school in a place called Dongtan, a “new city” (read: sandy construction-site wasteland, like a miniature Dubai minus the glitz). That out-of-the-blue approach puzzled me at first before I remembered that one of the recruiters I went through simply posted my image and resume on their website, for any Korean school to come along and take a squiz at.

My ideal job would be in central Seoul (because I like big cities) teaching younger children like kindergartners and primary school kids (because they’re less likely to catch on that I have no idea what I’m doing). I’d also prefer to teach in a hagwon (private school) over a public school, because public schools generally have much larger classes and provide you with a Korean co-teacher, and as I just said, I’d like my teaching audience to be as small and oblivious as possible to my complete ineptitude and, most likely, paralysing fear. Besides which, Touch 4 Teaching sent me an example of a standard public school contract which was very… restrictive. Government services and complicated bureaucracy go hand in hand, after all.

All of the schools I’ve been offered so far have been in the satellite cities that dot the circumference of Seoul like, well, satellites. I’m keen to hold out for something more central. But at the same time, I don’t want to price myself right out of a job. It is a delicate balancing act, one which my years of being handed whatever job I wanted during Western Australia’s economic boom have left me hilariously unqualified for. But not as unqualified as I am for teaching, SNAP!

Ideally Mike Jang, who is still processing my details, will come through for me like a glittering paladin on a white horse and secure me my dream contract so that I can then be placed under quarantine or lost in the sea of civilian casualties in a vast war. Failing that, I’ll just keep working in the deli at Coles, which I think is the most horrific of the three options.