So... Where Even Is Korea?
So... Where Even Is Korea? Mr. N's Classroom (Somewhere in the World), Book One
In June 2013, Ken Namor finished teachers' college and signed up to teach English in South Korea. He did zero research. He packed sandals. He thought Korea might be warm.
It was four degrees when he landed.
So... Where Even Is Korea? is the first book in the Mr. N's Classroom series, a memoir about teaching abroad, finding your people in strange places, and the long, winding, occasionally ridiculous road to figuring out what you actually want. It covers Ken's first years in Korea: the hagwon on the seventh floor of an office building, the cold noodles at midnight, the subway map that looked like organized spaghetti, the students who taught him as much as he taught them, and the slow process of turning somewhere completely foreign into somewhere that felt like home.
It is funny. It is honest about the parts of expat teaching that don't make it into the highlight reel. It has a Scotsman, a pillow fight flash mob, a World War II tank at the bottom of a lagoon, and one very ill-advised use of Febreze.
It is also a book about what teaching actually is, not the tidy version from a training manual, but the real thing: the students who say something that stops you cold, the classes you get exactly right, the gap between the teacher you trained to be and the one you're becoming.
It is also, eventually, a love story. And a teaching story. And an argument for always packing a coat.For anyone who has ever been the new person somewhere and had to figure it out from scratch. Which is most people, eventually.
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