about
Hey everyone! My name is Courtney and I am a TEFL certified English teacher that is on her way to 대한민국! I can’t believe it! This time a year and some change ago, I made the decision to start working towards making the move to South Korea. My love for Korean dramas and Korean hip hop and R&B led to me going after learning the language and things kind of progressed from there.
For the past few years, I have been working as a full time wedding photographer. When I made the decision to go to South Korea, I was experiencing the most lucrative year I had ever had in running my wedding photography business. As happy as I was with the amount of money I was earning, I still felt a bit unfulfilled. I have always been drawn to teaching in some regard but never thought about pursuing it until someone asked me why I wasn’t doing it, considering that photography is not my ultimate goal in life. While I do really, really love photography, it has never been something I see myself doing forever and ever.
The more I started thinking about teaching (especially overseas), the more it started to make sense to me. After living in London for a year, the desire to move outside of America again began to grow exponentially. South Korea seemed to be a natural fit for me; after becoming fascinated with the culture through their entertainment and learning the language (shout out to my iTalki tutor, J, as well as Koreanclass101.com, the King Sejong Institute classes I took, and my Los Angeles Korean-English Exchange Meetup group), I started preparing and researching for a move to South Korea. I looked up qualifications I needed and immediately signed up with International TEFL Academy to get my TEFL certification.
My priority was being based in Seoul so I could be close to my church and God really opened the doors! The way He orchestrated everything and how it all fell into place just left me in awe and reassured me that South Korea is where I need to be.
But I wasn’t always a teacher….
One thing that I’m appreciative of was that my lack of extensive formal teaching experience was not a hinderance to me securing a position in South Korea. Before accepting my teaching position in Seoul, I had actually done quite a few different things (not necessarily education related).
First, I graduated! I received my Bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Kansas in May 2007. I can’t believe that was nearly 14 years ago. And those two very incredible men on either side of me are my dad and my big brother. 🙂
1. Immediately after graduating, I started my first big girl job as an Admissions Counselor. So basically, I was the person that would show up at your high school to give you all the reasons why you should enroll at my university and tell you about how great all of our academic programs were. I was also that person that would stand behind the tables at college fairs and give you all of the material you would need to learn about the university.
3. …then I moved to California. After a few months of being in Los Angeles, I got a (very) temporary job filing documents at a water technologies company. I actually really enjoyed this job. I was able to listen to music and Netflix all day, or just simply get lost in my thoughts while filing. It was AWESOME. This job ended right before I took the trip of a lifetime to the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, for a mission trip.
5. After my first stint as a dental office receptionist, I worked as a salesperson at a local camera store in South Bay Los Angeles, Silvio’s Photoworks,. I know, I know, just a little while ago I said that sales weren’t my thing but being surrounded by cameras all day long was definitely my thing. There was a little math involved with this job, but the computers did all the heavy lifting for me. And my boss and co-workers made my job so enjoyable. If there was something I didn’t understand (like all of the technical photography questions and specs), there was always someone on hand that was way more knowledgeable than I. I absolutely loved my time working here and learned so much. There was only one reason I left. And that reason was…
2. After my three year stint as an Admissions Counselor, I began working as a newborn photographer at a hospital. It ended up being way different than I expected. I got very nervous about posing the newborns and it was very sales based. I quickly learned that sales did not play into my strengths.
4 (and 7). A month after returning from India, I began working at a dental office as a receptionist. This job was very much unlike any other job I’ve had before. I had to do a lot of math, with calculating different patients’ insurance policies and how much they would have to pay when they came in to see the doctor. Working here was actually pretty difficult for me because my creative mind STRUGGLED to wrap itself around all those numbers and calculations. But it was really nice interacting with all of the patients that came in, especially the regulars. Although I left after 10 months, I returned to work at this same office 2 years later. I suppose I just couldn’t stay away!
6. I got to spend an ENTIRE YEAR living in London! I was a volunteer with my church, serving in the teen ministry. This year was, without a doubt, one of the best experiences of my life. I spent time with the teen girls in my ministry, grew so much spiritually, ate some of the best Nigerian food EVER on a regular basis, traveled to France, Italy, and Turkey while I was there, made some of the best friends I will ever make, and experienced such incredible hospitality. It was so hard to leave. This year of living abroad planted the seed for my desire to live abroad now. Once I got back home after this year in 2016, I was so restless. I just had to keep traveling outside of America. Since my London trip, I traveled to Portugal, Spain, Israel, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Morocco, and back to England three more times.
8. I had been a freelance photographer on the side for years. But in 2018, I made the leap in to photographing weddings full time. One thing that I’ve always loved about photography is that I felt like it was a creative way for me to put my History degree into practice. Documenting moments for families is essentially making history. In my time as a wedding photographer, I’ve been featured in numerous wedding publications and have been able to travel around the world photographing weddings. And weddings weren’t the only things I photographed–I also photographed for a Korean music blog. Some of the artists I’ve been able to photograph in concert were ZICO, Stray Kids, BewhY, and Itzy.