#andsoju

Haha, you guessed right!

I went to juno hair (in sinchon) really friendly, but I wasn't able to communicate very well--showed a picture tho and they did it exactly!

Hey there! So placement in the TaLK program varies quite a lot. I was placed in Jeonju, which is a relatively big city and not what I would consider rural. However, I had a few friends who were definitely in rural areas. For example, my boyfriend was placed in Jangsu. He was the only TaLK scholar in his town. The only person that spoke English was his mentor teacher, and she wasn’t very good. Luckily, he speaks Korean fluently, so it wasn’t very difficult for him. It was just boring because there aren’t many people his age living there. He came to Jeonju pretty much every weekend anyway so it didn’t matter much. It’s worth noting that EPIK does rural placement as well if they need to. There were a few EPIK teachers living in or near Jangsu.

Honestly though, you can get by pretty easily without having to speak much Korean. I’m conversational, but there wasn’t really a need to have conversation on a daily basis with the people you come into contact with. If I go to the store to buy something or go out to eat, there’s not really much to the Korean that you would need to use.

I applied with my friend from back home. We were placed in the same city about 20 minutes away from each other. Depending on the city, quite a few scholars will likely be close to you. There were at least 10 TaLK scholars in Jeonju with me.