In the summer of 1993 I graduated from SUNY Albany with a Masters degree in History. Even with an advanced degree, it was difficult to find a teaching job. I taught some college classes and subbed here and there but could not find a full-time teaching position.

In February 1995, I answered an advertisement in the Washington Post. A recruiter was looking for people interested in teaching English as a Second Language in South Korea. I had just bought my first computer with a high speed 14.4 fax modem (remember, this was the dawn of the Internet age) and sent my resume to this recruiter by fax.

Well, long story short, I received a call the very next day! Imagine, little interest here in the states for 2 years and within 24 hours someone wanted to hire me. My girlfriend (now wife) and I  went for an interview with the recruiter and were hired on the spot. Two months later we arrived in Korea for the adventure of a lifetime!

We first lived and taught in the city of Ulsan, in the southeastern part of Korea. Today, Ulsan is a hip, trendy metropolis, but all this has happened in little over a decade. When my wife and I arrived in Ulsan in 1995, there were few 'Westerners' in the city. After a few weeks there we 'affectionately' called it the 'Wild West' because most of the English Conversation teachers were living in Seoul or the suburbs of that city and few had been hired on in provincial cities like Ulsan. Although this was about to change, we were some of the first to arrive in provincial Korea and we were treated like royalty one minute and aliens the next. I cannot tell you how often I was stared at, spoken about, screamed at by young boys and girls who thought I looked like Jun Trabolta (I had darker hair then...actually, I had hair then) or had a kid rub my forearm and say 'tulbo ajushi' which means 'hairy man', or, just as likely, 'monkey'! My wife would be a movie star as well, often being called Julia Roberts!

We would eventually meet another 30 or so Westerners living in this far-off city, many of them from England, Australia and New Zealand. We would get together as often as possible and share 'war stories' from the front lines. Info and knowledge were key to survival and we networked because all we had were each other. When we finally left Ulsan, we realized that our experience as 'expatriates' was unique. While we wrote 1995 on letters, it could have been 1965, or even earlier for that matter as we all lived the life of a 'stranger in a strange land'.

Today, with the Internet and blogs, it's easy to find friends (link to Ulsan web site for foreigners) and info in almost any place on Earth. In 1995, the Internet was in it's infancy and info was more difficult to come by.