Ancheon – Sleepy Paradise or Devil’s Heartland??

Ah, Ancheon my home ‘myeon’ (means something smaller than town, I assume village) is the strangest, most alien place I have ever set foot in for longer than a week… its all very well experiencing ‘the real this and that country’ for a few days, while you seem all ‘right on’ and explorer, but the reality of living in a place like this for a whole year is one that is very difficult to comprehend!! Ancheon was formed in the 1990s after the Korean Government kicked out people living in a town nearby in order to flood the area for a dam. Most people moved to the cities but a few stayed in the local area, attending my school and living in 5 tiny villages – Ancheon is the biggest of these villages – I have no idea how small the others must be! I am the first westerner to ever live in Ancheon, non of its 100 residents speak English and there is not a good meal or coffee shop or internet café to be seen – the nearest town is Jinan which is 24 km away and therefore it is a very lonely place to be… I make the most of it by incessantly watching soap operas downloaded online…I didn’t come to Korea to watch English tv, but at time the options are very limited, so its either do that or meditate – and I DON’T meditate!!!

  bus stop - about as exciting as it gets in these parts!!

Let me explain how my living here came about; when I applied for this post I was told I would be living in the small mountain town of Jinan, Jeollabuk-do… 40 minutes by bus from the Province capital, Jeonju with ‘excellent bus transport links’ according to Bonnie my evil recruiter – may she burn in hell! I checked it out on Wikipedia and was informed it had 30,000 residents ‘Wow, that’s small I thought, I’m pretty sure there were that many people living on my street in East London! Still, I thought it would be exciting to live a quiet, peaceful life in the country, going for walks and breathing fresh air and the like… but alas it was not to be and I was one of the many westerners to be screwed over by recruiters each year! I would kill to live in a town of 30,000 right now, people in the street, and shops and noise would be a glorious thing!

My bubble was burst on the first proper day in Korea, I was taken shopping by my co-teacher and informed ‘there is no store near your house, so we will need to buy provisions in Jeonju’. ‘Weird’ I thought, ‘How can a town of 30,000 have NO store’, as I was massively jetlagged I didn’t pay too much attention and assumed I must be living slightly outside Jinan in this ‘Ancheon’ place – maybe it was a suburb like Royton is to Oldham! The bubble was burst further still the following day when I was taken to my school and my new home – since labeled (lovingly of course) ‘The Shack’.. This place was LITERALLY in the middle of nowhere, I noticed there was one shop that sold bus tickets, a bank and randomly a post office – why there needs to be a bank and a post office in a village with no people in it is beyond me!!! I was taken to the school first – Ancheon Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle and High School. I had been told that I would be teaching in high school, so it was a shock to discover that I would be teaching all of the students in the whole school… I was later to discover that my school is usually one served by a circulating teacher and the only reason for my presence was the insistence of the new Principal who insisted the school have one teacher for itself – big thanks to that guy – not!! Still, that didn’t bother me too much, as I thought variation is the spice of life etc etc….

The biggest shock was to come when I was taken to my house (the Shack), which lies in the middle of Ancheon in the back garden of some old couple’s house. Obviously, there are no apartments in Ancheon. The first thing that caught my eye upon entering the house was the fact that a very noisy chicken coop was set up in the garden –ah how the chickens loved to keep me awake at night! My biggest victory to date in Korea is that I can now sleep through them, but the first few weeks were very tough with the 5am wakeup calls – not good for a girl who started work at 10am in London, and who is only used to the beautiful sounds of sirens in the night!!

Chickens - grrrr!!!

After seeing the wondrous exterior, I was then taken into my shack, where I was promptly told that I would basically be a prisoner in Ancheon in the evenings – there is not escape out of the village after 6.30pm (I finished work at 5.10pm), thus I promptly burst into tears, as the horror of what I had done hit me full speed!

The Shack in all it's glory

                                                                

I understand that this argument is completely veering towards the argument of ‘Ancheon is the Devil’s heartland’, so I must explain there are some benefits to living here, especially now I am more settled… Ancheon is set in some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen, the mountains of Jeollabuk-do and surrounded by a beautiful lake – I feel it is a good place to reflect on my life and hopefully once I am more settled here, positive decisions will be inspired by it!! It’s also very quiet and peaceful and actually gives time to think without noise and rush everywhere! I’m also something of a local celebrity – something I could never say in London, and everyone rushes to greet me when they see me and give me random bits of fruit – the old couple whose house I live next to are also very kind (the Koreans are the kindest people on earth and will go massively out of their way for you at every turn), and I now have a constant stream of eggs – thanks chickens!! 

Beautiful Ancheon

Although no one here speaks English and I don’t speak Korean, I think we have a mutual friendship and interest in each other. As my school is so small and my pupils mostly live in my village, I have got to know them all quite well and they all enthusiastically shout after me when I am walking down the street – it’s nice to feel wanted!! I have also managed to get out of here sometimes – meeting Greg in Jeonju on a Tuesday night and getting a taxi back to Ancheon from Jinan – luckily the taxis here aren’t as expensive as in the UK!! I am also out of here every weekend, experiencing all Korea has to offer, so its nice actually to get back to the peace of my room after a busy weekend being cultured and Love Motelling…

So, Ancheon; sleepy paradise or devil’s heartland?? YOU DECIDE!!!