As it edges towards the end of another year here in South Korea, it is always a good opportunity to review 2025. As with everybody I suppose, much has happened this year personally and I have really not blogged as much as I had wanted. However, one thing that I have been working on busily is planning, filming, and editing video content for my YouTube Channel. So apologies if this website has been rather quiet of late.

Anyhow, let’s start at the beginning of the year.

January

As I had applied for the role of English Development Coordinator at the beginning of the year, essentially responsible for students’ improvement with their English in an international business school, and was successful, I was first tasked with organising and managing a winter camp.

The winter camp was geared towards Korean high school students whom had just applied for study at the business school, but required that much needed exposure and support with their communicative ability in English in a relaxed yet intensive environment. The intensive English camp ran for two weeks, and I also worked alongside a fellow Brit from Scotland.

We both discovered, as we were expecting to share a class with one teacher in the morning and then we would swap in the afternoon, that there were two classes which would be split depending upon the student’s level of English. With a few minutes to spare, I explained the situation to my fellow teacher, and she graciously agreed to teach mornings and we would swap classes in the afternoon.

Phew! Crisis averted.

We decided that afternoons would be a good chance for students to work on a presentation project, and what better idea than for students to plan their trip in the UK. Students would present their itinerary and budget to class, with places to visit, things to do, and where to stay. They would also learn a lot more about the UK with a Scottish lady and an English man.

With the time I had remaining, I decided to create a video on a 25 minute lesson with Preply with a corporate client. It took a while to edit and I noticed that my MacBook Pro was starting to slow down.

Anyhow, I had to head to Incheon Airport to meet my parents in the final week of January. This was my chance to unwind and relax, after an intensive winter camp, and what better way than to have my parents visit me in South Korea, for 6 weeks. They were rather bushwhacked and needed to rest before acclimatising.

After a few days, once my parents had fully recovered, they wanted to go to Japan and visit Hiroshima. So we sat down, planned our route from Tokyo to Hiroshima and back again.

February

We started our travels in Japan on 1 February 2025. It was a rather busy itinerary, with much to do during the six days. However, on the first day, our flight was delayed and we ended up arriving at our hotel after midnight. We had to get up the following day at 6am, to get our tickets for the bullet train for our remaining five days in Japan.

As I had never been to Japan before, I really wanted to document this trip with my parents and recorded much of travel. The video took many weeks to edit and still it hit towards an hour of content in the end, with the video finally released in March 2025. It didn’t really perform as well as my usual content on YouTube but it was more to document my first trip to Japan with my parents.

For those that are curious, here is the video below.

There were some highlights for me personally when visiting Japan which included visiting the Peace Park in Hiroshima, having okonomiyaki freshly made in front of me on a hot iron grill, as well as thankfully seeing Mount Fuji in all its splendour. Much was packed in during our six day trip and I would like to visit Japan in the future, perhaps by ferry from Busan.

Towards the end of February, I took my parents up to Seoul so they could visit the usual touristic spots. I spent two days with them, before I returned back home to Daejeon, and they stayed a few extra days in Seoul. You can some of the pictures from Seoul below.

My parents returned back home towards the end of February after their extended time in Korea, and it is always nice to welcome them to the Land of Morning Calm.

March

March was a rather quiet start to the month, apart from the start of the Spring semester at work, so I made the spontaneous decision one evening to venture out to a local jazz bar – I know the owner – and ask whether I could play a few tunes on my saxophone. He agreed, so I attempted to play a jazz standard with the musicians that evening. I was glad to have made the effort as I met a few local musicians which would provide a blessing in the coming weeks.

A week later, I was approached by Graham Stanley to see if I could participate in a Teachers Talk Radio show about creating educational video content. I checked my diary to see if I had any time. Alas, my diary was completely empty, so I jumped at the chance before my boredom set in for the remaining period of my holiday.

You can have a listen to the full episode below.

Two weeks after approaching the local jazz bar, I was informed by the owner that he was organising an annual celebration for his bar and wanted me to play saxophone with some other musicians. I connected with the other musicians and arranged a rehearsal at one of the individual’s music studio. We sat down, and decided on some of the music that we would cover during our set at the bar.

We rehearsed for a few hours and decided on the final set list for the concert, and all I had to do in the meantime was practise at home. There were two groups of musicians that were performing that evening so we would change during the intermission, but we were a few weeks away before the concert.

The next thing that I decided to do was focus on creating a video about the British Council’s practices with their remote teachers, highlighting the precarious nature that online educators face. It was in response to a Guardian article that was published, and it was a time to review and respond to what had been reported in the news article.

At the end of this month, I had my concert and invited some musically inclined colleagues to attend as well as my ever patient wife. I played the set that we had agreed and by the time that I had got to the end of the set, I was all warmed up and ready to play some more, but had to step off the stage and make my exit. But the final song, “Georgia on my Mind”, was received positively as my chops were ready and I had finally found my groove.

April

With a month after the Spring semester starting, I was still creating video content on my YouTube. I was approached by Preply in March to create a sponsored video about their platform and how relevant it is for professional educators more so in 2025 than before. I worked on this video for quite a few weeks, making all the necessary edits and adjustments before it was finally released in April.

It is this year’s most successfully performing video accumulating almost 25,000 views. It took a while to plan, shoot, edit, upload, delete the upload, re-edit, re-upload before all parties were happy. Personally, I am pleased at how well the uptake has been and it really helped my YouTube Channel during the year.

It was this particular video that I learnt the style of thumbnail that I should adopt for all future videos, and I kept with it over the remainder of the year. I now keep a number of styles at the ready with Canva.

The next thing that emerged after my podcast with Graham Stanley was being invited to join Teachers Talk Radio as a host every fortnight on a Sunday evening here in Korea. I had not really considered being a host before but after a little discussion with some of the organisers, I would usually not have much going on during a Sunday evening, so dived in and had my first TTR show during this month.

May

May was a rather quiet month compared to the last four months. I was a busy beaver getting everything together for my courses at work. I was delivering courses related to writing and presentation skills, business English, as well as holding a range of workshops.

With much of my work starting to take my time, I had little time to create content on YouTube, but the most successful for the month was related to an update with Preply.

I was still experimenting with thumbnail content but I had to use the obligatory Pikachu face which many content creators try to incorporate into their videos. This particular video garnered 1,300 views, perhaps thanks to the rather bewildering thumbnail.

I continued the Teachers Talk Radio show on Sundays during this month and the most memorable guest that I had on was having Joanna Hebel join me when we discussed online teaching and freelancing. The show is available below to listen to when you wish.

June

By the time June arrived, I was nearing the end of the spring semester at work. I continued to shadow my colleague before he would retire within the next few months. Anyhow, to mark the end of another semester, I joined students and a colleague with the official university’s hiking club for a wander locally.

It was the first time that I had ventured to Daecheongho Lake (대청호) but it was the set for many Korean period dramas and TV shows. There was also an event going on down the road with many plants having been cultivated and some live music was being performed at this location.

After the term was complete, and I had submitted all the necessary paperwork for my courses, I was approached to make a video about another online teaching platform.

I was asked to record an organised and agreed online trial lesson with a young learner. It was quite a unique experience as I had not taught young learners for many years, particularly online, and I had to consider what would be acceptable for both the learner, my audience, as well as the company. If you are interested in teaching young learners, then I would recommend looking at StudyBuddy.

I also had a show with Teachers Talk Radio about teaching in South Korea, and it was a great chance to share experiences with a fellow English teacher here in the Land of Morning Calm.

July

At the end of June, I received some unfavourable news that my father was rather unwell and had been hospitalised. It was quickly decided that I head over to France to visit for three weeks – the total holiday entitlement that I had for the summer. Both my son and wife had visited, with my son staying on and my wife returning to South Korea, with me leaving Incheon Airport and heading to the south of France.

The weather in South Korea was starting to become quite stifling and the south of France was no different. I stayed much of my time indoors with my parents and my son, rather than outdoors during the height of the summer. The only time that I went out was to Bagnères-de-Luchon to watch the Tour de France.

We pitched up with our campervan at the train station, along with many many others, and walked up to face of the mountain taking a cabin to the peak, and I am sharing many of the pictures from my time in France.

Towards the end of July, I returned back to South Korea and it was a nice respite to spend time with family, despite the family emergency, which reminded us all how fragile life can be.

August

With another month remaining until the start of the Fall – ahem, I mean the Autumn (and apologies for the Americanisms creeping in but that is how influential American English is in South Korea) – semester, there was a little time to spend with family in this continent. Anyhow, I discovered that my 2019 MacBook Pro was starting to slow down and I was not able to use for online tutoring or any video editing. Thus, I decided that I should update my desktop computer with something that would not slow down for whatever purpose.

I enlisted the help of my brother-in-law who helped me install all the necessary components, but I was waiting to save up for my graphics card which was obviously the most expensive part of my new PC setup. However, I would have to wait until the end of the month until my graphics card would be ordered, so I placed the PC away in the cupboard until that moment.

Nevertheless, our family decided to head out to spend quality time with each other, and as I had never visited Daecheon Beach (대천 해수욕장) I wanted to visit. After persuading my brother-in-law, we drove over an hour to the west coast and had a wonderful day together. Highlights included riding the coastal tram and seeing the sunset. This area of Korea is famous for their mud festival, and perhaps I should visit again to experience this.

After this mini-break, I managed to have quite a few online lessons over August and some of the sponsored deals started to come through with their remittance, so I was able to invest in a graphics card for the new PC build. Again, my brother-in-law came to the rescue and installed it without hiccup, and then I held my breath and hoped that the computer would install Windows 11 without any technical issue. Thankfully it worked first time and, fingers crossed, it has now replaced my MacBook Pro – I even use it for video editing now.

Here is a breakdown of my PC build which I use on a daily basis:

Since building this, I have recently ordered another 1TB SSD as much of my video editing (and gaming) has taken up much of the first hard drive. However, the PC runs like a dream and I have not seen any performance issues – it is even quicker than my MacBook Pro.

When I was ready, I returned to Teachers Talk Radio after a short summer away with a tribute to Phil Longwell after his untimely passing and it was a pleasure to have both Tom Rogers and Graham Stanley join me during this rather sobering show. Although Phil passed away in August, I am sure he is in the thoughts of those that he influenced and it was amazing to hear that he successfully completed the London Marathon despite his deteriorating health that he faced.

During the final few weeks of August, I was asked to deliver a summer camp for Japanese High School students to our University, which was great as I had been away from campus for a number of months and it is always nice to dust my office and get into the swing of things before the start of September.

The students were an absolute joy to teach, and I focused more on communication and pronunciation. I said goodbye to them and I was then ready to start my next semester.

September

I started the semester feeling refreshed and keen to meet my new students for my courses. However, with the writing course, I wanted to discover more about their ideas regarding the acceptable usage of AI. After the initial meet and greet, as well as the common ice breakers, I got students into small groups so they could brainstorm what they consider acceptable and unacceptable usages of AI within their course.

Some of the ideas that the students considered were rather telling, and quite different to how I would approach AI. I decided that the writing course would be wholly pen and paper without any reliance towards technology – something that students were feeling rather unpleased about.

During one weekend in September, I was asked whether I wished to take part in an English Speech Contest for the Institute of Korean Confucian Culture (IKCC), where I would grade different presentations.

It was a rather eye-opening experience, not merely having to wake up an unearthly hour to get to the institute on time, but the whole culture of delivering a presentation is based upon memorising a whole speech, delivering it without any hiccup, and then receiving some feigned applause. Not to take away from the hard work from those that participated, it was rather enlightening to see a parent shocked that their little child had not received a prize and then decided to berate the winner of the contest, which really put a dampener on things. I was thankful to get the train back home and then enjoy the rest of my uninterrupted weekend.

Towards the end of September, I welcomed Eric (from Etacude) to Daejeon and we managed to organise a recording at a local café. We sat down for a few hours and shared our experience of teaching in South Korea, and the recommendations that we have for anyone wishing to teach in this unique country. Funnily enough, it was the first time that we had met face-to-face, despite us having communicated extensively over the past number of years remotely, and it seemed like we were catching up like good friends.

Anyhow, you can watch the video above which I was pleased to have edited on my newly built PC, and my workstation ran incredibly smoothly when editing all the footage from the day.

October

Another month gone, it was time to continue teaching my university courses, but I still had time to complete a variety of videos and another sponsored video came along which was Twenix. I recorded the video at the end of the previous month, and after a little communication between ourselves, as well as re-editing, we finally agreed on a video on this alternative online teaching platform.

Again, I relied on my new workstation to edit the video (as you can see above) and I was really pleased to see that I was able to produce quality videos without having to wait an eternity for my MacBook Pro to render footage. Nonetheless, the video was finally released.

Towards the end of October, I had a bit of time available, so I decided that I would head out to the local jazz bar, particularly as a blues rock band were performing. I turned up and managed to unwind listening to some wonderful songs throughout the evening.

I then spent the rest of the month with my head buried, just ensuring that the semester was going smoothly enough.

November

At the beginning of November, I decided to pick up my Korean vocabulary books again and start to study once more. Despite picking up the Korean language here and there, I never really made a concerted effort to learn the language so thought that I would get a few memo cards, open my rather dusty books, and learn some more phrases.

Perhaps my renewed Korean learning came about as I was approaching my forty seventh birthday, and I desired to improve my communicative ability with more complex phrasing. Nevertheless, my birthday came about and my wife and I decided that we would head out and celebrate together by having some Korean food.

We visited an area in Daejeon that we had not yet been to, despite us living here for over two years, and stumbled across a nice restaurant serving steamed pork, with kimchi and oysters.

The next thing that I had discovered, while I was searching for a place to play my saxophone at, was a jazz bar in the south of Seoul. My good wife called them to check that it was still encouraging musicians to play together, and thankfully it was. I booked my train ticket up to Seoul and had a blast as it had been a while since I last played with other musicians. I have continued to head to this place over the past few months now as they are a wonderful group of people.

One video that I had made at the end of November was rather spontaneous but it was about how to become an independent online English teacher. I decided to make it as a promise to myself that I should start to promote myself as an independent online tutor and also offer courses for anyone wishing to do anything similar.

After eight years or so of online tutoring experience, I do feel that it is time to help train other professionals about how they should go about succeeding as an independent online teacher.

December

We reach the final month of the year and I have just finished another semester at the University. There are only a few things to complete admin-wise, but everything else is done for now. However, I finished the courses and I do hope that the students feel more comfortable and confident at delivering presentations, communicating in English, as well as being to find their voice with their writing.

I delivered another Teachers Talk Radio show where Claudia Tumba was invited as a guest, and she shared her experiences of storytelling in the classroom. As we are both based in the South Korea, much of our experiences seemed to connect with each other.

I have continued to practise my saxophone each day as I feel rather rusty and have switched to Christmas songs during my practice sessions. On top of this, I am now playing various scales and ensuring my timing is on point as it is crucial whenever one plays jazz music. Thankfully, there is much available on YouTube.

So there we are at the end of the year. Thank you for getting to the end of the post – it might have appeared like the never ending story. So where does this leave us for next year? Well, I am going to save you the trouble and post about this in the future.

One thing you will be promised is more regular posts from me in the New Year. Nonetheless, I wish everyone a splendid Christmas and all the best for 2026!