• Kylie Genter graduated from college with no career plan.
• At 22, she moved to South Korea to teach English and became fascinated by female freedivers who harvest seafood.
• Now, 37 and married, she spends around five days a week diving with women in their 70s and 80s.

This-as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kylie Genter, 36, a Haenyeo diver on Jeju Island, South Korea. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I'd been teaching English in South Korea for four years when I learned about the Haenyeo — female freedivers who harvest seafood without using modern equipment. I was interested. So, in the summer of 2018, I completed diving lessons with the hopes that maybe I could work with them one day.

A few years later, my Korean husband, a scuba diver, read on a diving group chat that a small village on the southwestern side of Jeju Island was recruiting new divers. Their youngest diver was 68 — I wanted to give it a try.

At first, I was rejected, but I got invited back a month later. I don't know what changed in that one month, but I guess they suddenly became open to it, and I went in for an interview.

In January 2024, I started as a diving intern, and after two years of training, I received my Haenyeo license in April.

Finding my footing in South Korea

I was born in upstate New York, the middle of three kids. I went to SUNY Oswego and graduated with a degree in communications.

After graduating in 2012, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I applied to a few graduate schools and jobs, but nothing worked out. I was stressed out and wanted to leave. I thought about going to Japan to teach English, as I'd studied Japanese for a year while in university.

Instead, I settled for South Korea, where some schools offered housing. I didn't know much about Korea at that time — I wasn't really a big K-pop fan before I came.

So, just four months after graduating, I moved to Jinju, a three-and-a-half-hour high-speed train ride from Seoul, to work as an English teacher. In the mornings, I'd do 20-minute lessons with kids. In the afternoon, I'd have speaking classes.

I continued teaching until August 2020. That same year, I got married and started a pension business with my husband, while still teaching English on the side.

Building my life as a diver

To get my license, I had to dive 50 days within a year, sell 1.2 million South Korean won, or $884, worth of catch, and get a unanimous vote from the divers in the collective. It took me two years.

Language was an issue; despite having spent years in the country, I still couldn't always understand what was happening. My biggest strength is that I'm physically fitter than some of the divers — they are mostly in their 70s and 80s. So, I help out, like when they need someone to carry their nets full of catches or wash the dishes.

A lot of the work is physically demanding. If you don't feel good, you can't just push through. I can't dive if I have a cold or my sinuses are blocked because I can't equalize underwater. It's important to keep my body physically strong and healthy through working out.

Committing to an unconventional job

I enjoy my life. Every day is different, and I do a lot of things besides diving. I run a pet hotel with my husband; sometimes I still tutor and give lectures. I work more hours, but I also have a lot more flexibility to pursue other things. I don't need permission for a break or a day off.

On normal days, I wake up and take the dogs for a walk. Then, I go diving depending on the weather. If it's not great, I only dive for two or three hours. A normal day of diving may take four or five. After that, I take the dogs for another walk.

In our village, we typically dive five days a week. We'll take our catch and accumulate it after one cycle. After that, we'll sell it to the regional fishing co-operative. They'll pay our president, and she then distributes the money.

Being a diver isn't a full-time job. A lot of what we earn depends on the catch. I make around $2,000 a year. Teaching is much more financially stable. But I love learning from women who have been carrying on this work for generations.

When I'm diving, nothing else matters. I just have to focus on diving and catching seafood. Nobody can call me. I don't have to look at my phone and waste time doomscrolling.

When I'm deep underwater, it can be meditative, especially on days when the ocean is calm, and there's plenty to catch. I see myself wedded to this village for the rest of my life.

• My husband and I moved from the US to the Netherlands without seeing our new apartment in person.
• We encountered lots of surprises, like the lengthy Dutch application process.
• Although we love our apartment, we've had to get used to a few cultural differences.

After living as digital nomads for nearly two years, my husband and I decided to move from the US to the Netherlands.

We'd visited several times and fell in love with the walkability and bike culture. Plus, I have a connection to the country, since my great-grandparents were Dutch.

With the help of a real-estate agent, we found an apartment remotely from the US, signing a yearlong lease in the city of Utrecht before ever setting foot in the home.

We encountered some surprises while looking for an apartment

Since the process of finding an apartment abroad can often take months, we chose to search remotely from the US. To make things easier, we hired a Dutch real-estate agent with local connections who could view apartments for us in person.

The prep work was much more intense than I was used to. In the US, I've leased apartments in three different states, and the extent of the application typically included filling out a basic form and sometimes completing a background check.

That wasn't going to cut it in the Netherlands.

Our agent gave us a long list of materials to prepare, from 12 months of bank statements and links to our LinkedIn profiles, to a "get to know us" letter, which included our hobbies and photos of us. Then she went looking.

Rentals often get snatched up within a few hours or days, so my husband and I were regularly waking up at 4 a.m. in Colorado to read our agent's emails about the new listings each day.

When we finally found one that checked all our boxes, we asked her to schedule a walkthrough. Luckily, she recorded a video for us to review, so we didn't need to wake up early for this part of the process.

It was during the walkthrough, however, that we learned Dutch apartment listings aren't as detailed as the ones we were used to in the US. When our agent arrived, we discovered the listing had omitted several important pieces of information.

For example, there was a fully fenced-in back garden, complete with a shed, picnic table, and blackberry and rose bushes. The kitchen had a dishwasher. And there was a washing machine hidden away behind a cabinet door — and a dryer (which is not as common in Europe).

Score, right? So we jumped at the opportunity, put in our bid, and jumped for joy when our offer was accepted.

Despite a few setbacks, we fell in love with our apartment

We arrived in the Netherlands a few weeks later, traveling directly from the airport to our rental. When we unlocked the door for the first time, hoping we'd fall in love with our new home, it was … freezing.

Turns out, the heat had stopped working, and the rental company couldn't send someone to fix it until the next day. So, we spent our first night in the Netherlands at a hotel.

Thankfully, the heat was fixed the following day, and then we could start unpacking. This is when we began to notice some of the more nuanced differences of a Dutch house compared to an American one.

The first thing to get used to? The alarmingly steep stairs (a hallmark of skinny, tall Dutch houses) which made moving furniture up to our second-floor office feel like a Herculean feat.

We also learned to accept moths and gnats as houseguests, since Dutch windows don't typically have screens. However, with no air conditioning and a 100-year-old house that was built to retain heat, we definitely want to keep those windows open.

Overall, aside from a few stowaway insects and some hot days, we've been very fortunate with our rental. I particularly love the neighborhood and how we can walk to a grocery store, bakery, or park within five minutes.

The biggest lessons have come from being part of a Dutch neighborhood

Although finding our rental was a whirlwind process, I've found the most interesting parts of living here have come from the cultural differences between American and Dutch neighborhoods.

For example, shortly after arriving, our neighbor invited us to the neighborhood WhatsApp group. If you need to borrow a drill or lose your cat, you send a message to the group.

It's very active, and joining the group helped me feel like I was part of a community before knowing anyone here. Although I've heard of similar groups in the US, I've never been invited to join one.

Ordering packages is also very different. Back in the States, packages would be left by my door. In the Netherlands, however, they aren't left unattended.

Instead, the delivery driver will start ringing the neighbors' doorbells until someone is home. Then, they'll leave a digital note about which house has your package.

One place I didn't expect to feel such a contrast is the sidewalk. On sunny days, my Dutch neighbors bring out their dining room chairs, park them on the bricks outside their front door, and enjoy a cold drink. Sometimes, it'll feel like an impromptu block party — and I couldn't be happier to join in the festivities.

After leasing an apartment across the world, sight unseen, would I do it again? I sure would — especially if I could hire a real-estate agent to check out the home in person.

The quirks of our apartment and neighborhood are all part of the experience of living abroad, and although I may not have expected them, I've now grown attached to these cultural differences.