Lots o stuff...

Wow, it's been a while. I keep meaning to write here, but then I feel drained and I'll put it off until the next day. I guess that 'next day' lasted two weeks. Ooops.

Things have been somewhat crazy with the school again. As I had mentioned before our school was not giving us pension or health insurance. Both of which are in Korea law that they must be given to foreign teachers. So we fought it a while ago and finally our director said, ok we'll give you pension and health insurance. Our next pay day came and still pension and health insurance didn't show up on our pay sheet. So Heather and I went to talk to our director. Now talking to your elders in a place of employment is a bit of an art here. You must be very respectful and act like you are so grateful to everything that they are doing. If you need something, in order to get it you must present it as a favor. Like they would be doing you a favor and you will return the favor to them eventually. It's all very twisted and complicated, but thats how the Korean culture is. So after talking with our director in this manner he said, ok give me two weeks and I will have your health insurance and pension. We talked to the other foreign teachers after that meeting and they said that our director said the same thing to them and it just ended up dragging out for the whole year with them never receiving health insurance or pension. Uggg!!

So in the last two weeks while we've been waiting for our director to get us health insurance and pension we have been exploring other possibilities. We've begun applying to other schools and checking out our options. Yesterday I had an interview at a huge hogwan (private school) chain. It went well, but the school is so much more rigid than my school and they are only interested in placing me outside of Seoul...no go on that one. So the search continues. In this whole searching process Heather and I have learned that in order to leave our school and start work at another school, our school must release our visa. If our school is mad that we are leaving they can refuse to release the visa and that would cause huge problems. If they do release the visa though, we have to go through the whole visa process again which will be a headache to do while not in the US. Either way we go, there is bound to be problems so we're unsure of what to do at this point. We could stay at our school with no pension an health insurance, but we think our school is being audited for fraud on taxes and pension so it could get shut down and then we'd really be screwed. Or, we could find another job and go through the whole headache of re-applying for a visa and starting all over again after three months. It's all been so frustrating, but also an adventure at the same time. I had no idea what to expect when coming here but so far it's been a great learning experience and I know that whatever works out in the end will be what is best.

On another note, the rainy season has begun and wow does it rain here!! The first day of the rainy season it down-poured all day long, never letting up once. By the time I had walked to school under my umbrella I was still soaked. My school also decided that it would be a good day for a teachers lunch out. So all of the teachers trekked out into the rainy streets to find some traditional korean food. Once we got to the restaurant we were all wet, but sitting on the warm floor and eating hot kimchi tofu soup was the perfect thing for a rainy day.

My students have given me a Korean name now. It's kim-ellie. They seemed to think that it was important for me to have a Korean name since they had to have english names. I'm loving my students more and more. Each day I get to know them a bit better and I feel that a lot of them are truly learning better english from my teaching methods. Some days though, I look at myself and can't believe that I am a teacher, what a privilege.