The title of this blog (Another Year) is for two reasons. The first reason, if you haven't heard via the grapevine or from this horse's mouth. I have decided to stay in Korea for at least one more year. I resigned my contract about a month ago. I enjoy teaching and have become quite attached to my friends and students here.
The second reason is because of my birthday I celebrated back in March. It was an interesting birthday. One of my coworkers came to my room at noon to drop off some pictures of Ethan's wedding and to give me a bottle of soju as a b-day present. She also dropped the news that she was leaving Chungdahm.... The next day! She didn't tell anyone, I was the first to know. Apparently she had been planning it for several weeks. This put me in a sticky situation, our boss needed to know so we could get a replacement. I called Ethan up to my room to have a chat with him. Luckily he had gotten back from his honeymoon and was just enjoying unemployed life so he was able to cover all of her classes (something that no other teacher could have done). Still, bolting in the night is not a great thing to do to people.
That night a few of us went out to dinner and then I played videogames with John.
The next day I went to pick my friend Joe up from the airport in lieu of going to a St Patrick's Day Festival. Joe was planning on joining me in my adventure here in Korea and working for the same company just at a different branch. For reasons unclear to me Joe decided that Korea was not the right place for him and left approx 36 hours after he landed. This has taught me two things:
1. Korea is not the right place for everyone.
2. "Never a lender nor a borrower be"
At any rate, what is done is done. I am still enjoying it here and can't wait to see Mandy and Ethan's baby this fall! I am sad to see John and Anne leaving at the end of this month. My gaming partner will be heading to Thailand and around Malaysia to do some exploring and also going to be learning about some Eco-friendly sustainable living type stuff. Pretty interesting.
Since Thomas and Kristin left (two teachers that came here after me and stayed 8 months) we have been getting new teachers. The newest teacher to come to ChungDahm: Emily from Chicago. She is pretty entertaining and I have enjoyed showing off my mad Korean restaurant skills and tricks of Korea. Dan from the UK will be here in a week. Then 2 more next month when John and Anne leave and another teacher is breaking contract and leaving in July, so we will be getting another one then. The one more when another teacher leaves. The moral of this is that in about 3 months, Ethan and I will be the only teachers here for longer than 3 months. Good luck to us all.
In more recent news. I spent the day before class yesterday with Rachel, her brother, and her mom. It was the first day of the Annual Ansan Street Festival. The weather was amazing food was amazing and playing in the park was amazing. Check out pictures here.
Well that is about it for now. As always I will make the promise to be more diligent in my writings....
