Have a Hep-B Day!

I have a flight! I have confirmation of my month off. I don't have confirmation of my future salary/hours/job. I'll take what I can get.

One of the consequences of a looming international flight is I suddenly have to do the many things I could have done last week but at the time didn't have to ergo I didn't.

I spent my morning picking up the results of my medical check for teaching in France next year. I'm pretty sure it wasn't necessary to give me blood/urine tests and x-ray my lungs. I think they just needed to know I wasn't dying. But when operating in a completely foreign hospital with a weird language you sorta do what they say. It turned out that the series of Hep B shots from grade 8 had run their course and I got another today. Good times. Though it reminded me of the deeply cheesy  slogan I made the title of this blog post. Finally the doc checked and signed the "healthy" box. 

There's the issue of the global economic crisis that sadly has affected the Won rather catastrophically. Generally speaking the English teachers in Korea are extremely unimpressed. I am trying to devise a plan to best protect my hard earned millions (of Won) that will hopefully include a James Bond titanium suitcase ;)

I'll be home for Xmas... yes... no... yes... yes!?!

I think so at least. I will be in Canada for xmas this year. How surreal is that? Since signing up for Korea about 11 months ago I've had it firmly fixed in my brain that I would work in Korea for a year and that would include my first xmas away from all family.

That all changed dramatically when my school closed its doors yesterday. Originally I was led to believe I had happened upon an unexpected month of paid vacation (hanging out essentially until the new school opens at the beginning of January). Probably the most awesome deal ever. So I started thinking about what to do. It finally dawned on me two days ago I should go to Canada. It is xmas after all.  

I arrived at work yesterday totally jazzed about the prospect of going home for xmas and a list of questions to iron out the details of this holiday time; but also acutely aware that this seemed absolutely too good to be true and therefore probably was.  Well the trouble started around 2 pm. I was chatting to boss no.2 (whose English language skills are quite iffy) who said something that instantly put me in a heightened sense of alarm. He alluded to boss no.1 maybe paying for a flight home for me. (The standard operating procedure for teachers in Korea is we have our flights paid for at the beginning and end of a contract.) If I would be getting a flight I would not be getting a new job in January. Not good.

The last day had a very weird vibe to it as last days are prone to have. As the day wore on I got more and more jittery about the uncertainty of my future in Korea. What was I doing on Monday? Would I be in Canada or Busan? Or Jinju (at about 6 pm my boss inexplicably offered me a completely new gig in a city 1 hour north of Busan)? I can definitely say Friday was not a good day for Julia's nerves. 

So at the end of the day we had a work dinner. Ok, game time, I thought, let's clear this all up.

Hoo boy was it a doozy! Three hours of non-stop negotiation about December, pay, vacation, pay, contracts, pay, the new job, pay, hours, pay.... It was probably the most intense dinner discussion I've ever had riddled with language barriers and miscommunications at every turn. If I could, I'd like to offer this general piece of advice to employers in Korea: foreigners do not take kindly to statements such as "Frankly speaking, I don't know your old contract and I don't really have a contract with you." I almost had a heart attack at the table. 

That was probably the worst it got. There was also talk about not paying us for December, making us show up and do nothing at the school if he was paying us, and many conflicting statements and ideas about my future job in general. The most bizarre outcome of the night was without a doubt the exorbitant salary he is proposing to give us under the new school. It is literally more than double my current salary and 50% more than any salary I have heard of in Korea. And he signed the paper.

Currently I am still reeling from the events of last night. I'm looking at booking a flight to Vancouver but also waiting for a reply from my bosses to confirm what they said. I am quite unsure of what to make of it all. And I definitely haven't got my mind around the fact a week from now I could be walking along the Breakwater in Victoria, BC. 

A capital weekend

It must be the Canadian in me that is waiting for some form of meeting to confirm what exactly is happening to me and my job in my last 3 months in Korea. I can't help but feel that my unexpected month of holiday is somehow not real. But I think the few words I got out of my boss last Monday are probably all that I'm gonna get.

So in that spirit I'll accept my circumstance, believe it's happening and get back to my regular blogging. 

I went to Seoul last weekend to visit C and finally see some palaces. I caught an early morning KTX and discovered a new car of the high speed train: cinecar. For the price of a regular movie ticket I got a seat in the movie car where they showed "The Bank Job." I wouldn't have sprung for the extra entertainment but the rest of the econo tickets were sold out. 

Following in the tradition of my previous visits to the city it rained. It rained all day Saturday which is somewhat unusual for Korea where it usually pours and  then the sun comes out. 

The deep grey and stormy sky did serve as a phenomenal background to the fiery fall foliage surrounding Changdeokgung Palace in central Seoul. I thoroughly enjoyed the 1.5 h tour of the palace buildings and gardens. (Even if we had been forced to wait 30 mins in the rain for the English tour to start).

Afterwards we found warmth in a bowl of Korean porridge (a thick milky soup with rice, veg and tuna). The second palace we hit promptly shut its doors in our faces thus concluding the palace touring portion of my visit.

Not to worry, we were close to Insadong home of some awesome tea houses were we spent the rest of the rainy afternoon. 

We had a chill Saturday night with the exception of temporarily getting locked in a bank at 11:45 pm. Seriously how does that happen?

Sunday was a beautiful sunny fall day in which we traveled to the far reaches of the city bumping and pushing our way through ginormous Korean  crowds in the subway. There we found the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was good to get out of the city and see some open space and also get some culture. Busan is sorely lacking in the museum department so I appreciated the opportunity if not the tower of TVs that was offered up as art. 

Definitely a top notch weekend! Photos on Facebook.

Two Weeks Notice

I'm going to bump my previously scheduled Seoul post to bring you the latest news from my job. 

The first I heard of the fate of my school was from B, my coworker, "you know the school is closing right." Me: "uh, no." B: "yeah, like next month. D just told me." 

D spoke to us together a few minutes later. He told us first off that there's this meeting on Wednesday. Yeah fine but tell me about my job I thought. It was like playing twenty questions. Not that he didn't want to tell us what was happening; more he just didn't think it was very important and he answered everything in a very casual off-handed sort of way. When is the school closing? At the end of the month. What happens to me in December? Nothing. No classes. Will I be paid? Yes. Will I have an apt? Yes. Will I have a job in January? Yes.

So that is all the information I have for now. It sounds pretty freaking amazing. I am trying to remain calm and not plan an amazing trip to Japan in my head before anything is certain...

 

Couple Culture

When I was in Seoul last we visited Seoul Tower. It was predictably a good spot to take in the view of the ~20 million+ city. I hadn't expected to find thousands of "couple love locks" hooked onto the chain link fence that was keeping us from falling down the mountainside. I came across this article about the phenomenon at the Korean Times website. The experience, for me, encapsulated the rampant couple culture here in Korea otherwise most notably present in the Sunday couples outfits.

ahhh shiver

I learned in my first month as a teacher in Korea that the word "shiver" is Korean for sh*t. It came up in the predictably entertaining situation in which newbie Julia Teacher tried to teach "to shiver" as a spelling word. Needless to say that got many laughs from the kids who were all much too eager to repeat the spelling words that week.

Well a long time seems to have passed since then. I have just come from my worst class of the week. Thankfully it is only once a week. It's three hours with 5 thirteen year old tyrants. I don't know how they do it but they manage to maintain a constant muttering of ahh...shiver....ahhh...shiver for three solid hours! Seriously why don't they get tired? Oh and they were none to pleased to discover I was completely ignorant of Pepero Day (Pepero is a chocolate covered stick shaped cookie. 11/11 apparently looks like Peperos and that's a good enough reason to make it a day) Well I didn't know about it so I didn't buy any. It's a side effect of being the only teacher at school. Ahh shiver is right.

In brighter news I got paid today and only a day late.

What's happening at KORUS?

On Monday this week I had a particularly tiny first class. I figured it was a city wide picnic day or some such thing for that age group. When the same kids didn't show up on Wednesday I started to think something might be amiss. However I was rather occupied nursing a particularly unfortunate post birthday hangover to be too much bothered. So it was only today that I finally gathered my thoughts and pressed my VP about what was going on with my High B class. He told me that in fact 7 kids dropped my class en mass. Kind of a big deal in a class that was originally 9 students. Also doesn't do much to bolster this teacher's confidence. Though I had had that class for four months already. I really don't know what's happening to my school.

Look who's old

Well I thought I just turned 23 but apparently in Korea I'm 25. That international date line gets more mysterious every day.

Pottery

I've been itching to do some pottery. It's not always very easy to find specific things like pottery classes here as using the Internet is completely useless and the phone is a ridiculous option. Usually you need to rely on Korean friends or acquaintances for such purposes. So I turned to my bosses. I was quite excited when my VP Eric wound up hooking me up with a workshop with a famous Busan ceramic artist this past weekend.

As with Canadian potters I have visited this Korean artist has set up shop on the outskirts of Busan in a very interesting house surrounded by beautiful countryside. Eric drove J and me out to Gijang and acted as translator for us all afternoon. It was yet another example of the extreme generosity of Korean people towards us foreigners. We had a spiffy afternoon making a coil pot, having a try at the wheel and laughing with out fellow potters. (Laughing works well when nobody knows what each other is saying).

A Very Hangul Halloween

Halloween in Korea was pretty interesting. I spent the better part of my Thursday hunting all over town for a costume and decorations. As it happens there's a Halloween store in Seomyeon its stock entirely imported from Canada and the US. But seeing the price of a tissue paper pumpkin (10,000 won) I bailed and headed to the ever reliable Megamart. There I found black and orange construction paper and orange and purple balloons. The costume situation was comical. I found some cute kiddie costumes mixed in with car seat covers in the bug section. (Yeah the bug section was a new discovery for me at MM but why not?). I finally opted to make my own costume at home and settled on the classic black cat thinking my kids would appreciate it. It worked out well because it turned out B had dressed up as Batman.

I heard a rumor MegaMart had a table of scream masks which may be responsible for its popularity.