The name pun is pretty lame, I know.
Let me get this out again: I'm not fond of blogs. It's so hard to avoid sounding pretentious or self-involved because you're talking about YOURSELF. As much as I like talking about myself, actual physical evidence of my pomposity makes me cringe. That's why I've failed with the DMZ.
The DMZ is an amazing, terrifically uncomfortable, and (for lack of a better term) eye-opening experience. But I haven't really been able to figure out how to do it justice. So I guess I'll have to table that posting for when I either gain talent or no longer feel so intimidated by the subject.
That said, the primary purpose of my blog is to keep folks from home updated on my life (as a substitute for the dreaded mass-email). That point has been an even greater failure, because I've not remotely done that. My last posting informed everyone (rather late, too) that I was unemployed. The next day, I got a job.
THE NEXT DAY.
So even though I knew my contract would end a month in advance, I only spent two weeks unemployed. For those of you who were concerned about my well-being but didn't talk to my parents, sorry about the lack of info. This new job is amazing. It's at a public school, which is kind of the promised land for foreign teachers in Seoul. Good hours, job stability, good pay, and most importantly: lower expectations. My previous employers had kind of insane expectations for teachers who had no experience. They didn't train us or tell us how to do anything. Instead, they'd say things like "You need to make your class more fun, but push them."
Sounds good. HOW???
"Don't play games with them." One week. Next week, "Make sure they have fun!"
You get the idea. My current job is so much better. I actually have a partner teacher I discuss lesson plans with. I don't have to do evaluations or monthly plans every month (during my free time and without pay). I'm allowed to play games and talk with my students. I only teach between 1:00 and 6:00pm.
Overall, it's a nearly ideal situation. I'd continue, but I have to stop before I go on a greater tangent. But there's more to the story. I need to tame the Korean rental market. AISH...
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Um... yeah.
I’m afraid I’ve been pretty off about writing in the blog lately. It’s not that I haven’t been doing interesting things, or haven’t had the time to write them down, but that I haven’t had much luck figuring out how to say them. My school laid me off last month, and I’m still trying to work out what I’m going to do about it. I’ve been job hunting in Korea because I don’t feel like I’m ready to leave. But I’m also uncertain if I’m ready to commit to a whole extra year when I’ve been here eight months already.
So you can imagine the conundrum. It seems like such a commitment either way (should I stay or should I go?) even though the reality is that either decision won’t kill me. I’ve never been laid off from a job before. It’s a curious feeling, and I can’t help wondering how real adults deal with it. I’m just a single twenty-something with student loans. I’m not married, I don’t have children (I don’t even have a pet fish), or house or car payments… How do people cope with that? How does someone ignore the panic that maybe they won’t have a job soon enough to keep up with bills? My insides get fluttery at the concept and I have savings now. Aish. Times like these make me miss childhood. I don’t want to make tough decisions or stick up for myself. I want to remain in the familiar, if slightly miserable job I had before.
You’ll have to forgive the self indulgence of those two paragraphs. It’s not actually hard to find an English teaching job in Korea, and I’ve got many friends helping me out. I'm staying with someone, so I won't be dropped on the street or anything. I've got money saved up, too. So unemployment is more of a short vacation while I decide what to do next. Everybody loves a vacation, right?
Speaking of that, you take trips on vacation. I took one of those trips last week, and I have to say it was really interesting. I visited the one main landmark that every tourist in Korea should see: the DMZ. It’s still kind of difficult to wrap my head around everything there, so I’ll just stop now with the promise of telling about that soon. Very soon.
So you can imagine the conundrum. It seems like such a commitment either way (should I stay or should I go?) even though the reality is that either decision won’t kill me. I’ve never been laid off from a job before. It’s a curious feeling, and I can’t help wondering how real adults deal with it. I’m just a single twenty-something with student loans. I’m not married, I don’t have children (I don’t even have a pet fish), or house or car payments… How do people cope with that? How does someone ignore the panic that maybe they won’t have a job soon enough to keep up with bills? My insides get fluttery at the concept and I have savings now. Aish. Times like these make me miss childhood. I don’t want to make tough decisions or stick up for myself. I want to remain in the familiar, if slightly miserable job I had before.
You’ll have to forgive the self indulgence of those two paragraphs. It’s not actually hard to find an English teaching job in Korea, and I’ve got many friends helping me out. I'm staying with someone, so I won't be dropped on the street or anything. I've got money saved up, too. So unemployment is more of a short vacation while I decide what to do next. Everybody loves a vacation, right?
Speaking of that, you take trips on vacation. I took one of those trips last week, and I have to say it was really interesting. I visited the one main landmark that every tourist in Korea should see: the DMZ. It’s still kind of difficult to wrap my head around everything there, so I’ll just stop now with the promise of telling about that soon. Very soon.
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