Friday, August 24, 2007

Year Two!

Last year I really lost interest in updating my blog in the last four months. It was for a variety of reasons. I set myself some goals this year to make sure I continue to have such a positive experience in Korea. One of those goals is to update my blog once a week. Even if nothing is happening I want to form a habit of sharing my thoughts with the people who read my blog. Certainly, part of the reason I lost the habit of posting was that I found Facebook a more convenient and entertaining way of keeping in touch with most of my friends. However there are many special people in my life who are not on Facebook and I don't want to leave them out.

My recent trip home was full of visits with family and many great experiences. I think the highlight was my trip to New York with my mother and sister. We went to museums, ate great food and went to musicals. I particularly recommend Spamalot! as a wonderfully inappropriate and hilarious distillation of some of the best that Monty Python offered in it's heyday.

I am now back in Korea and embarking on the next chapter of my Korean adventure. For those of you who don't know, I have been lucky and determined enough to get myself a job teaching at Dong Eui University, here in Busan. I started looking for the right job months ago. I wanted a job which would make my time here more pleasurable and more meaningful. With a teaching degree I could have found myself a job in a day if I really wanted. There are so many Hogwans and public (elementary, middle and high) schools looking for good teachers. But I set my sights high. In particular I wanted to job at a University. It took me almost 3 months of dedicated job hunting before I signed the contract with Dong Eui. In my first month of looking for jobs I interviewed for Pukyoung University. I was offered the job the day after my interview. However, when I entered into contract negotiations I found myself disappointed with their offer. The pay was lower than what I expected, they only gave a month of holidays and the housing was in a student dormitory! After a lot of thought and receiving the opinions of a number of friends (a few who work at Pukyoung, and some who work at other universities) I declined the job offer. Part of the reason I felt able to do so was that I had just had an excellent interview with Dong Sung, a private elementary school. They offered good wages, 8 weeks of paid vacation and some very comfortable housing. The head foreign teacher told me that I was their best candidate. So, I felt comfortable giving up the Pukyoung option. However, the Principal of the school had other ideas and it turns out she only wanted to hire women.
After giving up the Pukyoung job and loosing the Dong Sung job I entered into 6 incredibly stressful weeks with no job offers and precious few good jobs being posted on the job sites. When I was a month from the end of my contract, I finally saw another university position advertised which I was elegible for (many universities require either nepotism or a Masters to enter). I applied and was called the next day to set up an interview. I did quite well in the intial interview and was contacted in a couple days for a second interview. I don't know how many people got a first interview, but there were 20 people in the second round of interviews, applying for 5 positions. In some of my interviews I have a sense that I have either sealed the deal or failed to get the job. This time I really had no idea, so it was a stressful week waiting for the answer. Six days later I got a call, not from Dong Eui, but from Dong Sung! The principal had reconsidered her insistence on females and I was being offered the job. WOW! I was really happy.... But... I was supposed to hear from Dong Eui the next day. I told them that I was very interested but I needed time to consider my options, and the next day I was also offered the Dong Eui job. It was no simple matter deciding between them. They both had big advantages. I am an elementary teacher and the school had excellent facilities in it's "English village." But the Dong Eui job offered the possibility of more money and greater prestige. On the other hand the Elementary school offered excellent housing, while the University job would require me to find and pay for my own housing. Obviously, in the end I chose the University job, and I still feel it was the right choice. In the end, all things being equal, I would rather be at work for 20 hours a week instead of 40 (especially if it is for the same money :)

It's a hot Friday afternoon as I write this. I don't have internet in my apartment yet, so I am writing this post in a nearby PC Room, which is decorated to look like a cross between a Roman villa and a Renaissance palace (don't ask, it's Korea). Tomorrow I will go for a beach bbq, and then play volleyball until the sun goes down. On Monday I will teach my very first university class. Life is good, and I am filled with a feeling of contentment. In my last week in N. America I certainly had my doubts. I was enjoying family time, something in short supply in Korea. I wondered if I wanted to once again separate myself from these familiar faces. But as I flew over the skies of Busan, picking out familiar and much loved landmarks in the brilliant night time lights of a Korean city, the smile on my face told me all I needed to know about the rightness of my decision to stay and live in Korea.

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