Decision: Made

Hello,

Talk about a week of getting asked about my decision by my friends, it's been pretty huge in comparison to other weeks when I get asked the question about me coming home or staying in SK. It's been a long time coming, but it's done, dunzo, it's made!

So is Osc coming home for good now, finally? No.

So is Osc staying renewing his contract to stay in Korea? No.

Before I tell you my decision, here's a little back story (haha, I'm making you read!). So GEPIK, the program that has allowed me to teach in Korea, is going through a reconstruction. This remake of the program would allow teachers to come into Korea only two times within a year, in March and in September. At first I heard this as rumors on the Facebook walls of different fellow teachers and emails, including one I got from the guy I replaced at my school. Well what would this mean for me? This means that if I wanted to renew my contract and that if my school wanted to keep me, that a lot of meetings would have to take place because since GEPIK won't pay for me to stay in the months between my contract's finish (June) and the next start-up date for teachers (September), then my school would need to find the funding to hire me that summer. I spoke with the teacher who's job is to be "in charge" of me and the happenings in my program, and she indeed confirmed that these rumors were true. I was prepared for these rumors to be true and I proposed a resolution that I think will make all parties involved VERY happy.

So in June I'll be going home when my contract is over. Ideally I'll be back home looking for a local job to keep me home. However, if I don't find a teaching job in that time, then I will lean towards reapplying at my school to teach again in Korea. So all in all, I will in the very least spend three months back home. I'll be home all summer long, and is there any better time to be in LA?

The teachers in the English department conferred for a whopping two minutes about my proposition, and it's a go.

That's all. I'll be in this employment purgatory back in LA in hopes to make one of those prior questions into a yes. Hope you enjoyed reading about my decision.

-oscar

p.s. Summer......whoop whoop!

Soar, No....Sore, Yes

Hello! (Lionel Richie voice)

Soar, No.

Yesterday the travel agent told me I would be able to cancel my then scheduled trip to Japan for a full refund. This is mostly influenced by embassy warnings that are posted about traveling, especially to countries recently hit by natural disasters. It's not primo time to go given all the damage that is still present there, maybe sometime in the future. I had decided to allot the funds somewhere else and have reallocated them in a threefold solution: digital toy for myself, trip to Busan, and donate some to the Japan relief efforts. So there's that.

Sore, Yes.

So I've been fighting a sore throat the past couple of days, and when I went into work on Monday it got a lot worse. So I opted for a sick day today in order to go a clinic and get to the bottom of this. I found a great clinic here in Songtan where the staff were helpful and the doctor spoke perfect English. He told me my tonsils were swollen, which isn't a surprise to me because it used to happen to me all the time as a kid. So he prescribed his meds, I picked them up, and I must say that after two doses I'm feeling a lot better. Can I just now take time to give major kudos to the Korean health system? It baffles me how the US always claims to be number one in this or that, and don't take it to sound unpatriotic, but can't they get their business together enough to care for the wellbeing of people's health? If Korea, Canada, and many other countries can offer their residents quality health care, why can't America? The insurance foreign teachers get here is excellent and everything went smoothly. I hope work will be okay tomorrow, we'll see how much better this situation gets by then.

30 Days

I stole this idea from someone's Facebook and I decided to take it to another level, make its own Tumblr site for it. The idea is a continuous 30 days of different posts about different aspects of one's life.


http://theoscblog.tumblr.com/

Limbo

The upcoming days are going to be really weird, and changing. So as many of you know, I’m down to how many days (yes, DAYS) I have to decide whether I’m staying in Korea or not. To be honest, I would LOVE to be back in LA, but realistically (as stated before), a job is a nice thing to have. We’ll see.
Also, the tragic happenings in Japan have affected how I’m going about this supposed vacation. I find out next week whether or not I get to go, or if I get to cancel. The embassy still has travel warnings to Japan, and if they stay until next week then my flight gets cancelled. In that instance, I would get my money back. I’ve decided if that happens I’ll just go to Busan for that weekend, buy myself something nice, and then donate some of the money I would have spent on the trip to the Red Cross relief effort. I think it sounds like win-win.
I have a class to teach in ten minutes, so I’ll end this stream of consciousness here.



p.s. It's going to suck to see Lizelle, one of my coworkers and first friends I made in Korea, leave this week, but happy she's moving on.

OMG Japan, DMZ South Korea

A lot has been happening in the last week and it would be crazy for me not to write about it. As some of you know, I am planning a trip to Japan in exactly one month where I will be in Tokyo for three days. Well at least that’s still the plan. There are still travel warnings for Americans on the US Embassy website, so I’m pretty much trying to keep positive and hope those warnings are lifted before my travel times arrive. If not, I’ve already considered reinvesting the Japan funds on another trip, so I guess I’m just waiting now. The devastating earthquakes and tsunami that struck Japan are tragic, and therefore it fuels me to still go because during this time I feel they could use my tourism dollars (much like tourism helped the post-Katrina New Orleans recovery) to help a bit in stimulating their economy.

I was touched to receive emails, tweets, and Facebook messages indicating concern from my family and friends, thank you. I, however, was not affected at all. It’s bittersweet, but Japan takes the fall for any turbulence that may occur along the Pacific Ocean because it cocoons over South Korea and there is a sea in between as Figure 1 depicts below:

This weekend was also personally eventful for me. Some things happened with some friends that are now comedic, and I got to go to Hooters in Seoul for a birthday. Hooters is not something most foreigners know about in terms of finding one in South Korea, but their entire clientele is just that, foreigners. Weird paradox I suppose.

The next day was entirely devoted to Korea, and I mean Korea, both ends. I took a trip with some friends to the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone) on Sunday. The DMZ is the border between North and South Korea. The trip was great and we did it through a great company called Adventure Korea (www.adventurekorea.com) and that is also the company that my friends and I went white-water rafting through. The trip consisted of going to a bridge, the Freedom Bridge, that connects both countries, going into an infiltrated tunnel North Koreans tried to dig in order to sneak into South Korea, watching a DMZ film, going through the DMZ museum, looking through various souvenir shops, getting to see North Korea through a periscope, and going to the train station of the only rail that connects Seoul (South Korea’s capital) to Pyongyang (North Korea’s capital). Needless to say that I learned a lot from each part of the tour, and I mostly enjoyed the film they showed us about the DMZ (I want to look into where I can get a copy) and that I got to see North Koreans going about their day through the periscope. Also, I got to buy DMZ chocolate, North Korean-made soju, and North Korean postage stamps. To be honest, this trip to the DMZ has now lit a curiosity fire in me in wanting to visit North Korea at some point in my lifetime. A big part of me also wants the reunification of both parts to be imminent.

It still baffles my mind that the world allowed this country’s policies to happen. How does everyone in a country just “agree” that they will be isolated and allowed to be told what to do at all hours with no way out? It’s almost magical and I cannot wrap my head around that process at all. The thing that is now engrained in my head came from the DMZ film I watched where the fourth infiltration tunnel (and the last one to be discovered) was found in 1990. That’s crazy! That’s during my lifetime!

So those are the thoughts running through my head about that event. I’m still in the lent process of not eating chocolate, so I guess those DMZ chocolates are safe…for now. Also, happy birthday Jaz!

Moral of the story: Be grateful.

A Ling Thing

It was the about two days before I left for South Korea last year in June that I was packing and catching up on my podcasts via my Apple TV. One of my favorite ones, and a shame that he decided to cut his run on CNN, was the Larry King Show. As I was packing I decided to play my podcasts as background noise and images to get myself moving. I hadn’t noticed the title of the episode I was playing and when the interview began it was Lisa Ling (reporter, she used to be on The View) and her sister Laura Ling talking to Larry about Laura’s North Korea capture. A little background info: Laura was reporting in China near the North Korean border when a tour guide led her the wrong way and North Korean guards captured her and told her she had crossed into North Korean territory. Also, Lisa Ling had once been granted access to North Korea to take pictures and video of the wildlife there for an assignment, something that made the North Korean government suspicious as the family now had a history with the country. Laura was captured for some months and held in a cell when a former president came to her rescue, Bill Clinton. Kim Jong-Il had negotiated to let Laura go if Clinton would go and get her. As it turned out, Clinton was one of a scarce number of country leaders who sent his condolences to Kim Jong-Il during his father’s passing some-odd years ago. Kim Jong-Il wanted to thank Bill for his gesture and in turn return Laura to her family.

As I’m watching this intense interview and hearing Lisa and Laura talk about letters they exchanged during the capture, I must say that I gave every article of clothing I was packing a second look before placing it in the luggage. Now it’s comical, but at the moment I gave each shirt, sweater, and pair of pants the same look you give someone when they tell you that you are wrong.

It was all coincidental and decided to look at it just like that, a coincidence and not as a sign that I should keep my butt in LA. Okay, now fast forward to nine months later. I’m going to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) that borders South and North Korea on a tour this weekend. I must say I’m really excited because hear of people going and it is right along my quest do more actually Korean things during my stay here. Well like clockwork, the Lings do it again and find a way to give me information as I’m about to embark on another Korean destination. This Monday, I came across this op-ed piece that Laura Ling wrote for the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ling-north-korea-20110304,0,1805224.story

To think that I come from one of the most technologically driven nations and I move to another one that compares well to it, it’s hard to think that some of the things she wrote about are actually happening at this very moment just miles away from where I am. I must say that I appreciate the work Laura and Lisa Ling do, I appreciate their experiences, and how they go about informing the world of the happenings in parts we would never know about otherwise.

"When we free ourselves, we are freeing humanity"

So thanks to Phoebes who gave me another unbiased token of advice. We recently had an AIM conversation where I told her about my lenience towards staying in South Korea versus my wanting of going home. She told me almost the same thing my mother did (as stated in the last post) that as much as it would be cool to be home with all the people I miss and vice versa, maybe staying in Korea wouldn’t be the worst thing because of the stability I would have here. That makes three pieces of unbiased feedback. My coworkers, other SK teachers, and the occasional “COME HOME OSCAR!” comment are not included in this tally.

So we’ve made no progress in this field. However the quote from the title comes from something I saw on someone's Facebook wall about World Book Day. And I quote, “Find the book nearest to you, turn to page 56 then find sentence 5 and write it as your status. Needs to be the book nearest to you, not your favorite.” Well the book nearest to me is in my desk drawer and it’s Paulo Coelho’s The Witch of Portobello. Coelho wrote one of my favorite books of all time, The Alchemist, however I couldn’t really get into this book, but when I did the whole search-the-quote thing, and I found it fitting. I’m sure once I make a decision it will be freeing to me and freeing to other, and the world will keep on turning.

Los Angeles Mom Theory on Education

I just got off the phone with my mother.

I spoke with her last week, and to paraphrase that past conversation quite frankly I think she'd feel better if I were to renew to my contract here in South Korea. I still don't know. Time is literally of the essence and I have about 3 weeks to decide if I'm staying another year or not. Granted, if I decide to stay in SK, I would still spend my summer vacation in LA (which would be longer than this past visit during my holiday vacation).

Back to my mother. A week ago she has filled me in on a rolling layoff update LAUSD did recently. How bad is it? It's really bad. Take a look:

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_17434726?nclick_check=1

This past weekend a couple of friends and I got together just to hang out and I ran into Jaime. Jaime is a teacher in Pyeongtaek who is from LA, and she actually taught at my school during my winter camp. We started talking about the situation back home, and it actually turned out that both of our mothers are on the same boat when it comes to informing us and trying to sway us into the rational decision of staying. After comparing conversational notes, it's like in the same parallel universe we had the same mirror conversation with them. They both gave us the stats on the So Cal teaching situation along with having to look at the big picture. Cue to Twilight Zone music.

Although I'd love to come back home, things are looking grim, and to be honest it would suck for me to be up for a job against someone who used to teach me or someone who has light years ahead of more experience than I do.

I even had a Facebook chat convo with someone who used to serve in Circle K e-board with me back in CSUDH who I hadn't heard from in years and I got the same token of advice. I think it's the type of stuff I need to hear, the outsider looking in. I, my friends, and my family (mother exempted) are sometimes biased and would love for me to come back. In an ideal world that would be great, but I have no intention of asking for change under the 110 freeway on-ramp.

Seems like a negative blog, but let's be realistic about this. There's lots of thinking ahead of me.