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.