One Year Down

Well it's been an eventful couple of weeks for us. As most of you probably know by now, Meg has been hired at a local Elementary school. The process was a lot more difficult than it should have been, but we're glad to have that behind us now. After over a month of going through recruiters with little to no luck, one of my co-workers finally called a public school that he knew of and they were extremely interested in hiring Meg. The next day we visited the school and had a meeting with the Principal, the VP and one of the English teachers. After a nice thirty minute conversation, they were quite eager to offer Meg the job (and we were equally eager to accept it). It made for a very happy weekend.

Unfortunately, that happiness didn't last too long. On the following Monday I was denied my renewal visa. My school didn't have me prepare the proper documents (they told me that I didn't need a criminal check since I had done one the previous year and hadn't been back to Canada...they were wrong). So now I have a month to get the criminal check done and sent to me over here. I should be fine, but I'll be much happier when I have my actual visa renewed.

Later that night at a farewell dinner, Meg's school informed her that they would be taking back all the furniture they had provided for us in our apartment. We had no idea what they had provided, but it turned out to be quite a lot. They apparently bought us the fridge, TV, washing machine, toaster oven, stove, ricer cooker, microwave, fan and iron. They were nice enough to give us 2 days notice.

We celebrated our one year mark in Korea with a box of delivery chicken while drinking warm Coke and watching TV on my laptop in our bare apartment. It wasn't quite the event we had hoped for. It did feel nice to have made it however. There were days where I think both of us weren't so sure we would.

After some mad scrambling my school managed to replace the items taken by Meg's former school on Friday (so we only went without them for the one day). Sadly, we now have a tiny fridge. I'm still trying to decide what to do about that. We might try and buy another ourselves, or just live with it for the next 6 months. It's quite small though.

On Saturday morning Meg flew back to the USA. After about 20 hours she arrived in Vermont and will be there for the next few days. From there she'll head down to Philadelphia to visit her sister's family (and her new nephew) before getting to Nashville sometime around Sept. 24th. If things go according to plan she'll fly back to Korea between Oct. 1st and 5th. I'm sure she'll really enjoy her time back home. I know she's missed seeing grass, fields and trees. She'll probably also enjoy breathing properly again as the air quality in Korea (at least the area we live in near Seoul) is quite poor.

As for myself, I've managed to kill most of my Korean Thanksgiving holiday watching TV and staying inside. The traffic is a nightmare and it takes about twice as long to get anywhere (and lots of things are closed anyways) so I've decided to just rest. It's been nice after the crazy few weeks we've had. Even after the few days of rest I've had, I still feel pretty beat. Hopefully, Meg's faring better back home.