365 Days

It’s been a while since we’ve written – for a variety of reasons. When last we wrote, our appliances had been removed and replaced, and I had flown to America to get my E2 visa documents. As most of you already know, I was in America for a month, visiting my family and shopping for supplies. I returned to our town on the 9th of October and started work the next morning. It seems as though I’ve been back for months and months, but I’ve really just barely passed the three-week mark.

Just before I left in September, I signed a contract with a new school; I’m now at an elementary school, a thirty-minute bus ride away from our house. It was a lucky find, after we were worried that I wouldn’t have a job this fall. My school and coworkers are kind, interested in me as a person, and interested in working together to teach students; in short, it’s everything that my old school was not.

I can’t say that I’m excited for another winter in Korea or eager for the next however-many-months of teaching at this school. I can say that though last year was miserable at times, I was proud at the end of it – proud that I had worked a full year at a place I had hated without quitting, proud of the money we had saved, proud of all the places we had been. I was the property of that school for 365 days, and I didn’t fold.