Unexpected things are happening. I mean, I didn't go into this year knowing what to expect or having any sort of plan. But Korea teaches you to forego all expectations because it's going to try its best to defy everything you know and understand.
I'm four and a half months into teaching at YBM's Nam-Bundang campus and I got asked this week to transfer schools. Luckily, to our sister school whose foreign teachers I'm already friends with. One of their workers, also a friend of mine, got a university job and is leaving soon and they need someone urgently who's already in YBM. Still, this was a surprise and will be a big change. I'm moving to a new apartment (to continue my life's trend of never living in the same place a whole year), working in a new school with different teachers that I've only known socially, and trading all my annoying and adorable children in for a new mystery batch. Feels like I just dumped all my Scrabble letters.
I realized tonight, in constantly thinking through every detail of this change, that most of what I'm actually trying to figure out is how to make myself come out ahead of everyone else. How can I get the best living arrangement? How can I have the easiest schedule? How can I make the most money?
So I decided tonight to stop. I came to Korea to have an adventure, and this wasn't part of the plan, but I want to embrace it, good or bad, as part of what I signed up for and be happy about it. Some parts of it are going to be awkward, uncomfortable, strange, confusing, and/or annoying to be sure. And so I've been trying to work out every kink in my mind before any of it actually happens - until one friend simply told me tonight, "Life's awkward sometimes."
So true. I don't have to try to circumvent it. So I'm embracing it all as part of the adventure that is Korea.
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