Monday, August 20, 2012

There Must Be Some Kinda’ Way Outta’ Here, Said the Joker to the Thief.


No doubt many of you (my dear readers), whom are frequent visitors to facebook are well aware; Rachel has quit her position here at Avalon. 

Right, so how did this come about?  It has little to do with the culture, our living conditions, our relationship, or the students in the classroom.  If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you will be aware our boss is… well how can I put this politely?  She may very well be the anti-Christ.  I have written about her before and I feel no need to torture the poor horse (may it rest in peace) once again.  I do think it is worth mentioning that the problems that I have talked about did not disappear, and in some cases were exacerbated by our “dear leader” in the last few weeks.  The breaking point here was when she (Marie A) fought us over allowing students to use the bathroom during class time.  Now, at times this is a concern for some classrooms, but when a student, who obviously needs to use the bathroom is sent back twice and then becomes terrified of the boss, saying that “she’ll be fine”, and her saying that she is fine is then used as a point of evidence for supporting a position, is when the deal became broken.  I mean it isn’t as if our boss used a terrified student as justification.  The argument was not enjoyable.  She then proceeded to get offended later that day when I had handed in a piece of paperwork for Rachel, as a favor (rather than Rachel handing it in herself) and was ready to give Rachel an official write-up about this because she had missed the opportunity to throw her authority around/pull out the superiority stick.  Have we mentioned she is petty and insecure? No?  Well…

Rachel and I have been talking about this for some time and I have been holding off writing about it until we had made a decision and figured out what the next step is.  If there has been undo lack of communication and distraction on our end, this is partially why. 

Now, on to the details.  There have been a number of worried nights and dreadful speculation, but all will be well and we have worked out the details to do what must be done so that everyone can get the best out of this.  In the legendary words of Douglas Adams, “Don’t panic”.  Fortunately, Rachel has been frugal enough, and I make enough for us to live comfortably here with only one income.  I had a very long talk with a good friend of mine who gave me some good advice on the situation, and we can make the finances work.  We worked out a way to remain and not have to worry about being separated and so on and so forth.  We have set up a budget, a plan, and we have even stashed away some cash for leisure time and getting to that oh so wonderful spa that we enjoy so much.  I am also planning on getting to the cinema more often, just because it’s cheap, good entertainment. 

Now the question about idle time is certainly the next issue.  Rachel has been looking into grad school for some time and she now has ample time to study for the GRE and start getting all the paperwork together for this to happen.  We even found a testing site here in Seoul should we need it.  There are numerous things that we can do (and for cheap).  We have started going on river walks together and she has decided that there are a number of lovely spots that she can start taking frequent constitutionals. 

What will we do next is the next most important question.  Well, we are not sure.  It would not be hard to get new gigs after my contract expires.  This might work out because we can take our time and actually scope the place out ahead of time and make sure that there isn’t a bright neon sign saying “bat-shit insane lunatics are inside, abandon hope, all ye who enter here”.  Maybe we’ll move on to other things.  Honestly, we don’t know yet.  But we have made this decision and we are progressing forward with our plans. 

What I do know is that I can handle it here, and Rachel was at her wit’s end with Marie A/ “dear leader”/ whatever else you want to call her.  Things are a lot less bad now than they had been, and they will get better. 

We are going to get through this together. 


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