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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