It's Official!

I have a contract! I'll be at the ChimSan location of the MoonKkang English School in Daegu, SK. I teach M-F from 4:40-10:20pm (with the exception of Wednesday, which is 4:40-9:50pm) and have days and weekends off. The salary at MK is a bit higher than the other schools we looked at, and I chose the option with less vacation days so I can save a bit more. So I have 5 paid vacation days (I sense a trip to Japan coming up). My airfare is paid for by the school, and I have rent-free furnished accommodations, also courtesy of MK. I only have to pay for utilities. I start teaching December 21st, but I start a brief training period on the 18th (so I suppose I'll be leaving shortly before then). Hooray for finally knowing what is happening!!

For real this time...

Alright, yet another slight change of plans.

So to get you up to speed since my last post, the interview that was supposed to happen never happened. The school simply didn't call. In our frustration, Angie and I applied at MoonKkang English School, and this time we applied directly to a school, not a recruiting agency. MoonKkang is a very reputable school, and from what we've heard it is THE school you want to work at if you teach in SK. 

So we were doing a bit of double dipping with Hoya and MoonKkang so we didn't cut off any options. Hoya called back a week later and asked if we wanted to interview with a school THAT NIGHT. We knew absolutely nothing about the school, but we had the interview. (Side note: we had an interview scheduled with MoonKkang for two days after the Hoya interview.) So it turns out the Hoya school was a school in Suwon (just outside of Seoul) for small children (ages 3-7). Not only would we teach English, but also singing, dancing, and role play. I am not trained in singing and dancing, but when they offered us the job we decided to tentatively accept, pending the outcome of the MoonKkang interview. (They hadn't begun processing our visa paperwork yet so it wasn't a huge deal). 

So then we had the MoonKkang interview two days later, and we found out at the end of the week that they would love to have us join their staff. The catch is this: Angie and I will be teaching in different cities, and she leaves a few weeks before me. Angie will leave Nov. 30 to teach at a MoonKkang in Busan, and I leave Dec. 18 to teach at a MoonKkang in Daegu. We'll be about 2 hours away from each other. The fact that we're not together is not ideal, but at least we're close enough to visit on weekends and such. We both decided that the opportunity to teach at the best English academy in SK was worth the frightening prospect of being separated. And we've been in contact with people who teach at MoonKkang, and from what we hear they take very good care of their teachers. Heck, we even get free Korean lessons!