Stig's Update

Well, it's been about a month since I left Korea, a time to rest and recharge.
I've been enjoying being back in the Great White North, but it sure is a change from the Land Of The Morning Calm and Afternoon Difficulty.
First of all, the weather. I went from wearing a t-shirt and shorts to slacks and a jacket. Brrrrrr! The days have been mostly cold, cloudy and wet. Today it's brilliantly sunny, but the weatherman keeps mentioning the word "snow" in his forecast. It's not even fall yet! I missed snow while I was in Korea, but this is ridiculous.
Secondly, my mook encounters have gone waaaay down. I was driving into town with my mother yesterday, and I only cursed once in the hour-long drive. In Korea, it'd be every minute or so. The mooks here are just as mookish, there're just fewer of them, that's all.
I was climbing up a hill, and just over the rise a tractor-trailer had pulled to the side of the road. His ass was still sticking out, though. The highway had just gone from three lanes to two, and this jackass had just cut that in half.
Fucking mook!
Third, I'm no longer living alone, with the luxury of doing what I want when I want. I'm staying with my folks until the next contract comes through. They've got a nice place, and it's a hell of a lot more comfy than a one-room con-apt in Cheongju, but sometimes the restrictions get a little confining.
I can no longer strut around nude, for instance.
Oh well. Adjustments have to be made everywhere I guess.
The big news, of course, is about my new job.
I don't have one.
I was all excited about being offered a job in England. It was pretty sweet. Fantastic money and extras like a car and a 'puter, not to mention being able to take advantage of life on the European continent, a particular dream of mine.
The post was supposedly the tutor to a family of Italians living just outside of London, and for about a month, preparations went well.
I was corresponding with the "employer" and his "lawyer," and they were asking me for all kinds of documents, and I was sending pictures and forms and so on.
They even sent me pictures of the family. It had a lot of authenticity to it.
And then they (or was it he? maybe it was a single person) proved themselves to be villains.
They asked me for money.
The lawyer claimed that I had to show that I as able to support myself in country until the first paycheck kicked in. He wanted me to send him about $1,200. Both he and the "employer" said it would be safe, and I could trust them, and they were so looking forward to my coming over, and the children were really excited and blah blah, blah!
I knew something was fishy, so I checked the requirements for UK work visas on-line, and told them that it looked like sending them money was unneccessary.
I so wanted to believe the job was legitimate.
But the "lawyer" kept insisting that I had to send them some dough. I had let Flint know about what was transpiring, and he went and called the British Embassy for confirmation about all this. They came back with the statement that dashed all my dreams. This was definitely a scam. Any time someone asks you to send them money, it's a scam.
Well, the disappointment was... well, I can't say just how bad it was. You can probably guess.
I turned my correspondence over to the police, and maybe they'll be able to do something, but... These cockroaches have plenty of ways of concealing themselves, and are pretty hard to track down and squash.
Sigh.
A few days after I had spoken to the police, somebody called me, asking if I was going to send the money. I told them no, and they said, "so I'm going to cancel the application?" I said yes. "I'm not sending you any money." This person had a kind of accent, thick and middle-European? They muttered someting unintelligible and hung up.
And that's the last I've heard from them.
All the time I was in Korea, I'd heard a lot of horror stories. Flint has recalled some hair-raisers in this very blog.
I'd only been badly cheated a couple of times. A recruiter kept my return airfare once, and a hagwon owner was late paying me. I never did get that airfare back, and I did a runner from that hagwon as soon as I got all my money. Being aware of all these things made me wary, and saved me from an expensive lesson at the hands of this latest scam artist.
So now I'm back on the unemployment line, looking for another contract... somewhere.
Sigh.

Goodbye Korea

Well, after ten years of Morning Calm and Afternoon Difficulty, I'm finally closing down my Korea station, and moving on.
I've thought that it was time to go for quite a few years now, and it very nearly came true two years ago, when I was run out of Daegu for trying to kill a Korean teacher at the middle school I was working at.
But then Flint needed my help, and I came to the 'ju to work for him for a couple of months, and that led to me finding a job at the hagwon which I finished working at on Friday.
I had hoped to stay for one more year, and lure Flint back for more cigars and tapping on the deck at Dunkin's, but my director decided the kids could use a change of pace.... er, face. She thought a new teacher was in order, and I was given my walking papers.
I tried (half-heartedly, I must admit) to see if there were any other opportunities here, but nothing turned up. My folks were urging me to come back to Canada and try getting a job as a teaching assistant in my hometown, and that seemed the likeliest of possibilities for my future, when the job of a lifetime, literally a dream come true, popped up in my inbox one day.
I am leaving Korea, spending about a month in Canada, and then going on to my dream job - wait for it - teaching English in London, England!
I am so excited, I can barely contain myself. The opportunities, the history, the chance to live and work in the capital of the UK... words fail me. It's what I've wanted to do most of all, ever since I came to Korea and found out I could teach. I never thought it would really happen, as the difficulties and drawbacks seemed nearly insurmountable. But that's all changed. I'm going.
I have lots of memories that I'll be sharing here, and I just might cobble something together on a new blog about life in England.
My final days here have been kind of anti-climactic. My director didn't even bother arranging any kind of farewell party or dinner or anything. The kids'd been told I was leaving before I had the opportunity to inform them, and they seemed, for the most part, kind of neutral about it. So my time there just sort of petered out, rather than ending with a bang.
Oh well, I've had other, more enjoyable (and memorable) departures from Korea that I can look back on fondly. It's been ten years, as I said, but now it's over.
Goodbye, farewell, and amen.

Good Bye South Korea

Howdy Folks

Well, I did it. I actually left Korea with no plans on returning. I won't say never again because it is impossible to say what the future holds.

Since this blog is about Korea and life there I started a new one called Flint's Follies which I will use to talk about life now that I am home, and anything else I want to talk about. I will still keep workin on What the kimchi??? with Stig. Lots of mook's of the weeks left to post. Plus lots of tales of the early years. Plus Stig will have to start posting more. ;)

I have no regrets about the 9 years I spent in South Korea, nor about returning home. It was a great experience with the usual ups and downs that life throws at us. It was hard to leave, especially saying good bye to my friends and students.

I will write more about leaving Korea later. With pictures.