Today was my last day at a school I’ve been working at for the past year and a half. It was a rather anti-climatic day.
I started off by going to the hospital. Since I still have school insurance, and the many tentacles of this school happens to include a medical center, I stopped by for some discount health care. I had a previous health check come back with a very Magic 8 Ball answer of "Answer Unclear. Try again later." Seems there were some things they wanted to recheck involving urine. I have been suffering from some pulsing pains in my kidney/abdominal area for the past week, and wondered of my inconclusive test results might need to be further refined.
We did the tests, with some additional X-rays to see if there was anything potentially hiding from the other tests. The doctor that interviewed me about they symptoms proceeded to ask me to lift my shirt for an examination. He made a claw with his two fingers and started hooking my stomach and asking me if I was in pain. Now, having someone claw at your stomach isn’t exactly pleasant, but it wasn’t as if I was in serious pain from anything other than his fingers. He concluded by looking by my X-rays that I had no kidney stones.
He suggested I was suffering from a lack of exercise, infrequently timed meals, and an abundance of stress. That basically nailed what had defined my life for the past few weeks. I can’t go out to exercise with my dog Yoshi yet (two more weeks for shots!), and I’ve been so busy with looking for work and for apartments I haven’t been eating at the same time everyday. The stress levels are absolutely through the roof at the moment. I can’t remember a time when I’ve had so much stuff going on that’s costing me this much money at every turn. Just today we made airplane reservations back to the United States (July 7th to July 22, confirmed). Along with my apartment purchase, I’ve dropped a serious amount of cash in the last two days. All this while officially being temporarily unemployed for the first time in Korea. (Deep Breath.)
However, my students were great today. One group of kindergarten mothers actually begged me to stay at the school. The entire group of mothers came in and asked me my plans and really tried to make me decide to stay with their kids. If only things had worked out differently, I would have loved to keep things as they were. While I really like teaching their kids, I wasn’t going to be able to stay at the school despite their pleads. It’s time to go. The majority of the teaching staff is going, and the school won’t be the same. I wouldn’t want to be around when all the drastic changes started to occur.
I had four "cookie parties" today. The kids supplied their own snacks, and I brought the cola and cider for them to drink. The kids ingested massive amounts of sugar, then bounced around the classroom between rounds of Uno. They also made sure I ate dangerous amounts of salted and sugary snacks. By my last party I stayed far away from the snack table. I took some pictures for my Flickr account to share. I have to say that I never had any significant problems in any of my classes this year.
My largest class was actually my favorite, and I didn’t lose a single student the entire time I taught them this year. All my other classes were very good too. They each had their own character and senses of humor. Some of my students this year have been at the school longer than I have, so they were shocked to see such dramatic change occuring. They genuinely would miss the teachers they learned from for the past few years. The transformations in some of the student’s characters and abilities has been remarkable.
That being said, each time I leave a school it gets a little easier. It’s not that the connections between student and teacher aren’t as strong, but that I know where to place a limit on my attachment. I can have good relationships with students without violating my privacy now, which lets me step away from everything much more easily. Right now it still hasn’t sunk in that I won’t be going to work next week, or the week after that most likely. The whole "I’ve got to move into another apartment" idea hasn’t even begun to register yet either. The "I’ll be visiting the United States with my wife for the first time to meet the extended family" seems so far away that it’s like a dream.
Tonight will be indulgence of another kind. Korea plays Switzerland for a place in the knock out rounds of the World Cup. The game starts at 4 AM local time, so we’ll be traveling to the World Cup Stadium in the middle of the night to watch the game with the rest of the city of Daejeon. It will be my first World Cup party of the tournament, and I hope not the last. Now that I don’t need to worry about work, I can enjoy myself and try to get rid of some of this stress that has accumulated for the past few weeks.
