Well, here’s the big news, for those of you who didn’t see a mass email from me: I have taken a department job over at Jeonju University. It begins at the end of August, so I will be on staff at Wonkwang until the mid-August holidays, and then I will begin over at Jeonju University at the end of August. For now, I’m just getting my head around the idea of the holidays I’ll be enjoying, and trying to make sure the paperwork gets done properly and quickly.
It’s not a huge change, either financially or in terms of my teaching duties. The changes as far as I have been told include the following:
- I will be teaching required classes, which means that motivation will be lower than in the elective/extracurricular classes I have been teaching these days in Iksan.
- I will enjoy much more holiday time, to the tune of 4 months’ worth of time off.
- I will have individual housing, as in no shared apartment.
- I will be living in Jeonju, which is a slightly bigger city than Iksan, with more arts and cultural stuff going on.
I’m happy but the excitement isn’t really at full tilt yet. It still feels a long way off. For now, I have one heavy term left to get through, and a visa run to make, before I can even begin to think about my life in Jeonju.
And the visa run looms: I will need to travel somewhere, but where can I go cheaply and quickly (as in, in Asia) that isn’t full of SARS? Hmm. Maybe Thailand will have to do, even with its own limited SARS problem. Hmmmmm. I’ll ask around about it.
As one of my friends said about this coming on the tails of my breakup with my ex-girlfriend… Saeong jima. “You never can tell what the silver lining of a given cloud might be…” is how I would translate that expression, though it’s got to do with an old man, a horse, a boy, and a war. I’ll post the story sometime… but not tonight. Anyway, it’ll be easier to move to Jeonju now that I am single.
Anyway… no other big news for now. Off to watch a couple of DVDs and enjoy a cold beer.