From black to white

I’ve got a job offer!!!

For quite possibly the best teaching position I could hope for here in Korea:

in the mountains, the beautiful beautiful mountains, (I’d already decided the job in the agricultural town in the South was both too isolated, too far away, and the students too young for my taste. The cottage with garden was tempting, but coastal hills don’t comfort me like thickly wooded mountains do) in a rural town of 20,000 with only one older apartment complex (half the height as in the city) that you can still see the mountains past, on a river.
MANAGEABLE class sizes of 20-30
mixed gender classes
two fantastic female Korean co-teachers
only 16 classes to teach, and broadcasting a 10 minute English greeting/lesson to the whole school every morning
a technical high school of 300 students
the school is clean, it doesn’t have a dirt sports field, and it already has an English Zone
no hogwans for miles !!!!!!!
English classes are incorporated into the overall English GRADING system, so I won’t be powerless like at most schools
an hour by train outside of Seoul, soon to be a half hour by high speed subway by this summer, and the train ride is really scenic (see below)
the last teacher was there for five years and said the administration was totally supportive with everything he wanted to do or any time he had trouble
I’m free to leave the school anytime the classes are done and I feel I’ve finished my prep.
It’s the same pay I’m making now +$100 additional for its rural location

Basically, it’s already got all the things I’d hoped for and fought for but didn’t receive at my last school. AND, just looking out the window is thrilling, the air is clean, there isn’t a crush of people being rude, the people are not pretentious and just look content.

When they handed me the contract to look at, I was disappointed to see it was the standard school district contract and I proceeded to tell them about my being blacklisted and how I could only contract with them if they gave me an independent contract.

They called the head of the school district and he told them that there is no blacklist and that I could be hired if they wanted me. So that indicates that the blacklist I was on is independent of the school district and it is strictly the handiwork of the evil person running the Native English Teaching program and her recruiter cohorts, and she doesn’t have the final say in who gets hired.

They also called my references, who told them I was a professional and passionate teacher worth hiring.

Now, the only hitch is I also have an inside opening for a job that probably pays a lot more a month. We’re talking a lot more. However, this job would be 50-60 hrs. a week in front of a computer screen, which would leave me dead/drained. I definitely would love to actually be exceeding my expenses for once, but not sure if the toll it would take would be too high. In addition, this opening is two months away and not guaranteed, even though it’s probably mine due to being recommended internally and being the first applicant. Two more months of uncertainty, and if I don’t get the position, maybe many more months, at which point I’d just have to leave Korea…

If I were to take the teaching position in the country, that means participating in TRACK would be remotely, and I’d have to move almost immediately and find someone to take over my apartment lease or maintain it at great expense, and I like the place I’m at and Mrs. Kim.

So I have until the 16th to decide. In polling people I know, the Koreans tell me to take the big money (it’s also more prestigious) and the foreign teachers tell me a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

What to do???

daeseong — How the Northern Han River looks from the train between Daeseong and Cheongpyeong

nami — On the river north of Cheongpyeong is Nami island, made famous in the Korean movie, Winter Sonata

OK. Can this get any harder? I just got a message from the major newspaper that they would like to interview me and the job is probably mine – but this interview is AFTER the deadline to decide about the Cheongpyeong teaching position closes. ARGH!!!!

A view from the loft

Even though I work with Track and talk to Jane Jeong Trenka regularly, I’m always finding new things she’s participated in that I was unaware of. I honestly don’t understand how so much activity and profundity can pour out of one person…

Read, An Interview with Jane Jeong Trenka at the Loft Literary Center’s website.

Hungry Ghosts

My spinning wheels and its changing scenery is, I guess, like addiction. As is connecting, however imperfectly and incompletely, to others via the internet. But sometimes it pays off, my repeatedly pushing these buttons. (the irony of using one addiction to analyze another addiction doesn’t escape me) Here’s a gem another adoptee found and shared on-line. It spoke to her for its reference to abandonment. It spoke to me for its reference to abuse, neglect, and abandonment. It is me, without the needle stuck in my arm. (and, I have always been fascinated by needles and white powder to an unhealthy degree, so made sure never to go there)

“In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”

click on the title above to view the video page of this thought-provoking interview on Democracy Now, with Dr. Gabor Maté, Physician at Vancouver Safe-Injection Site, on the Biological and Socio-Economic Roots of Addiction and ADD

Excerpt from the transcripts:

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the people you treat.

DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, the hardcore drug addicts that I treat, but according to all studies in the States, as well, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. And the commonality is childhood abuse. In other words, these people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development, they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside who wasn’t sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again.

And that’s what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief, and neurobiological development to early adversity.

AMY GOODMAN: What does the title of your book mean, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts?

DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, it’s a Buddhist phrase. In the Buddhists’ psychology, there are a number of realms that human beings cycle through, all of us. One is the human realm, which is our ordinary selves. The hell realm is that of unbearable rage, fear, you know, these emotions that are difficult to handle. The animal realm is our instincts and our id and our passions.

Now, the hungry ghost realm, the creatures in it are depicted as people with large empty bellies, small mouths and scrawny thin necks. They can never get enough satisfaction. They can never fill their bellies. They’re always hungry, always empty, always seeking it from the outside. That speaks to a part of us that I have and everybody in our society has, where we want satisfaction from the outside, where we’re empty, where we want to be soothed by something in the short term, but we can never feel that or fulfill that insatiety from the outside. The addicts are in that realm all the time. Most of us are in that realm some of the time. And my point really is, is that there’s no clear distinction between the identified addict and the rest of us. There’s just a continuum in which we all may be found. They’re on it, because they’ve suffered a lot more than most of us

The Wheel of Samsara Six Realms of Existence

By Barbara O’Brien, About.com Guide

The Six Realms are an allegorical description of conditioned existence, or samsara, into which beings are reborn. The nature of one’s existence is determined by karma. Some realms seem more pleasant than others — heaven sounds preferable to hell — but all are dukkha, meaning they are temporary and imperfect.

The Six Realms often are illustrated by the Bhava Chakra, or Wheel of Life.

Please note that in some schools the realms of Devas and Asuras are combined, leaving five realms instead of six.