From the Hair Salon

I'm now in the hair salon I used to frequent when I was here 3 years ago. Unfortunately my former hairdresser, Lee Sung-min, is no longer here. I usually don't get attached to hair dressers well enough to remember their names, but when I find a Korean hair dresser that can cut my hair in a way that doesn't look like I'm trying to bring 80's style back, I gotta stick with him. I'm waiting for my wife to get her hair done so I have a bit of time right now.

I've been updated on the housing situation. Apparently no one wanted to tell me before I arrived but I've heard through the grapevine (not even firsthand as you would expect from a professional organization) that the school doesn't have enough money for the large furnished apartment they promised. In fact the options I have are as follows: 1) Unfurnished small apartment where they pay $300 rent and I have to come up with the $3000 "key money" (damage deposit-like lump sum payed at the beginning). 2) We live in a larger apartment across town owned by my previous employer but commuting will be about 45 minutes each way (this option may not be available anymore) or 3) We live in the school dormitory with the students.

From what I understand there has been a misunderstanding between two of my higher-ups, each thinking that the other was responsible for finding a house. Now we have no place and no one is willing to apologize and step up to fix this blatant breach in our agreement. In fact, no one has contacted me to inform me about any of this except my wife's mother and I am expected to start work on Thursday. We will meet with the official in charge of foreign teacher recruitment tomorrow and find out first hand what the situation is.

Today is the first day we haven't been on the move or doing school business since last Tuesday so we're far from impressed that no one has done any work to find us a place until now...and even now we are expected to find our own place. We are both inclined to pick up our bags and move on to China or somewhere else. The problem is that everyone knows that we are right, however if we tell that to those who messed up in the first place, they will "lose face" and we will cause them to be shamed and they will likely be less inclined to help us. From my point of view though, they have already shamed themselves a great deal by leaving us hanging with no house, expecting us to find our own (all standard contract conditions) and by not even contacting us about the situation to let us know beforehand.

Tonight we are going to meet with someone who we expect will encourage us to compromise and think of it from their perspective...I am a bit confused as to why they can't tell us their perspective themselves. I can hardly wait to hear what excuses they have for breaking our contractual agreement even before I start working.

When we meet the official tomorrow we plan to explain it very simply: If we have no adequate place for the two of us to live, I will not start working until there is. If they want us to compromise our expectations for our housing, I'm not sure we'll even stay. The housing was one of the big draws for us to this job and without it, there isn't much reason to stick around. After talking about it, we'd both love to go to China for the year...we'll see what happens.

In Taipei

It's been a while since I've written as I've been at home in Canada visiting with family and friends for the past 3 1/2 months or so. We've been at the airport in Taipei since 6:00 AM and it's now 5:00 PM with our plane leaving in just 2 more hours. We got a really cheap flight and I think we're paying for it now.

I still haven't heard anything from my employer about what to do and where to go once we reach our destination city which this time is Gunsan (I suppose I may have to change my blog to "Gunsan Diaries" now). I just heard through the grapevine that we don't have a place yet and that we aren't expected to have one soon and there's a long story behind it all. We'll be informed upon our arrival in Incheon in about 5 hours about our housing situation. We are already cranky and stressed from not getting proper sleep for the past 25+ hours and this is not welcome news. I don't understand how someone who knew of our coming 5 months ago still doesn't have our housing situation sorted out. I'm tempted to tell them what I think of the situation but while that choice may get an apology and results in a western country, in Korea it would likely result in a string of face-saving excuses or a counter-attack blaming me.

Anyway, we're off to eat some sushi before the last leg of our trip, if we can afford it. We got some $6 US vouchers from the airline to help us wait out the day, which seemed great at first but after buying 2 "Russian" ice cream cones for $8 we realized how little that would buy us. We've still got one left so hopefully we can get some rice anyway.