day 70

I was finally paid on Friday, May 10. The day before I'd gone to Jim's office to bemoan the trials of functioning without money (yeah, shame of me for complaining about such a trial). I said I was ready to ask Mr. Kim for a letter of release from my contract. I told him what an insult it is to not receive payment in full on time. Why should I care about the students or doing a good job teaching if I was doing it for free? I was furious, with no patience to work under such conditions.

He promised me I would be paid by the end of the day. The end of the day came and went and I wasn't paid but I was paid the next day so all my worries have been solved and now I can worry about more important things. Jim told me this is a problem of the past now and that come June, I'll be paid on time. We'll see.

My work schedule also changed a bit on May 10. I no longer teach the class with my favorite problem student, Jee-hoon. It's been replaced by an advanced reading class that I teach three times a week during the regular dinner hour. So on the days I teach that class, I have to take my dinner alone and earlier that the other teachers. I don't mind so far because it's an advanced class, which is usually fun to teach, and they are well-behaved so far.

On Wednesday, May 8, I went with Carly, Jim, and Michael to see the movie Spiderman. Loved it. Many of the current movies that are showing in the States also find their way to Korea (and Chunchon by default) where they are shown with the original English and Korean subtitles; so it's just like the real thing. The one movie theater I've been to in Chunchon is very old but very big. The sound system isn't anything to get excited about and the refreshments are about as old, stale, and unexciting as you can imagine but as long as you're seeing the movie you'd want to see back home, who can really complain?

I had wondered about videos before I came to Korea. Video stores are almost more common here, from what I've seen, than they are in the states. Of course there is a large selection of Korean-language videos but the largest percentage of movies available in these video stores are original American movies with Korean subtitles! And the selections are usually very up-to-date.