It's been quite awhile since I've made any updates to my blog, but due to my busy schedule, I find that it is hard these days to find time to sit down and write. But I want to update everyone on my plans for the future.
Due to a long and drawn out process involving my school Connexus possibly moving, I was unable to make a decision about my future. But I now am able to make a decision.
I've decided to extend my term for another year. Of course I was hoping to make a decision sooner, however because of the moving situation, it was hard to know what the right decision was for me. The whole process of moving was pretty complicated, so I'll try to explain why Connexus had to move, and why it took me so long to make a decision:
The area that I work in, called Gangnam, is a really expensive area in terms of renting a building for a small business, and last fall Connexus was in danger of possibly going under because of the high cost of the building that we are currently in. So at that point there was talk of moving the location of Connexus.
In addition, KAC (Korean Anabaptist Center) is the "parent company" of Connexus, and thus provides input in terms of direction for Connexus. Now because we are in such a wealthy area, many of the people that we teach are among the privileged elite in Korea. So by serving the most privileged people, what I am doing as a teacher doesn't exactly align with the mission of the Mennonite Church's values of serving the needy. In a nutshell, staying in Gangnam is not necessarily the best place to serve the underprivileged.
As a result of some of these factors, the idea of moving was seen as a way of changing to fit the mission of the Mennonite Church in Korea. However, Connexus also serves as a source of income for KAC, so at the same time it is beneficial to stay in the same area because moving somewhere else would mean losing most of our students as a consequence.
In addition, Connexus was initially supported by a couple of investors, and one of these investors is demanding that we pay them a sum of money per month for the next 2 years, should Connexus remain in Gangnam. This of course puts another burden on the organization as a whole, and it of course has complicated things even further.
So a few weeks ago some of the members of the KAC staff had a meeting to decide where we should move, and the two options at that point were Gangnam (where we are now), and Chun Chon, a city outside of Seoul.
After a long meeting the decision was made to move to Chun Chon, which was a decision that wasn't received well by the Connexus staff. In particular, my greatest concern with this move was that we would have to basically start over in terms of teaching and programming for Connexus.
To say the least, I was not enthusiastic about this decision. I was pretty upset because in my mind the decisions I had to make were as follows:
1. Stay with KAC/Connexus and not know what was going to happen.
2. Stay in Korea and find a new teaching job, but take the risk of working at a place that I'm not comfortable with (some teachers I've talked to have said that there are some places that are terrible to work at)
3. Go home and try to find a job
I was very stressed out because what I really wanted to happen was to just stay in Gangnam, and continue to do the things that we are doing. Right now I'm not ready to make such a dramatic change.
But because of the negative reaction from the teaching staff, a few days later, we had a meeting with the majority of the KAC and Connexus staff. During that meeting, all of the teachers were given the opportunity to voice their opinion, and the majority of the teachers wanted to stay in Gangnam. As a result the initial decision to move was reversed, and the final decision has been to stay in Gangnam.
After hearing about this I decided to stay. However, I am going to be coming to the US soon. But I'm actually going to be coming back in October rather than September, so I have more time to plan ahead. I'm hoping to visit Minneapolis and Goshen while I'm back, but I'll try to see as many people as I can.
I hope to see you soon!
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