I got my official last day a few weeks ago. My last day is August 31st. This is the last day of first semester. I was originally supposed to be done in the middle of September, but they figured it would be best if I ended on the last day of the semester. This is especially good for the students because they won't have me for 2 weeks in September, then have a new teacher come after just getting used to me. It works best to start the semester with a new teacher. Emily extended her contract from 1.5 months and we are now ending on the same day. In the past few weeks we have begun planning our travels for September. As of now our plan is to visit Beijing for one week, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Malaysia for around one week each, and Hong Kong for 3 days. We are scheduled to fly out together on October 5 from Seoul, as we will be flying back there from Hong Kong to see people one last time and get extra stuff we are not taking with us.
We are both extremely excited for the SE Asia trip, but China decided to pull a fast one on us!! As of July 1, China put a new visa law affecting non-Koreans living in Korea into effect. This law states that you must have 6 months or more left on your ARC (Foreigner ID card) card to be allowed to apply for a visa. We booked our flights to China and other places around SE Asia in June together as a package. Since July 1 many people have been turned away for China visas because their ARC cards don't have 6 months left on them. We heard about this new law from these people. NOWHERE on any Chinese embassy or consulate website in Seoul, Chicago, etc. has this new law posted. How are travels supposed to know this? The only place we have seen this law posted was on a travel agency website in Korea. Obviously it isn't fair to do this without announcing that a new law will come into effect. You would think that people who bought their plane tickets prior to July 1 would be exempt from this law. One of my co-workers had booked plane flights and hotels for her and her parent's in China over our summer break. She did this before July 1 also, but was forced to cancel those plans. I'm not sure about her, but our plane tickets are non-refundable so we are doing everything we can to not lose a lot of money! There are a few options that could possibly work and we are checking into these. They all involve spending more money than we should for the visas, but we will do whatever it takes because we both want to go to China! I will have to keep you posted if we are able to get the visas or not. I wouldn't mind spending another week in Thailand, but I'd rather not have it at the expense of China.
An another note, school has been moving a long quite well. All the kids in my kinder class have been doing a great job lately. I've noticed a ton of improvement in each student since he/she began in February. My class, unlike every other kinder class at my school did not go to pre-k at the school. They were all new to Poly School. They have adjusted well and are doing awesome! It's really bad timing that my contract is done at the end of August because my Korean teacher is pregnant. She does activities with them during break time, eats lunch with them, and has 1 class at the end of their day. Needless to say, the Korean teachers work very hard. They call most parents on a daily basis to keep them up to speed on things. Her last day is next Friday, the day before our summer break starts. I feel really bad for my kids that both me and the Korean teacher will be leaving in the timespan of about one month. I just hope that the new Korean teacher will be a good one because my co-teacher has done an excellent job and all the kids love her.
In June we went on a field trip to another park (who would've guessed). The gym teacher came too and played some field games with the kids. They had a lot of fun. This Friday we are going to an aquarium. It's a pretty cool one. Emily and I went in February. Some of my students have been there. It will definitely be a lot of fun for everyone. That's about all that has been going on lately over here. Time is moving extra fast. It's weird to think I only have 6 weeks left! In little over a week my family is coming to visit for our summer break. They've never had Korean food before (since Iowa has nothing to offer for Korean food). If they are like me then they will love the food. I'm excited to show them all the things I've been doing in the last year. I hope it doesn't rain too much, since it always seems to on Dempsey family vacations!! People in my area of Seoul are used to me since I see a lot of the same people each day to work, around the school building, and on the way home. It will be funny to see how people react to 3 more tall white people!! Many, many stares will be occurring, that is certain!
