Vacation has ended and life has gone back to normal. This past week was a long week definitely. Our schedules changed and seem more full than before. Evidently our school isn't doing well. Even though we are constantly getting new students, old ones are leaving. Why? I've been trying to figure that out exactly. One of the reasons I've heard is that the kids haven't improved over a certain amount of time. I am not completely surprised by this in some cases because I often feel that the school cares more about appearances and making money than about the actual education. I was riding in a cab with Scarlet yesterday and she asked me if I was scared about it. "What if the school loses too many students and we get laid off??" That scared me a little bit. I don't know if it is actually a possibility or not.

This new schedule has definitely left me frustrated. Some of the classes have been rearranged. One of my classes (a pretty low level) now has so many students that there aren't enough seats. One of them has to sit at the teacher's desk and we're still short one seat after that. I hate it. Mostly because I can't help the students at all. I spend most of the time trying to get everyone to quit talking and pay attention. Then when they do their workbooks, I hardly have time to even check them all. I feel like I'm just correcting it and handing it back to them, with no chance to explain their mistakes and help them understand better.

So I don't know what will happen in the future. I hope things will get better. I'm not too worried about it all though. I guess if things do go wrong, we'll most likely get placed at another school. The salary is about the same all over Korea, so it wouldn't change most of that. It would just mean a new apartment and new location most likely. But I won't think about that too much right now.

On a better note...the Korean Lunar New Year is coming up at the end of this month. So we'll have 2 days off work, leaving us with a 4 day weekend. SO we are going to go to Japan to visit Elijah!!! I'm pretty excited about that! We leave Saturday the 24th and will return on the 27th. We're flying into Osaka and taking a train to Elijah's town. We're also going to get to spend a day in Kyoto! Jen is also going to visit her family so we should be able to hang out with her! I'm excited about going to a new place! I've been in the airport in Japan several times, but never really been there. Only two more weeks to go!