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Week 52 (Feb 19th to Feb 25th) |
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Wednesday Feb 22nd, Jason is back! He surprised me (and the kids) by
showing up at Wonderland this morning. He's only staying in Daegu for a couple of days before he moves to Pohang to start his new job, but it feels great to have him back here, kind of like he never left!
Tonight was my last appearance at the Commune open mic night. The band kind of joined forces to send me off, which was nice. I also got to see most of the people I care about in Daegu, which was also nice. Commune (and Hyun Shic, the owner) is one of the few things that I will truly miss about Daegu!
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Thursday Feb 23rd, Sue and I finally had it out today over the pension
and flight money stuff. Initially, a couple weeks ago, she was refusing to pay me the flight money, and was going to dock my severance pay for the pension money. Both of these moves, of course are illegal. I was so terrified to talk to her about it-- I'm not
good with conflict, and I usually avoid it like the plague. But that's a lot of money that I deserve. So I spent two weeks researching and going over my contract so that I could back myself up.
Here's how Korean pension law works: EVERYONE is legally required to contribute money to the pension fund, and your employer is legally required to match whatever you pay into it. For foreigners, you get all the money back when you return to your country�the money you contributed and the money that your employer contributed. Since I'm still going to be working in Korea, I won't get any money back until I leave for good. Here's what Sue was doing: she never said anything to
me at all regarding pension. So I was entirely unaware that there were even laws about it until Jason left and there was a scuffle over it. What Sue did was pay all of my pension money, and then she was
expecting me to just give her all the money back. Her logic: she allegedly negotiated with my recruiter to not pay into the pension plan at all in exchange for paying 1.9 mil won per month (this is the standard rate, but she wanted to pay only 1.8). The flaw:
there is absolutely nothing in my contract stating that I have to pay her back the pension money, and the money is legally mine any which way you look at it. While I don't have too much of a problem with giving
her the money back when I leave Korea for good, however many years down the road, she was expecting me to pay her out of my pocket! That's $1000 bucks that she just wanted to take from me. So we had this ridiculous argument for a full hour, with me waving printouts from the National Pension Website and saying "This is the law!", and her
spouting out her ludicrous and obviously illegal argument. It's very difficult to argue with someone who apparently has no sense of logic OR legality. Then the flight issue . . . I did finally get what I want
in the end. I was extremely proud of myself for not backing down (for the first time ever), but my legs were shaking really badly under the table the whole time, and there were definite moments when I was
trying not to cry. It hurts that Sue would treat me this way after all the hard work I've put in for her this year. But, at least I'm getting the money that I legally deserve, and thank god! I'll be out of here in
less than a week.
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Friday Feb 24th,I had to say goodbye to my morning students today.
Because there are no morning classes on the coming Monday and Tuesday, today was the last time I will ever see them. It broke my heart! I never imagined that it would be so hard to leave. Especially
Michelle . . . I would put that little girl in my suitcase and take her with me if I could. She was upset all day today, because I'm leaving, and every time I looked at her, I had to try not to cry. At one
point during the day, she told me that she was going to Seoul with her mom on Saturday, and she leaned in and whispered "I'll see you there, ok?" Nothing could hurt more than that. Right before the kids left, they had a big pileup and group hug, which will be the way I remember them forever. I can't believe how much I'm really going to miss these kids!
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Saturday Feb 25th, Tonight was kind of my going away party.
Coincidentally, there are a lot of other people who are leaving right now as well. Rob, for instance, is going to travel for 6 weeks, and then he's going back to England. Stephanie (Jason's girlfriend) is also leaving. Since the three of us have so many friends in common, we decided to do our own things for dinner, but to join the three parties downtown a little later on. I had dinner with the "Chilgok crew" and some of my band mates at Dijon, which is this really good European restaurant downtown. It's pricey, but that kind of food doesn't come along very often! Next stop was Commune, one last time to say goodbye to Hyun Shic. Then we put our parties together at Itaewon around 1 am. It was nice to be seeing everyone I know in the same place at the same time, but I also felt kind of overwhelmed with too many people to talk to and say goodbye to. So I didn't really say goodbye to
a lot of people. I'm not going that far anyway, and goodbyes suck.
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