Another month, another check-in

Good news everyone, this post won't be too long! I still have not secured a job in Korea, but at least this time I have an actual timeline I'm working with. About half of the post might be about that, so you know it won't be too heavy of a read. I'll get straight into it now because I haven't got much else to mention here.

I have done the document submission and other things requested of me by GEPIK and I'm currently being recommended to schools. A couple early possibilities have come my way, but they were in pretty undesirable locations (...locations for me that is. They're good locations that just aren't close to the area I would like to base myself in) so I turned them down and I'm currently waiting on schools to show an interest in me. I'm of course worried because I keep hearing about how the job market for teaching jobs is shrinking, but the recruiter I'm working with is pretty positive and helpful, so I have to figure she knows something I don't and maybe my chances are better than I think. At any rate, I should start to get an idea of schools that might be interested in me by late December and in early to mid January, I should be doing interviews and finding out if I have a job or not. By the end of February then, I would be going out there if I do wind up getting a job. The process is long and it gives me time to get all my ducks in a row as far as paperwork goes, but I'm starting to get to a point where my work here is drying up and I'm going to start feeling like a bum when I have no jobs to do here and all I can do is wait to find out if I have employment. I'm really banking on getting a job in Korea though, I hope I just get one and this all works out. On a related note, I mentioned my project not being accepted in my last post. It was indeed a quick fix and a quick turnaround for grading as I received a notification that it was accepted about a week after I finished it. So now I can OFFICIALLY say I have a 4.0 GPA in my current pursuit of a masters degree (whether or not I continue to pursue that remains to be seen).

So yeah my jobs are drying up. I still do stuff with Grandpa of course and I still do stuff for other family members too, but as far as my steady work with the shed goes, that is pretty much complete. I need to remember to post pictures eventually. I've been taking whatever jobs need to be done for family members though, not being too picky because I really feel like I should be out doing things at least 3 times a week. Though I enjoy playing all the new games I'm getting on super sale from Steam, I should be doing good stuff and helping people as much as I can before I (hopefully) leave. Plus, maybe I can earn some good karma along the way or something. I haven't been picky though, I even drove down to Vancouver, WA to help my Grandma with some things down there. I had only seen her at my graduation in the time since I've been back from Korea, so it was nice to catch up.

For Thanksgiving, my family got back into our tradition of going down to central Oregon (Sunriver) and renting a big house for my family and my uncle's (mom's oldest brother's) family. He has two daughters and a son, each married. Both the daughters have sons, one is 6 and the other is 4. The 6 year old and his family couldn't make it, but we'll see them at Christmas. The other two kids did make it which was nice. I hang out with their son a lot even though he's older than me by about 14 years. We're the lefties of our generation and since we both like beer, we did a big brewery series of tours in Bend which is the nearest city to Sunriver. That was a pretty fun way to spend the time. Other than that, it was nice to see everyone there and just hang around for a few days.

In League, Keir has been playing more and getting better. That has stopped now though as his finals are approaching, so he can't play again until those are done. I'm not going to let him and additionally, he requested me to not let him so we are doubly sure I will not be letting him break his study routine. Outside of that, I'm trying to soloqueue a bit more. I haven't done it as much as I would have liked, but I've seen more success than I expected, so I'm pretty happy. Maybe I'll get out of "ELO hell" this season haha. Our ranked team dropped the guy we didn't know in real life and we picked up our friend Wolen as well as Eric Canada. They will be good additions to the team. Eric Canada is the main replacement for the other guy and Wolen plays with us when Eric Canada can't. Peter is on the team too, but I haven't heard from him in quite a while actually.

A few of us have also been having fun with the Tekkit mod for Minecraft. Aside from that, I just picked up Civ5 (as did Chris and Steven) and that has been super fun and super hard to tear myself away from. It's reminiscent of the Total War series, but a bit more polished in ways. I like it.

EDIT: Hey everyone I just remembered. If for some reason you really need to get in touch with me, use the internet. I am able to check my email multiple times a day and I try to stay on facebook for the chat feature when I'm at my computer now (since I don't use gchat anymore). Failing that, you can also use our mumble server if you have it/have the information. You can still contact me on my cell of course, but I recommend you don't do that because it is slowly dying (charge now lasts part of a day) and I won't be getting a new one until I know one way or the other if I'm leaving for Korea. So that would be 2-3 months of my cell being kinda shitty.

That's all I have for now, so until next time, peace out.