It's Not All Rainbows and Butterflies.

Many people seem to think that living abroad is one big adventure and every day is new and exciting.  That's not exactly the case.  My day to day life is pretty much just like it would be at home.  I have Monday to Friday job.  I come home and make dinner.  I go to the grocery store and run errands.  Ya know, normal life.  I just happen to be doing it on the other side of the world.

And living abroad can be difficult sometimes.  There are the obvious reasons that you are far away from friends and family and miss home and your loved ones.  I also miss a lot of little things, like driving my car.  Having an oven (we only have 2 burners and that's it).  Lots of good food from home.  Being able to communicate with people easily (I kind of forget what it's like to be able to walk in a store and ask any questions I want without having to speak like a 4 year old).  There are a lot of little things.  But there's also more.

One of the hardest things about living in a foreign country is being a foreigner.  You don't know customs and culture and how things work.  I've learned quite a bit about Korean culture in my year here, but there is still so much I don't understand.  But I'm not getting into that now.  Maybe at a later post.  Anyway, back to the subject:  being a foreigner.  This can be a big problem if, say, you have legal problems and don't know how the legal system in your current country works.  That's our problem now.  

Our school is a small, privately owned language school; called a hagwon in Korean.   There are thousands and thousands of hagwons in Korea.  There are several within walking distance of the one we work at.  Because of this (and currently the bad economy) a lot of them fail.  Our school has been going for about four years now, but it is on it's last leg.  They haven't had enough students this whole year and now they keep losing students left and right.  They have been having financial problems since we arrived, but things are suddenly getting a lot worse and in a scary way.  

Despite the financial problems, we have always been paid on time.  That is, until last month.  We are supposed to be paid on the 5th of every month, which in January was our first day back to school after vacation.  So when we weren't paid right on the 5th, we weren't too worried about it.  But when it was 2 days later and the director of our school still hadn't mentioned anything about being paid, we started to wonder.

We eventually got HALF of our pay checks two weeks later.  And now, on February 2nd, we have not been paid the other half of our paycheck.  The school has no money.  None.  Our boss can't afford to pay us.  It's kind of a problem.  Oh, and did I mention that when we finish a one year contract we get a severance (equal to one month's pay) and our plane tickets home paid for.  There are 3 of us leaving at the end of this month.  

If we were in America, we would know how to take care of this.  Not getting paid would hardly even be an issue.  I don't think I've ever heard of anyone I know not being paid in the States.  But here, how do we deal with it?  We're not Koreans, we don't have all of the rights Koreans do.  And dealing with the legal system in a country where don't know the laws is not easy.  We really don't know what to do.  Our boss says she's trying her hardest and wants to pay us.  We believe her, but just wanting to pay us isn't quite enough.  We've been kind of stuck.  It doesn't seem like there is too much we can do.  So we just wait and hope that she finds the money to pay us.  

Waiting, waiting...