I owe it all to LeVar Burton...

It all started, years ago, with a little song that went like this:

"Butterfly in the sky....I can go twice as high...take a look, it's in a book, Reading Rainbow...I can go anywhere..."

It seems as though my anywhere is South Korea!  Sorry, I know this is cheesy, but it is official--I (Leslie) am going to be the Elementary Librarian at Gyeonggi Suwon International School (GSIS)!!  Click on the name to go to the school's website if you want to see more.

I am so thrilled about this job!  In my four years of teaching experience, I have found the most satisfaction in teaching children to read and getting kids excited about books, and I am soo excited to get to do this as a school librarian!  I am wanting to start working on my school library certification as well, so hopefully I can work that into my schedule and eventually be certified so that I will have a better chance of doing this as a career when we eventually return to the U.S. to live.  Oh yeah, the school requires a 2 year contract, so we will for sure be living in South Korea for at least 2 more years.  Start making plans to come visit us!! :)

We will be moving to the city of Suwon, which is the capital city of our province, Gyeonggi-do, and has a population of around a million.  It is a cool historic city which actually has the original fortress wall intact, Hwaseong Fortress, but of course the city has spread past the original wall.  Suwon is the home to one of the World Cup soccer stadiums, and the Suwon Bluewings soccer team, which is great because we love to go to the games here.  Suwon is also where galbi, my favorite Korean meal, originated.  That is the barbecue-style meal where you cook the meat on a grill at your table and make lettuce wraps with rice and other veggies and stuff.  I am excited that we'll be living in galbi-land!  haha  I could seriously eat galbi every day and be happy.

So, I don't have all of the official details yet with start dates, etc. but the principal is supposed to get back with me at the beginning of next week (they've been on a week-long winter vacation this week) with all that.  Like I have mentioned in a previous post, the international schools are on a westernized calendar and curriculum, so it will be very similar to teaching in an American school, just without many American kids!  School starts in August and goes through June, and I think they have a good 7 week summer vacation, as well as a 3 week Christmas break, and other breaks throughout the school year (winter break, spring break, Chuseok--Korean Thanksgiving).  So, it will give me more vacation time and hopefully more time to travel!

So, now, you are probably wondering about Michael. :)  At this point we are hoping that he can also get a job at GSIS.  The principal had talked to me at one point about a full-time substitute job that Michael could possibly fill, and he said the administrators are going to discuss that next week.  We have also heard that they are going to have some Bible openings, as it is also a Christian school, so he has put in his application if any jobs open up there.  So, we are praying that one of these will work out so that we can both work there and have the same schedules, vacations, etc.  We're just trusting that God will take care of it for us! 

We'll update as we know more and will hopefully be planning our summer vacation to the US pretty soon here!  I want to thank you again for all of your prayers and to ask you to keep them coming for Michael!  

~Leslie