So, I'm hesitant to announce this widely, for fear of jinxing the process – but I have been offered a one-year contract to teach at a school in Goyang-si in South Korea. I still don't have the contract in hand, but it should be showing up via email any day now.
Interestingly, Goyang is an exurb northwest of Seoul, along the same commuter rail route and trunk road I used to take between my Army posting (near Munsan) and Seoul – so I actually carry a fairly vivid picture of the town (as seen from a slow-moving train) in my head. The school is exciting – it does not just offer EFL (English as a Foreign Language) but instead offers its curriculum in English. So I'll get to teach social studies, literature, even math or science to middle/high school students in English, much the way I turned my AP Spanish class at Moorestown, NJ, into a social studies and Latin American history class that just happened, coincidentally, to be taught in Spanish.
Meanwhile, my sister has consented to adopt my cat, Bernie. So, within hours, Bernie and I leave for Phoenix on a short highway odyssey. Bernie actually turned out to be a very good traveler when we did the trip here to Minneapolis from LA last year, so I'm not terribly worried. Once she spends an hour or so yowling over the changed circumstances she settles down on the dashboard and watches the world go by fairly contentedly. Now that I own a camera, maybe I'll even take a picture of the experience.
More later.