Leavin' on a jet plane.

In January.

Let me cut to the chase: Horyon and I have accepted jobs in Korea, and will probably leave in late January.

And my wife is awesome.

Over the past month we have been discussing our options. That's when it started to become apparent that there was no teaching job waiting for me in the Lawrence area, nor even a job slowing down to a manageable pace to which I could catch up. Heck, most of them seemed to be in vehicles while I was on foot. This was very frustrating, after spending the past two years in a transition to teaching program designed to help Kansas deal with their teacher shortage. I feel sorry for anyone getting into a program like this one right now.

Since I lost my job, I have gone in and out of a funk. More in than out, I'm afraid. On a rational level I believe that a man is not defined by his job, but it seems that as you walk into my reptile brain, my job title is written on the door and the mailbox. And when you ring the doorbell, it announces, "Someone to see you, Mr. Teacher!" Even the towels were monogrammed. Now when you push the doorbell button it makes a rude noise.

Through all this Horyon has been patient with me, and lifted me up when I felt like just giving up. Not just telling me things would be okay, but talking about what we could do practically to move on.

It was not an easy decision to make. Whatever doubts I had faded quickly: less than a week after telling Horyon's parents about our decision, her father found a school that wanted to hire both of us.

We are now collecting documents to prepare to go. Maxine needs a new passport soon, and Quinten has never had one. Horyon needs to file some very expensive paperwork to leave the country without losing her visa. Papers will have to go back and forth across the ocean before we can go. It's all somewhat messy, and that's not even getting into the fun and excitement of packing and disposing of three years worth of stuff.

We are planning to leave in mid-Januray. You would think that four months is plenty of time, but it is going to be tight. We've already made flight reservations before the prices start changing for the worse. Hopefully we will not have to change them before leaving.

In the mean time, I have applied to be a substitute teacher again, but can't start until the state processes my license. So I have time to work on these projects, but our only income is from Horyon's sewing. Yeah, no stress there, right?

I feel like there is lots more to write, but I'm going to leave it here for now, and hopefully have more news to share sooner rather than later.