BUT I DON'T LIKE LENTILS AND MCDONALD'S TASTES GOOD.

Pretty much this. If Lentils tasted good and people wanted them, you'd have lentil bowls everywhere on the value menu.

Back on point. It may not exactly be insane to leave a decently secure job right now but it is definitely worth seriously considering staying at one.

The coronovirus infection rate elsewhere compared to here is huge.

The resilience of demand for English language teachers here is clear.

The benefits of free rent, low taxes, limited hours of work (even if you invest in prep time) and ability to contribute to your pension back home (agreements between SK and several Western nations).... are all financial...

... yet... also...

Isn't rockin' bossin' a classroom the cat's meow?

Even on my sickest day of work in 18+ years here, there were moments of glee, stillness, awesomeness, pain-free performance. Oh yeah.

I feel often like an actor on a live stage yet equipped usually with the tools to change the world, one audience at a time.

I think that's insight into my psyche. I had a major role in my high school play as a 1st year - mere 10th-grade student - Reverend Parris in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. I opened the play by talking while weeping. I LOVED every night of performance. After that year, in Grade 11, we did a musical and i said f*** that and played high school football instead. In Grade 12 I played a funny character in The Teahouse of the August Moon. I thought acting awesome but thought a more REAL platform was in my future (scientist? Er,... no. Why? Math, too hard/unengaging. Newspaper reporting? Hell ya, years of greatness, multiple awards, newspaper and radio news, I rocked the industry in Western Canada until at age 32 I thought i'd take a one - year break to travel... to Asia... South Korea... surprisingly never felt as satisfied. Did NOT look back. Being a big fish in the smallest pond of a classroom was enough for me to sleep well at night!

Thank you.

I bolded it because i felt it came straight from the heart.

It's always great to be heard and appreciated (another motivation of us career teaching junkies).

So did i, tylerthegloob, but i knew that was my ego talking, so didn't highlight it.

Nothing beats teaching a class of attentive, dialed-in students. Yeah, it may happen only half the time, but it jacks you up!

I have taught in hagwons (1-12 students per class) for... 17 years and 10 months.

I have taught in public school (30+ students in the library) for 2 months then a hard OUT! (Don't waste my time bro'! I ain't there to merely fill a spot and be a clown).

Now, some teachers might be able to connect wirh and help grow the skills of students in a 25+ attended class. It ain't my skillset.

I am not gainfully employed at the moment. A secure job awaits me in America after a final half semester of nursing school. But yeah, sounds like a decently secure kindy job paying 2.1mil awaits me here should I ever change my mind! It would be quite a comedown from what I had been making though...

Adjectives do not exist to describe my profound respect for nurses.

When I was 17 I woke up one morning in mid-May with a fever. My mom kept me home for the day and then the next one. My fever spiked and stayed at 103F. It wouldn't come down despite my mom following the doctor's orders.

The doc said to bring me in to the hospital. They couldn't bring my fever down and an overnight stay turned into 6 weeks. It took them a week to found out what I had and by then I was on my way to dying. I had bacterial endocarditis. Rare at the best of times and virtually unheard of in 17 year old's who go to bed feeling great.

I was the guy that doctors took their residents to on rounds and after describing symptoms asked them for a diagnosis. No one ever got it right.

I was in a small hospital in Quebec City, 200 beds. There were 120 or so senior citizens, about 12 new babies and me. The nurses spoiled me rotten. Of course I missed my high school graduation and prom. I had tubes hanging out of me. Massive dose of constant penicillin. The nurses baked a cake for me and threw me a grad party. I got special meals and juices, I liked grapefruit juice and there was always a jug beside my bed.

I saw the doctor twice a week unless I was on freakshow parade :-)

Mad mad mad respect for nurses, man. Three cheers for you Don Hobak. You are a hero.

They let me out the end of June and I spent July and August eating penicillin like smarties and sitting on my porch watching my friends play. I couldn't do any activity that would raise my heartbeat above resting. At the lowest point I weighed 72 pounds. 5' 10"...72 lbs  it was not a pretty sight.

I'm alive and I believe the nurses were a bigger help to that than the doctors. 

The expectations were high enough; now I gotta learn to bake?! 

That sounds like a truly harrowing experience. I’m glad you got the care you did; couldn’t have been easy for a 17 year old to go through all that. Unfortunately that sounds like a vignette from another era. Nursing has changed a lot since then, I’m afraid.

With the exception of China where you don’t even need to wear a mask, Korea is probably the best place on Earth to ride the chaos out.

America? Cmon, planes are literally falling out of the sky, whole states going dark, 500K corpses. Stay away, far away.

With the exception of China where you don’t even need to wear a mask

If you're going to believe that then you probably believe that absolutely nothing happened on June 4th 1989.

No requirement to troll my posts and argue.

Oh the irony.