I am catching up on blogging during the Winter Break. Writing and reflecting on my experiences helps me make sense of the world and leaves a record for future generations of my family. This semester I conducted a job search as this is my last year in Tashkent. It felt like a second job, filling out cover letters, researching schools, preparing for interviews, and then all the correspondence. It is exciting, stressful, and always develops me professionally. I learn a lot from other schools and, more importantly, myself. The job search process crystallizes what I value in education and brings my leadership strengths and areas for growth to the forefront. I always wanted to try this with faculty and staff. Ask them to interview each other with the instructions of the interviewee: What special talents and strengths do you bring to the classroom and the school? It gets people out of their usual routines of preparing for teaching.
In mid-September, Nadia and I visited Pangyo, South Korea, for several days on one of the interview trips I did as a finalist for potential schools. Pangyo is a suburb of Seoul and is the Silicon Valley of Korea. Over 1,300 tech companies are headquartered there. It was a planned “eco-city” when it was developed in 2003 to alleviate the housing crunch in the adjacent Gangnam district. It certainly was green with trails along the Tan Cheon (Tan River) and the lush forested Cheonggye San, Geumto San, and Bara San mountains surrounding the city.
We enjoyed the elegance and development of East Asia. Prior to coming to Uzbekistan, we lived in Osaka, Japan, and we find the two countries to be quite similar. Nadia bought a juicer that she accidentally burned on the 220-volt outlet when we first arrived in Tashkent. On our rest day after an overnight flight, we visited a nearby mall for lunch and shopping. Everything is perfect in East Asia and we joke sometimes it feels like we are on a movie set. In our two trips to the 8-floor mall and walking around the city, we didn’t see any foreigners in the entire trip outside of the school. Korea is much quieter than Tashkent. We love the cuisine, nature, sophistication, and politeness of the culture of Korea. With our Latino/American background, however, the tightness of East Asian cultures sometimes causes us stress.
I would like to thank our hosts, the Korea International School. The hospitality and logistics were outstanding and had a delightful time learning more about the school and the city.
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