Perish the thought

Heather and I had been in Canada for a year-and-a-half. We were living from paycheck to paycheck, as my piddling salary from Campus WorkLink and Seneca College failed to match our expenses. We never went anywhere, not even to decent restaurants. We never took a vacation except to go to my parents' house in Wiarton. Things were looking pretty bleak.

At about the same time that Heather received her permanent resident status, the one idea that I had previously refused to consider began to creep into my mind. Should we go back to Korea?

The fact of the matter was that I had been able to make some money when I had worked in Korea as an English teacher. Living a life of deficit spending in Canada was going to be disastrous if we continued down this road. I couldn't see any bright options on the horizon in Toronto, so I finally popped the question to Heather: "Do you think we should go back to Korea?"

It was as simple as that. Merely expressing the thought suddenly made it real. One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that when an idea strikes me as being the right thing to do, I'll likely follow through on it. And so it was that we decided we would go back to Korea after our apartment lease was up, in April 2000.