avalon's guidelines regarding swine flu

1. do not travel abroad without a notice in advance.
2. do not go to public areas if possible.
3. employees will have their body temp checked daily and results will be recorded.
4. wash your hands more than 3 times a day. teachers must wash their hands before and after class.
5. classrooms will be sterilized before and after class for safety measures.
6. transportation vehicles will be sterilized.
7. notice will be sent to parents regarding avalon's guidelines about the swine flu virus.
8. all head office employees must be aware of guidelines to prevent wine flu.
9. guidelines will be posted and students must be aware of the guidelines.

this is an excerpt from a handout that all teachers received wednesday. apparently at one of the other large hagwons there was an outbreak, the rumor headcount that i've heard is 18. that's 18 teachers. supposedly they will be closed for a while. because of this avalon is trying to prevent anyone contracting it and spreading it around, potentially forcing them to shut down and lose money. the notice also said that there have been 22 confirmed cases of swine flu in all of south korea. i don't think these numbers are matching up. last night i was out with a few korean teachers and they told me that now the campus director wants to take everyone's passports to prevent anyone from going anywhere. what a huge pile of 돼지똥.

i'm supposed to find out next week when exactly i get my only vacation this year. it will be about a month from now, i just don't know the exact dates. a few months ago i had decided that i would go to thailand, but i was able to get ahold of jeremy, so i changed my plans to go see him in tokyo. i had decided i was going anyway until i found out about their trying to take my passport. there is nothing in my contract that says i'm not allowed to travel outside of korea. one of the main reasons i came over is to travel. sure korea is cool and all, but i can see a little bit every weekend. there aren't any holidays that make for long weekends this year, so this is my only chance to see somewhere else. teachers are only allowed to take vacation during holding periods, when the students all stay home to study for their public school exams, which only happens a couple times a year and one has already passed.

it's not like i'm trying to go to mexico, japan is close enough to swim to. i can understand not wanting anyone to go to america, but this is asinine. i talked to the head elementary teacher about this the other day and he said that all new teachers coming from the u.s. and canada have to be in quarantine in their apartments for 2 weeks before they're allowed to come to the school. that's fine, but it's going to spread regardless of whether i stay or go. what the hell is up with #2? i have to take a public bus to get to school, because they put me in the ghetto where rent is cheap and it's way to far to walk. i highly doubt anyone will be sterilizing any class rooms at all, let alone before and after classes.

they don't realize that this is not going to stop swine flu, it's already in korea (see above: it's infected the sweet potatoes). i don't think that new teachers are just going to sit isolated in their new apartments with no internet or tv or food or whatever for two weeks. don't forget about the huge amount of korean business people that are always traveling. it's symptoms are no different than seasonal flu and most people have had mild symptoms here. i think i had 4 students in the past 2 days that had head colds (so they said). they should be putting all their snot-nose little kids in quarantine.

scrub me down, take my blood, stick a thermometer in my ass, hell i'll wear a bio hazard suit the whole time, just let me go. after all, it's not like we're dealing with zombies here, that would be something to be concerned about.