I almost forgot to post. That would have sucked. It would have made it two Decembers where I forget to post, how embarrassing that would have been. This month, the whole year in general I guess, was pretty decent. In particular though, this month went pretty well for me. Here's why:
New job responsibilities:
My working partner here finally left. Last I mentioned, she was almost certainly leaving. It happened. I had the whole classes to myself this last month and I think everyone was really happy about it. I really enjoyed the chance to work on my own. I would be happy if they didn't hire a replacement for her next year. Unfortunately, even if they didn't do that, they would move one of the other two guys over to help me because they want to have 2 teachers on the English majors in order to give them the special attention they deserve for selecting English as their area of focus. In the end, it's all moot anyway as it sounds like they'll hire a new teacher. I've enjoyed working on my own though and it has made me less worried about being able to do a good job if I wind up needing to move to another school. However it's currently going so well here that I think I might be able to work at this school until my Korean is good enough to land me a job in a field relevant to my major.
But who knows where life will take me in a few years anyway...
New bed:
On the note of my coworker leaving, she and her husband were getting rid of their beds. Their mattresses were damaged slightly in transit to Korea and it created a dip in the mattress. Now back home, I used to have a mattress that had a big dip in the middle (like a hammock kinda) and this mattress they had was the same way. I happily bought it off them before they left. I've been sleeping better than ever (I was sleeping well before, but now it's more improved) since I got it.
New friends:
I still hang out with the Chinese teachers a lot, but somehow our foursome has drifted apart. The two Chinese teachers don't hang out with each other much anymore and they don't hang out with Brandon at all outside of me. So I've split my time a lot with them and it's why I sometimes haven't been online on weekends (also because the Saturday middle school classes were winding down so I was busy with those). The one Chinese teacher that I spend a lot of time with recently introduced me to her friend. Her friend is amazing and gorgeous, but naturally has a boyfriend. Such a shame. Either way though, it's nice to have another cool friend. I hang out with the Chinese teacher and this friend she introduced me to pretty often now. In fact, I will have seen them for four days in a row this week, pretty nice.
New schedule:
This just really pertains to working out. I started working out again because the Chinese teacher (that I just mentioned) wanted to start and wanted someone to go with. I haven't really lost any weight, but I haven't gained any. That doesn't matter much to me anyway, I'm kind of going to try to build muscles. Gotta make my arms less twiggy.
New finger(?):
I cut off the very tip of my finger. Maybe half the width of my watchband, so not a terribly large amount, but it was a significant piece. Of course I didn't go to the hospital for it. I have a bandaid on it and hopefully it will heal soonish. I'm currently lamenting not making this post earlier because it kind of hurts to type tonight using that finger :(
Well that's it for now. Tomorrow (well today I guess) is New Year's Eve and I'm hanging out with the Chinese teacher and her friend. The next post I make will be at home in Washington (I'm home from 1/10-2/1), so until then, peace out!
Monday, December 30, 2013
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Always got something going on
Sorry about kind of delaying my updates here. Maybe I should just start planning to post towards the end of each month because I like to procrastinate so much. You know, now that I've typed it out, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea...
So how has my life been going? Pretty well. I mean I'm still really bummed about the whole breakup and all, but on the other hand that was two months ago and I have no interest in turning my blog into a Spring-2008 depression fest again, so I'm not going to really mention much more about it. Suffice to say, I would take her back in an instant. But now for more interesting things!!!
Work:
My night class ended recently. It was only scheduled to run for about a month and a half anyway. It was pretty nice having a lecture based class like that, but I'm definitely appreciating having some evenings off from work. I still have Korean class 2/3 times a week, so having some days when I can just linger late at work, then go home and make and eat my own dinner is nice. I've also started doing a language exchange with one of my Korean co-teachers which at the very least will not be unhelpful so I'm looking forward to learning this language as quickly as I can.
In other work-related news, my teaching partner here is moving away early. Her husband is getting moved to Hawaii. It worked out best for both of us really. She was kind of overbearing and difficult to work with at times this whole year though we were able to get along well enough. But she and her husband certainly deserve to get put somewhere nice and I figure I deserve to have a month to myself! It'll be good to have the whole classes back together for me. It's big class sizes compared to what I'm used to, but I seriously doubt I'll have any problems. It's just for this last month where finals are done and the lessons are mostly just "for fun."
In a crazy small world story, I found out one of my students is the brother of one of my Korean friends over here. I first met my friend in 2011 at a Starcraft match. He is actually the guy responsible for introducing me to my first pro player, Jangbi. I saw him several times since then and we've been in touch since then. The funny thing is he looks just like his younger brother who is a student of mine. We just found out last week that they're related. Such a weird coincidence.
Social Life:
Hahaha yeah right.
No but actually I just hang out with the Chinese teachers and Brandon a lot, that's pretty much it.
I guess another funny story is that there are just tons of rumours about my dating options at this school. The Chinese teachers are trying to set me up with this one Korean teacher who I think is really cool. At the same time, my first grade and second grade students are saying I should date the Chinese teachers (different classes say a different Chinese teacher) because the Chinese teachers apparently really like me (of course none of this is credible because high school). And while that's going on, the other half of my classes are saying I should start dating the Japanese teacher (who is really cute and looks a lot like Sunny), Actually they think that there's already something going on between us. It's because I asked one question too many about her in class one day or something so they figured I was interested in her. Then they asked her about me and she just acted coy and said she didn't know me that well. She was being professional because she actually doesn't know me that well, but the students assumed she was lying and her and I are secretly dating or something. Oh high school. Is this what it was like to be popular? I sure wasn't missing out.
Gaming:
What else can I talk about in posts? Season 3 ended recently for League. I failed to reach gold, but I did come close in the end. I'm not mad or anything really. I wish I had gotten there, but I feel like I didn't deserve it. I see too many faults in my play. These faults would all have been rectified by just playing more semi-regularly. I'm going to try to do that in Season 4 and I'm shooting for somewhere in platinum. A long and over deserved shoutout to Eric for so much excellent advice in the way of League. Also to Steven for his teaching as well. And of course Mike and Keir for being great duo partners during the season. Next season let's work hard together, 화이팅!
Fantasy Football:
I figured out the last thing I can talk about. I just failed to make the playoffs this season. It marks the first time I've failed to finish less than 3rd place in our league. I was pretty salty about it, but I guess my dominance had to end sometime right? At least I earned a few good records (both good and bad) this year on my way to the bottom! I considered starting my playoff predictions again this year, but I've decided against it because I think the Seahawks are going deep and there's no way I'm going to be the one to jinx them. Oh and feel free to ignore the following advice.
DAVID FROM THE FUTURE: DRAFT A FUCKING QUARTERBACK WITHIN THE FIRST 10 ROUNDS.
So that's about it. I'll probably start posting at the end of months from now, so expect something probably after Christmas. Happy Thanksgiving (today that you're waking up to if you read this shortly after its posting) and at the very least have a good Christmas. Peace out!
So how has my life been going? Pretty well. I mean I'm still really bummed about the whole breakup and all, but on the other hand that was two months ago and I have no interest in turning my blog into a Spring-2008 depression fest again, so I'm not going to really mention much more about it. Suffice to say, I would take her back in an instant. But now for more interesting things!!!
Work:
My night class ended recently. It was only scheduled to run for about a month and a half anyway. It was pretty nice having a lecture based class like that, but I'm definitely appreciating having some evenings off from work. I still have Korean class 2/3 times a week, so having some days when I can just linger late at work, then go home and make and eat my own dinner is nice. I've also started doing a language exchange with one of my Korean co-teachers which at the very least will not be unhelpful so I'm looking forward to learning this language as quickly as I can.
In other work-related news, my teaching partner here is moving away early. Her husband is getting moved to Hawaii. It worked out best for both of us really. She was kind of overbearing and difficult to work with at times this whole year though we were able to get along well enough. But she and her husband certainly deserve to get put somewhere nice and I figure I deserve to have a month to myself! It'll be good to have the whole classes back together for me. It's big class sizes compared to what I'm used to, but I seriously doubt I'll have any problems. It's just for this last month where finals are done and the lessons are mostly just "for fun."
In a crazy small world story, I found out one of my students is the brother of one of my Korean friends over here. I first met my friend in 2011 at a Starcraft match. He is actually the guy responsible for introducing me to my first pro player, Jangbi. I saw him several times since then and we've been in touch since then. The funny thing is he looks just like his younger brother who is a student of mine. We just found out last week that they're related. Such a weird coincidence.
Social Life:
Hahaha yeah right.
No but actually I just hang out with the Chinese teachers and Brandon a lot, that's pretty much it.
I guess another funny story is that there are just tons of rumours about my dating options at this school. The Chinese teachers are trying to set me up with this one Korean teacher who I think is really cool. At the same time, my first grade and second grade students are saying I should date the Chinese teachers (different classes say a different Chinese teacher) because the Chinese teachers apparently really like me (of course none of this is credible because high school). And while that's going on, the other half of my classes are saying I should start dating the Japanese teacher (who is really cute and looks a lot like Sunny), Actually they think that there's already something going on between us. It's because I asked one question too many about her in class one day or something so they figured I was interested in her. Then they asked her about me and she just acted coy and said she didn't know me that well. She was being professional because she actually doesn't know me that well, but the students assumed she was lying and her and I are secretly dating or something. Oh high school. Is this what it was like to be popular? I sure wasn't missing out.
Gaming:
What else can I talk about in posts? Season 3 ended recently for League. I failed to reach gold, but I did come close in the end. I'm not mad or anything really. I wish I had gotten there, but I feel like I didn't deserve it. I see too many faults in my play. These faults would all have been rectified by just playing more semi-regularly. I'm going to try to do that in Season 4 and I'm shooting for somewhere in platinum. A long and over deserved shoutout to Eric for so much excellent advice in the way of League. Also to Steven for his teaching as well. And of course Mike and Keir for being great duo partners during the season. Next season let's work hard together, 화이팅!
Fantasy Football:
I figured out the last thing I can talk about. I just failed to make the playoffs this season. It marks the first time I've failed to finish less than 3rd place in our league. I was pretty salty about it, but I guess my dominance had to end sometime right? At least I earned a few good records (both good and bad) this year on my way to the bottom! I considered starting my playoff predictions again this year, but I've decided against it because I think the Seahawks are going deep and there's no way I'm going to be the one to jinx them. Oh and feel free to ignore the following advice.
DAVID FROM THE FUTURE: DRAFT A FUCKING QUARTERBACK WITHIN THE FIRST 10 ROUNDS.
So that's about it. I'll probably start posting at the end of months from now, so expect something probably after Christmas. Happy Thanksgiving (today that you're waking up to if you read this shortly after its posting) and at the very least have a good Christmas. Peace out!
Sunday, October 20, 2013
No, Apparently I Can't
Well as many regular readers of the blog will know, I no longer have a girlfriend. For those of you just now finding out, yeah it's true. That kinda sucks given how excited about it I was last time. It seems like we were only dating a short time (which I guess is not untrue), but it was actually about 2-3 months in total and I just took forever to post about it beginning. I'm pretty bummed, but it's been a couple weeks now and I've tried keeping myself as busy as possible (I did too good a job) which prevents me form dwelling on it too much. I'm actually going to avoid talking about the breakup here in part due to I don't want to make a permanent record of it, but mostly because I have other things I want to mention. If you want to hear more, feel free to set up a time to chat with me though. I can do Skype or just instant messaging; both are fine. I'm more than fine talking about it like that. In fact, I've already done it several times. I'd like to thank the people that gave me some good perspectives on it also (you guys know who you are but I can edit in your name here if you want everyone to know, haha).
But anyway, it's been a busy month. I'll start with the trip to China that I took last month. I went to Beijing with Brandon, the next-youngest teacher English teacher here. We went over Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok), so just a quick 5-day trip. Neither of us speaks Chinese, but Brandon has a friend studying in Beijing who is from Canada, but is also Chinese so he speaks both English and Chinese fluently. Having him was extremely helpful. I don't think I'll go to China again unless I have help translating like he did. It was almost impossible to navigate to new places without his help. We got to see a lot of cool places like the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and other cool places around Beijing. We also got to hang out with friends of this guy, which was pretty cool. I can go into more detail about it or show pictures, but they're also on my facebook in the meantime. It's hard to describe what we did exactly because we just had a lot of fun the whole time. It was a good adventure.
Since I've been back, I've just been working and trying to get ahead on lessons and stuff. My work has been starting to pile up recently. We split our lesson plans evenly, but somehow it worked out that I needed to do two whole chapters of lessons in a row because they were topics within my expertise (technology and environmental crap). In addition, I'm also planning our other classes' projects at the same time. Then this week, I found out my night class (Macroeconomics) is coming back, so I've had to start planning lessons for that to try to desperately get ahead. I'm managing to stay ahead without having to rely on working for more than 2-3 hours on the weekends or losing sleep so far. It would better if I had more time, but my Korean classes are eating up a lot of that.
Speaking of which, I've joined a private school for my Korean lessons. The ones I had at school were becoming irregular because the teacher that's tutoring me has been busy this semester so I've only gotten to see her a couple of times since summer vacation. Brandon actually also just started going to this private school this month too. He's the one who found it and everything and learned the process of how to apply, so I have to credit him for that. After hearing he was doing that, I considered the idea of doing it myself, but I then figured I was probably too busy (this was before I got a night class (I figured between having a girlfriend, self study, and my private lessons, I would be fine)) so I chose not to do it. But then that following weekend, my girlfriend broke up with me and I guess I should say the short story of it is that she was stressed out about the language barrier (it wasn't that bad, in fact we were set up because she was so good at speaking English and the people that set us up knew I was studying Korean). At any rate, I wound up deciding that I would take classes on the day she broke up with me. It took until the following Monday to get a time for a placement interview though. I think the guy placing me at a level was having a hard time because I learned a lot of stuff in a logical order, then forgot about half of it, and then started just learning whatever through private lessons and self study, so my knowledge is kind of all over the place. I wound up getting put at Level 1, class 5 which it takes 5 months of classes to reach. Considering I only really ever took 4 months of official classes at Yonsei and that was two years ago, I figured that sounded more than fair to me.
Class is going really well. The problem is that it eats 6 hours out of my day three times a week. On class days, it takes 3 hours by subway round trip to get there. The class itself is two hours and then there's another one hour (split on either end of the class) because the subway leaves from here so infrequently that I have to get there super early or late every day then subways traveling as far as my stop leave very rarely from the middle of the city so I have to wait about a half hour after class too. Overall though I'm learning a lot and it's pretty fast paced which is nice. I'm looking at going up to classes five times a week possibly during school breaks or if the time is convenient then I'll do it during the regular year. I need to be rid of my night classes first though.
So my normal schedule is drastically changed. Mondays-Fridays, I have work from 8-4 every day (that hasn't changed) but now I've added my night class (M/W 4:00-6:00) and my Korean class (T/Th/F 7:00-9:00). The only place where I have more free time is Saturdays since that's no longer date day.......ㅠㅠ
Anyway, Brandon and I still get to hang out a fair bit which is nice. We've also started hanging out with the Chinese teachers more. It's been nice to hang out with them because I really like talking with them. I don't know what exactly happened that we finally started considering inviting them to stuff, but I'm glad we did start.
Other than that, life is okay. I'm not totally bummed out permanently or anything. I think I'm past drinking myself to sleep at night (I'll let you decide whether I did do that for possibly a few days to a week...). I figure I'm going to just work hard and get gold in League of Legends and then maybe get back out there after the season ends or more likely after my night class ends (season ends on 11/11 and my night class ends on 11/26). I'll be online during my usual hours. If you see me, feel free to say hi. Otherwise, leaving emails and messages always works too! Until later, peace out.
But anyway, it's been a busy month. I'll start with the trip to China that I took last month. I went to Beijing with Brandon, the next-youngest teacher English teacher here. We went over Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok), so just a quick 5-day trip. Neither of us speaks Chinese, but Brandon has a friend studying in Beijing who is from Canada, but is also Chinese so he speaks both English and Chinese fluently. Having him was extremely helpful. I don't think I'll go to China again unless I have help translating like he did. It was almost impossible to navigate to new places without his help. We got to see a lot of cool places like the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and other cool places around Beijing. We also got to hang out with friends of this guy, which was pretty cool. I can go into more detail about it or show pictures, but they're also on my facebook in the meantime. It's hard to describe what we did exactly because we just had a lot of fun the whole time. It was a good adventure.
Since I've been back, I've just been working and trying to get ahead on lessons and stuff. My work has been starting to pile up recently. We split our lesson plans evenly, but somehow it worked out that I needed to do two whole chapters of lessons in a row because they were topics within my expertise (technology and environmental crap). In addition, I'm also planning our other classes' projects at the same time. Then this week, I found out my night class (Macroeconomics) is coming back, so I've had to start planning lessons for that to try to desperately get ahead. I'm managing to stay ahead without having to rely on working for more than 2-3 hours on the weekends or losing sleep so far. It would better if I had more time, but my Korean classes are eating up a lot of that.
Speaking of which, I've joined a private school for my Korean lessons. The ones I had at school were becoming irregular because the teacher that's tutoring me has been busy this semester so I've only gotten to see her a couple of times since summer vacation. Brandon actually also just started going to this private school this month too. He's the one who found it and everything and learned the process of how to apply, so I have to credit him for that. After hearing he was doing that, I considered the idea of doing it myself, but I then figured I was probably too busy (this was before I got a night class (I figured between having a girlfriend, self study, and my private lessons, I would be fine)) so I chose not to do it. But then that following weekend, my girlfriend broke up with me and I guess I should say the short story of it is that she was stressed out about the language barrier (it wasn't that bad, in fact we were set up because she was so good at speaking English and the people that set us up knew I was studying Korean). At any rate, I wound up deciding that I would take classes on the day she broke up with me. It took until the following Monday to get a time for a placement interview though. I think the guy placing me at a level was having a hard time because I learned a lot of stuff in a logical order, then forgot about half of it, and then started just learning whatever through private lessons and self study, so my knowledge is kind of all over the place. I wound up getting put at Level 1, class 5 which it takes 5 months of classes to reach. Considering I only really ever took 4 months of official classes at Yonsei and that was two years ago, I figured that sounded more than fair to me.
Class is going really well. The problem is that it eats 6 hours out of my day three times a week. On class days, it takes 3 hours by subway round trip to get there. The class itself is two hours and then there's another one hour (split on either end of the class) because the subway leaves from here so infrequently that I have to get there super early or late every day then subways traveling as far as my stop leave very rarely from the middle of the city so I have to wait about a half hour after class too. Overall though I'm learning a lot and it's pretty fast paced which is nice. I'm looking at going up to classes five times a week possibly during school breaks or if the time is convenient then I'll do it during the regular year. I need to be rid of my night classes first though.
So my normal schedule is drastically changed. Mondays-Fridays, I have work from 8-4 every day (that hasn't changed) but now I've added my night class (M/W 4:00-6:00) and my Korean class (T/Th/F 7:00-9:00). The only place where I have more free time is Saturdays since that's no longer date day.......ㅠㅠ
Anyway, Brandon and I still get to hang out a fair bit which is nice. We've also started hanging out with the Chinese teachers more. It's been nice to hang out with them because I really like talking with them. I don't know what exactly happened that we finally started considering inviting them to stuff, but I'm glad we did start.
Other than that, life is okay. I'm not totally bummed out permanently or anything. I think I'm past drinking myself to sleep at night (I'll let you decide whether I did do that for possibly a few days to a week...). I figure I'm going to just work hard and get gold in League of Legends and then maybe get back out there after the season ends or more likely after my night class ends (season ends on 11/11 and my night class ends on 11/26). I'll be online during my usual hours. If you see me, feel free to say hi. Otherwise, leaving emails and messages always works too! Until later, peace out.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
I Can Has Girlfriend?
You may look at the title of this post and go "Damn, that's a dated and now stupid reference."
Yeah, that's how long I've been promising myself I would title my blog post this way when the event happened.
But anyway, hey guess what everybody, I have a girlfriend now! Whoa! Crazy! Amazing! 10/10 story! So much wonder and surprise! He did it folks, the end goal. The blog is finally done. We can stop following it!!!
No sorry, I'm not going to end it that easily. Although to be honest, I did once toy with the idea of ending my blog once I finally got a girlfriend. Nowadays, I've grown to like having it around for keeping people up with what's going on in my life if I can't talk to everyone regularly. Also, there's the whole "I'm not a whiny, lonely teenager anymore" thing going for me so I'm going to keep the blog around.
At any rate, I'm pretty happy right now. I don't know how I've kept this post from happening for a month (that's a lie, it's because I'm really lazy), but it's good to finally blog this news at long last. We actually have been a "couple" (god this post is already full of air quotes and parentheses this early X__X) in the more proper sense since mid August (like the 17th). I don't know if she has ever been in a relationship either, so it's like two awkward people trying to figure out something that neither of them know how to do. It's still cool. Our work schedules and the fact that she lives in another city mean that we can't see each other more than once or twice a week (recently we've been making time to see each other twice and we always spend the entire day together on Saturdays), but we talk every day so that's still good. It's really cool because at this point, I feel like I have enough of a social life here. I have friends from back home and we talk all the time, plus I have some friends here at work that I hang out with and now I have this girl who I talk to every day.
Hmm, what else can I say. I mentioned we met through my coworker because his wife and this girl are friends. He's also been able to give me a lot of advice on dating Korean girls since he's "beaten the game" so to speak. This girl actually lives in a town outside of Seoul that I was recommended to many times when I was applying for jobs here. In fact, over 50% of the places that I was recommended to were in her city. But of course, if I had wound up going there, I would have never met her. The funny thing is I chose my current city because my 3p1c map r34ding sk1lzz (read: shitty map reading skills) determined that this city was in a superior location to hers for viewing starcraft (so, so wrong. even before they switched locations to a place MUCH more convenient from her city (oh also there's the fact that I don't go watch starcraft live anymore anyway :/)). I also chose not to teach in her city because of the lack of convenient subway stops. Good thing I can't read maps to save my life because it turns out there are two very convenient ones. So if I had really read the maps right, I would have wound up in her city this year. Fortunately, I didn't and I came to this city instead. It allowed me to meet her and to be honest, it's made being here worth it. Plus a couple of the people (anyone that's not my partner) that I work with have been really cool.
Other stuff time though. I've been busy with the new semester staring up. It's been pretty mundane. My partner and I delegated the work better from the get-go this semester, so it's allowed us both to plan really far ahead. Both of us are planned out well past one month from now which feels really nice. It's allowing us to make more fun lessons since we have more time to prepare now. I've also been more properly added to the male staff soccer team. I got my jersey recently. It's pretty neat. Oh also I joined a gym near the school. It's not because of this girl (just something I've been meaning to do for a while and it happened to happen after I met her) although being her boyfriend is pretty good motivation to keep going all the time.
Other than that, not much is happening. Brandon (the teacher I work with who isn't my partner and isn't the econ guy. We hang out a lot on weekends when I'm not playing videogames or going on dates) and I are going to Beijing next week from Wednesday through Sunday. It's Chuseok (K-Thanksgiving) break, so we figured we might as well go somewhere cool while everyone goes home and all the good stores and stuff are closed for the holiday.
Around that, as always, feel free to set up a time to Skype with me. If you're in the League crew and you're reading this then you don't get a choice on talking to me, I'll just be online sometime whenever I get the chance.
Until next month, peace out!
Monday, August 12, 2013
Oops, I did it again
Well it seems one wasn't enough. I have once again had a month where I failed to update my blog. Sorry about that. I really meant to last month, but it was finals + the end of the semester until the 26th (year round school), so laziness and me being preoccupied with other things kept me from posting. After that, I went to Hawaii to meet up with family and spent that last week of the month forgetting that I was supposed to update. Anyway, good things have been happening so I figure I should update on that.
I feel like I generally got everyone filled in on the stuff I'm doing so maybe from now on I can actually talk about experiences or something? Hey wouldn't that be nice.
I guess before I forget, here's a link to the most recent video of my apartment. I filmed it in July or something I think. Either way, it has indeed changed from the last video you would have seen it. Important additions are my bedsheets (that only took me four months to get bedding...) and a new desk that actually has enough room for my computer (plus it has room for two monitors now!) which has made my computer setup feel a lot nicer. The one thing I feel bad about is my tower has always been on top of my desks since I first built it, but now it has to be below the desk. I feel a little bad sticking it down there, but it hasn't had any problems and I have only accidentally kicked it once or twice, so it's not too bad I guess.
The summer season is in full swing and thankfully, my air conditioner is working well. Without it, I would be dying in the heat/humidity. I still feel like a rich guy though for having an air conditioner, an unnecessary luxury in Seattle.
The end of the semester finally came and now I'm halfway through my contract. That means only half a year left with my current teaching partner (unless some bill gets passed about military spending in which case she may have to stay another year, fml). That hopefully will not happen though. Aside from that, school is going well. The students are good, my Korean lessons are really helpful, and I'm getting along well with the other coworkers. One guy got fired back in March and his replacement arrived shortly before my last post, so I didn't know anything about the guy. He's turned out to be really cool. I'm going to grab dinner with him in a few minutes actually. We hang out fairly often and just get a beer or eat or something. He's about my age and a Redditor so we get along well.
Final news (I'm already at about the end of this post because as I said, it's about dinner time): I met another person haha. The guy who has worked here all year (there are three of us foreigners that have been here all year, my teaching partner, the other guy, and me) had a friend of his wife and back in March, he said they would be willing to set me up with that friend. I was skeptical at first and eventually I wound up meeting that other girl and hung out with her for a couple months. We went on two dates so I can hardly even say we dated. I'll get to that in a second.
Anyway, that other girl and I stopped seeing each other in May (just that we weren't really interested in each other (mostly her being less interested in me T__T)) and a couple weeks after everyone found out we had stopped seeing each other, the guy said he was still willing to help set me up with his wife's friend. At that point, I was a little bummed out because I'm so introverted, it's hard to meet people here and I was figuring I wouldn't have the chance to meet anyone again. Anyway, I said sure it could be fun. Before we went to meet her, the guy kept saying things like "you don't have to date her if you don't want to" and stuff like that to make me feel like there was no pressure if I didn't like her. That kinda weirded me out and I was starting to worry if there was something wrong with her. I was wondering if I was walking into anything bad. Turns out he was just weird and I had nothing to worry about. The dinner was awkward at first because everyone knew that the other two were really trying to set us up, but eventually it became less awkward.
We've gone out three (technically four if you count the first time in which we did go out just the two of us after the four of us had dinner) dates now. It's going really well. Neither of us have dated anyone before (that's why I don't really count the other girl. I mean I didn't do anything with her anyway, not even any hugging so how can I possibly count that?) so we're going really slow it seems, but as long as I don't move too slowly in this then I should be fine. I consulted the guy who set us up since he has beaten the game so to speak and he says I'm doing good so I'll take that as a good sign. Hopefully this can continue for a long time.
What happens if she ever becomes my girlfriend? That's like the final objective of my angsty teenage years of this blog.
At any rate, I'm going to try to start holding myself to regular posting times again, no more of this whenever I remember to crap. I'll try to do posts in the first week of every month. I have to just do one post a month because my life is too mundane and busy (yes at the same time) to post too often. So look for a post to come along in the first week of September (only half a month away!!!) and then every month from there on out. Who knows, maybe even in only half a month I'll have some cool news! Until then, peace out.
I feel like I generally got everyone filled in on the stuff I'm doing so maybe from now on I can actually talk about experiences or something? Hey wouldn't that be nice.
I guess before I forget, here's a link to the most recent video of my apartment. I filmed it in July or something I think. Either way, it has indeed changed from the last video you would have seen it. Important additions are my bedsheets (that only took me four months to get bedding...) and a new desk that actually has enough room for my computer (plus it has room for two monitors now!) which has made my computer setup feel a lot nicer. The one thing I feel bad about is my tower has always been on top of my desks since I first built it, but now it has to be below the desk. I feel a little bad sticking it down there, but it hasn't had any problems and I have only accidentally kicked it once or twice, so it's not too bad I guess.
The summer season is in full swing and thankfully, my air conditioner is working well. Without it, I would be dying in the heat/humidity. I still feel like a rich guy though for having an air conditioner, an unnecessary luxury in Seattle.
The end of the semester finally came and now I'm halfway through my contract. That means only half a year left with my current teaching partner (unless some bill gets passed about military spending in which case she may have to stay another year, fml). That hopefully will not happen though. Aside from that, school is going well. The students are good, my Korean lessons are really helpful, and I'm getting along well with the other coworkers. One guy got fired back in March and his replacement arrived shortly before my last post, so I didn't know anything about the guy. He's turned out to be really cool. I'm going to grab dinner with him in a few minutes actually. We hang out fairly often and just get a beer or eat or something. He's about my age and a Redditor so we get along well.
Final news (I'm already at about the end of this post because as I said, it's about dinner time): I met another person haha. The guy who has worked here all year (there are three of us foreigners that have been here all year, my teaching partner, the other guy, and me) had a friend of his wife and back in March, he said they would be willing to set me up with that friend. I was skeptical at first and eventually I wound up meeting that other girl and hung out with her for a couple months. We went on two dates so I can hardly even say we dated. I'll get to that in a second.
Anyway, that other girl and I stopped seeing each other in May (just that we weren't really interested in each other (mostly her being less interested in me T__T)) and a couple weeks after everyone found out we had stopped seeing each other, the guy said he was still willing to help set me up with his wife's friend. At that point, I was a little bummed out because I'm so introverted, it's hard to meet people here and I was figuring I wouldn't have the chance to meet anyone again. Anyway, I said sure it could be fun. Before we went to meet her, the guy kept saying things like "you don't have to date her if you don't want to" and stuff like that to make me feel like there was no pressure if I didn't like her. That kinda weirded me out and I was starting to worry if there was something wrong with her. I was wondering if I was walking into anything bad. Turns out he was just weird and I had nothing to worry about. The dinner was awkward at first because everyone knew that the other two were really trying to set us up, but eventually it became less awkward.
We've gone out three (technically four if you count the first time in which we did go out just the two of us after the four of us had dinner) dates now. It's going really well. Neither of us have dated anyone before (that's why I don't really count the other girl. I mean I didn't do anything with her anyway, not even any hugging so how can I possibly count that?) so we're going really slow it seems, but as long as I don't move too slowly in this then I should be fine. I consulted the guy who set us up since he has beaten the game so to speak and he says I'm doing good so I'll take that as a good sign. Hopefully this can continue for a long time.
What happens if she ever becomes my girlfriend? That's like the final objective of my angsty teenage years of this blog.
At any rate, I'm going to try to start holding myself to regular posting times again, no more of this whenever I remember to crap. I'll try to do posts in the first week of every month. I have to just do one post a month because my life is too mundane and busy (yes at the same time) to post too often. So look for a post to come along in the first week of September (only half a month away!!!) and then every month from there on out. Who knows, maybe even in only half a month I'll have some cool news! Until then, peace out.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Ok I should start being better about posting what I promise to post.
Well sorry everyone, I kinda dropped the ball on regular updates. To be honest, I was kind of building to something and I wanted to make sure it panned out well before I was posting regularly again. I will start continuing to tell about things now that it panned out. Of course as many of you may know, what I'm referring to is the girl I was dating here for a while. I was hoping to wait until we officially became a couple or something (moreso than just going on dates every weekend). Unfortunately it didn't pan out as I had intended and we broke up recently. So nothing going on in that department now. But I did get practice dating and stuff so it wasn't all bad. I'll enjoy some single life for now then try my luck somewhere else. A co-worker actually was going to set me up with a friend of his wife's before I started dating this other girl, so that might actually happen soon because I think his wife was really hoping I would go on a date with her friend. Who knows, maybe that could turn out well. In the meantime, I'm not too concerned with it. I'll just go back to my old routine.
But I do owe you a new post about some other aspect of Korea outside of my house.
How about work?
I pull regular hours each week which total to 40 hours (five eight-hour days). Of those 40 hours, I spend only 16 in the classroom. The rest is all planning. We come up with our own curriculum and work with our Korean co-teachers to make lessons that are relevant to the students' needs and the co-teacher's own curriculum. At the end of the day, they're the teachers and I'm not. My classes are times when otherwise they would just have classes with the students so my lessons need to at least supplement what they're doing in their classes. I have a partner teacher who is also a foreign teacher and we teach eight classes together. We split the classes in half though so our classes are like small group classes. We teach second and first graders in high school (the equivalent of juniors and sophomores in American high school). At this school, every student studies two languages. They study either English Major/Chinese Minor, English Major/Japanese Minor, Chinese Major/English Minor, and Japanese Major/English Minor. Each of the four options has two classes per grade so in order it would go 1-1 and 1-2, 1-3 and 1-4, 1-5 and 1-6, 1-7 and 1-8. Me and my partner teach the English majors and the other two teach the non-English majors. All students except third graders (seniors) get taught by a foreign teacher. So eight classes that I teach, two classes each per week is my regular schedule. It's not too bad.
In addition to that, I'm also a middle school teacher! Every other Saturday, I teach a first, second, and third grade middle school (7th, 8th, and 9th grade) class (each one hour) of students hoping to enter (test into) this school someday. It's a pretty good gig and it pays extremely well so I like it. For this, I made my own curriculum so that was nice to have free reign of what I teach PLUS it looks excellent on a CV if I apply for other teaching jobs someday.
I also teach night classes (every foreign teacher gets one) to students. These are run like AP classes and again, they pay extra from my usual salary. Also, like middle school, I have complete control over the direction of the course. Normally, we would get two per semester. I don't know if it will happen next semester though as interest is dwindling due to the changing nature of college applications in Korea these days. I actually had two CP classes cancelled on me this term, so I don't have one. The other two foreign teachers that were here at the start of the term did get classes though. I could have had a class this term, but I conceded it to my partner who was really bitching about not getting a second one. Plus, I got two CP classes in the first term (I'm special ^_^) so I figure not having one this term is no loss for me since I just did more work up front. When I did do the CP classes, I had one class of Microeconomics which was fun for me to teach. The class was the biggest of all the CP classes and unfortunately not enough signed up afterwards even though I kept getting compliments of how good it was. Since it was econ in another language for the students, it was an interesting challenge to teach. My other class was a writing class specifically designed for senior students. So I'm the only foreign teacher here that's taught 3rd grade students which is great for me because it gives me the exclusive relationship and cool teacher status with a whole grade now. That was a small class of only seven, but they were really cool so that made the class fun.
And I have one last job which is elementary school teacher! Sometimes, we are called upon to go to the library on Saturdays and teach English lessons to elementary school kids in partnership with our school's Red Cross Youth program. My partner is a masters certified teacher who has only ever taught high school. The other teachers are two guys who have only taught middle or high schools. While I've never taught, I grew up around an elementary school teacher my whole life. Every teaching tip I picked up from her has perfectly applied to this experience so while the other three have had a terribly hard time adjusting to the kids, I have probably had the easiest time. I still wouldn't want to do that for a living though. It makes me glad that I decided to take this high school job instead of settling for an elementary school position just to get closer to Seoul. That would not have been worth it.
So those are my main jobs. Of course since I'm the youngest/cutest/most aggreable/what have you, I get roped into a lot of other side jobs too which are no trouble. It usually just involves proofreading things for coworkers, translating some stuff if I can, teaching some coworkers English, and generally just helping out with random stuff. I also offer to read essays for students and things since I have a lot of planning time and feel like I should use it well so until recently, I was looking at a student's essays every day. He was in my senior writing class and he plans to study at Harvard, so he took the SAT recently. He wrote me a practice essay every day for about 3 weeks and I graded them SAT style every day.
I'm happy with the amount of work I'm doing. It doesn't really interfere with my weekend free time too much so I still have time on those days to relax and hang out with the guys online or go to Seoul or go on dates (until recently, brb going to go drink to forget T__T). I also ran through my finances the other night out of boredom and I noticed that if I keep the same costs throughout the whole year, I will be able to live off my extra job salaries alone (CP, middle school, and elementary school) then at the end of the year I would pocket around 105% or something of my base salary. That would be pretty sweet. Maybe I should get a girl to spend it on or maybe I should actually buy something to improve my quality of life to human standards.
Nah who am I kidding.
Until next time, peace out!
But I do owe you a new post about some other aspect of Korea outside of my house.
How about work?
I pull regular hours each week which total to 40 hours (five eight-hour days). Of those 40 hours, I spend only 16 in the classroom. The rest is all planning. We come up with our own curriculum and work with our Korean co-teachers to make lessons that are relevant to the students' needs and the co-teacher's own curriculum. At the end of the day, they're the teachers and I'm not. My classes are times when otherwise they would just have classes with the students so my lessons need to at least supplement what they're doing in their classes. I have a partner teacher who is also a foreign teacher and we teach eight classes together. We split the classes in half though so our classes are like small group classes. We teach second and first graders in high school (the equivalent of juniors and sophomores in American high school). At this school, every student studies two languages. They study either English Major/Chinese Minor, English Major/Japanese Minor, Chinese Major/English Minor, and Japanese Major/English Minor. Each of the four options has two classes per grade so in order it would go 1-1 and 1-2, 1-3 and 1-4, 1-5 and 1-6, 1-7 and 1-8. Me and my partner teach the English majors and the other two teach the non-English majors. All students except third graders (seniors) get taught by a foreign teacher. So eight classes that I teach, two classes each per week is my regular schedule. It's not too bad.
In addition to that, I'm also a middle school teacher! Every other Saturday, I teach a first, second, and third grade middle school (7th, 8th, and 9th grade) class (each one hour) of students hoping to enter (test into) this school someday. It's a pretty good gig and it pays extremely well so I like it. For this, I made my own curriculum so that was nice to have free reign of what I teach PLUS it looks excellent on a CV if I apply for other teaching jobs someday.
I also teach night classes (every foreign teacher gets one) to students. These are run like AP classes and again, they pay extra from my usual salary. Also, like middle school, I have complete control over the direction of the course. Normally, we would get two per semester. I don't know if it will happen next semester though as interest is dwindling due to the changing nature of college applications in Korea these days. I actually had two CP classes cancelled on me this term, so I don't have one. The other two foreign teachers that were here at the start of the term did get classes though. I could have had a class this term, but I conceded it to my partner who was really bitching about not getting a second one. Plus, I got two CP classes in the first term (I'm special ^_^) so I figure not having one this term is no loss for me since I just did more work up front. When I did do the CP classes, I had one class of Microeconomics which was fun for me to teach. The class was the biggest of all the CP classes and unfortunately not enough signed up afterwards even though I kept getting compliments of how good it was. Since it was econ in another language for the students, it was an interesting challenge to teach. My other class was a writing class specifically designed for senior students. So I'm the only foreign teacher here that's taught 3rd grade students which is great for me because it gives me the exclusive relationship and cool teacher status with a whole grade now. That was a small class of only seven, but they were really cool so that made the class fun.
And I have one last job which is elementary school teacher! Sometimes, we are called upon to go to the library on Saturdays and teach English lessons to elementary school kids in partnership with our school's Red Cross Youth program. My partner is a masters certified teacher who has only ever taught high school. The other teachers are two guys who have only taught middle or high schools. While I've never taught, I grew up around an elementary school teacher my whole life. Every teaching tip I picked up from her has perfectly applied to this experience so while the other three have had a terribly hard time adjusting to the kids, I have probably had the easiest time. I still wouldn't want to do that for a living though. It makes me glad that I decided to take this high school job instead of settling for an elementary school position just to get closer to Seoul. That would not have been worth it.
So those are my main jobs. Of course since I'm the youngest/cutest/most aggreable/what have you, I get roped into a lot of other side jobs too which are no trouble. It usually just involves proofreading things for coworkers, translating some stuff if I can, teaching some coworkers English, and generally just helping out with random stuff. I also offer to read essays for students and things since I have a lot of planning time and feel like I should use it well so until recently, I was looking at a student's essays every day. He was in my senior writing class and he plans to study at Harvard, so he took the SAT recently. He wrote me a practice essay every day for about 3 weeks and I graded them SAT style every day.
I'm happy with the amount of work I'm doing. It doesn't really interfere with my weekend free time too much so I still have time on those days to relax and hang out with the guys online or go to Seoul or go on dates (until recently, brb going to go drink to forget T__T). I also ran through my finances the other night out of boredom and I noticed that if I keep the same costs throughout the whole year, I will be able to live off my extra job salaries alone (CP, middle school, and elementary school) then at the end of the year I would pocket around 105% or something of my base salary. That would be pretty sweet. Maybe I should get a girl to spend it on or maybe I should actually buy something to improve my quality of life to human standards.
Nah who am I kidding.
Until next time, peace out!
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
An Actual Update (of past events)
Ok sorry about the huge delay of over one month here. This post won't exactly get me to all the current events, but I hope it will get a good few things out of the way. In the next few posts, I'll be talking about my place, my coworkers, my students, my life, my new friend, and other things. I'll see how far I get in this post.
My apartment:
For jobs like this in Korea, a school provides its native English speaking teachers with a place to live. For most schools, this is an apartment that is nearby the school. In fact, when you fill out forms to apply to come here, one of the questions you get asked is whether you want them to find you an apartment near the school, a bus terminal, a subway station, etc. This school is a bit of a special case though as it has dormitories. They have special dorms for teachers that live here. For teachers that are married, they live off campus. For teachers like me who are single (or basically anything that is short of actually being married), they are provided housing in the school's dorm. It's not as great as an apartment, but it's more space than I need and it makes the commute really nice.
My first apartment was on the top floor of the dorm in the teacher's wing. The teacher that lived there before me was the only female teacher that year (we only have one this year as well) and she was super concerned about leaving a mess, so it was pretty clean. Unfortunately, the clean stopped at the point where it required dusting and wiping surfaces down. It took a number of blackened paper towels and I never mentioned it to her because she was so afraid of me thinking she was a slob. I did joke about it with the other teachers from last year though when they told me about it.
Now my apartment up there was okay, but it wasn't that great. The view was nice, but the shower kind of sucked (the hot water stayed good for 5 minutes) and the heat just randomly died and came on. After two days and halfway unpacking, I was informed that I was going to need to move because of some BS reason that the Vice Principal had. I forget what exactly it was, but I found out later my moving didn't solve anything because my new neighbor here didn't move. Either way though, the move was a very positive thing for me. I have a slightly larger space now and the bathroom is certainly bigger. My shower is excellent, even being on par with the one I have at home. Additionally, the heat here is actually pretty regular. As it's May, that's no longer a problem. When the winter comes though, it will come in handy. Also, it's on the second floor, so I don't need to use the elevator which was slower than all hell and had a tendency to be crowded at hours when I would usually be using it. With a few minor improvements, my apartment has become a home to me. I have three videos of the progress of remodeling it. I am saving the last one for when I have it exactly how I want it, so that will hopefully come around in about a month or two. There were some more expensive additions I needed to make after I started getting paid. Here are the videos:
March 2
March 12
April 6
Okay I was hoping to write more, but dinner just finished so I'm going to go eat. Until next time, peace out.
My apartment:
For jobs like this in Korea, a school provides its native English speaking teachers with a place to live. For most schools, this is an apartment that is nearby the school. In fact, when you fill out forms to apply to come here, one of the questions you get asked is whether you want them to find you an apartment near the school, a bus terminal, a subway station, etc. This school is a bit of a special case though as it has dormitories. They have special dorms for teachers that live here. For teachers that are married, they live off campus. For teachers like me who are single (or basically anything that is short of actually being married), they are provided housing in the school's dorm. It's not as great as an apartment, but it's more space than I need and it makes the commute really nice.
My first apartment was on the top floor of the dorm in the teacher's wing. The teacher that lived there before me was the only female teacher that year (we only have one this year as well) and she was super concerned about leaving a mess, so it was pretty clean. Unfortunately, the clean stopped at the point where it required dusting and wiping surfaces down. It took a number of blackened paper towels and I never mentioned it to her because she was so afraid of me thinking she was a slob. I did joke about it with the other teachers from last year though when they told me about it.
Now my apartment up there was okay, but it wasn't that great. The view was nice, but the shower kind of sucked (the hot water stayed good for 5 minutes) and the heat just randomly died and came on. After two days and halfway unpacking, I was informed that I was going to need to move because of some BS reason that the Vice Principal had. I forget what exactly it was, but I found out later my moving didn't solve anything because my new neighbor here didn't move. Either way though, the move was a very positive thing for me. I have a slightly larger space now and the bathroom is certainly bigger. My shower is excellent, even being on par with the one I have at home. Additionally, the heat here is actually pretty regular. As it's May, that's no longer a problem. When the winter comes though, it will come in handy. Also, it's on the second floor, so I don't need to use the elevator which was slower than all hell and had a tendency to be crowded at hours when I would usually be using it. With a few minor improvements, my apartment has become a home to me. I have three videos of the progress of remodeling it. I am saving the last one for when I have it exactly how I want it, so that will hopefully come around in about a month or two. There were some more expensive additions I needed to make after I started getting paid. Here are the videos:
March 2
March 12
April 6
Okay I was hoping to write more, but dinner just finished so I'm going to go eat. Until next time, peace out.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
No really, someday I'll actually get some good catching up going on.
Sorry about totally not updating the blog all month. I promise that for once, I have a good excuse. The excuse is that I met someone here. We're not dating yet (trust me, I would probably come home, tell anyone online, then make a blog post about it if that ever happens). You can ask in person if you want, but I'll eventually come to it in my blog posts. Long story short, we're not dating yet, but it looks like we will be soon. Because of the type of people that live in this city (military), some lingering racism present in rural South Korea, and the fact that her last boyfriend (of six years) ran off and got married then broke up with her last December she was a little nervous about being an actual couple until she got to know me better. But we're currently dating so it's only a matter of time it seems. Unfortunately, I was supposed to bring my list of talking points back to the room with me, but I totally forgot it at the office so I don't have much to talk about today. I'll try to get a post in tomorrow or something. Sorry about that. Just wanted to confirm that I indeed did have a good excuse for not posting. You shall hear from me tomorrow!
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Old Information, New Post Should Arrive Eventually
Hey, hope all are doing well. I didn't want to get another month of no posts, but at the same time, I don't have time to sit down and make a huge post. I expect that I'll have internet in my own apartment soon enough, so I'll start putting out posts more regularly after that. I think once a week, I'll make a new post until I'm pretty caught up. For this one though, I'll just write about the first couple of days here.
I caught my flight with no problems. Upon signing in, I was given te chance to change my seat to a front row (extra leg room woot woot!) so of course I instantly decided to do that. To add to the excellence, only one other guy moved into that row (a row of three) so we had the middle seat open to put our stuff on. I was running on about 2 hours of sleep because I was looking forward to sleeping on the plane, but I forgot Korean Air is really nice, so I wound up watching a bunch of semi-recent movies that I had never gotten around to watching. I did manage to get an hour of sleep, but that was really all.
When I landed, it was 5pm and I was sufficiently tired because in Washington, it was now midnight which meant I was running off 3 hours of sleep across 48 hours. I was going to go find the taxi place when I got lucky and a driver coming back from the bathroom saw me and asked if I w anted a taxi ride. I said yes, so I got a taxi very easy and additionally, I got hep with my bags. The ride to Incheon was 45 minutes (even though the airport is in Incheon...), but it was a good chance to get some Korean practice again. A lot of what I had forgotten came back during the cab ride.
I had to stay in Incheon overnight because I wasn't supposed to arrive until the following day. Originally, I was excited because I never got over to Incheon last time I was in Korea though I had wanted to. Now I just know I don't need to go again. Everything is pretty far apart still, so my plan of going out and finding a nice place to eat kind of died on the table (so to speak). Since it was late (late in America, it was only 7pm in Korea), I just decided to go to bed and get a good 13 hours of sleep. The next morning, the rep from the school (actually I think she was just a hired driver since I haven't seen her since) got me at 10 and we started the 1.5 hour drive from Incheon up to Dongducheon.
Actually, I'm going to stop there for now. I have to get back to work since my partner is gone for the week and I need to get ahead on lesson plans. Until next week, peace out.
I caught my flight with no problems. Upon signing in, I was given te chance to change my seat to a front row (extra leg room woot woot!) so of course I instantly decided to do that. To add to the excellence, only one other guy moved into that row (a row of three) so we had the middle seat open to put our stuff on. I was running on about 2 hours of sleep because I was looking forward to sleeping on the plane, but I forgot Korean Air is really nice, so I wound up watching a bunch of semi-recent movies that I had never gotten around to watching. I did manage to get an hour of sleep, but that was really all.
When I landed, it was 5pm and I was sufficiently tired because in Washington, it was now midnight which meant I was running off 3 hours of sleep across 48 hours. I was going to go find the taxi place when I got lucky and a driver coming back from the bathroom saw me and asked if I w anted a taxi ride. I said yes, so I got a taxi very easy and additionally, I got hep with my bags. The ride to Incheon was 45 minutes (even though the airport is in Incheon...), but it was a good chance to get some Korean practice again. A lot of what I had forgotten came back during the cab ride.
I had to stay in Incheon overnight because I wasn't supposed to arrive until the following day. Originally, I was excited because I never got over to Incheon last time I was in Korea though I had wanted to. Now I just know I don't need to go again. Everything is pretty far apart still, so my plan of going out and finding a nice place to eat kind of died on the table (so to speak). Since it was late (late in America, it was only 7pm in Korea), I just decided to go to bed and get a good 13 hours of sleep. The next morning, the rep from the school (actually I think she was just a hired driver since I haven't seen her since) got me at 10 and we started the 1.5 hour drive from Incheon up to Dongducheon.
Actually, I'm going to stop there for now. I have to get back to work since my partner is gone for the week and I need to get ahead on lesson plans. Until next week, peace out.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Bye America (For Now)
Ok well time to get a post in because this is the last time I'll have guaranteed easy access to the internet in February. I'm leaving tomorrow for Korea so I'm just spending today finally getting everything squared away. Before I wrap up my American life for now though I guess I'll catch you up on a few of the bigger events that happened this month.
First off, congrats to Keir on getting level 30 in League of Legends. Now we can both do ranked someday. He took 6 months to get there, which is half the time it took me (although I made an account and just let it sit, then actually started playing and did 90% of the work in 4 months) so good on him. Also in League related events, I captained a team in a tournament in the early weeks of February. We got second place in the tournament and we were all pretty happy with each other. The casters even said I "played a mean Cho mid" so that felt good. The champion was even banned against my team for the final game because I was doing so well on him.
In other news, it's been good to catch up with some people and see them in person for the last time before I go. I helped my aunt move the rest of her stuff into the new house. I finally finished work on the shed, so I can say that story is closed now forever (hooray!!!). Aside from that, it was general hang-outery with other people which was just nice. I mostly spent the month taking it rather easy and just getting ready to go.
Short post so sorry for that, but I have to get back to packing and I have a couple emails to send. Until I'm in Korea, peace out!
First off, congrats to Keir on getting level 30 in League of Legends. Now we can both do ranked someday. He took 6 months to get there, which is half the time it took me (although I made an account and just let it sit, then actually started playing and did 90% of the work in 4 months) so good on him. Also in League related events, I captained a team in a tournament in the early weeks of February. We got second place in the tournament and we were all pretty happy with each other. The casters even said I "played a mean Cho mid" so that felt good. The champion was even banned against my team for the final game because I was doing so well on him.
In other news, it's been good to catch up with some people and see them in person for the last time before I go. I helped my aunt move the rest of her stuff into the new house. I finally finished work on the shed, so I can say that story is closed now forever (hooray!!!). Aside from that, it was general hang-outery with other people which was just nice. I mostly spent the month taking it rather easy and just getting ready to go.
Short post so sorry for that, but I have to get back to packing and I have a couple emails to send. Until I'm in Korea, peace out!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Finalizing Preparations
Howdy everyone. I've been hard at work this month getting all my documents in order and it now looks like this will be my second to last post made from America (although who knows what the distant future holds, perhaps someday I shall make posts from the good ol' US of A again). My contract is slated to start on March 1 and I expect to arrive in Korea as long before that as reasonably possible. I want to give myself several days to unpack, acquire things I don't want to carry over but will need (ex. towels, bedsheets, food, etc), familiarize myself with the area I'll be living in, and hopefully to glance over the textbooks I'll be using. As of the writing of this post, I have no idea what my address will be and I have not booked a flight yet. I'm supposedly going to be told these things when I show the school that I've acquired my visa. My visa should come in on Thursday though, so hopefully I'll know these important things before too long. I'm just glad that this long process is finally coming to an end. It may seem like it moved quickly since every time I posted, I had new information. The truth is that I only got that new information days before I would post and those posts were a month apart each. This process began in September and I've been worrying about what I would be doing for employment this year since then. It's nice to finally have some assurance. Having that, I can just take this month mostly to myself to (RUNNINGIN)square away things before I leave.
It also seems like now is becoming a good time to leave the area. Aside from caring for Grandpa, which is a never-ending and increasingly complex task, most other people around me seem to be settling into a new phase in their lives or major projects have been finished. With all that, it seems like I can quietly slip away and people will be fine without me. I plan to interact more with people this time however. I am going to adjust my schedule in Korea though to get up earlier so that I can play games with people in the mornings and get to bed at an earlier time. I think that will work out for me well. If I get up at 8 or earlier on a regular occurrence, it will be easier to wake up for work in the morning. There are so many benefits to doing that, I can't think of a reason not to. I also want to get to Korea early so I can get on that schedule in time for the school year. It will be nice to talk to people I know this time. I would rather not repeat last year where I woke up at 10-11 every day and I thus was unable to regularly talk to anyone other than Keir given my schedule.
In other news, it was good to see everybody on the 30th of December. We had a fairly large get-together (game night minus Chris but plus Davis and Orion) which was pretty nice. I got to hang out with people fairly regularly this month due to that and the Seahawks doing somewhat well in the playoffs. Speaking of playoffs, I forgot to do my picks this year, but just in case you were wondering, I would not have beaten my record. I got four picks wrong, so that would have made me shy of tying my previous record.
I've still been playing League a lot too. I have dipped in my ranking due to people leaving games mostly, but hopefully I'm on the rise. They're implementing a new rating system very similar to the SC2 ladder soon though so that will be nice. Speaking of SC2, the Heart of the Swarm expansion comes out in March. I may have to pick it up in Korean. It sounds like global play will be available, so that should be interesting. Hopefully I can get a Korean version and just change the language.
Well I had best get back to work. I'll make one last post before I leave in February, then my adventure begins. Until next time, peace out.
It also seems like now is becoming a good time to leave the area. Aside from caring for Grandpa, which is a never-ending and increasingly complex task, most other people around me seem to be settling into a new phase in their lives or major projects have been finished. With all that, it seems like I can quietly slip away and people will be fine without me. I plan to interact more with people this time however. I am going to adjust my schedule in Korea though to get up earlier so that I can play games with people in the mornings and get to bed at an earlier time. I think that will work out for me well. If I get up at 8 or earlier on a regular occurrence, it will be easier to wake up for work in the morning. There are so many benefits to doing that, I can't think of a reason not to. I also want to get to Korea early so I can get on that schedule in time for the school year. It will be nice to talk to people I know this time. I would rather not repeat last year where I woke up at 10-11 every day and I thus was unable to regularly talk to anyone other than Keir given my schedule.
In other news, it was good to see everybody on the 30th of December. We had a fairly large get-together (game night minus Chris but plus Davis and Orion) which was pretty nice. I got to hang out with people fairly regularly this month due to that and the Seahawks doing somewhat well in the playoffs. Speaking of playoffs, I forgot to do my picks this year, but just in case you were wondering, I would not have beaten my record. I got four picks wrong, so that would have made me shy of tying my previous record.
I've still been playing League a lot too. I have dipped in my ranking due to people leaving games mostly, but hopefully I'm on the rise. They're implementing a new rating system very similar to the SC2 ladder soon though so that will be nice. Speaking of SC2, the Heart of the Swarm expansion comes out in March. I may have to pick it up in Korean. It sounds like global play will be available, so that should be interesting. Hopefully I can get a Korean version and just change the language.
Well I had best get back to work. I'll make one last post before I leave in February, then my adventure begins. Until next time, peace out.
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