Guess it's been a while huh? Two months without any word from me. I feel like I've still found a way too keep everyone generally up to date but I really shirked my responsibility to sit down and post. I've been keeping really busy these days though so that's why. Before I explain what's been going on, I just wanna give a shoutout to Davis on his really cool and entertaining (as opposed to what I do here haha) blog. My sidebar now correctly links to that one. Check it out if you haven't yet. Also, if there are any weird words or errors in this post its because I'm on my phone (riding the subway was the only time I could spare to make a post) so it's sometimes hard for me to see that my phone suggested something that makes no sense. Anyway, here' s what I've been doing with my life.
Work takes up most of my time and I'm finding myself once again in this pattern od needing to get work done outside of normal hours. I'm getting back up to those 12 hour minimum days. And it's not all class prep either, a lot is just busywork and favors foe other teachers. I still like it though and it's going rather well. I'm still planning on renewing for next year. I hope I can move to teaching the next grade up so I can keep my students.
After work, my next priority is still Korean classes. I'm getting worse about it though because now after a year of going, that 6 hour block of time it takes up 3 days a week is feeling excessive. When work needs me on a Korean lesson day, I'm finding myself shying away from taking that work less and less because I know if I work late enough to miss the subway, I'll still get more time to relax at night. This month was really bad because I missed 4.5/10 lessons. I only attended that half lesson because I felt guilty for missing so much and besides, I had a quick date after it.
"Wait what was that? A date?" Yeah, I don't know if I mentioned but I was convinced in August to try out Tinder. After middling success for a month, I wound up meeting a really cool girl on September 10 and we've been seeing each other since. We're actually a couple now. She's really cool and I like her. It feels a lot better than the last girl I was with because she actually seems to outwardly desire to be with me. I'm actually on the subway to meet her at the moment. She lives on the opposite side of Seoul from me which can be a little inconvenient but we're working around it.
Aside from those 3 things, I've been playing a lot of league. I finally went on a tear recently and got from silver 2 0lp to my gold promos in a relatively short time. I won the first game in my gold promo (bo3) and was really nervous but fortunately Steven was on and offered to duo with me. The series went well, I took it 3-0 and now I'm a proud gold 5 0lp guy. Nowadays I play on my smurf a lot because my coworker has picked it up. It's pretty fun for practicing new champs.
Aside from that, my cat is well and I'm doing good myself. Hopefully all the things that take up my time sort themselves out and I can feel like I have time to myself once in a while.
That's all for now. If you we hanging on these two months, my apologies. I'll try not to do that again. Until next time (which its hopefully soon), peace out.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Classic me, delaying a post until forever
Wow it's been since June that I really sat down and made a post. And now it's September here (although it's still August in Washington so it still counts as an August post!). I've been pretty busy all summer which has been nice here and there and less nice here and there as well. I guess I'll get into it now.
The cat:
I've named her Daria (Dari or 다리 meaning 'bridge' in Korean plus 'a' to make it a girl's name). I named her that way because she was found under a bridge. The school (all the way up to the principal) made a special exception to allow me to keep a pet in the dorms, the first time it's ever been done for this school. I think her cuteness won everyone over. She's had the chance to meet students and usually gets along with them, which is fun. The downside is she's kind of mean and likes to bite me a lot. I can't wait until she gets older and calms down. In the meantime, I'm collecting some sweet battle scars :/
Work:
Work has been going well. Since my last post, we finished our first semester, had summer break, and have now started our second semester. As of today actually our schedule changed and now school starts and ends 40 minutes later, so I'm working a proper 9-5 now. I'll need to adjust how late I feel like staying because I used to stay until 5, making it so I worked 8-5 every day. I figure I don't do anything good before cooking dinner anyways, so I might start staying until about 6 every day then going home to cook dinner and do whatever it is that I do. And being able to wake up at 7:40 is pretty nice. It's like being back in college (SCC, not SU when I had to start class every day (that I actually had classes) at 7:40).
Summer break was fun and interesting. I got rented out to another high school that asked our school if they could borrow a foreign teacher to teach a summer class. It was interesting and a valuable experience to get to teach students who aren't the super studious type I'm used to here. And the class was really easy to teach as well, plus I got paid well to do it (and since our summer classes aren't paid above our base salary, I was the only one that got paid any extra money). Even better, they liked me so much, they requested that I come back during the semester as well, but I have night classes/Korean lessons every night of the week, so I told them I couldn't do it, but I could probably come back during winter break.
Our school has sports day and the festival this week (rescheduled from first semester due to the ferry incident) and then next week is Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving) so I'm working a pretty relaxed week this week into a 5-day weekend, then a 2-day week the following week. I'm looking forward to using one of the 5 days to just do only work and get super far ahead, then using the other 4 days to play Planetside 2 or grind or whatever.
Other stuff:
Aside from that, I've been keeping up on Korean lessons despite having to miss several classes during July and August. I was able to marathon league for a little while recently and I saw some gains in lp that I have more or less lost since then. I'm holding off for now and just waiting for this weekend when I can really set aside some time to play. I'm kinda losing hope of making gold this season which sucks because I think once again my main barrier is that I just don't have enough time to play during the year. Next year will maybe be my year. Honestly I would play a lot more if Planetside 2 weren't so a) fun and b) less time consuming. I can only play league on weekends really but during that time, I want to play with the guys. I just need to find alternate times to play it.
I also went on vacation to France with the family since they were there for 2 weeks. I joined them for the second week when we went to Paris then out to western France (Mont Saint Michel and Normandy). Since I enjoy studying WWII history and since I've had to look at a picture of Mont St. Michel that's been above our fireplace since forever, it was nice to get to see both things.
Aside from all that, general business has ensued. Nothing major worth reporting, especially since I should get back to work. Until next time, peace out!
The cat:
I've named her Daria (Dari or 다리 meaning 'bridge' in Korean plus 'a' to make it a girl's name). I named her that way because she was found under a bridge. The school (all the way up to the principal) made a special exception to allow me to keep a pet in the dorms, the first time it's ever been done for this school. I think her cuteness won everyone over. She's had the chance to meet students and usually gets along with them, which is fun. The downside is she's kind of mean and likes to bite me a lot. I can't wait until she gets older and calms down. In the meantime, I'm collecting some sweet battle scars :/
Work:
Work has been going well. Since my last post, we finished our first semester, had summer break, and have now started our second semester. As of today actually our schedule changed and now school starts and ends 40 minutes later, so I'm working a proper 9-5 now. I'll need to adjust how late I feel like staying because I used to stay until 5, making it so I worked 8-5 every day. I figure I don't do anything good before cooking dinner anyways, so I might start staying until about 6 every day then going home to cook dinner and do whatever it is that I do. And being able to wake up at 7:40 is pretty nice. It's like being back in college (SCC, not SU when I had to start class every day (that I actually had classes) at 7:40).
Summer break was fun and interesting. I got rented out to another high school that asked our school if they could borrow a foreign teacher to teach a summer class. It was interesting and a valuable experience to get to teach students who aren't the super studious type I'm used to here. And the class was really easy to teach as well, plus I got paid well to do it (and since our summer classes aren't paid above our base salary, I was the only one that got paid any extra money). Even better, they liked me so much, they requested that I come back during the semester as well, but I have night classes/Korean lessons every night of the week, so I told them I couldn't do it, but I could probably come back during winter break.
Our school has sports day and the festival this week (rescheduled from first semester due to the ferry incident) and then next week is Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving) so I'm working a pretty relaxed week this week into a 5-day weekend, then a 2-day week the following week. I'm looking forward to using one of the 5 days to just do only work and get super far ahead, then using the other 4 days to play Planetside 2 or grind or whatever.
Other stuff:
Aside from that, I've been keeping up on Korean lessons despite having to miss several classes during July and August. I was able to marathon league for a little while recently and I saw some gains in lp that I have more or less lost since then. I'm holding off for now and just waiting for this weekend when I can really set aside some time to play. I'm kinda losing hope of making gold this season which sucks because I think once again my main barrier is that I just don't have enough time to play during the year. Next year will maybe be my year. Honestly I would play a lot more if Planetside 2 weren't so a) fun and b) less time consuming. I can only play league on weekends really but during that time, I want to play with the guys. I just need to find alternate times to play it.
I also went on vacation to France with the family since they were there for 2 weeks. I joined them for the second week when we went to Paris then out to western France (Mont Saint Michel and Normandy). Since I enjoy studying WWII history and since I've had to look at a picture of Mont St. Michel that's been above our fireplace since forever, it was nice to get to see both things.
Aside from all that, general business has ensued. Nothing major worth reporting, especially since I should get back to work. Until next time, peace out!
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
In memoriam: Eric Koolich
I learned just as I was leaving for my trip to Japan in early June that Eric had gone missing. The events that unfolded occupied my mind for pretty much the entire trip. It's really sad to see Eric go, he was always an interesting part of the group. It's hardly set in actually because I've grown used to not seeing you all every day, but I think once I'm back in Washington, it'll start to sink in that he's gone and I won't see him soon.
If you had said X number of people in our graduating class would be dead before the 10-year reunion, I would probably have been able to fill out a shortish list of names, but there's no way Eric would have been on that list. The guy lived a really careful, well thought out life which in some ways admittedly annoyed me and in some ways was kind of impressive.
I first met Eric in high school, shortly after he moved here. I only really knew him through the part of our group dubbed as "The Asians," so we never really directly associated until college. He didn't really gel with parts of our group; not to say he wasn't accepted, just that he wasn't someone that everyone wanted to hang around with all the time. Eventually, our group of friends split up for college and those of us that stayed behind kind of banded together. Part of that involved Eric becoming a bigger presence in the group. He spent a lot of time at the UW interacting with people besides me and I spent most of my early college years tied down and busy at SCC, but when I moved to Seattle University, we started to talk more. Eventually, when I began playing League in 2012, we started to talk a lot more.
I had the chance to talk with Eric a lot about this and that and everything in between. He was a really strange guy at times, almost coming across like a robot that needed case by case programming on how to act in certain situations. At other times, it seemed like he knew what he was doing. One thing he always did was check for help from real people whenever he had a problem. As someone who grew up in the generation of the internet, it annoyed me a bit that he would often ask for advice on stuff when I felt that it was something that could be easily googled, but now that I think about it, he was not only getting genuine feedback that he could trust, but he was able to use those dialogues as a way of staying in touch, and that's pretty cool.
We also talked a lot about life philosophies and whatnot, conversations that sometimes kept us up for several hours late into the night (because his parents wouldn't let him play League late, but they would let him chat on Skype until the wee hours of the morning). To describe his life philosophy in detail would be difficult and I don't think I would be 100% correct, so I can't really do it here. But to put it kind of simply as I understood it, Eric was one of those guys that hated being static. He always had to be learning a skill or improving himself in some way. It seemed to be really all he knew. I enjoy taking my breaks now and then, but Eric never really took any. I mean it when I say the guy was practically a robot.
More recently, Eric began to work the social game. He started going out with people and I got to hear about a lot of his experiences (mostly drinking experiences and whatnot). Even while he was going out and trying new things on his own, he would still occasionally ask people for advice and whatnot. For me, computer advice shifted to drinks advice and stuff like that. It was cool to see him starting to live it up as I would put it. Judging from what I saw on Facebook, he met and talked with a ton of people often. I think that was something cool about Eric is that in places where I would probably be too bashful to start up a conversation, he would just start one up like it was no big deal and would keep going. I'm not sure to this day if it was because deep down, he was an outgoing person or whether he had no social inhibitions (or maybe those are the same thing), but it seemed to be something that did a lot of good for him. He began to build a huge amount of contacts and before I knew it, he was bragging about the awesome job offers he had coming his way. In fact, as I understand it, the Monday after he was found, he was supposed to have started a job. That's what really makes this so sad, but I guess there's really no good time for anyone to die.
It's hard to pick a favorite memory with Koolich, but I'll always treasure the advice he gave me on League. He's had a big effect on my soloqueue mentality. He duoed with me only a handful of times, but he always watched my stream and helped me out a lot. Because of him, I don't get mad in chat and rage at people about 95% or more of the time. I think that doing that has allowed me to focus on my own skill, which has been helping me improve. The last time I talked to Koolich was in League chat and that exact conversation is of course lost forever, but I know it was something mundane and to the effect of "Why aren't you in mumble" and "Hey wanna play ranked 5s later?" and "No sorry I'm playing with some other people." I should quickly mention that I liked that he tried to give everyone equal time playing with them in League, even if that meant sometimes he stopped us from being able to play ranked 5s. Anyway, the last conversation with him where I have a log of it is on Facebook. I was lamenting the unlikeliness of getting into gold at the rate I was going and he encouraged me that Keir and I would surely make it to gold. I'm definitely determined to do it if for no reason other than to prove him right.
So one last time I'd like to throw a thanks out there to Eric Koolich for all the good memories. There were some weird times, some great times, but at least they were all pretty memorable. Thanks for all the memories, man.
If you had said X number of people in our graduating class would be dead before the 10-year reunion, I would probably have been able to fill out a shortish list of names, but there's no way Eric would have been on that list. The guy lived a really careful, well thought out life which in some ways admittedly annoyed me and in some ways was kind of impressive.
I first met Eric in high school, shortly after he moved here. I only really knew him through the part of our group dubbed as "The Asians," so we never really directly associated until college. He didn't really gel with parts of our group; not to say he wasn't accepted, just that he wasn't someone that everyone wanted to hang around with all the time. Eventually, our group of friends split up for college and those of us that stayed behind kind of banded together. Part of that involved Eric becoming a bigger presence in the group. He spent a lot of time at the UW interacting with people besides me and I spent most of my early college years tied down and busy at SCC, but when I moved to Seattle University, we started to talk more. Eventually, when I began playing League in 2012, we started to talk a lot more.
I had the chance to talk with Eric a lot about this and that and everything in between. He was a really strange guy at times, almost coming across like a robot that needed case by case programming on how to act in certain situations. At other times, it seemed like he knew what he was doing. One thing he always did was check for help from real people whenever he had a problem. As someone who grew up in the generation of the internet, it annoyed me a bit that he would often ask for advice on stuff when I felt that it was something that could be easily googled, but now that I think about it, he was not only getting genuine feedback that he could trust, but he was able to use those dialogues as a way of staying in touch, and that's pretty cool.
We also talked a lot about life philosophies and whatnot, conversations that sometimes kept us up for several hours late into the night (because his parents wouldn't let him play League late, but they would let him chat on Skype until the wee hours of the morning). To describe his life philosophy in detail would be difficult and I don't think I would be 100% correct, so I can't really do it here. But to put it kind of simply as I understood it, Eric was one of those guys that hated being static. He always had to be learning a skill or improving himself in some way. It seemed to be really all he knew. I enjoy taking my breaks now and then, but Eric never really took any. I mean it when I say the guy was practically a robot.
More recently, Eric began to work the social game. He started going out with people and I got to hear about a lot of his experiences (mostly drinking experiences and whatnot). Even while he was going out and trying new things on his own, he would still occasionally ask people for advice and whatnot. For me, computer advice shifted to drinks advice and stuff like that. It was cool to see him starting to live it up as I would put it. Judging from what I saw on Facebook, he met and talked with a ton of people often. I think that was something cool about Eric is that in places where I would probably be too bashful to start up a conversation, he would just start one up like it was no big deal and would keep going. I'm not sure to this day if it was because deep down, he was an outgoing person or whether he had no social inhibitions (or maybe those are the same thing), but it seemed to be something that did a lot of good for him. He began to build a huge amount of contacts and before I knew it, he was bragging about the awesome job offers he had coming his way. In fact, as I understand it, the Monday after he was found, he was supposed to have started a job. That's what really makes this so sad, but I guess there's really no good time for anyone to die.
It's hard to pick a favorite memory with Koolich, but I'll always treasure the advice he gave me on League. He's had a big effect on my soloqueue mentality. He duoed with me only a handful of times, but he always watched my stream and helped me out a lot. Because of him, I don't get mad in chat and rage at people about 95% or more of the time. I think that doing that has allowed me to focus on my own skill, which has been helping me improve. The last time I talked to Koolich was in League chat and that exact conversation is of course lost forever, but I know it was something mundane and to the effect of "Why aren't you in mumble" and "Hey wanna play ranked 5s later?" and "No sorry I'm playing with some other people." I should quickly mention that I liked that he tried to give everyone equal time playing with them in League, even if that meant sometimes he stopped us from being able to play ranked 5s. Anyway, the last conversation with him where I have a log of it is on Facebook. I was lamenting the unlikeliness of getting into gold at the rate I was going and he encouraged me that Keir and I would surely make it to gold. I'm definitely determined to do it if for no reason other than to prove him right.
So one last time I'd like to throw a thanks out there to Eric Koolich for all the good memories. There were some weird times, some great times, but at least they were all pretty memorable. Thanks for all the memories, man.
In memoriam
It's really terrible that I have to make these types of posts, but I guess that's just the pain of getting older. I'm making this post just to start off a new label that I'm going to make. I'll be using it to write things about people I/we've lost to remember them by. The first post will immediately follow this one.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Filling in on life quickly
Hi all. I'm going to just post an update about my life in this post. I'm not going to mention what happened with Eric Koolich this month because that deserves its own post and it will certainly get one at some point later on during this week. I'm starting to have some free time, so I'll be getting to both of the posts I wanted to make during this week (I sincerely hope so at least).
Upon checking what I said in my last post, I may have sounded a little too depressed, confused, stressed out, or some combination of the three. I'm not thinking of quitting teaching immediately after I finish my program and I'm certainly not planning on just up and leaving Korea. I was just really busy at the time and didn't choose my words carefully. I won't be teaching for my whole life (unless I go get a masters and do that) but I've known that from the start. I don't mean to convey that I hate it now, only that I'm looking forward to someday doing a different type of work as well.
Work:
Work was horribly busy last month as it has been since the midterms for some reason. I don't know what happened, but this year was pretty crazy. However, all of a sudden my workload has dropped off dramatically and now I have a ton of free time. It coincided well with the fact that I need free time nowadays more than I did before because...
Cat:
...because I rescued a kitten! She lived near the school with her mom and 4 siblings (one died). One day, the three remaining cats just up and left and ditched her. The Chinese teacher brought her into the school and everyone didn't know what to do except one of the Korean teachers who knew I love cats and he told everyone that I should take the cat. That turned into a crazy two-week adventure of taking the cat to the vet, getting her accustomed to her new digs, and getting permission to keep the cat in the dorm. The permission thing went all the way up to the principal, who actually approved it personally with the caveat that "It's too bad the cat has to live in a small apartment so you can bring her to the office if you want." which basically means that he wants to see the kitten occasionally. I feel special now because I'm the first person to ever have a pet in the dormitory here. I'll post pictures of her on facebook soon. I'm excited too because I've had 3 boy cats, but this is my first girl cat. It's also my first time raising a cat on my own (or raising a kitten ever), but I've learned how to properly do it over the years, so I feel like I'm ready.
Japan Vacation:
At the start of the month, Brandon and I went to Tokyo for our big weekend. It was pretty fun, although I was reminded that I'm not really that fond of Japan. We had a good time, but it'll be a while before we go back. A fun story from the trip (the worst day):
We really wanted to hike Mt. Fuji, so we planned a day around it. We got up at the crack of dawn, took a big 2-hour bus ride to the base of the mountain, then waited about 40 minutes to take another 40-minute bus ride partway up the mountain to hike. Along the first bus ride, it started raining. Little did I know at the time, but that would be the last time I saw the sun all weekend. It poured on us the rest of the time. When we got up to the place to start the hike, Brandon had to use the bathroom. As he went in, an older guy grabbed him and pointed to a box full of coins. Apparently, it cost Y100 to use the bathroom. Ridiculous. After getting situated and ready to head out, we got to the start of the trail only to find that it was closed. A few other hikers were disappointed as well because there had been no signage (Japanese or English) to note that the trail was closed on this particular day. In mild rage, we hung around the place where the trail starts, enjoying the "view" (of nothing but straight up fog) and caught the first bus back. While enjoying the view, we found a free public bathroom that we better quality than the Y100 one. After that, we needed to find a way to fill the rest of the day that we had basically set aside for being on the mountain. There was an amusement park nearby, so we figured that would be a fun way to kill some time. It cost about $10 to get in, then would cost additional money at each ride you wanted to go on. No big deal we figured, let's have a good time. As soon as we paid the *non-refundable* entrance fee and entered the park, it cut loose and all the rides had to close due to weather. Since the rain was moving in indefinitely, we had to just leave and take the $10 hit. We left but not before unloading all of the hiking equipment (snacks and water) that we didn't want or need into a locker in the theme park in our rage. After getting back to Tokyo, we went to Akihabara, but a combination of the rain and terrible stuff there in general made it terrible. We went back to near our hotel in search for some drinks or something and happened to find a bar.
The bar we went to actually was really great. It was a new startup whiskey bar with a cool environment and the owner was an awesome guy. It's called Cafe Bar and it's in Kinshicho or something like that. Also, we found a good Ramen place there with God-tier ramen. That and the bar made the are we were in pretty cool. The second day we went to the bar, there was a girl working there. Since she knew a little Enlgish and was extremely cute, she talked to us the whole night. Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend but to be honest, I don't think I would have done anything anyway because it was the night before we were leaving. An interesting note though is that I found she had a friend that goes to SCC. She had her friend take a picture of the part of Seattle she was in. I figured it would be a longshot that I would recognize it, but she took a picture of Deseret and the ice rink on Aurora and I was like oh shit she's in Shorline. The girl didn't remember the name of the college her friend when to, but when I asked if it was SCC, she said that sounded right and her friend confirmed it. Crazy small world story.
Anyway, Japan was pretty neat. I'll go again to hike Mt. Fuji, but for now I'm good on Japan.
Other stuff:
Korean lessons are still going well. I've kept myself pretty busy with this and that, videogames and whatnot. I finally finished my computer, so I can start playing games on the weekends again. StarCitizen's dogfight simulator has come out, so now I've been pretty happy too.
I don't know if anyone enjoys reading about it also, but I recently had good closure and am definitely over my ex-girlfriend now. I know that she broke up with me back in October, but I had only just started to get over it in early December. Then, a bunch of crazy stuff happened (Grandpa, a couple quick trips back and forth between Washington and Korea, lots of work, new students, tons of stuff in general) and she kind of slipped my mind of a few months. Recently though with the weather getting warmer, I started to feel a bit lonely and I thought about her again. However I recently learned from Patrick that my ex-girlfriend (according to Patrick's wife) is a bit controlling and crazy and his wife actually told him she regrets having set me up with her. It's stuff I could have realized on my own sure, but just hearing it from someone else kind of opened my eyes and now I'm totally fine. In fact, I was considering starting to try to go out and do things rather than play games on weekends, but shortly afterwards, I got my kitten so now that occupies most of my time. There are still some girls I could ask out that I see and socialize with often, but I don't think things would work out with them, so I'm holding off. I don't really have time to be dating anyone at the moment. Besides, I live with the cutest girl I know anyway (the cat, I'm already becoming a crazy cat lady). Anyway, that was just a bit of good news. Overall, things are pretty good at the moment.
So I owe the universe a couple posts about people that I hope we never forget. I'll definitely make those posts this week or next if I get the time. Until next time, peace out!
Upon checking what I said in my last post, I may have sounded a little too depressed, confused, stressed out, or some combination of the three. I'm not thinking of quitting teaching immediately after I finish my program and I'm certainly not planning on just up and leaving Korea. I was just really busy at the time and didn't choose my words carefully. I won't be teaching for my whole life (unless I go get a masters and do that) but I've known that from the start. I don't mean to convey that I hate it now, only that I'm looking forward to someday doing a different type of work as well.
Work:
Work was horribly busy last month as it has been since the midterms for some reason. I don't know what happened, but this year was pretty crazy. However, all of a sudden my workload has dropped off dramatically and now I have a ton of free time. It coincided well with the fact that I need free time nowadays more than I did before because...
Cat:
...because I rescued a kitten! She lived near the school with her mom and 4 siblings (one died). One day, the three remaining cats just up and left and ditched her. The Chinese teacher brought her into the school and everyone didn't know what to do except one of the Korean teachers who knew I love cats and he told everyone that I should take the cat. That turned into a crazy two-week adventure of taking the cat to the vet, getting her accustomed to her new digs, and getting permission to keep the cat in the dorm. The permission thing went all the way up to the principal, who actually approved it personally with the caveat that "It's too bad the cat has to live in a small apartment so you can bring her to the office if you want." which basically means that he wants to see the kitten occasionally. I feel special now because I'm the first person to ever have a pet in the dormitory here. I'll post pictures of her on facebook soon. I'm excited too because I've had 3 boy cats, but this is my first girl cat. It's also my first time raising a cat on my own (or raising a kitten ever), but I've learned how to properly do it over the years, so I feel like I'm ready.
Japan Vacation:
At the start of the month, Brandon and I went to Tokyo for our big weekend. It was pretty fun, although I was reminded that I'm not really that fond of Japan. We had a good time, but it'll be a while before we go back. A fun story from the trip (the worst day):
We really wanted to hike Mt. Fuji, so we planned a day around it. We got up at the crack of dawn, took a big 2-hour bus ride to the base of the mountain, then waited about 40 minutes to take another 40-minute bus ride partway up the mountain to hike. Along the first bus ride, it started raining. Little did I know at the time, but that would be the last time I saw the sun all weekend. It poured on us the rest of the time. When we got up to the place to start the hike, Brandon had to use the bathroom. As he went in, an older guy grabbed him and pointed to a box full of coins. Apparently, it cost Y100 to use the bathroom. Ridiculous. After getting situated and ready to head out, we got to the start of the trail only to find that it was closed. A few other hikers were disappointed as well because there had been no signage (Japanese or English) to note that the trail was closed on this particular day. In mild rage, we hung around the place where the trail starts, enjoying the "view" (of nothing but straight up fog) and caught the first bus back. While enjoying the view, we found a free public bathroom that we better quality than the Y100 one. After that, we needed to find a way to fill the rest of the day that we had basically set aside for being on the mountain. There was an amusement park nearby, so we figured that would be a fun way to kill some time. It cost about $10 to get in, then would cost additional money at each ride you wanted to go on. No big deal we figured, let's have a good time. As soon as we paid the *non-refundable* entrance fee and entered the park, it cut loose and all the rides had to close due to weather. Since the rain was moving in indefinitely, we had to just leave and take the $10 hit. We left but not before unloading all of the hiking equipment (snacks and water) that we didn't want or need into a locker in the theme park in our rage. After getting back to Tokyo, we went to Akihabara, but a combination of the rain and terrible stuff there in general made it terrible. We went back to near our hotel in search for some drinks or something and happened to find a bar.
The bar we went to actually was really great. It was a new startup whiskey bar with a cool environment and the owner was an awesome guy. It's called Cafe Bar and it's in Kinshicho or something like that. Also, we found a good Ramen place there with God-tier ramen. That and the bar made the are we were in pretty cool. The second day we went to the bar, there was a girl working there. Since she knew a little Enlgish and was extremely cute, she talked to us the whole night. Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend but to be honest, I don't think I would have done anything anyway because it was the night before we were leaving. An interesting note though is that I found she had a friend that goes to SCC. She had her friend take a picture of the part of Seattle she was in. I figured it would be a longshot that I would recognize it, but she took a picture of Deseret and the ice rink on Aurora and I was like oh shit she's in Shorline. The girl didn't remember the name of the college her friend when to, but when I asked if it was SCC, she said that sounded right and her friend confirmed it. Crazy small world story.
Anyway, Japan was pretty neat. I'll go again to hike Mt. Fuji, but for now I'm good on Japan.
Other stuff:
Korean lessons are still going well. I've kept myself pretty busy with this and that, videogames and whatnot. I finally finished my computer, so I can start playing games on the weekends again. StarCitizen's dogfight simulator has come out, so now I've been pretty happy too.
I don't know if anyone enjoys reading about it also, but I recently had good closure and am definitely over my ex-girlfriend now. I know that she broke up with me back in October, but I had only just started to get over it in early December. Then, a bunch of crazy stuff happened (Grandpa, a couple quick trips back and forth between Washington and Korea, lots of work, new students, tons of stuff in general) and she kind of slipped my mind of a few months. Recently though with the weather getting warmer, I started to feel a bit lonely and I thought about her again. However I recently learned from Patrick that my ex-girlfriend (according to Patrick's wife) is a bit controlling and crazy and his wife actually told him she regrets having set me up with her. It's stuff I could have realized on my own sure, but just hearing it from someone else kind of opened my eyes and now I'm totally fine. In fact, I was considering starting to try to go out and do things rather than play games on weekends, but shortly afterwards, I got my kitten so now that occupies most of my time. There are still some girls I could ask out that I see and socialize with often, but I don't think things would work out with them, so I'm holding off. I don't really have time to be dating anyone at the moment. Besides, I live with the cutest girl I know anyway (the cat, I'm already becoming a crazy cat lady). Anyway, that was just a bit of good news. Overall, things are pretty good at the moment.
So I owe the universe a couple posts about people that I hope we never forget. I'll definitely make those posts this week or next if I get the time. Until next time, peace out!
Monday, June 02, 2014
I *May* have forgotten to post last month
I had to take a second to appreciate that title. Anyway yeah I did forget to post last month. As per usual, I've been super busy. I just don't know anymore, I think in 2015 after I finish my Korean program, I should start thinking about either getting out of teaching or getting more qualified to be an actual teacher. Then I could at least make more for the amount of work I'm putting in. But in the meantime, these extra classes (though they are a ton of work) do pay pretty well so it's okay.
I really have been busy in the last month, even my free time has been carefully calculated. It's been really weird because the guys will stay up late on their Saturday nights playing League and even though they stay up past 3am with me, I'm usually the first one to have to sign off (even though its only around 7pm for me) because I have to get caught up on work. That all being said, I'll try to fill you all in on stuff that's been going on.
Work:
My night class started up again. Last time around, it was a test preparation class for a speaking test. Really easy to plan for because you could pretty much come up with a logical way to teach it based on how the test itself is arranged. The class was hard to teach though because there's only so much you can do with speaking activities and it's hard to work on 8 peoples' speaking skills at the same time. Since the class was definitely the most boring topic of the four foreign teachers' classes, I let my students suggest some things they wanted to me. The top one that came up was English Culture. I had no idea that it would be this much of a pain in the butt, but I took it on. In addition to doubling my class size (I have 16 now), I also doubled my workload (or more). Turns out planning for what to teach, what order to teach, and how to teach things related to English culture is extremely hard. That class has been nice to teach and I feel like it's been fun for the students, but there's no way I can keep it up next term so I'll probably wind up changing the class to something else. It's really because of this class that I've been so busy all month. It's a horrible pain to plan for.
Besides that, my normal workload is going smoothly. In addition, the middle school classes on weekends are going well too. We're getting towards finals, so Brandon and I are trying to think of what to do after that point. Also we're considering not switching for next semester because some of our classes we only get once a week and we don't feel like we've gotten to know them enough yet. We'll see how that goes.
Outside of Work:
Outside of work I've of course been just as busy. It'll seem like I did a lot here and that might give you the impression that I have tons of free time, but don't be mistaken, I'm just becoming really efficient with my free time.
If you've talked to me this month, I've surely complained about my computer being dead. If you haven't heard about that, it's also why I haven't been streaming my games. It seems that my motherboard and/or SSD died so I had to replace both. I also bought a new computer case while I was at it because my old one got smashed to hell when I originally sent it over to Korea from the states. The build is complete, but I have yet to test it. I'll be doing that when I get back from Japan.
On that note, Brandon and I are going to Tokyo tomorrow until Sunday. We decided to go because it is a 5-day weekend for our school. Wednesday is election day, Thursday is a holiday for our school's founding or something, then Friday is....Armistice day? I should really look into what magical occasion is giving me a day off. Anyway, I think it'll be fun to go back to Japan since Brandon's never gone and I hope I like it better than the last times I went.
Speaking of things I've been planning to do, I have been planning to start going back to the gym. My night class is starting to wind down, so from next Monday, I'll be going back to the gym with the Chinese teacher that I used to go with plus one of the new Chinese teachers. Why do I mention this? Not sure really, but it does kinda go with the fact that I've pretty much gotten a makeover over the course of the last month.
In the past month, I changed my look up a bit. I got new clothes of course as I'm starting toupdate my start using fashion. In addition, I saw this picture recently on Reddit and thought "Hey I wonder if I can pull off hair similar to that." It's not the same, but it's I guess kinda similar. Either way it's now not just lazily resting on my head the way it has for...my entire life. In addition, I finally gave into peer pressure with everyone (including my eye doctor) saying I should get contacts and I went ahead and did it. Wearing them was hard at first. It took over an hour in the store and I couldn't put them in by myself. I even lost one and had to come back later in the week to try again, at which point it still took 45 minutes. I've slowly worked myself down to a point where I can get them both in in about 3 minutes, but then my eyes burn and tear up for about 10 minutes after that since they're still not fully used to wearing contacts. It'll get better as I go. Anyway, I look totally beautiful now ^__^
You probably don't know or care what I'm talking about, but I'm getting pretty decent at Planetside 2. It's a fun game. I won't bore you with more than that I suppose.
We've started to do more ranked 5s when we all play League with each other these days. A few weeks ago, we actually hit gold with one of our teams. So that means I finally got gold. I'm super excited about it. Hopefully I can do the same in soloqueue. At the very least, having gold in my pocket in any ranked queue has helped relieve a LOT (read: all) of my League related stress.
And last and probably most important is my Korean class. I just finished level 2 this last month (it's the equivalent of 12 months of study). I still have 20 more months to go (oh wow that just hit me) but I think I can make it. I've always said that if I ever lost my teacher, I would probably start looking for different schools closer to me. That actually has happened as we go to level 3, but now I feel like I might stay because of the class. I really don't like the 3 hour commute 2-3 times a week, but any other school just wouldn't be the same. I've lost the teacher, now I think if I lose the classmates too, that'll be the point at which I just say screw it and go to another school (of course that can always change, knowing me). In the meantime, I want to see if I can finish the full course.
That's about it for now, I should get back to packing. Until next time, peace out.
I really have been busy in the last month, even my free time has been carefully calculated. It's been really weird because the guys will stay up late on their Saturday nights playing League and even though they stay up past 3am with me, I'm usually the first one to have to sign off (even though its only around 7pm for me) because I have to get caught up on work. That all being said, I'll try to fill you all in on stuff that's been going on.
Work:
My night class started up again. Last time around, it was a test preparation class for a speaking test. Really easy to plan for because you could pretty much come up with a logical way to teach it based on how the test itself is arranged. The class was hard to teach though because there's only so much you can do with speaking activities and it's hard to work on 8 peoples' speaking skills at the same time. Since the class was definitely the most boring topic of the four foreign teachers' classes, I let my students suggest some things they wanted to me. The top one that came up was English Culture. I had no idea that it would be this much of a pain in the butt, but I took it on. In addition to doubling my class size (I have 16 now), I also doubled my workload (or more). Turns out planning for what to teach, what order to teach, and how to teach things related to English culture is extremely hard. That class has been nice to teach and I feel like it's been fun for the students, but there's no way I can keep it up next term so I'll probably wind up changing the class to something else. It's really because of this class that I've been so busy all month. It's a horrible pain to plan for.
Besides that, my normal workload is going smoothly. In addition, the middle school classes on weekends are going well too. We're getting towards finals, so Brandon and I are trying to think of what to do after that point. Also we're considering not switching for next semester because some of our classes we only get once a week and we don't feel like we've gotten to know them enough yet. We'll see how that goes.
Outside of Work:
Outside of work I've of course been just as busy. It'll seem like I did a lot here and that might give you the impression that I have tons of free time, but don't be mistaken, I'm just becoming really efficient with my free time.
If you've talked to me this month, I've surely complained about my computer being dead. If you haven't heard about that, it's also why I haven't been streaming my games. It seems that my motherboard and/or SSD died so I had to replace both. I also bought a new computer case while I was at it because my old one got smashed to hell when I originally sent it over to Korea from the states. The build is complete, but I have yet to test it. I'll be doing that when I get back from Japan.
On that note, Brandon and I are going to Tokyo tomorrow until Sunday. We decided to go because it is a 5-day weekend for our school. Wednesday is election day, Thursday is a holiday for our school's founding or something, then Friday is....Armistice day? I should really look into what magical occasion is giving me a day off. Anyway, I think it'll be fun to go back to Japan since Brandon's never gone and I hope I like it better than the last times I went.
Speaking of things I've been planning to do, I have been planning to start going back to the gym. My night class is starting to wind down, so from next Monday, I'll be going back to the gym with the Chinese teacher that I used to go with plus one of the new Chinese teachers. Why do I mention this? Not sure really, but it does kinda go with the fact that I've pretty much gotten a makeover over the course of the last month.
In the past month, I changed my look up a bit. I got new clothes of course as I'm starting to
You probably don't know or care what I'm talking about, but I'm getting pretty decent at Planetside 2. It's a fun game. I won't bore you with more than that I suppose.
We've started to do more ranked 5s when we all play League with each other these days. A few weeks ago, we actually hit gold with one of our teams. So that means I finally got gold. I'm super excited about it. Hopefully I can do the same in soloqueue. At the very least, having gold in my pocket in any ranked queue has helped relieve a LOT (read: all) of my League related stress.
And last and probably most important is my Korean class. I just finished level 2 this last month (it's the equivalent of 12 months of study). I still have 20 more months to go (oh wow that just hit me) but I think I can make it. I've always said that if I ever lost my teacher, I would probably start looking for different schools closer to me. That actually has happened as we go to level 3, but now I feel like I might stay because of the class. I really don't like the 3 hour commute 2-3 times a week, but any other school just wouldn't be the same. I've lost the teacher, now I think if I lose the classmates too, that'll be the point at which I just say screw it and go to another school (of course that can always change, knowing me). In the meantime, I want to see if I can finish the full course.
That's about it for now, I should get back to packing. Until next time, peace out.
Monday, April 28, 2014
Do I really have time? No. BUT THAT WON'T STOP ME!!!
Dang man it's been about 2 months since I posted. Crazy. To be honest, I've been really busy. "But David, you've been playing games with us every weekend!" Ok fine. That's literally the only free time I've had though and I've decided I prefer to use my free time on games. If ever I get 2 days in a row where I have free time, that's usually where I squeeze in a blog post. That has somehow actually not happened since my last post. Actually it's still not happening now, but I decided I need to really make tome time. I don't know what the time will say on this post because I plan to be working on it in pieces throughout the week. If there are spelling errors, I blame my fat fingers because typing on my phone is hard (yeah I'm actually trying to type on the subway haha). I don't plan on making this a short post (it covers 2 months) so strap in and enjoy!
Work:
As I said last post, I got only first graders this year (which means sophomores, they're in the first year at our school though). It's the same amount of lessons to prepare per week (four) but it's harder this year. Last year, one type of class got 2 lessons a week and the other type of class also got 2 lessons. This year, one of our classes gets 1 lesson per week and another type gets 3 lessons per week. Finding ways to fill 3 lessons per week has been one challenge and managing to make a good lesson when we only see a class once a week has also been a challenge. Again though I do like the work, it's just that there's a lot of it. In addition to that, we have the usual stuff like helping with clubs, translating exams, and basically everything that the regular teachers don't want to do/the non-native speakers aren't qualified to do. Also there's my middle school lessons and night class. In total, I'm producing about 9 hours of lessons per week, 5 on my own and 4 in collaboration with Brandon. I do enjoy being busy though because it distracts me from my life. If I can get depressing for a moment, I realized recently when I had one totally free day that I hadn't really had much time to myself since Grandpa died. I used that day to take his picture to visit the new Costco that they built the next town over. Really quickly on the note of Grandpa, I'm going to maybe make a post here at the beginning of May sometime on the topic of him and it's mostly going to be things I don't want to forget. Don't feel obligated to read it, especially after what I'm putting you through in this post.
So total work is pretty busy. With the regular classes plus my night class (basically English speaking for proficiency exams and now English culture starting this week) as well as middle school and then helping tutor the economics club at school, I've kept super busy. It's bad and nice at the same time. At the very least, I'm getting credit for being such a hard worker. It is keeping me from one thing though...
My life:
I don't have one, moving on
No actually, my life:
Ok I was kidding. I hang out with Brandon a lot these days. The Chinese teachers are busy, so I don't hang out with them much anymore, but I do see them all the time. We'll all hang out again someday when we're less busy. I've seen the Chinese teacher that moved away to Seoul a couple times and that's always nice. She has a good place in Seoul and I've crashed there a couple times. It's nice on a Friday night because it means I don't have to suffer the 1.5 hour trip home on a late Friday night plus I get to hang out and feel social. I also have gotten drinks with people from my Korean class exactly 2 times. Other than that, my social life these days consists of hanging out with you guys online (which don't get me wrong, is my favorite way to pass the time) or playing Planetside 2 with Brandon in a PC bang. There's a cute girl that works there and I'm trying to convince him to ask her out, but I think he thinks she's interested in me? I have no idea. Either way, it's not terribly important. Maybe it is, I have no idea. I'm just there to play Planetside 2 >___>. If you'll permit me to be depressing, since the weather has been getting nice, I've begun lamenting the fact that I'm single again. Perhaps someday I'll do something about that. In the meantime, I have work to do!
Korean Class:
My Korean has been coming along well. I'm at a point where I know a sufficient amount of grammar, but I'm really lacking in vocabulary. I have all these things I want to say, but I just lack the words to say it. It's kind of frustrating that I know the grammar, yet a 5-year-old can still say things better than me. It's a slow climb, but I'm getting better every week. I recently had a revelation in class that I'm the only person in my class of 6 that lives outside of one district of Seoul. We all knew that I lived the farthest away and that I was the only one that lived outside of Seoul, but we just found out last week that the other 5 people all live within 20 minutes of each other and within 20 minutes of the school. As a person with a 3-hour round trip commute, I hate them =___=
Other fun things:
Last month, I managed to find time to go get my driver's license. Even though I haven't used it to drive a car yet and I have no immediate plans to do so, I was really happy to get it. I just like the idea that if I wanted to drive, I could.
I tore a muscle in my calf last month. It was pretty interesting how I did it in that I was asleep when it happened. I woke up at around 6:30 one morning to a loud pop sound coming from the foot of my bed, followed by a lot of pain in my leg. Thinking it was a leg cramp, I went through the motions to get rid of it, which made the leg hurt more. After a little bit, the pain subsided a bit which was enough for me to go back to sleep (not because I'm so bad-ass that I ignore pain, but because I'm so kick-ass at sleeping). Anyway, I wound up standing and teaching on that leg all day before I realized at the end of the day that it still really hurt. By the time I decided to go to a doctor, they were all closed. I wound up doing the only sensible thing left, diagnosing myself on WebMD (it was pretty clear what happened though) and trying to take care of it as needed. That turned out to be a fine enough solution as my injury fortunately wasn't as severe as it could have been. It's totally fine now (as far as I know). At the very least, this self-fix has turned out much better than the two times I broke my toes and tried to wrap them up myself (and now they're both slightly crooked :/ ).
I got a new haircut recently and now I use product in my hair (wax? hair wax? I have no idea what to call it, they just call it wax here). My new hairstyle is based off a picture of Harrison Ford that I saw online recently. It's the shortest my hair has been since that year in high school that I got a buzz cut. But it doesn't look like I have cancer and it's actually decently long so I do like it. I'll try to get a picture up on facebook sometime if I ever get around to it. The reason I bring this up is because with the new hairstyle, I decided it looks better without glasses. That was kind of the tipping point for me to look at alternatives to glasses. My eye doctor says I am not a good candidate for lasik, but I'm a great candidate for contact lenses. Based on that continued assertion and pretty much everyone in this country saying I look better without glasses, I'm now considering contact lenses. Mom (who wore contacts for about 20 years) is currently helping me to figure it out.
"David one of the top 3 things you did in the last TWO MONTHS was CONSIDERING getting contacts."
I know, that should show you perfectly how boring my life is at the moment. I kinda like it this way though. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
So I'm gonna make that post about Grandpa probably around the first weekend in May. It's mostly stuff I want myself to remember before I forget someday (I'll never forget, but I want to be safe). Then I'll get back to my (attempted) usual schedule of posting at the end of the month (so the end of next May).
Until then, peace out everybody!
Work:
As I said last post, I got only first graders this year (which means sophomores, they're in the first year at our school though). It's the same amount of lessons to prepare per week (four) but it's harder this year. Last year, one type of class got 2 lessons a week and the other type of class also got 2 lessons. This year, one of our classes gets 1 lesson per week and another type gets 3 lessons per week. Finding ways to fill 3 lessons per week has been one challenge and managing to make a good lesson when we only see a class once a week has also been a challenge. Again though I do like the work, it's just that there's a lot of it. In addition to that, we have the usual stuff like helping with clubs, translating exams, and basically everything that the regular teachers don't want to do/the non-native speakers aren't qualified to do. Also there's my middle school lessons and night class. In total, I'm producing about 9 hours of lessons per week, 5 on my own and 4 in collaboration with Brandon. I do enjoy being busy though because it distracts me from my life. If I can get depressing for a moment, I realized recently when I had one totally free day that I hadn't really had much time to myself since Grandpa died. I used that day to take his picture to visit the new Costco that they built the next town over. Really quickly on the note of Grandpa, I'm going to maybe make a post here at the beginning of May sometime on the topic of him and it's mostly going to be things I don't want to forget. Don't feel obligated to read it, especially after what I'm putting you through in this post.
So total work is pretty busy. With the regular classes plus my night class (basically English speaking for proficiency exams and now English culture starting this week) as well as middle school and then helping tutor the economics club at school, I've kept super busy. It's bad and nice at the same time. At the very least, I'm getting credit for being such a hard worker. It is keeping me from one thing though...
My life:
I don't have one, moving on
No actually, my life:
Ok I was kidding. I hang out with Brandon a lot these days. The Chinese teachers are busy, so I don't hang out with them much anymore, but I do see them all the time. We'll all hang out again someday when we're less busy. I've seen the Chinese teacher that moved away to Seoul a couple times and that's always nice. She has a good place in Seoul and I've crashed there a couple times. It's nice on a Friday night because it means I don't have to suffer the 1.5 hour trip home on a late Friday night plus I get to hang out and feel social. I also have gotten drinks with people from my Korean class exactly 2 times. Other than that, my social life these days consists of hanging out with you guys online (which don't get me wrong, is my favorite way to pass the time) or playing Planetside 2 with Brandon in a PC bang. There's a cute girl that works there and I'm trying to convince him to ask her out, but I think he thinks she's interested in me? I have no idea. Either way, it's not terribly important. Maybe it is, I have no idea. I'm just there to play Planetside 2 >___>. If you'll permit me to be depressing, since the weather has been getting nice, I've begun lamenting the fact that I'm single again. Perhaps someday I'll do something about that. In the meantime, I have work to do!
Korean Class:
My Korean has been coming along well. I'm at a point where I know a sufficient amount of grammar, but I'm really lacking in vocabulary. I have all these things I want to say, but I just lack the words to say it. It's kind of frustrating that I know the grammar, yet a 5-year-old can still say things better than me. It's a slow climb, but I'm getting better every week. I recently had a revelation in class that I'm the only person in my class of 6 that lives outside of one district of Seoul. We all knew that I lived the farthest away and that I was the only one that lived outside of Seoul, but we just found out last week that the other 5 people all live within 20 minutes of each other and within 20 minutes of the school. As a person with a 3-hour round trip commute, I hate them =___=
Other fun things:
Last month, I managed to find time to go get my driver's license. Even though I haven't used it to drive a car yet and I have no immediate plans to do so, I was really happy to get it. I just like the idea that if I wanted to drive, I could.
I tore a muscle in my calf last month. It was pretty interesting how I did it in that I was asleep when it happened. I woke up at around 6:30 one morning to a loud pop sound coming from the foot of my bed, followed by a lot of pain in my leg. Thinking it was a leg cramp, I went through the motions to get rid of it, which made the leg hurt more. After a little bit, the pain subsided a bit which was enough for me to go back to sleep (not because I'm so bad-ass that I ignore pain, but because I'm so kick-ass at sleeping). Anyway, I wound up standing and teaching on that leg all day before I realized at the end of the day that it still really hurt. By the time I decided to go to a doctor, they were all closed. I wound up doing the only sensible thing left, diagnosing myself on WebMD (it was pretty clear what happened though) and trying to take care of it as needed. That turned out to be a fine enough solution as my injury fortunately wasn't as severe as it could have been. It's totally fine now (as far as I know). At the very least, this self-fix has turned out much better than the two times I broke my toes and tried to wrap them up myself (and now they're both slightly crooked :/ ).
I got a new haircut recently and now I use product in my hair (wax? hair wax? I have no idea what to call it, they just call it wax here). My new hairstyle is based off a picture of Harrison Ford that I saw online recently. It's the shortest my hair has been since that year in high school that I got a buzz cut. But it doesn't look like I have cancer and it's actually decently long so I do like it. I'll try to get a picture up on facebook sometime if I ever get around to it. The reason I bring this up is because with the new hairstyle, I decided it looks better without glasses. That was kind of the tipping point for me to look at alternatives to glasses. My eye doctor says I am not a good candidate for lasik, but I'm a great candidate for contact lenses. Based on that continued assertion and pretty much everyone in this country saying I look better without glasses, I'm now considering contact lenses. Mom (who wore contacts for about 20 years) is currently helping me to figure it out.
"David one of the top 3 things you did in the last TWO MONTHS was CONSIDERING getting contacts."
I know, that should show you perfectly how boring my life is at the moment. I kinda like it this way though. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
So I'm gonna make that post about Grandpa probably around the first weekend in May. It's mostly stuff I want myself to remember before I forget someday (I'll never forget, but I want to be safe). Then I'll get back to my (attempted) usual schedule of posting at the end of the month (so the end of next May).
Until then, peace out everybody!
Sunday, March 09, 2014
Always with the procrastination
Well I should have made a post at the end of February, but I got lazy and figured I wouldn't miss the month since I had already made a post at the beginning of that month. Now that I'm sitting around trying to do some work, I am able to finally make a post because it counts as procrastination from doing something important! February was a pretty busy month. I came back from Washington, went back to work, watched students graduate, got my visa and stuff taken care of, then went back to Washington again, then came back to work.
Ok post done, we can go home now!
No, I'm not letting you off that easy.
That "graduation week" that I had to make it back for turned out to be pretty unimportant. I had a few options for class: Mafia (game), Taboo (game), Back to the Future, or self study. All of the first graders chose the movie and all of the second graders chose....self study. So the whole week was pretty uneventful. Graduation was nice, I'm going to miss the students that graduated. I only knew really 9 of them in a graduating class of 201 (because I had a class of 7 then gave 2 more some private tutoring for interviews over the summer), so I can only imagine how graduation will be next year when I know about 120 of the graduating students (and that class will contain my favorite students from last year).
The week after that was spent mostly desk warming. Or it would have been, but our office head offered us a different deal. For those of us renewing our contracts, we are given 15 days of paid vacation that we have to use consecutively (and weekends count once you start the 15 days, so it's actually more like 11 which is still a pretty good deal). They would rather we not use the days in summer because we only have about 2 weeks when we could use vacation time in the summer anyway. If we took that route, then we would have our full contract-mandated 4 weeks of paid vacation next winter and they don't want that, so the offer was made to me to use my 15 days +1 (I'm allowed 1-3 "grievance days" for different family members) to go back home for more than just a weekend. This was much appreciated for me because I was then able to spend a full week at home helping clean Grandpa's apartment and help prepare for the funeral rather than just flying in on a Friday night and flying back out on that Sunday night right after the funeral. I also had a week of vacation in that 15 days that I was spending being in Korea. I would have gone home, but I had some paperwork (visa and stuff) to sort out before going home so I took my week to just do that.
Going home again was pretty decent. I found a better way to book plane tickets and got good fares, so the plane rides were nicer. I had bulkhead rows on my flights to and from Frisco and I had exit rows on my flights between Frisco and Seattle, so I always had a little bit of extra legroom. It lessened the pain of making a round trip to Washington so soon after my last one.
When I was at home, I generally just spent time working on Grandpa's apartment, organizing things, and hanging out around the house. I did get to see everyone once or twice which was nice too. I enjoyed the game night we got in and the good drunk viewings of Ktown season 2 as well as the GoT watching.
Grandpa's funeral was pretty well done. A lot of people showed up and there were some people I hadn't seen in a while and would have not seen had I not come back for this. I didn't do any readings for this funeral unlike the one I did for my Grandma (his wife) back in 2006, but dad did remember Grandpa always used to say he wanted me to play taps for his funeral and asked me if I'd do it. I did it and it went well despite not having played a brass instrument in about 5 years. I don't want to have to play taps many more times though, so I think I'll just never make the offer again, but I'll always be okay doing it if someone specifically requests it. I had no problem doing it for Grandpa, but it was just extremely sad.
After getting back to Korea, we spent a couple of days cleaning the office and getting our new assignments. This year, I'm teaching only first graders (10th graders) and my new partner is Brandon, the guy I hang out with all the time. Patrick and the new guy (Richard) are teaching 2nd graders (11th graders). I was bummed about losing all of my former students this year, but I still get to see them and now they can like me more because I'm not the one giving them schoolwork.
I'll talk about my classes more next post. We've only had one week of them and we also got our schedule changed up this next week so I'm not even used to that. Until next time, peace out.
Ok post done, we can go home now!
No, I'm not letting you off that easy.
That "graduation week" that I had to make it back for turned out to be pretty unimportant. I had a few options for class: Mafia (game), Taboo (game), Back to the Future, or self study. All of the first graders chose the movie and all of the second graders chose....self study. So the whole week was pretty uneventful. Graduation was nice, I'm going to miss the students that graduated. I only knew really 9 of them in a graduating class of 201 (because I had a class of 7 then gave 2 more some private tutoring for interviews over the summer), so I can only imagine how graduation will be next year when I know about 120 of the graduating students (and that class will contain my favorite students from last year).
The week after that was spent mostly desk warming. Or it would have been, but our office head offered us a different deal. For those of us renewing our contracts, we are given 15 days of paid vacation that we have to use consecutively (and weekends count once you start the 15 days, so it's actually more like 11 which is still a pretty good deal). They would rather we not use the days in summer because we only have about 2 weeks when we could use vacation time in the summer anyway. If we took that route, then we would have our full contract-mandated 4 weeks of paid vacation next winter and they don't want that, so the offer was made to me to use my 15 days +1 (I'm allowed 1-3 "grievance days" for different family members) to go back home for more than just a weekend. This was much appreciated for me because I was then able to spend a full week at home helping clean Grandpa's apartment and help prepare for the funeral rather than just flying in on a Friday night and flying back out on that Sunday night right after the funeral. I also had a week of vacation in that 15 days that I was spending being in Korea. I would have gone home, but I had some paperwork (visa and stuff) to sort out before going home so I took my week to just do that.
Going home again was pretty decent. I found a better way to book plane tickets and got good fares, so the plane rides were nicer. I had bulkhead rows on my flights to and from Frisco and I had exit rows on my flights between Frisco and Seattle, so I always had a little bit of extra legroom. It lessened the pain of making a round trip to Washington so soon after my last one.
When I was at home, I generally just spent time working on Grandpa's apartment, organizing things, and hanging out around the house. I did get to see everyone once or twice which was nice too. I enjoyed the game night we got in and the good drunk viewings of Ktown season 2 as well as the GoT watching.
Grandpa's funeral was pretty well done. A lot of people showed up and there were some people I hadn't seen in a while and would have not seen had I not come back for this. I didn't do any readings for this funeral unlike the one I did for my Grandma (his wife) back in 2006, but dad did remember Grandpa always used to say he wanted me to play taps for his funeral and asked me if I'd do it. I did it and it went well despite not having played a brass instrument in about 5 years. I don't want to have to play taps many more times though, so I think I'll just never make the offer again, but I'll always be okay doing it if someone specifically requests it. I had no problem doing it for Grandpa, but it was just extremely sad.
After getting back to Korea, we spent a couple of days cleaning the office and getting our new assignments. This year, I'm teaching only first graders (10th graders) and my new partner is Brandon, the guy I hang out with all the time. Patrick and the new guy (Richard) are teaching 2nd graders (11th graders). I was bummed about losing all of my former students this year, but I still get to see them and now they can like me more because I'm not the one giving them schoolwork.
I'll talk about my classes more next post. We've only had one week of them and we also got our schedule changed up this next week so I'm not even used to that. Until next time, peace out.
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Weesa Gone Hommeeeee
Made a Jar Jar reference, what have I done...
I got back on Sunday and waited until now to do this post because I was pretty busy for the early part of this week which is surprising considering I wasn't doing very much. I guess being from a town of FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS takes up a lot of time!!! Being back home was a mix of fun and happy and sad, of course different things at different times. Fun times with friends, good times seeing people I haven't seen in a while and of course the sad parts of having to leave Grandpa. I feel like I should give some background on that before I talk about having arrived at home. I'll tag this post with sad stuff so you can skip around it if you want.
***SAD STUFF BELOW***
It started around New Year's Eve (so the day after for me). I got home from my New Year's celebration here at about 2am. Brandon and I had gone out with one of the Chinese teachers and her friend. They both were on their phone with their boyfriends too much for us, so we gave up and did what we wanted to do and told them they could come with us and sit on their phones or go do their own thing. Next year I don't think we'll be hanging out with them on New Year's Eve again. Meanwhile the other Chinese teacher was sitting at home alone drinking, maybe I should have just stayed in the area...
Anyway I got back at 2am and saw an email before I went to bed that said Grandpa was in the hospital and they would tell me more in a couple days. I waited around and just got back to planning my winter camp while I waited. Then a couple days later, Kathryn set up a Skype call with me. They told me that they found out Grandpa had Cirrhosis (sp?) or hardening of the liver. In addition to that, they detected very late stage liver cancer which had spread to his lungs. It explained why he had been progressively getting weaker and weaker since I left in 2013. Doing a biopsy would only tell us exactly what kind of cancer it was and we were pretty sure it was just liver cancer, so we wound up not doing one at his request. Besides, if it were liver cancer truly, the problem was not solvable because if they got the cancer out, he would need a whole new liver which at his age was just not possible.
You may notice I'm using past tense in some very ominous places. I'll get to that. Prepare to be bummed out later guys. After hearing that news, I just had to make it through the rest of the week with my class so I could go back to see him.
***NOT SAD STUFF BELOW THIS POINT***
My class went pretty well. It was a four student class which basically wound up being tutoring in speaking. They couldn't show up on Friday due to some reason that I forget, so they requested we do the class in four days. However the class had to be 20 hours total, so that meant 5 hours per day. It had me seeing them as soon as they got back from lunch and then I sent them on their way to dinner at the end of the class. It was a marathon of a class and I appreciate that they tolerated me for the duration of it. The last day was pretty casual too, winding up just being a casual conversation for a few hours after I gave them a brief lesson in American slang. I got some updates on the rumors about me and the Chinese teachers, here's what is apparently the real story.
David was in love with the Japanese teacher (this is true). Meanwhile, the Chinese teacher (the one that stayed home on NYE) is in love with David (I don't think this is true) but David ignores her love. The Japanese teacher rejected David (I never even attempted) so now David is in love with the other Chinese teacher (the one I spent NYE with, she has a boyfriend in China by the way but the students apparently don't know that). Meanwhile, the first Chinese teacher is still in love with me, but I ignore her love. I guess the students are really pulling for me to date that teacher. I feel so successful in rumorland.
That Friday, I went down to the airport to catch my plane. Because of the subway, I got there wayyy too early (I got there before my flight was able to check in and I was past security 2.5 hours early). Despite being there so early, the flight was delayed by 45 minutes because apparently they didn't realize they would need to de-ice the plane until we were 10 minutes late to take off. The problem was I had a very tight layover at Tokyo (one hour) and the delay was pushing me to be late. The airline took care of us though and got the 10 of us on that connecting flight transferred. We thought we were going to be holding up the plane because we got on the plane 40 minutes after its scheduled departure. Turns out THAT plane was also having problems. The door wouldn't seal and they had to call in maintenance to repair it. The total delay for that flight was 1.5 hours. It was horrible. In addition, I booked my tickets on Travelocity and they told me the plane would be a 3-4-3 seating so I selected seat D which was an aisle seat. The plane was ACTUALLY 2-3-2 seating so I was in the only middle seat possible. It was fucking horrible and uncomfortable. Never booking with Travelocity again. After total about 18 hours of travelling, I finally arrived in Seattle and we basically went straight to Grandpa's house to see him.
I spent the next week kind of unpacking, getting a base of operations set up on my parents' computer that I made them a couple of years ago, and setting up appointments to meet with friends and other people. I got most of my important appointments (including new glasses finally) in the first week. Now I no longer have transition lenses and I can see when I walk into a building when coming from a sunny outside.
I got in a few game nights with people which were fun. Eric had a new friend that he brought in a couple times and I finally got to meet the legendary Milku Tea in person. It was nice to be back for game nights, I had missed those. Maybe someday we can explore the possibility of online game nights (like I phone it in or something). At the very least, I'll be content to play League with everybody in the meantime.
I didn't get to see everyone though because my weekends were always full. Due to Grandpa's condition, we had to take him to see a lot of people on weekends when they could get time off work. Additionally, for other people I knew, that was the only time I could see many people. And on top of that, I was trying to go to Seahawks games because I really missed going to them. I did make it to both the divisional round game and the NFC championship (the two games I was in town for) and both of those were really cool. I also got in plenty of good times with Grandpa at Costco and in other places too which as always nice.
In general it was a pretty good time being back home. I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to, but I got to at least talk to everyone. Davis, I'll try to make a point to see you next time for sure!
***OK BACK TO SAD STUFF BRIEFLY***
The last Wednesday I was home, I was able to get Grandpa to Costco one last time. A couple days after, his condition worsened quickly when he caught some kind of illness as a side effect of a weakened immune system. His condition was going downhill fast and the doctors were saying there was a 50/50 chance he might not see the Superbowl and they would be surprised if he made it to Monday. We had my parents going to the Superbowl in his stead and me going back to Korea, but all of us were willing to change our flights and cancel our plans (I'm entitled to time off at work and I could possibly have traded classes around or asked my co-teachers to fill in using the lesson plans I made them) but Grandpa wanted someone to represent us at the Superbowl and he didn't want to be an inconvenience. Leaving him there like that was horrible, but I figured it was what he wanted, so I said my goodbyes. I got in a good goodbye with him at least. And I'm glad I didn't have to sit and watch him die like my other Grandpa back in 2008. Seeing that messed with all the memories I had of him. He was usually so bubbly and full of life but I'll always remember how he was right before he died too. With Grandpa, I won't have those memories. I owe him a lot for that. I'm going to really miss Grandpa, but I feel okay about it now because whenever anyone asked how he felt about dying, he would always say "I'm okay with it, I lived a good life." He made it to 90 years old and he did indeed live a pretty good life. In the end, he made it through the Superbowl and finally got to see his Seahawks win (he's been a season ticket holder since the very first year the team existed so he deserved to see that win) and he even made it to Monday. He passed away on Monday at around 4:30am.
***SAD STUFF OVER FOREVER***
I had a very comfortable flight back (aisle seat in a bulkhead row) which was nice even if I was kind of sad the whole time. When I got back, I started the long subway ride home, but it was okay because my flight landed at the same time as the flight one of the Chinese teachers was taking, so I had her with me on the way back.
Monday for me was spent first in class for the first half of the Superbowl, then it was going to be waiting and avoiding the internet for the whole day so the result wouldn't be spoiled. Needless to say, I didn't make it and I instantly turned it on for the second half when I got back to the office. Since then, my week has pretty much been spent either in class or watching football highlights. Now I'm catching up on LCS stuff from League. It's been a pretty easy week. I started going back to my Korean class again this week and it's really grown. Now we have 9 people (up from 4) which sucks, but I guess I'll get used to it. I don't think most of them will stay for more than a few months...or at least I hope so. I was really liking the small class sizes. During this week, the school has been talking about hiring a new person who will be my partner next year. The person that looks to have that job secured was a guy that game in on Tuesday. He seemed pretty friendly, so hopefully next year goes pretty well for me.
That's about all I have for now. I might be back in Seattle soon actually for the funeral, but I don't know exactly when. And I'll probably be tied up doing that the whole time I'm around so don't necessarily expect to see me in person for a while. Until when next we speak, peace out.
I got back on Sunday and waited until now to do this post because I was pretty busy for the early part of this week which is surprising considering I wasn't doing very much. I guess being from a town of FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS takes up a lot of time!!! Being back home was a mix of fun and happy and sad, of course different things at different times. Fun times with friends, good times seeing people I haven't seen in a while and of course the sad parts of having to leave Grandpa. I feel like I should give some background on that before I talk about having arrived at home. I'll tag this post with sad stuff so you can skip around it if you want.
***SAD STUFF BELOW***
It started around New Year's Eve (so the day after for me). I got home from my New Year's celebration here at about 2am. Brandon and I had gone out with one of the Chinese teachers and her friend. They both were on their phone with their boyfriends too much for us, so we gave up and did what we wanted to do and told them they could come with us and sit on their phones or go do their own thing. Next year I don't think we'll be hanging out with them on New Year's Eve again. Meanwhile the other Chinese teacher was sitting at home alone drinking, maybe I should have just stayed in the area...
Anyway I got back at 2am and saw an email before I went to bed that said Grandpa was in the hospital and they would tell me more in a couple days. I waited around and just got back to planning my winter camp while I waited. Then a couple days later, Kathryn set up a Skype call with me. They told me that they found out Grandpa had Cirrhosis (sp?) or hardening of the liver. In addition to that, they detected very late stage liver cancer which had spread to his lungs. It explained why he had been progressively getting weaker and weaker since I left in 2013. Doing a biopsy would only tell us exactly what kind of cancer it was and we were pretty sure it was just liver cancer, so we wound up not doing one at his request. Besides, if it were liver cancer truly, the problem was not solvable because if they got the cancer out, he would need a whole new liver which at his age was just not possible.
You may notice I'm using past tense in some very ominous places. I'll get to that. Prepare to be bummed out later guys. After hearing that news, I just had to make it through the rest of the week with my class so I could go back to see him.
***NOT SAD STUFF BELOW THIS POINT***
My class went pretty well. It was a four student class which basically wound up being tutoring in speaking. They couldn't show up on Friday due to some reason that I forget, so they requested we do the class in four days. However the class had to be 20 hours total, so that meant 5 hours per day. It had me seeing them as soon as they got back from lunch and then I sent them on their way to dinner at the end of the class. It was a marathon of a class and I appreciate that they tolerated me for the duration of it. The last day was pretty casual too, winding up just being a casual conversation for a few hours after I gave them a brief lesson in American slang. I got some updates on the rumors about me and the Chinese teachers, here's what is apparently the real story.
David was in love with the Japanese teacher (this is true). Meanwhile, the Chinese teacher (the one that stayed home on NYE) is in love with David (I don't think this is true) but David ignores her love. The Japanese teacher rejected David (I never even attempted) so now David is in love with the other Chinese teacher (the one I spent NYE with, she has a boyfriend in China by the way but the students apparently don't know that). Meanwhile, the first Chinese teacher is still in love with me, but I ignore her love. I guess the students are really pulling for me to date that teacher. I feel so successful in rumorland.
That Friday, I went down to the airport to catch my plane. Because of the subway, I got there wayyy too early (I got there before my flight was able to check in and I was past security 2.5 hours early). Despite being there so early, the flight was delayed by 45 minutes because apparently they didn't realize they would need to de-ice the plane until we were 10 minutes late to take off. The problem was I had a very tight layover at Tokyo (one hour) and the delay was pushing me to be late. The airline took care of us though and got the 10 of us on that connecting flight transferred. We thought we were going to be holding up the plane because we got on the plane 40 minutes after its scheduled departure. Turns out THAT plane was also having problems. The door wouldn't seal and they had to call in maintenance to repair it. The total delay for that flight was 1.5 hours. It was horrible. In addition, I booked my tickets on Travelocity and they told me the plane would be a 3-4-3 seating so I selected seat D which was an aisle seat. The plane was ACTUALLY 2-3-2 seating so I was in the only middle seat possible. It was fucking horrible and uncomfortable. Never booking with Travelocity again. After total about 18 hours of travelling, I finally arrived in Seattle and we basically went straight to Grandpa's house to see him.
I spent the next week kind of unpacking, getting a base of operations set up on my parents' computer that I made them a couple of years ago, and setting up appointments to meet with friends and other people. I got most of my important appointments (including new glasses finally) in the first week. Now I no longer have transition lenses and I can see when I walk into a building when coming from a sunny outside.
I got in a few game nights with people which were fun. Eric had a new friend that he brought in a couple times and I finally got to meet the legendary Milku Tea in person. It was nice to be back for game nights, I had missed those. Maybe someday we can explore the possibility of online game nights (like I phone it in or something). At the very least, I'll be content to play League with everybody in the meantime.
I didn't get to see everyone though because my weekends were always full. Due to Grandpa's condition, we had to take him to see a lot of people on weekends when they could get time off work. Additionally, for other people I knew, that was the only time I could see many people. And on top of that, I was trying to go to Seahawks games because I really missed going to them. I did make it to both the divisional round game and the NFC championship (the two games I was in town for) and both of those were really cool. I also got in plenty of good times with Grandpa at Costco and in other places too which as always nice.
In general it was a pretty good time being back home. I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to, but I got to at least talk to everyone. Davis, I'll try to make a point to see you next time for sure!
***OK BACK TO SAD STUFF BRIEFLY***
The last Wednesday I was home, I was able to get Grandpa to Costco one last time. A couple days after, his condition worsened quickly when he caught some kind of illness as a side effect of a weakened immune system. His condition was going downhill fast and the doctors were saying there was a 50/50 chance he might not see the Superbowl and they would be surprised if he made it to Monday. We had my parents going to the Superbowl in his stead and me going back to Korea, but all of us were willing to change our flights and cancel our plans (I'm entitled to time off at work and I could possibly have traded classes around or asked my co-teachers to fill in using the lesson plans I made them) but Grandpa wanted someone to represent us at the Superbowl and he didn't want to be an inconvenience. Leaving him there like that was horrible, but I figured it was what he wanted, so I said my goodbyes. I got in a good goodbye with him at least. And I'm glad I didn't have to sit and watch him die like my other Grandpa back in 2008. Seeing that messed with all the memories I had of him. He was usually so bubbly and full of life but I'll always remember how he was right before he died too. With Grandpa, I won't have those memories. I owe him a lot for that. I'm going to really miss Grandpa, but I feel okay about it now because whenever anyone asked how he felt about dying, he would always say "I'm okay with it, I lived a good life." He made it to 90 years old and he did indeed live a pretty good life. In the end, he made it through the Superbowl and finally got to see his Seahawks win (he's been a season ticket holder since the very first year the team existed so he deserved to see that win) and he even made it to Monday. He passed away on Monday at around 4:30am.
***SAD STUFF OVER FOREVER***
I had a very comfortable flight back (aisle seat in a bulkhead row) which was nice even if I was kind of sad the whole time. When I got back, I started the long subway ride home, but it was okay because my flight landed at the same time as the flight one of the Chinese teachers was taking, so I had her with me on the way back.
Monday for me was spent first in class for the first half of the Superbowl, then it was going to be waiting and avoiding the internet for the whole day so the result wouldn't be spoiled. Needless to say, I didn't make it and I instantly turned it on for the second half when I got back to the office. Since then, my week has pretty much been spent either in class or watching football highlights. Now I'm catching up on LCS stuff from League. It's been a pretty easy week. I started going back to my Korean class again this week and it's really grown. Now we have 9 people (up from 4) which sucks, but I guess I'll get used to it. I don't think most of them will stay for more than a few months...or at least I hope so. I was really liking the small class sizes. During this week, the school has been talking about hiring a new person who will be my partner next year. The person that looks to have that job secured was a guy that game in on Tuesday. He seemed pretty friendly, so hopefully next year goes pretty well for me.
That's about all I have for now. I might be back in Seattle soon actually for the funeral, but I don't know exactly when. And I'll probably be tied up doing that the whole time I'm around so don't necessarily expect to see me in person for a while. Until when next we speak, peace out.
Friday, January 31, 2014
It's been a hectic time back
Short post here. I'll fill in on details when I'm set up back in Korea. The short story is I've been keeping busy here and it's been a fun three weeks, but I'm about ready to head back. I head out tomorrow around noon and before that, I'll be hanging out with family. I'll probably make a detailed post in the first couple of days of the week next week. See you then!
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