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.