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