Crawling out the grave of dead blogs;

.......... and once again, without pictures.

So, this thing hasn't been updated in about 100 years since I've been trying to make my new post a SPARKLY KOREA PICTURES! post, except that keeps failing because I can't resize or upload pictures at my work, and that is where I spend the majority of my computer time. Usually I have time to do these things on the weekend, when I am not working, but my weekends have been rather busy as of late (will explain shortly). So, as a result, the blog posts just kept getting pushed further and further back, and the guilt over my lack of updates just kept up building and building. I would post what pictures I already have uploaded, except the site they are on (photobucket.com) is blocked by my work's internet, so........ fail. I know. If only I actually had energy at night. I'll try this week. 파이팅/fighting!. X_x;

So, it's been very close to a month since my last entry, and.......... a lot has happened. This calls for a list.

So what the heck have I been up to?

1. I'm on my seventh week of classes now, so....... teaching for nearly 2 months. Which isn't that much really, but first year teaching moves at an exponential rate--the first week alone is mind blowing and mind numbing on all sorts of levels. But I'm pleased to say that I'm much more adjusted now and have a better (not complete, but better) understanding of how I feel abou teaching: I hate it! Okay, all kidding aside (I do not hate it), while some of my shiny-eyed idealism has been stomped to death but the Realities of Education in Korea, I have to say that I enjoy teaching now more than when I first started. I know my students better (still fail at their 500+ identical-sounding names), I know how to plan better classes for them, I know better coping mechanisms for not dying of exhaustion..... and midterms are just around the corner, which means high-level stress for every teacher except ME. I don't give grades or exams of any kind (anything I marked is ungraded), which 98% of the time means I don't have as much clout as the Korean teachers, but midterms are my time to pity them rather than have them pity me, as my duties become significantly shortened prior to midterms (nothing I teach will ever help on Korean standardized tests, sadly), and during the actual exams I'm not even supposed to show up. So, free vacation for me, yay! October is a good month. November will be worse--midterms will be behind us, but everyone in the whole school will be flipping over the 3rd years' college entrance exams in the middle of the month. Good luck to those kids, seriously. They're all probably trying for Seoul universities (American translation: the Ivies), so they're going to need it.

2. Mid-September, I hiked it all the way over to Jecheon (6 hours away by car......... if the traffic is good. It wasn't good) with my host family to celebrate the Korean equivilant of Thanksgiving: Chuseok/추석. This is a 3-day weekend holiday in Korea, although the actual holiday itself really only takes about one day. 1.5 days if you're a woman, because, given Korean's, er, "traditional" ways, for this great Thanksgiving-esque feast it is expected that the women of the family, and only the women, shall prepare everything. This includes hand-preparing hundreds of steamed glutinous rice dumplings, called songpyeon, gathering enough fresh fruits to feed an elephant, and frying basically every food in sight: lettuce leaves, green onion, spicy green peppers, spam, picked raddishes on sticks, potato pancakes...... the list goes on. My host family's extended family (the women, that is) made enough food for 50; there were about 10 of us in total. But that's because you're feeding more than the living: it's a feast for the ancestors! Chuseok morning starts with a good ol' family alter set up, loaded with all of the different traditional Chuseok foods. No kimchi, or strange garlic-y foods (I say "strange" because the ancestors apparently would consider the taste strange), but rather blander fried foods, cooked fish, Asian pears and apples, traditional sweets......... all foods that I found delicious, btw. Thanksgiving food is good, too, but Chuseok was a nice change. In addition to stuffing myself, I watched lots of bad Korean television, walked around Jecheon, went to Yeongju (famous for its apples, of which was bought 100 or so) and went to a family spa with my host mum's entire extended family. You haven't really done Korea until you've gotten naked with a family you never knew and the grandmother with the hundback puts her hand on your thigh when you're both in the hot bath and says how white your skin is. ........ Yeah. It was a fun trip, though.

3. More weekend trips! The weekend before last I went to Andong to meet with friends and attend the Andong International Mask and Dance Festival. It was awesome, especially the Russian dancers' showcase. Makes me want to go to Russia and don some cassock clothing or something. This weekend I went to the historically-significant city of Gyeongju, which is north of Busan. It's well-known among Koreans for two things: one, being the formal capital of the Shilla Kingdom (which was later supplanted by the Goryeo Kingdom) and two, Gyeongju bread. It's real name is...... hwanambang, or something like that, but everyone called it gyeongjubang. (It's delicious, btw, being 80% red bean. Yuuuuuum.) My trip to Gyeongju was actually the first business trip of my life (the first of many, probably), to attend a conference with my fellow ETA's. We discussed teaching strategies, language level problems and classroom management, as well as social problems such as getting along with our host families. I got some really good teaching advice which I think is going to help me a lot this semester, so I'm grateful for the trip.

4. Extra-curriculars! I do attempt to have a life outside of school....... sometimes I succeed. I renewed my membership at the gym (so expensive T_T), so I'm still going there after school to sweat out some stress. It's a great way to forget about bad classes--nothing distracts better than having a rabid fear of tripping on the treadmill. I also found a free Korean language class that meets once a week, which even gave me a free textbook. Sadly, had to miss the last two classes b/c of weekend travels, but the class is super-informal (aiding mostly Philippino immigrants and foreign brides), so it should be okay. It's good to have the class: with all of my teaching English, it's hard to focus on my own language study. While I've been learning a lot of Korean through the work place and at home, I'm also forgetting a lot of my old vocab. I'd better get back to the self-study, sheesh. I am planning on taking a hardcore language class this winter break, though. Also, I found an excellent Chinese academy in my town that would love to have me......... when I finally am ready to sign up for classes. I'm poor (my organization doesn't adjust our salary for changing exchange rates T_T), so I'm putting off continuing my studies until next month. Here's hoping my Chinese doesn't completely deteriorate in that time.

5. I've run out of things to list. I have also been....... spending too much time in Korean saunas, and cleaning my room a lot. Yeah.

So I guess that's everything. Truthfully, life feels pretty hum-drum right now. I've officially been in Korea long enough for it to feel almost normal. Of course, it will never be 100% normal, because I'll never really fit in and I still forget to bow sometimes, but 3 months after I first got here, this feels a bit like...... home. I think moving abroad when I was so young must have really geared me for making myself at home abroad, as some of my fellow ETA's were saying at the conference that they still don't feel at home in this country. I guess it really all depends on what your definition of "home" is. And mine is: home is where your laptop lies. =D; (Sad but true.)

That's all for now, folks, until I FINALLY am able to access my photobucket account again...... speaking of which, anyone know anything about flickr? Is it a good service?