Yes, You May Envy My Super-Fluffy Bed

As I mentioned, I'm living in a temporary apartment right now.  This is more of a typical Korean apartment than the one that I'll be moving into.  When I arrived it had already been outfitted with an awesome Korean-style bed.  Behold:

It's super cozy and super fluffy.  It consists of a mat, a thin but fluffy blanket that goes over the mat, a really thick and fluffy comforter-like blanket that goes on top, and an insanely taut pillow.  I say the pillow is insanely taut because it's very high when you rest your head on it and it feels so tightly packed that it's almost hard.  I'm getting used to the pillow.  The bed, however, needs no getting used to.  It is so comfy and warm and wonderful.

Also, in Korea, the rooms are heated through the floors, so a bed like this is a great way to stay warm.  It's been face-blisteringly cold here lately, so it's a relief to have a cozy place to sleep at night.

The Pirate Offers Me a Card

My former kindergarten class has been super excited to see me.  Even the elementary and middle school students have been talking about me in the halls.  I can't understand most of what they're saying since it's in Korean, but I recognize my name.

Today was my second day back at work, and since yesterday my former students have come to hug me or say hi to me quite a lot.  One of my kindergarten students - none other than the Phonics Pirate - came up to me today to offer me yet another delightful form of tribute.

It was a New Year's card, because this weekend we will celebrate the Lunar New Year.  I took pictures of it but keep having difficulties getting my old blogging app to work.  On top of that it's not the easiest thing in the world for me to transfer photos from my phone onto my laptop.  Once I figure something out, though, you can be sure to see some photos.

I'll spoil it for you and describe the card to tide you over until then: on the outside of the envelope she wrote:

have new year

Inside she addressed a letter to me on cute bear stationery and wrote:

Thank you for teaching me
I love you!

She signed it and underneath her name she drew a picture.

Several of my students have come to talk to me a lot, but this one in particular has just attached herself to me whenever she sees me in the hall.  She and one of my other students keep on trying to clarify if I'm just visiting or if I'm staying.

Tomorrow we will celebrate the Lunar New Year with the kids, and everyone wears traditional Korean clothes (the school supplies us foreigners with those), hanbok.  Today my student said, "Teacher, tomorrow I will wear hanbok!  And you will, too!"

It's amazing to be back.

I'm Back!

After a long hiatus in America, I'm back "at home" in Korea again!  I'm working at the school I worked at when I first came back in February of 2011.  It's a lot of work but ultimately it's a great place to be and I am really grateful that the school director thought to offer me a job again.

I left my house a little before 4 a.m. on Monday morning to catch the 6:20 a.m. flight to Chicago, then boarded a huge plane bound for Incheon Airport, South Korea.  It was due to depart at 12:00 p.m. on Monday, but there were all kinds of problems.  The O'Hare airport was clogged with planes because of snow, and by the time it was our turn to leave we had to stop and do the whole de-icing process all over again.  Then we finally made it out to the runway (which happened to be the farthest from our gate) only to find that there was something amiss with the plane's communication equipment.  So we went all the way back to the gate again and waited while they fixed it.  (Nothing like knowing your plane has been malfunctioning to give you ease about your flight over the arctic!)  Finally that problem was fixed, but the airport was incredibly backed up, so we still had to wait and wait.  I think they even did the de-icing process again.

We finally left, three and a half hours late, and didn't really have any problems during the flight, but a lot of people missed their flights (to Vietnam, China, etc.), which was a shame.  As for me, I still caught the bus down to my city, but not until 9:40 p.m. Tuesday night, which meant I got in around 1:00 a.m. this morning.

One of the desk teachers at my school came and picked me up.  She's always really nice, and I felt bad that she had to come and get me at 1 a.m.  She brought  me to my temporary apartment (since I'm here early and can't move in to the apartment of the teacher I'm replacing yet), which happens to be right nextdoor to my friend's apartment.

The bedding the school supplied was super soft and warm and fluffy and I slept really well.  I got up and got ready for work and was thinking about leaving early to see if I could find breakfast when my friend knocked on my door to offer me some oatmeal that he'd made.  How nice!  I'm about to eat it now - as of yet it's still too hot for me.

I feel pretty well rested.  (I slept a lot during every leg of my long trip.)  I'm excited about work today.  I hope I can get back into the swing of things quickly.

Time to eat my oatmeal now!

미국에서

I'm in America.

Long story short, I needed to see my grandmother before the cancer takes her, I needed to mourn my friend who suddenly died on March 17th, I needed to meet my brand new niece, and I needed to get away from a job that turned out to be far less honest than I had originally thought.

Resigning was traumatic; leaving was stressful. This wasn't how I wanted to come back.

But I'm comforted by the idea that this doesn't have to be the end. That someday I'll return and live in wonderful Korea again. That next time, I'll come home on my own terms, satisfied with my experience in Korea and the outlook of my life.

But for now, I'm still reeling, and I'll always miss some of the best friends I ever made.

FYI

Just so you know, I've been trying for some time now to get Bloggeroid (the app I use to post from my mobile phone) to publish a blog post I made with pictures from an adventure I had Thursday.  For some reason it always fails.  It may be time for me to find another app to try...sadly, all my pictures are on my phone, so posting from my computer is a pain.  (I as of yet haven't found any efficient way to transfer photos from my phone to my computer, because it insists on scanning all of them each time I connect my phone to my computer, and I have almost 3000 pictures on my phone.)  Once I figure something out, though, I hope to get more posts up here again.

The Follow-Up (Salad)

Remember the extras I had while making this dinner?

Here's the salad that I made, along with the ham sandwich and the apple I ate with it for breakfast yesterday:



I think I need to do all this more often.

(Side note: I still haven't seen any Ranch here, but they do have Thousand Island, which works out for me, since it's my favorite salad dressing.)

Socks My Students Gave Me

Cute, don't you think? And soft. They're super soft.