I guess Sunday has become my designated blog day. Although I don't think I posted last week.
I'm still on the roller coaster. I wake up most mornings thinking, "crap, I'm still here." I feel like I'm inching, inching along to the six month mark. In three weeks, I'll be in Vietnam, and that will be the five month mark, a pretty good milestone, especially considering I'll pass it while on vacation. Then, a month later, the much-anticipated halfway point will arrive. This is such a big deal to me because I kind of see it as getting over the hump. The first half of things tends to go by slower than the second half, so I'm sort of counting on this experience to be that way too. I don't know, halfway just seems like such an accomplishment. Like, if I can make it through half of this, surely I can make it through the other half. That sounds really dumb, but I know what I mean.
Plus, the second half includes my Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) trip to Japan with a friend who's coming to visit from home (two exciting things rolled into a very exciting 10 days!) and my trip to China for Christmas. As well as smaller things like Halloween, lunar New Year (which I probably won't do anything big for but it's still a five-day weekend), the kindergarten talent show and graduation, and then I'll be HOME. Please, time, hurry up. I want to enjoy my time here, I just want to do it quicker.
Also, the six month mark will occur simultaneously with my birthday! I plan on hitting up a wine buffet in Seoul that a friend of mine went to for her birthday, and it was fantastic. Unfortunately, the Friday night of my birthday weekend (my birthday is on a Sunday this year, so the wine festivities will take place on Saturday), I got guilted into helping chaperone the PAJAMA PARTY at school. Which means Rachael, Pierre and I, along with some of the Korean teachers, are basically babysitting a bunch of elementary school kids ALL NIGHT LONG. Oh, and did I mention we don't get paid for it? They can't technically make us do it, but she (my boss) pushed and pushed until I felt like I couldn't say no.
So, along those lines, things are starting to get a tad shady at my school. I mean, hagwons are always a little on the shady side, but our owner has started getting a little shadier. The enrollment in our afternoon program has gone down (that's when the elementary and middle school kids come after public school), so we're doing this summer intensive program where the kids come in the morning while they have a month off from public school, which means we each are teaching an extra class every day for the month of August. Originally, we were told we would be paid overtime for that class. Now, we've been told no one will be paid extra for it because we won't technically be going over the legal cap of 30 teaching hours a week where he would legally have to pay us overtime. The hours we get paid for don't include planning time, which I knew, but I just think it's shady that we were told we would get paid and now we're not. And that I have to stay up all night on a Friday with a bunch of 8 year olds and not get paid for it.
Ok. Rant over. At the very least, Rachael, Pierre and I are all in this together and we should have some good stories to tell. I keep trying to go back to my mantra: It's just Korea. It's just Korea. It's temporary. And really, my directors at school (shady owner aside) have been so great, and things could so totally, definitely be ten thousand times worse. I am just trying to train myself not to borrow trouble. I let my imagination run wild sometimes and think "what if this happened or that happened or they try to make me do this or it interferes with this and what would I do?" But I can't live like that. I'll drive myself crazy. All I can do is take it as it comes. Take it as it comes. Take it as it comes. Mantra #2. There's no way I can be prepared for every little thing. Or even most things.
One really great thing did happen this past week. I started a "swimming class" at the gym in the building where my school is. I hadn't done it until now because I thought they were just learn to swim classes, but with the help of my Korean partner teacher, I signed up for the expert level class for the month of July, and it is fantastic! It's just like swim practice back home. It's a great workout, the people are nice (even though they barely speak English) and I think it's totally what I need.
So, for now, I'm just going to try and focus on that and the things I have planned that are coming up. Next weekend, my friend is coming to visit from Seoul. It's ridiculous how excited I get about having someone around to hang out with me on the weekend. Having stuff to do keeps my mind from going all nutzoid. Like last weekend, I went to Seoul to meet up with another friend and register for our overseas ballots at the US Embassy. I didn't go all crazy weird that weekend. Anyway, and then Vietnam, etc., etc. Hopefully, going to Vietnam will refresh me and restore my faith in why I'm here. Because, if I'm being honest, most days, my desire for this to be over and to go home outweighs my passion for being here. However, the travel/sightseeing days usually make up for that. I'm going to stop now. I'm rambling.
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