Hello! I have been completely lax on my real time updates since all my EU posts were scheduled in advance giving me a blog break to have my holidays and get back to school without any writing stress. So, here I am, back in Korea. Back in ‘lil ol’ Gyeongju, where the food choices are limited and the air quality is stunningly bad. Can you tell I’m excited?
March is the beginning of my year in Korea. Although the calendar flips January 1st, and the Lunar New Year is often in February, the school year starts on March 1. I started my life in Korea in late February 2016, and inevitably I feel like the first week of the school year is the real Week 1 of my year. So while everyone else does their retrospectives and new year plans in Dec/Jan, for me it’s Feb/Mar. Welcome to Week 1, 2019.
Retrospective:
March 2018: I moved from Busan to Gyeongju, rented an apartment in Korean, and started my shiny new job.
April 2018: Sadly short cherry blossom season followed by a metric ton of other flowers. I got into Macro photography for the first time, and went a little crazy with the flower photos.
May 2018: I went to Japan to visit my friend in Nagoya over the long weekend. I got to visit sacred forests, beautiful gardens, historical sites, plus local shopping and a ton of fun local foods.
June 2018: This was a little slow as the weather was getting hot. I visited a museum here in Gyeongju as well as a couple local archaeological sites, and I cut a couple feet off my hair! Big change.
July-August 2018: the EU summer trip which I cannot possibly link to all of the posts for. France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, & Russia!
September 2018: I was pretty glum last fall. The heat of my EU vacation drained me physically, and one of the classes I was teaching that semester drained me emotionally. All my Korea friends that hadn’t left in February, left that summer. I felt alone and stressed out pretty much all the time. Yeah, bummer.
I realize, looking back, that I may have been horribly sad last fall because I didn’t DO anything besides work. I try to track my fun activities through photos and there is actually nothing in the entire month of September and only a handful of smaller activities in October, November and December. Dear future self, don’t do that again!
October 2018: I got into art. I started going to watercolor classes, and made it to a real art store in town to explore more with acrylics and mixed media. I did a bunch of planning for the winter vacation as well.
November 2018: This was a wild trip to the local bird zoo. I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but I went with an out of town guest and had a blast with the birds. I also finished my first major piece of art in like 4+ years, so that felt good.
December 2018: Wrapping up the semester, learning how to file grades in Korean, and generally feeling the wintertime blues. I did make it out to one beautiful light show with friends in Daegu, but sadly caught a terrible cold for my birthday & Christmas.
Jan-Feb 2019: winter vacation! posts will be added as I’m able to get them all written and edited. Taiwan, Jordan, Egypt, & Malaysia!
Going Forward:
The good news is, I feel a lot better coming out of this holiday. The weather was mostly nice where I was, and even though Malaysia was hot af, I wasn’t trying to do a lot outside everyday. Plus, I got to spend 3 weeks with a good friend! The weather in Gyeongju is (so far) much nicer than it was this time last year, and I feel like I know what I’m doing at my job. I know it will still be a challenge to maintain my positivity here (Gyeongju is just too small for me) but at least I’m starting out in a good place.
I will be trying to get to better cherry blossom events than last year, but it is extremely weather dependent. Last year the long cold winter and massive rains gave us a whopping 3 days of beautiful trees. This year the early spring weather is much nicer, so I’m holding out a little hope.
Aside from the local cherry blossom festivals, I’m limiting my Korean outings this spring because I’m finally going to get my mom to do some international travel with me this summer! I need to save up a bit, though, since she’s even less into cheap-and-uncomfortable travel options than I am.
Meanwhile, I’m starting my second year at Korean University Professor life. I get to teach the same classes as this time last year, which is actually quite a treat since I have a lot of material prepared and a strong idea of how to do everything. It takes much less brain space to do, and ultimately should result in a better class experience overall since I can avoid the first-timer mistakes and add in all the things I learned to improve lessons.
This frees up some of my down time to work on my summer plan with my mom, and to finally get into the nuts and bolts of what it takes to do my PhD. Just as with the job hunt for EPIK and the University job, I’m sure I’ll be writing about this PhD process in a hopefully funny and informative stress rant blog.
I am a hopeless academic who would be happy to spend my life in continuous study, but in this case the PhD is not merely for the glorious satisfaction of my own inner Hermione Granger, but a good step in my career. The next tier of high quality and stable university jobs do require this level of education. There’s a lot to love about my current job, but looking forward it would be nice to have a place with English Majors (students who are invested in English instead of merely required to do it) and to know I have some kind of job security past the age of 50 (tenure or something similar). Plus… I’ll be able to refer to myself as “the Doctor” with total accuracy.
Despite the additional project, I am going to try to keep up with the blog because it’s a fun hobby / therapy activity. I’m coming up on 5 years this May, so no reason to stop now!
What you have to look forward to?
In March, April and May, I will be posting more stories from the EU summer trip. Believe it or not, I’m still not done telling all those wonderful adventures.
I will be Instagramming the local spring flowers as often as I can. Those will show up on the ‘gram, and also be mirrored on Facebook and Twitter so you can see them on your favorite platform.
Finally, I will be working to prepare the stories from this winter, which should start to come out some time in May or June.
Thanks for reading along. This blog has shifted and evolved in style and topic over the years as it fits into my life and I grow and change around it. It’s nice to imagine that there are people I have never met who nonetheless feel a connection because of this magical series of tubes we call the internet. ❤
Gallivantrix 