Even though it has technically been Spring for 10 days now, today is the first day I actually considered it to be "warm". It seems like two days ago it was a bit chilly outside, but suddenly today it was a little TOO warm and humid for my taste. And it wasn't even THAT warm. Which means that it is a long, long summer ahead. Still, it is nice to say good-bye to the cold winter and look forward to spending a little more time outside.

I was happy to see the end of February, not just because of warmer weather, but because it would mean the end of having really big classes. I did enjoy having many students and all that, but grading all those papers really got to me. Vivi joked that it always seemed as if I was grading papers, papers, papers.

Once March came around, I knew that I would see a significant decrease in the number of students I had. That's because the GRE was offered on March 15 here. So we just ran a "refresher" class for students who wanted to keep practicing. I probably had about 15 students total (in four classes). All I did was have the students write essays in class, and then I would photocopy them, distribute them, and grade the essays in front of the whole class. It allowed students to see what was good and bad about other students' papers. I would say that for 40% of the students, this actually helped improve their scores. And it meant that I had no papers to grade outside of class!

Outside of school, things with Vivi continued to go well. I mentioned that in Korea, girls buy gifts for guys on Valentine's Day. But then there is a holiday called White Day when guys buy gifts for girls. We celebrated White Day a bit early by having dinner at Vivi's favorite Chinese restaurant at the Hyatt hotel. In Korea (and probably in most of Asia), the best restaurants are generally at hotels. Afterwards, we sat in the lobby bar, which provided a great view of the city. It was a bit of a shock when ice cream and two drinks came out to $50, but we had a great time anyway.

One night, my roommate and I hosted a poker game. Two other teachers from The Princeton Review came by (Brian and Sean), plus there were a few other friends, so I think there were about seven people total. There were two unforgettable characters there that night. One is a Korean man known only as Mr. Hong. He is a student in one of the English conversation classes, and he is infamous for his rather un-Korean open attitude towards discussing sex in an open forum. Brian does a hilarious impression of Mr. Hong's Shatner-esque speaking style: "I was watching... a porn movie and... the black man... it was so... big and I was... so... aroused". I guess you'd have to be there. The other character was one of Rob's former students. He spoke pretty good English but apparently had a really hard time understanding the rules of the games, so he kept screwing things up. Sean is like me in that he has difficulty hiding his frustration with people, and eventually we were ALL pissed off at this guy. He finally got so drunk that he nearly passed out in our apartment, and Rob had to force him to leave. I don't think he'll be invited next time. Anyway, I think I maybe lost about $10 or so but not too much. The game started at 8:30pm and ended the next morning around 8am, though I had gone to bed long before that.

The other notable event that happened for me in Korea was that there was an exhibition of foreign language institutes one weekend, and The Princeton Review put on a GRE seminar. About 200 people attended and it's probably the biggest crowd I've ever spoken in front of, though my 8th grade graduation ceremony might have been bigger. Anyway, I was pretty nervous about speaking in front of such a big crowd, for many reasons. Primarily because I didn't exactly know what I was going to say, and I was supposed to fill 20 minutes but I was afraid of being too long or too short. The teacher who spoke before me was pretty nervous too, and she was talking super fast. She also talked for much more than 20 minutes, so I didn't have much time. I got up in front of the audience and said "hello" in Korean. At another seminar in December this actually elicited applause, but this time... no response. Uh, okay. So I started with my talk and then noticed that people were falling asleep and fanning themselves. It then occurred to me that it was REALLY hot in that room, and I started sweating. I stumbled through the rest of it and was glad to be done with it. People said I did a good job but I know I could have done a lot better. Oh well.

Because the GRE "refresher" course ended March 13, I had the rest of March off. So I decided to go back to Connecticut and spend some time with my family and friends. Though this website is supposed to be a journal of my time in Korea, I will write about that trip anyway. Hey, it's MY website! I could tell that everyone back home was excited to see me again, moreso than any other time I've visited. I suspect that partly it's because I'm so far away, partly because people are worried about me being in Korea, and partly because things have changed a bit now that my brother is married and he and his wife are living with my dad.

The trip back in Connecticut did not disappoint. After an ordeal to get from JFK back to my dad's, I went out with my brother and all his friends to their new favorite bar (where they serve Hoegaarden on tap). One of my buddies from high school showed up and it was a blast. I was afraid that jetlag would catch up with me but I guess I was totally wired because we stayed out until the bar closed, and then hit the diner afterwards. That was almost certainly the most fun I've ever had going out drinking with my brother and his friends. I could definitely feel how excited everyone was to see me and have me around again.

One day I took the train down to New York to meet my mom, who took the bus up from Baltimore. It was a beautiful day and we did some shopping in Midtown, had lunch at the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel, and then walked around Greenwich Village. By this point jetlag actually was catching up with me, so by 4:00 I was practically exhausted, but we had a really good time together. I know that of everyone, my mom probably worries the most about me living in Korea, and we talked a lot about what I will do after I leave here. I don't actually know what that is yet, but at least now I am thinking about it.

One reason for the timing of my trip, other than the opportunity presented by my work schedule, was that it coincided with St Patrick's Day. Last year, I had gone up to Montreal with my brother and his friends, but my brother got sick and missed out on the big day. So this year I thought it would be great to spend it with him. Maybe it's not meant to be because it didn't quite work out that way.

In past years, when I celebrated St Patty's in Boston, it was tradition to take the day off from work and start drinking at lunchtime. Two years ago, when I was living in London, SPD fell on a Saturday and so we didn't even need to take the day off from work. And last year in Montreal, we started at about 9:30am. So this year, my friend Christyn and I decided we'd start at lunchtime, and went to her favorite Irish bar in New Haven. This is where we played trivia last spring when I was living in Connecticut, and she's become a bit of a regular there.

I hadn't had a Guinness in nearly six months and it tasted great. So did the next few. But by 5:00, I was realizing that I was not really up to a big day of drinking. I was still jetlagged so I was pretty tired, but I can't blame everything on jetlag: I was simply piss-drunk. I have hardly been drinking in Korea and I think I had about six or seven pints that afternoon and they really kicked my ass. The plan was to meet with my brother and his friends at their favorite bar back in Milford, but I was literally passing out in the car as we drove there. Despite a trip to Wendy's in an attempt to revitalize me, I was not up for the challenge. I called my brother to apologize, and then Christyn brought me home. I assume my dad was a bit amused when I passed out on the couch at 8pm. Apparently I didn't miss much in Milford but it was a bit embarassing nonetheless.

(Here are some pictures.)

After about six days in Connecticut, I went up to Boston. Whereas my time in Milford was really great and really rewarding, my trip to Boston felt rushed and was ultimately quite frustrating. We didn't really have any set "plans" and I also think I made a mistake by trying to get all of my friends in one place at the same time. I think I should have spent a little time with each of them separately because my friends in Boston aren't really friends with each other anymore, so it was a bit awkward. This isn't to say that it wasn't absolutely wonderful to see everyone; I was really happy to get to spend time with them. But surely everyone has their own separate lives now and their own interests. I always warned myself "if you move back to Boston, you can't pretend it's 1997 again" and I think this was a pretty clear reminder of that.

Anyway, like I said, it was really nice to see my friends in Boston, even for a short while. I suspect that I won't be back until October at the earliest (though more likely Christmas), and even though I have gotten used to being away from those folks, I do already miss them.

Since returning to Korea, I haven't been doing much. I start teaching on April 3, so I have had about a full week after I came back. I've mostly been doing errands, watching movies, and hanging out with friends. Tomorrow I resume my Korean language classes. The class I'm taking in April is the same one I took in December, so it will be a refresher for me. Then in May I'll take a new class.

I can't believe how quickly March went by. I think that's because I was so much looking forward to going to the US and obviously my time there was bound to go by quickly. Surprisingly, my one-year contract is already half over, and soon I need to start thinking about whether or not I will stay longer.