Last Friday (May 28) marked my two-year anniversary in Korea. I honestly never thought I would make it this long! And now that I only have about 10 more weeks left, I am pretty sad to be leaving.

After a lot of red tape and anxiety, I finally found out that I was "officially" accepted to Columbia. So I will be leaving Korea in early August, spending a few weeks bumming around New England, and then moving to New York in early September. Many of you may know that I actually attended Columbia as a freshman before I transferred to Boston University. It's hard to believe that was 13 years ago...

Even though I had a lot of free time in May (I was only teaching four days a week and had a very small number of students), it was a pretty uneventful month. I did have a good night out with my friend Caroline at one of our favorite bars in Apgujeong. Caroline loves to take pictures, and on this particular night, the resident dog joined us for a few.

Aside from that, I did spend a lot of time with my "new" friends (other teachers, some former students, etc.), though it's kind of hard to start new friendships knowing that I will be leaving soon. We did get a bunch of people together for a night out drinking, including some former Princeton Review staff, so it was kind of like a "reunion".

I also went hiking with my friend Sean, though we had a bit of an "episode" afterwards that I'm not allowed to talk about.

Sean, his wife Jin and I also went for a Sunday afternoon picnic at a small island outside of Seoul called Namiseom. It's only about a 90-minute drive, but it's as far away from Seoul as I've been for months!

I did finally get around to watching the final "Friends" episode, which was massively disappointing. I will post my rant here soon.

I am sad to report that my good friend Rob will not be returning to Korea this summer. He was hoping to work for the Princeton Review in Busan (the city at the southern tip of Korea), but that fell through for reasons I'm not quite sure about. Even though I wouldn't get to see him that much if he were in Busan, it would have been nice to have him "around". I have met some of the teachers for Princeton Review's summer program but haven't been asked to train or advise any of them, so I don't know them very well at all. Somehow I suspect I'll be leaving without knowing who many of them are.

Now that June is here, we're definitely feeling the hot weather arrive. Up until today, it had been hot during the day but at least it was chilly at night. Not tonight, though; it's almost 1am and still fairly warm. So I guess it's time to put the light sweaters away.

I can't believe how quickly May went by. And I know that I'll be busy in June and then July will come and go quickly, too. I'm starting to make a list of all the things I meant to do in Korea but never did; I guess it's time to start doing those things while I can...