So two months have slipped by. I'd love to say that I've been busy, but the truth is that other than the last week I haven't really been busy at all. I did have a lot to think about, cause I couldn't decide for sure if I wanted to stay around in Korea, move onto South-east Asia, or pursue the Europe option. I finally decided to stay in Korea, but then I had an offer from another school to complicate things further. Everything seemed really good at the new school and they were offering me a little more than I make at my present school and a little more vacation time, but I finally turned them down. I reasoned that the little extra money wasn't enough to give up the great situation that I have been enjoying at my present school for the last two years. So, to make a long story short, I signed on for a third year. I haven't decided for sure if I'll stay the whole year or not, but I suspect I will. I don't yet see the upside of going home and Europe and South-east Asia aren't going anywhere either. I think that every month I stick around puts about another grand in my bank back home, so it's easy to justify. The working less than 5 hours a day helps too. That, the seniority, and having some students that I've taught for the full two years and don't really want to leave behind played a factor as well.
Since I mentioned the last week I suppose I should elaborate on it cause it's been about the busiest I've ever had. Last weekend was a three-day so Bret, my brother and I decided on short notice to go to Japan. After calling around we managed to find decently priced tickets that left Saturday afternoon and got us back in time for work on Tuesday. We flew back into Korea on Tuesday afternoon and didn't clear customs until about 1pm, which left us 3 hours to get to work on time. But the "freedom bus" (as we call it cause it goes straight from in front of our aparment to the airport) was waiting outside of the airport. It's only about an hour to my place so we managed to make it with time enough to drop our bags, have a shower and get to work. Of course, being the first day of the month, I had to make class lists for my classes and worry about getting my last month's status reports in by Friday. Not usually that big a deal, but I also threw moving into a new apartment on top of the pile. It took all day Wednesday, but I managed to get everything done without killing myself. I was pretty glad to see the weekend come.
The trip to Japan was relatively uneventful and I can sum up Japan in two words--ridiculously expensive. In spite of prices, I saw some cool stuff. It was good to have Bret along because, not only did he have a free place for us to stay, but also he can speak pretty good survival Japanese having lived there for two years. The trip went smoothly. We spent most of the weekend in Narita and only ventured into Tokyo for one day. We saw a lot of neat things and managed not to get too badly hit by the high prices. Scenery was nice, I'd like to compare it to Korea, but in spite of my two years here, I haven't traveled around as much as I should have, so I won't. I really enjoyed the trip though. I got to do all the things I wanted to. I drank some sake with a couple of Japanese girls, sang some Karaoke, saw a couple temples, ate some Japanese food. I even got to stop by the Hard Rock Cafe, eat some Terriyaki chicken and pick up a couple shot glasses for my collector friends back in Canada. I wanted to go out for sushi and sake in a traditional type of place, but it apparantly costs over $100 and no one was willing to go with me.... something about 5 pieces of raw fish over rice not being worth it. ^^
I don't remember if I mentioned, but I was supposed to go to Thailand over the Lunar New Year's holiday at the end of January. We were going through an organized trip and we had five tickets paid for, but somehow the travel agent lost our plane tickets, so we ended up sitting around our apartment. They gave us $60 consolation, but it was too late to do anything else. So we ended up sitting around the aparment drinking beer and playing Play Station II.
As far as my new apartment goes, it's pretty kick ass. My brother and I now live in separate apartments in the same brand-new building. It's actually about 25 seconds from door to door, so we should have all of the benefits of living together without the headache of being in each other's way all day of everyday. My place is still techincally a studio but it's pretty big by Asian standards. It actually has a fridge, freezer, closets, washer/dryer all built right into the wall and an actual shower stall...no more standing in front of the sink to shower (which I actually don't really mind). I'm on the top floor of a 15 storey building, with a pretty good view and they can't build anything in front of me to obscure it. I'm also about 10 minutes walking from the subway, less than five from the park, and less than five from LaFesta--a fun little area where there are a lot of shops, restaurants, and bars. As you can probably get from my tone I'm pretty happy with the new situation.
Well I'm pretty tired now so I'm gonna sign out for the night and update the rest of the recent developments later. I hope I don't forget...
Brent
