back in korea!

I am in fact back in Korea! Actually, I have been since Tuesday night. Things have been absolutely crazy since I got back, this is the first day I've actually had off. On Wednesday I took an 8:50 am bus back to Gyeongju from Seoul, and in the afternoon I went over to school to meet up with Matthew and lesson plan. Then teaching for the winter camp I'm doing started the next morning, with one class of middle school second graders at 9am and the next one at 10:55am (middle school second graders = 7th graders in the American system). That afternoon I found out that my host family was going away until Sunday, so I've been going downtown a lot, which has been fun! The next day I started my full teaching schedule: middle school class from 9-12:35, high school class 2-3:40. Luckily there are breaks in there. I've only done one day like that so far, because the middle school doesn't have class on Saturdays. Next week will be intense though! We'll see how it goes. Hopefully by then I won't be so jetlagged. This morning I woke myself up at 7, which is an improvement from 4:15 a few days ago. The lack of sleep's been building up, though, so I hope that at some point soon I exhaust myself to the point where I can't NOT sleep through the night.

Just in case you're wondering how it was to be home, it was wonderful. Just great. I was so happy to be back and to see friends and family that I didn't realize I had missed as much as I had. Also, strangely enough, I had no jetlag coming home. I was exhausted, sure, but I didn't have the annoying inability to sleep through the night that I'm experiencing now. While I was home, I played Christmas Eve service at the church with my family, ate a ton of delicious food (including Korean style on Christmas, New Years, and when we went to Flushing for haircuts), studied Korean at Starbucks while watching Matt work :), hung out with friends a lot, cooked an exorbitant amount of food for a New Years party of 5 people (yay Amy!), went to see the trains at the Botanical Garden (with Amelia, who came down from Boston to visit for the weekend!), went to Rockefeller Center to see the tree, ate Mexican and Indian food, and this list is getting ridiculous now so I'll stop. All in all, it was like I woke up from a long dream. Suddenly I could be totally independent and drive to Connecticut or Scarsdale to meet friends. I could get on the phone and order food in my own language. There was snow on the ground, and then it snowed again! It was really a great break, a nice recharge for me. I felt like I'd been running out of steam in the fall. Now I'm reminded of the great life I have back home, all the people I love and the places that are familiar, and it's given me a lot of perspective. I'm really going to try to enjoy every moment of being in Korea more this semester, and I think it'll be easier. First of all, I have a lot more experience with how things work here. Second, I'm (slowly but surely) learning the language. Third, I have Matt's visit to look forward to in March. Finally, spring and summer are on their way! I've come to realize that I'm very affected by the weather. I think I have mild seasonal depression. I'm excited that the days will be getting longer and warmer, and it won't be so foreboding to go outside. I guess I should add that I'm more comfortable with lesson planning and teaching now that I've been doing it for a semester, even though it's still not my favorite thing to do...but that's for another blog entry. This one is reserved for positive thinking about my future in Korea. 화이팅! Fighting!