At 40,000 feet with no wifi and nothing but the smudged ice tundra below I feel isolated but contemplative. Somewhere over Siberia I saw three orange lights linearly spaced: the first two were closer together and they all seemed to be on the cloud’s horizon. What is that? What could it possibly be? Is it another plane? But then the lights wouldn’t be so large or discernible. It seemed stationary as the plane took ages to fly past it. Is it a remote research lab? A marker of some kind? The North Pole? I wonder what the safety protocols are if the engine goes out and we meet the sea…

I have passed all three required exams! Once score verification is complete and the Florida Department of Education finishes processing (which takes one to six months…) I’ll be an officially licensed teacher. A US teaching license is globally recognized which means I can teach just about anywhere. However, where that will be is a consideration for future me. Current me is focused on cramming my big people shoe purchases into a single suitcase.

These past few weeks my life has felt like a series of nearly incomprehensible moving parts, this week especially. I had to become the project manager of my own life to organize the documents I have and have not received for my teaching visa, coordinate mock interviews and real interviews since my application was accepted, realign expectations that Gyeongnam wanted me to interview for a March start date instead of April, schedule and reschedule teaching exams, avoid COVID, ship Christmas gifts, cancel long distance trips and set up small meetings with friends, and try to put on pants at least once week. I decided to bite the bullet and take…