January – June Me: I’m having a hard timeSeoul: July Me: I’m moving out of SeoulSeoul: But wait! Look at the clear air! The students came back! You get vacation! You and your coworkers have grown closer! We’ll open the parks! Life is like that. The last few days I stopped and wondered, am I making the right decision to leave this school? I’ve finally grown comfortable in my neighborhood and with my new coworkers and my students are such a joy, can I give them up? Then I realized, if I asked the school if they would allow a super late renewal, I hoped the answer would be “no”.…

Asia Time goes like this: I spend 6 months in the dark about my next job, abode, visa status. Plan after plan falls through or gets canceled. And then with seven weeks before my visa expires, in a single day, I get accepted into a language program, I reserve a bedroom in a sharehouse with a Korean woman who has two corgis, and my international permit arrives in the mail which means I have a way to move myself and belongings down to Busan. So yeah, in two months I'll have my own bedroom, actually separate from the kitchen and bathroom, a five minute walk to the beach, and hopefully…

The elementary school across the street had a student test positive so as a precaution our school also closed to students until the other school was confirmed to have no further cases. As a result C and I had no classes today and also no served lunch. She ended up accompanying me to the local kimbap shop where we each had a fish cake and tuna kimbap. These kinds of restaurants are classified as “snack shops” and always give their patrons free fish cake water. The idea of hot fish broth may put off western readers but I found it really hits the spot. We spent an hour there talking…

Today was a busy day from start to finish that involved crossing off a bucket list item and squandering an opportunity to cross off a bucket list item. It was a wonderful 12 hours and 10 out of 10 would do again. I had plans to meet with a friend for lunch and made my way to the gym in the morning. But at the train station, someone tapped me on the shoulder and a young man appeared. We started chatting in Korean and I punched him playfully in the shoulder and told him to slow down. “How old are you?” “I’m almost 30. How old are you?” “I’m 23.”…

Last week I was very excited to stumble upon another buy two get one three sale at 7-Eleven on coffee milk. However, when I went to reach for one in the community fridge this week, I found them to be all gone. My only thought was, well must have drunk all of them and didn’t even realize it. I didn’t think much about it since I had also gotten the two for one coffee milk sale the week prior and my brain just wasn’t catching up that something was off. But then, my co-teacher came into our classroom and said “did you buy coffee milk and put it in the…

One of the fourth graders who has a surprisingly deep and gravelly voice for an 10 year-old spotted me through the open class window, said hello in Korean, and bowed. It was really cute and I appreciate it too because many students greet me in English with a wave instead of a bow which is okay… but also leaves me in a weird gray area of wondering if they respect me as a teacher. C laughed at my side and exclaimed, he didn’t even greet me! I told her it’s because I’m tall and easy to spot. He has always been a slow writer but his attitude has improved a…

The last day of June is here and officially there are now less than two months before my contract ends. The morning started with me actually applying eye shadow. I had to brush dust of the palette that fell into disuse while my poor eyes were plagued by yellow dust. If the rainy weather and lessening pollution trend continues, I’ll be back to get an eyelash perm as soon as I can. I gathered my hair into very un-Korean milkmaid braids and on a whim, detoured to the coffee shop. I missed my girl! I didn’t register this until later but when I first came in, her mask was pulled…

After buying a new toilet seat and flushing one of the screws down the toilet, I had to laugh at my life. But the shock didn’t end there. During lunch C turned to me and said, “I searched the two numbers you sent me and searched for them on KakaoTalk.” (When I had those issues with that crazy guy, I screenshoted the twenty calls he managed to make from two different numbers before I blocked both.) KakaoTalk is the primary wifi based messaging app here, much like Whatsapp. You can make as many accounts as you want although people usually link it to a phone number so they don’t get…