Oot and Aboot: A Canadian Wanderer

Although it's not officially Spring here in Korea, the weather would make you guess otherwise. The last couple of weeks have been absolutely beautiful, with daytime temperatures floating around the +10 mark, and this weeks forecast expecting a high of +17 by Thursday! How happy am I?!?!

Unfortunately though, my journal updating has taken a turn for the worse because of it. I warned everyone in the beginning that I wasn't the greatest writer and that it would be hard for me to stay motivated, but through the winter months it was relatively easy as I stayed cocooned in my apartment for the greater part of most days. Now, using yesterday as an example, I spend upwards of 6 hours outside wandering around and enjoying the sunshine, replenishing my vitamin D levels. So, I figure an update is in order! Here we go...

February 24th marked the half-way mark for the completion of my contract in Korea. I knew it was coming, and now that it's technically in the home stretch, it's time to start thinking about plans for the new academic year. So far my brother and my best friend Kate have been more than kind to offer me suggestions of where I should go (conveniently, out west, near them) but I am still up in the air because of job certainty and a mix of wanting to settle down and not being finished with the world yet. It might be another year overseas for me to continue to build the savings reserve, but August is still 6 months away and a lot can happen in that time, so I'll keep you posted :)

The new school year in Korea started on March 3rd, but the week leading up to that I took another 5 days of holiday leave, and stayed in Seoul to explore things that are a little closer to home. The War Memorial Museum had an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so I finally paid it a visit, but find that I need to go back to really do it justice. Even in the couple of hours I spent there, I only managed to get through the outdoor exhibits, the Dead Sea Scrolls special exhibit and the first floor historical war exhibits, where I finally found out what a Turtle Boat is!

The famous Turtle Boat, complements of Yi Sun Shin.

Another beautiful day during that week of holidays, Sara, Richard and I decided to hop on the Seoul metro for 2 hours and head to Suwon and it's famous Folk Village. You just can't come to Korea and not see a Folk Village! Being the middle of the week, we were close to the only ones there, so it made for a nice, quiet outing. It was definitely Spring-y with the clear blue sky, the heat of the sun, the snow and ice melting, and all the farm animals copulating. Kid you not, we interrupted a ridiculous number of mating attempts that day. I managed to get quite the look from a goat at one point after coming around the corner and bursting out in laughter, scaring off his partner. Oops.

Richard let me use his super-fancy camera that day, so we ended up with over 250 pictures capturing the Folk Village as I happily snapped away, including over 50 of my new obsession...

...Kimchi pots!!
Cue Sara and Richard both rolling their eyes

We spent the later part of that day hiking up a hill in the middle of the city to walk around the walls of the Hwaseong fortress. Really spectacular, and it offered some amazing 360 degree views of the city.

And that pretty much brings us up to date other than this past week I returned to school and so far, it seems things may go a lot smoother than the last 6 months. I have three new co-teachers, half of my students have moved up to high-school and I am trying some new things in my lessons which have so far proven good for behavior management and keeping the students on task. In my current job, I generally manage the success of the day/week by the number of times I have been told to 'Go f*** myself'. So far this week: 0 .  An absolute record. Hopefully this is the start of a new beginning and not just them going easy on me because it's the first week :)

And so, that's me. How have you been lately?

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