Blogroll: 다시 한번 One More Time
Today is August 23rd, 2012, and it’s the first day of my second year as the English Native Speaker/Teacher at Sapgyo High School. It’s a mix of old and new. I’m currently typing on my old computer at a new desk in a new office. It’s a new school year but it’s a school I’ve called home for a year already. My students are the same, their smiles and swagger the same, but it still feels like I don’t quite know them.
Blogroll: Loving and Letting Go
If I haven’t made this clear recently, let me do so now: I LOVE my life. I love it exactly as it is right now. I have an incredible job with students who bring laughter to my heart and provoke new avenues of research/interest in my mind. No matter the weather, the attitudes (mine or others’), or the relative (un)eventfulness, a day that I teach is never truly dull. I work with wonderful people who treat me like a colleague despite the fact that most of them are old enough to be my parent, and I am treated both at school and in society in general with a level of respect that, sadly, few American educators can aspire to despite any true differentiation between myself and them.
Blogroll: The Beginning of the End
Two weeks from today I will be on a plane on my way back to the States. I must admit, there were times during this year when I thought that day couldn’t come fast enough. There were times when I was homesick, and lonely, and struggling to understand this totally upside-down culture. And all I wanted was to go back to my momma’s house, curl under the covers, and be a kid again. Growing up is hard. Living abroad is hard.