The end draws near...


A quick note on the co-worker's wedding I went to recently. Unlike the other wedding I went too, Dentia choose to conduct her wedding primarily in English. There was an white guy who stood up front conducting the service, and then a Korean woman stood off to the side translating after he spoke. The words spoken were similar to an American service and it lasted about as long. The rest of the wedding was fairly similar to the other one I had been to, but I did find it interesting that English was the primary language used for the ceremony.


This past Saturday, Meg and I took a trip out to the Korea War Museum. The museum chronicles the history of all the wars that Korea has been involved in, but of course, a big focus of the museum is the Korean War. Outside of the museum building is an impressive array of military equipment used in the Korean war, ranging from planes, to missiles, to trucks. There were also several monuments, my favorite being one of two brothers, one fighting for North Korea and one fighting for South Korea, meeting on the battlefield. The museum itself was very well laid out, it was easy to follow, had interactive displays and there were also lots of artifacts to look at. I especially enjoyed the museum seeing as I knew very little about the Korean War. Given that it was considered "recent" history when Meg and I were in AP US history, we ran out of time to study it and never really got past "the North and the South fought." Thus, it was nice to get a better grasp on the whole situation and what happened.


So it is that time in Korea...back to school time! No seriously...it is. The school year (at the public schools and the hagwons) starts in March so a bunch of the stores here have back to school signs in the windows and are advertising backpacks. Both our schools have also raised tuition for next school year, our schools now cost between 1.3 and 1.5 million A MONTH for kindergarten alone. That means parents are spending roughly 13-15 THOUSAND dollars per year to send their 3, 4, and 5 year olds to English school. Yeesh. Along the same lines, I have been informed of part of my teaching schedule for next year. I will be getting a new kindergarten class in March, unfortunately losing my babies to a new teacher. I will be teaching 6-1 students ("6" year olds in their first year of learning English). The good news is I only have to move one classroom over, which is convenient. The bad news is Jenny (my supervisor) is following the Nemos, so I am getting a brand new supervisor (who CIS just hired). So as of February 25, I will no longer be the Nemo class teacher, I will be the Bambi class teacher. No news yet on my afternoon schedule, I was told that we will hear about that next week.

I officially move into my own place in 8 days. Meg flies out in 18 days. In 11 days we will both have been living in Korea for 365 days. And in 2 days we will be in Taipei, enjoying one last long weekend in Asia, as well as setting foot on our 7th country of the year!