Merry Christmas, and happy holidays to everyone! After a month’s hiatus, I’m finally back to a (somewhat) regular blogging schedule. With the school year coming to a close, I thought I’d finally compose the piece that I’ve wanted to publish since my absence just before Thanksgiving; a piece about thankfulness. Having spent almost half a …
BLACKPINK in Your Area
On my birthday, more than a month ago, my friend Hana surprised me with tickets to go see BLACKPINK’s first official solo concert on November 10th. I had never been to a concert before, let alone a Korean one, and so my excitement to see my favorite group grew more and more until that weekend …
School Life Update
I haven’t talked a lot about my school the past several posts because, well, everything has been good here. Whatever discomforts I was experiencing during my first couple weeks have since been alleviated, and with that I’ve found myself enjoying teaching more than I thought I could. That’s not to say that I haven’t had …
Fall Conference
Friday, October 19th marked the beginning of Fall Conference. Hosted in Gyeongju, this business trip is one of two official meetings we have during our grant year where all the ETAs, including second and third years, are obligated to be in attendance. Since Fall Conference marks the first time that all the ETAs have been …
Midterms & Tough Decisions
This past Tuesday, Korea celebrated 한글날 (Hangul Day), which commemorates the invention of their alphabet by none other than King Sejong the Great. With this reprieve from work, I spent the day in Gwangju with fellow ETAs Robert, Ali, Hana, and Becca. We caught up with one another over some really good BBQ at a …
Birthday Weekend & the Busan International Film Festival
This week marked my third month in Korea. I can’t believe a quarter of a year has already gone by; it truly is surreal. During this past Monday, I began hosting an English teachers’ meeting during the fourth period of school. Because the other English teachers here do not get a lot of exposure to, …
Continue reading Birthday Weekend & the Busan International Film Festival
Chuseok and Everland Adventures
오랜만이군요, 그렇죠? I apologize for my sudden absence last week; however, it was for a good reason! The Friday before last, I left on a KTX towards Seoul to visit one of my ETA friends, HeeJae, to celebrate 추석 (Chuseok) with him and his Korean family. Chuseok is, in some ways, comparable to American Thanksgiving. …
The Etymology of “Holy Shit”
As you could probably tell from my last entry, this week did not get off to a great start. When my previous blog entry got deleted right before I was about to post it on Monday night, I felt so exasperated and annoyed that I never thought I would rewrite it. Perhaps it was an …
Lesson Planning
Preface: I apologize for the late upload this week. To make a long story short, I had written my blog post for this week yesterday, but while I was working on it in the Draft section of WordPress, the site crashed and didn’t save anything. This is despite me having saved it and closed out …
Unforeseen Problems
This was my first official full week of teaching since class had been cancelled last Thursday due to the typhoon. Compared to last week, I already feel like I am finding my stride as a teacher here in Korea. Generally, my finalized weekly schedule looks like this: I teach a total of 14, fifty minute …
Newsflash: This Just-in 