Quick Note on my Posting

Sorry to any frustrated, faithful readers out there who have been wondering where I have been the past 2 or 3 weeks. Though I doubt anyone would be frustrated by a lack in Evan news. I went without posting with both my parents and Emily in Korea for the past 2 weeks. This is probably my 3rd apology and I know that I have posted sporadically at best, but I hope you will forgive me for wanting to spend most of my time with them and not quite as much writing!! My recent posts and the ones to follow in the next few days are far from chronologically correct, and I will only make a brief attempt to cover all the things that happened over my Winter vacation. There was just too much!!

I should have some pictures up and a post on some of the big stuff that happened over the past 2 weeks.

I Will be a Great ESL Teacher Whether I Choose to or Not

Finished teaching today with a few more surprises. It turns out that rather than filling in for a week and teaching the English Zone's curriculum and classes it will be spread out to a month. I actually just wrapped up an hour and fifteen minute lesson in which only two of six students showed up. I managed to change the majority of the lesson on the fly. This is not a self-congratulatory post as much as it is a "Look what they have done to me!!" kind of rant. My constantly changing schedule has brought this about in me. Example: It seems for now that the last two weeks of January my in-class teaching hours will jump from fifteen to twenty-nine. This will put me heavy into overtime so I am almost expecting this to change by the time the 18th rolls around because the bank shall not break. My schedule has been changed too many times and on too short of notice at this point to even bother me anymore. These circumstances used to elicit anger and copious amounts of emails to my parents, Emily and my cousin Steve. Now it comes with a melancholic guffaw. More a chuckle than guffaw - I was just that desperate to use "guffaw". Anyhoo.. It seems as though I will be the baddest, raddest ESL teacher in the world even though the odds are high this will come against my will. I am at least grateful that I am out of panic mode when they do this.

A Quick Transcript from my Journal

* written 4 January 2010 * (meant to be posted yesterday)

I think the ink in my pen is frozen. Sadly, it seems as though I will not have the opportunity to thank Matt & Blair - they leave tomorrow and I don't foresee a visit with them.
About a foot of snow today. Many coworkers (co-EPIK'ers) had the day off. I literally had the opposite of a snow day. I went to school expecting a quiet, classless week to find they gave me M/B's classes for the week. I was given little notice as per Korean standard and caught both unprepared and unshowered (my water was off for 2 days to pipe freezing). Hoping to get wa-wa back today.
Far less upset about lack of notice this time than others, guess I'm coming around.

Quick Updates ::
1. I was able to see Matt and Blair today at school. Happy to say goodbye to them and maintain communications as much as I can with them as they slowly make their way back home.
2. I got my water back. Showered, shaved and happy!
3. I keep a journal now. What a forward thinking man I have become, one might say. It was just one of the fantastic Christmas presents I got this holiday season!

Winter

Life without air conditioning has been an up and down battle thus far. The lack of AC is not a Korean trend. Quite the contrary, it is just I who lacks powered climate control. In fact, I have been in one other apartment in this complex/area and their apt. was incredibly heated. However, two blankets and being fully clothed has kept me pretty snuggly. The problem isn't sleeping; it's waking up that kills me. It is so hard to get up and out of bed in the morning. Leaving my safe haven calls into question whether I realllly need a shower (don't fret everyone, I usually drag myself outta bed and take one!).

On a random aside -- I put the finishing touches on preparation for my last immersion class tomorrow. I dropped some serious cash to fill their stockings. I have made the firm decision that If they will not give me their love I will buy their love. All kidding aside, two classes down a Korean teacher helped them make balloon animals so I naturally had to up the ante if I wanted to be the cool kid on the block!!

Seoul Snow Jam!!

This past Saturday I went down to Seoul with my friends Carmine and Joe. After a long afternoon of Christmas shopping, and in my more frugal and calculating ways, Christmas prospecting, we walked a few blocks down from Insadong (where we were shopping) to where some friends were getting ready to go ice skating. As it turns out, the rink was closing down but the latter portion of a snowboarding tournament was just getting going. We were probably there for about an hour or so. It was pretty fun. I think I had more fun being around all the people, many of whom were really into it, rather than actually watching the snowboarding. They replayed highlights from earlier in the day and the skiing ones actually looked great!! I snagged a few photos before we left which I put on facebook. It was definitely nice to see the lights out around Seoul. It is not always easy to grasp the American vacations here but Christmas seems to be coming along quite nicely! I heard that about 1/3rd of Koreans celebrate Christmas. Here are a few photos I took with absolutely no description to go along with them!!

Mmmmm Cashmere

it fits great, it's warm and I am still falling in love with my new pea coat. My cousin Steve pointed it out but David Letterman sure was right when he or whoever was writing on his behalf penned the note "you do good job" on Manchester Tailors' celebrity autograph board. What a word smith!

Random tid bits

• I forgot to mention an odd story on the way back home from Seoul this past Saturday. I was a little gloomy because at this point I came to the realization that I sealed my fate on the whole sickness thing. The cab ride definitely cheered me up though!! I had a cab driver who spoke English fantastically. After he narrowed down that 2 out of 3 of his passengers were from Texas (Sophia and myself, along with our 3rd Joe from LA), he proceeded to name off a few of the cities he had been to. He started with Houston (of course, even in Korea, everyone is from Houston) to which we nodded and then tacked on Dallas to which we nodded again. Then he dropped a bomb; Brooh-own-sville. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? It's hard to find a Texan who has been to Brownsville, much, much, much less a Korean.
• Keeping up with my American habits, I have spent a solid % of my money on eating out. However, today might be a deciding reversal in the war against dining out. This is because today is the day I finally finished gathering all the ingredients for spaghetti. There were some casualties in this battle; I was forced to forego parmesean cheese. PC is my right hand man when it comes to the spaghett's. I thought it would be difficult to get ahold of salt too, but the stars aligned as I finally managed to (a) remember to look for it BEFORE going into the store rather than after and (b) have enough time to look for it rather than being in a rush. Shaping and educating kids' lives in Korea has been great but let it be known that the highlight of December 7th was spaghetti. Booyakasha!