Long time, no update

I didn't realize how long it had been since my last update until someone brought it to my attention on facebook, so I will try to do a quick summary of all of the happenings in Korea since my last post. When I finish putting pictures on my computer, I'll post a few pictures from each trip here and put the rest on facebook.

The months of June and July were both pretty uneventful...teaching during the week, and not doing much on the weekends. I was pretty excited to break out of my routine come the end of July when I had three whole days of summer vacation to use. Fortunately, those three days were a Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, so I had a total of five days to go do something exciting. After looking a couple of options outside of Korea, we settled on taking a trip to Jeju Island, which is a subtropical island off the southern coast of Korea. It's also part of Korea, so we were able to take a nice trip without having to deal with visa requirements for another country.

After we returned from Jeju, we went on an organized trip to the DMZ. We didn't actually go in to the DMZ, but we visited several sites near the DMZ, including an observatory where we could see North Korea, a tunnel that North Korea dug in an attempt to invade South Korea, and a subway station that South Korea hopes will eventually connect to several major train lines in Asia via North Korea.

Once summer vacation was over, I began preparing to take the GRE. My intent was to begin studying for it while I was here, and take it within a week or two of returning to the States. After emailing a couple of graduate programs, I decided to try and take the GRE here, which proved to be an interesting experience. I began researching the possibility of taking the GRE at the beginning of September and discovered that Korea has a unique procedure for administering the test. The writing section is taken separately from the math and verbal sections, and must be taken before the math and verbal sections. The math and verbal sections are offered twice a year, so everyone who takes the writing section during the first six months of the year goes to one math and verbal test taking session, and everyone who takes it during the second six months goes to the next math and verbal test taking session. By the time I figured all of this out, I had one week to register for and take the writing section. If I hadn't taken the writing section when I did, I wouldn't have been able to take the GRE in Korea, because I would have missed the deadline for the math and verbal section, and it wouldn't have been offered again until after I had returned to the States. Anyway, I took the writing section of the GRE on a Friday morning before school, and fortunately I had the next week of school off thanks to a generous director and a three day Korean holiday called Chuseok, which is a harvest celebration.

Because Chuseok is such an important holiday, people travel to their hometowns to pay respects to their ancestors and the roads can get pretty crowded. Our original plan for the holiday was to take a hiking trip in Seoraksan National Park, which is about a three hour bus ride away from Seoul. We had planned on leaving before Chuseok traffic picked up and returning on Chuseok day, when traffic would (hopefully) be at it lightest. In the end, we adjusted our travel days slightly, but we did make it to Seoraksan National park and had a nice three day trip, two days of which we spent hiking. When we returned to Seoul, it appeared that fall had finally arrived after a long, hot, humid summer. The arrival of fall was fantastic, even if it did bring another month long sinus infection along with it. At the rate I'm going, I have a sinking feeling that I'll be spending the next four months in and out of the doctor's office.

I had five weeks from the end of Chuseok vacation until the GRE, so the remainder of September and most of October were spent either teaching or studying. I took the math and verbal sections of the GRE on October 23rd and went in to a two week sleep coma immediately afterward, where I went from doing nothing but studying and teaching to doing nothing but sleeping and teaching. That pretty much brings be to today...or yesterday, rather, when I attempted to drag myself out of my sleep coma and start some graduate school applications, since that was the whole point of taking the GRE in the first place.

It's hard to believe that I've been here for over 8 months, and that I only have a few months left before I'll be heading home. I didn't come to Korea with any real travel goals in mind, but I have seen a few of the places the Koreans consider to be important places to visit, as well as gotten to know Seoul pretty well from frequent weekend trips. I have another seven days of vacation to take advantage of before my contract is up, so I'm hoping to plan a trip outside of Korea while I have the opportunity to do so. I'm also looking to make more of my weekends now that I only have three and a half months worth of them left, and I still have a list of places in and around Seoul that I would like to see. With that in mind, I'm going to work harder to update this blog once a week. It should be easier to do when I have more travel adventures to share...I've been caught up in my GRE adventures and my doctor adventures and my 5K training adventures (which I'm back to square one on, thanks to cutting back on running while studying for the GRE and doctors orders to take it easy on the exercise until I've had a chance to fully recover), but I didn't think any of those really warranted their own blog post.

Stay tuned for posts about Jeju Island and Seoraksan National Park, coming next week! I even put it on my to do list, so you know it will definitely happen...eventually.