5 months and counting...

Hi everyone,

I hope winter is treating everyone well- wherever you may be. I am really looking forward to a winter where there isn't snow fall where I live. I like snow a lot, but was definitely sick of it last year when my car got stuck in it twice. It does snow in Korea, just not as far south as Daegu. I'm sure I'll get to enjoy lots of it when I'm in Seoul for January. Which brings me to my first piece of news, I was selected as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. I will be working in the Regional Program Office, which puts on programs about America to different regions in Korea. I'm excited to have this new experience and live in Seoul/on base for a short while. The internship is a little shorter than usual because I was also selected (I don't remember if I mentioned it) to take 5 students from my high school to Seoul for 6 days in January to learn about Korean and American politics, economy, etc. I am excited about that as well, because we will learn a lot, go on field trips, and I'll get to know some of my students better.

I really cannot believe it is December- 5 months into my 13 months here. I am really enjoying my time. The beginning part of November/end of October was a little hard for me, but I seem to have gotten over that. Although I spoke with a lot of the people from our program this weekend and a lot of them are ready to go home for the holidays. They are generally missing America more than they are liking Korea. Which is understandable. I think/hope I'm going skiing for Christmas! My family is Buddhist and I don't particularly want to stick around on Christmas since they won't be doing anything.

Nothing else is really new. I have a final for my Korean class next week and am worried because I am definitely not studying as hard as I was for the midterm. I will be happy when class ends and I have my evenings free again. I am not sure if I will take Korean class in the Spring- it really depends on the time the classes are offered, where they are offered, and what my school schedule looks like.

One great thing is that I only have 8 more days of class to teach from now until I go on winter vacation (December 22)!!! It's because my kids have finals, there is a national day off, and I don't teach on Fridays. It's pretty crazy, but nice. I still don't know if I'll be teaching the same kids again, when I think about how I might not- I get a little sad. Even though I don't know their names (there are about 500 of them) I really like them.

My podcast project started today and I will e-mail everyone when I start to upload the recordings to the website- www.dong-moonhs.blogspot.com I haven't had a chance to listen to all of them, but overall I'm pretty proud of what my students accomplished!

Please write and let me know how everything is going!!!

-me