Hey, did you get rid of Tony yet?!

Sorry for the obscurity of the title. Kids in the Hall fans might recognize it. And what does that have to do with anything? Well, I blame the Kids in the Hall for me not having posted since JANUARY!!!! Yes, January. To be fair, I wrote a really long post in February, but it was accidentally deleted before I could publish it. And in frustration I vowed never to blog again. Plus I downloaded all five seasons of KITH and watched it for a long time...and someone got me hooked on The Office. And it's spring and who wants to be stuck at a computer writine a blog when it's spring outside. And...ok, enough excuses. I'm just a bad blogger.

But let my try to get you all up to speed. What has been happening since last we spoke.

Well, the biggest real reason I haven't been keeping up with my blog is because I was pre-occupied with a romance. It was short lived but intense and took up all my thought an energy while it lasted. And then all of my evenings turned to chocolate-eating, feeling sorry for myself and tv watching when it ended. But now that I no longer have that distraction, I'm trying to remember what my life actually consists of, and one of those is this, my wonderful blog. :) So that's probably the biggest news in my life, but I'll try to come up with some other things that have been going on.

How far back should I go?

The first week in February we had a holiday from the Villagey for Lunar New Year. It's one of the biggest holidays in Korea, so we closed the school for a whole week! I went to a Buddhist meditation retreat, intending to stay the whole week, but ended leaving after 4 days. (This experience is what my ill-fated three-hours-to-write post that was deleted was about. I'll give you the short version here.) It was going fine until the third day when this man came to stay at the temple, claiming he was a Buddhist monk. Even I could tell he wasn't. He knew less about what was going on than I did. The afternoon after his arrival, the head monk at the temple confronted him and asked him what temple he got his monkhood at (I'm not sure of the proper terminology here) and when he couldn't answer satisfactorily, the head monk got super pissed off and kicked him out of the temple. When the man refused to go, the monk began to punch and kick him. Watching this, I decided that this was not the sort of place I wanted to learn enlightenment at. There were other things about the place that made me not like it, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I left that night. Spent the rest of the week with Sean (the afore-mentioned romance) hanging out in a deserted Seoul eating mexican food and Dunkin' Donuts until I was ready to explode.

The week after that I went with Lee and Pip to see Bjork play in Seoul. It was AMAZING!! I was in tears pretty much the whole time. She is such a powerful performer, and though I didn't know much of her music at the time it still was so moving. It was for sure one of the top five concerts of my life. (Hawksley excluded.)

A few weeks after that I went to see maroon 5. A much less satisfying concert experience. But a good fun evening none-the-less.

I've started my drum lessons at last. This weekend was my forth lesson, and if I do say so myself, I am certainly one of the best in the class. :) I try to practice every day, much to the chagrin of my neighbours. The other day while I was banging away I heard a distinct tinkle from the bells I keep on my door. I stopped playing and heard banging on my door and yelling from the hallway. I sheepishly put away my drum and tried not to make a peep for the rest of the night. I put it inside its case to practice now so it only makes a quiet thump when I hit it. It does the trick, but it's not nearly as satisfying.

The spring is reeking havoc on my asthma and I find myself out of breath a lot of the time. The infamous yellow dust is also coming and going of late which doesn't help the problem. I think I'm going to consult a traditional medicine doctor about it, and have given up dairy in an attempt to get it under control. I really want to run a half-marathon in October and my training is way behind. (Okay, my training is back at square one. Darn boys for distracting me and then breaking my heart!)

School is getting busy. Kids are on a waiting list to get in. I guess word has spread that the Villagey is the place to be. My one year anniversary of being in Korea is coming up at the end of this month. I can hardly believe that this time last year I was stressing about what to pack.

I really just wanted to post a quick catch-up note so I could get back on track with my regular postings without feeling daunted by the prospect of writing 3 months worth of posts at one shot. So sorry for the "highlights reel" but I hope to stay on track from now on. And hope to have some exciting things to post about.

Oh! And speaking of exciting things, I was featured in an article in the Suwon News. Here is a picture of it. (A student brought me this clipping and asked for my autograph! Perhaps she's never known anyone who was in the newspaper before. It's not like the Wynard Advance where everyone in town is in it at least once a year.)


I can't tell you what the article says, but it's basically about my opinions on the state of English education in Korea. I don't know why they picked me for the article...but it was pretty fun to do. The interviewer didn't speak English so boss-lady Jeannie did the translating. I told her to make me sound smart. I'm hoping she succeeded. The Korean teachers all assure me it's a nice article.

So that's all I'll say for now. It's dinner time and my tummy is rumbling.

I hope it won't be too long before we meet again!