2014 (The Intentions)

At the beginning of the year, I wrote a list of things I said would happen in 2014. Spoilers: most of those things didn't happen. And yet I'm perfectly happy with most of the results on the list. Having gone through this experience, I think setting intentions and goals is more like creating calls of action for myself. They start to get me in action and the universe in motion, but the results themselves are all over the place! Let's take a look:

The Weekend Before Christmas in Korea

I blinked and Christmas is a mere handful of days away. Korea isn't very serious about Christmas so we'll be hard at work all the way up to the day before and then we'll have the day (but no more than a day) off.

In the meantime, my schedule is filling up to bursting.

Having the Perfect Halloween in Korea

I gotta say, I'm really not that big up on Halloween. I'm way too lazy and cheap to buy a full blown costume just for that one day, all with the expectation that I'd think up something to top myself the next year. As such, I usually use Halloween to wear whatever I wanted in the bizarre, topsy-turvy way I felt like... without having to explain myself. That aside...

고양이과 꼬리

I had a perfect Halloween in Korea. For once, I felt like I had a cultural imperative to dress up for my students, to share with them the joy of dressing up and asking for candy on this random day in autumn. 

Gyeongju, South Korea

We had a three day weekend at the beginning of October and I was honestly at a loss for what to do to spend it. In fact, when I woke up on Friday morning, I wanted to do absolutely and completely nothing.

However, I did promise my friend Jen that I would meet her and the rest of the gang in Gyeongju, a small city less than an hour away from Ulsan. I almost didn't keep that promise out of sheer laziness, but I am extremely happy that I did.

나는 왕자, 너는 왕비

Shakespeare in Busan (and Yang Rou)

(Photo taken by my friend Suvasha)

I've been itching to do some improv since taking a class back in Seattle. Sadly, improv isn't very widespread in Korea. It was hard even to find foreigners who would be down to do some.

I did, however, find the closest thing I could and joined up with a local theater group. Recently, we participated in the Busan International Shakespeare Festival.

Tokyo, Japan

When I was about 6 or 7, Sailor Moon came to the Philippines and I heard about Tokyo and Japan for the first time in my life.

Fireworks in Tokyo
불꽃

 20 years later, I finally visited the city that has been in the back of my mind for ages.

China

For my summer break, I went to mainland China for the first time in my life. Twice.

My contract guarantees me 8 days off in the summer, but the school gets to decide how I get those 8 days. With summer camp dates set by the Ulsan Metropolitan Office of Education (Ulsan MOE), my school split my break into 5 days and 3 days, with the three week camp in between.

My original plan was to travel to Southeast Asia but after talking to my mentor, Jon, I ended up making plans to go to China after all. We had been talking about my coming to visit him and his wife in China (with my friend Alizeh) since December 2013. I wasn't sure I'd manage to pull it off, especially with the China visa turning out to be so exorbitant for US citizens. $160! As it turns out, China sets the price of their visa according to how much the United States charges Chinese citizens for visas.

To make the visa more cost effective, I decided to go to China before and after summer camp.