Donkey!

My annual winter hibernation mode after the holidays hasn't made for very interesting blogging. Now somehow it's already February and we've magically been here over six months. I'm surprised at how comfortable I feel in Korea but with that comfort comes the guilt of not learning enough of the language or not traveling as much as I had intended. Oh well, I imagine there's no such thing as enough communication or enough exploration.

As if to further tie myself down to speaking only English and a abiding by a regular routine, I'm preparing for a career change back to engineering. I'll start at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on February 16th. While I'm ecstatic to be back on the career track and it'll be very convenient to work on the Army base near Andrew, I'm sad to quit teaching and lose the connection to my students. It's been a great opportunity to be part of the Korean community and appreciate the hilarity and headaches of teaching. Even so, my kindergartners have found a way to make me almost 100% unreluctant to return to engineering. Out of the blue they've starting harassing me in a completely inappropriate way: they fold their hands in the "here's the church, here's the steeple" way and run at my backside, trying to poke me right in the middle of my butt with their pointer fingers while they yell, "Donkey!" What the heck? I have no idea where this came from but it's challenging to spend an hour with six five-year-olds without getting poked in the butt at least once while I'm at the chalkboard or bent over to help a student. Seriously, should I be proud that they're learning new vocabulary words (like donkey and rude) or ashamed that the next teacher will inherit such bad behavior? Little rascals!

So is everyone ready for the Super Bowl? Instead of Super Bowl Sunday, we're celebrating Super Bowl Monday. Kickoff is at 8:38am so we're joining some friends for a breakfast.... including mimosas. The really unnatural thing about watching the Super Bowl overseas is that the American Forces Network rebroadcasts television programming from the States but has commercial breaks for military propaganda instead of the normal advertisements for cars, soft drinks, and Tim Tebow. What will the Super Bowl be without the commercials? We'll find out on Monday.