Ahhhh...

It's Friday and I'm very happy.

It's also the beginning of the second month of the semester. March went fast. I feel much more relaxed at the moment for some reason. Maybe because I just had a nice weekend in Jeju for the Fulbright conference, but also because I have less deadlines and worries at the moment. The first month was hectic and I had lots of little things to keep tabs on. Right now I'm relatively stress-free. I have to remember to go to Yeosu airport this week and pay for the plane tickets for Mom and I for Jeju in May, but that's the only thing sort of dangling over me at the moment.

So yes, the conference in Jeju was great. It was good to see other ETAs and I did have a few requisite moments of 'I wish I'd gotten to know you better, and now we only have three months left and you live four hours away.' We only had one full day of actual workshops, so the rest of the weekend through Tuesday afternoon was just sightseeing and hanging out. I'm looking forward to going back to Jeju Island in May with Mom. She's coming in just three weeks.

The weather has also been great lately. It's suddenly pretty warm. I've graduated out of my puffy winter coat and if this keeps up I'll be graduating out of my slightly lighter coat as well (if you know me well you know I get cold easily, so this is saying a lot). All the trees are in bloom now, too. I found out this morning I have a four day weekend next weekend so I may try to go to Ssangeysa temple on Thursday. They have a famous road lined with cherry trees, and of course it really overflows during the peak times, but the 14th will be sort of the end of the peak times and a weekday as well, so it might be a good time to go. In any case, I don't get four day weekends very often at all, so I should take advantage of it.

What other news? A couple days ago I went to SOS for my volunteer work as I do every week and it went well. I devised a new game to play (a sort of variation on the old memory game Concentration) and the classes went smoothly, even though I think the game was a little too difficult for the youngest ones. Another highlight was that Ha Young, who is a first grader in middle school now, showed up again. I think I hadn't seen him in about four months. He was the student that used to ride back to my neighborhood with me because he went to hagwon in Yeonhyang-dong. He's pretty good at English and pretty talkative. He went to England for an English program back before my winter break even started, thus the extended absence. On Wednesday, he immediately tried to fool me into thinking he was a new student. It almost worked, too. I wonder if he knew how different he looked. He'd gotten taller and slimmer and I think maybe even his voice sounded different, though maybe that's my memory playing tricks on me because his voice seemed higher to me and that seems counterintuitive. But the sly smiles he kept shooting my way and his way of calling me "Teacher" gave it away. It was nice to see him again. I think I've been feeling closer to all my students this semester. Maybe part of it is I've gotten a bit more comfortable in the classroom (though I'm not necessarily a better teacher for it). I will miss these kids when I leave this summer. I need to remember to bring my camera to school and to SOS once it gets fixed.

Tonight I'm going to relax and read and maybe rent one of the Korean movies I've been meaning to watch. "Oldboy" has been getting a lot of acclaim internationally, I've been trying to rent it here but it's always out. Cheers to the "Korean wave" of pop culture reaching America.