Ending Orientation

Orientation feels forever long. It's an isolated bubble in South Korea full of English speaking people from several different countries, pretty isolated from Korea proper when it comes to actual culture and daily interactions. Beautiful location at Daejin University and an awesome way to meet people, especially people you'll be friends with for the year (or more). Certain sessions left me feeling intimidated. Certain sessions left me feeling excited and at ease. I did my demonstration lesson with two other friends, and I feel a definite confidence boost from doing it. Not to say that a classroom full of 40 Korean kids won't still throw me off my comfort level. Quite the opposite! But at least I'll have an idea of how to act and what to do or not do! Excited for Jeju. 

Beauty fun freedom learning time!

 The monstrous hill to get to anything at Daejin University.

Drinks! I had one called Confidence the other day (made me feel great obviously).

Orientation

Here's a picture of where I'm at as of now, Daejin University. Doing orientation week with a bunch of other jet-lagged English speakers (from U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, etc.) Hot and humid. Always reassuring to hear that other people have never taught before. Hard to keep track of everyone's names, but now we're splitting up into smaller groups based on where you'll be teaching. So, I'm meeting other Jeju people, that's nice. I'm a little tired.

Decision

"But I regarded the matter as something which had been decided and which now simply had to be carried out. I often used this method for deciding difficult cases. In stage one I entertain the thing purely as a hypothesis, and in stage two I count my stage one thinking as a fixed decision on which there is no going back. I recommend this technique to any of you who are not good at making decisions."

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That quote above is taken from internal monologue in Iris Murdoch's book, Under the Net. I place it here because I can relate to it, and I have definitely relied on this type of process many times in my life, maybe even every time that an important decision really was all mine and relatively unclear or even uncalled for (like, choosing a college, studying abroad, breaking up, moving, so many many other things, now going to South Korea for a year). 

When big changes land in our laps or enter our minds that can't be ignored, we're probably all like that. I'm grateful for the fictional character's eloquence though, because these sorts of things float murkily in my head with the feeling of being on the tip of my tongue but never forming, a sneeze that disappointingly disappears and offers no relief.

All this to say, I made the decision and I'm carrying it out, but I don't necessarily have the confidence in myself yet. If I focus too long on uprooting myself and doing it, I have a 7% panic (I judge this by looking at my panic-o-meter, which is a cute little gauge on my left arm, don't you have one?). 7% isn't really a big deal, but the fact that there is any panic is a little unnerving. I guess I feel unprepared, or unfit to teach a bunch of Korean kids. It's hard to differentiate from excitement, though, so maybe I'm just really amped up.

Anyways,

I had posted 3 different academic articles on here to showcase my writing, in case anyone was to click on the link to this blog that I had posted on LinkedIn. It's fitting now that I have let go of them, not that they're deleted forever or anything, but that I have removed them from here because this was never intended for that. And I'm not currently pursuing the goal of someone recognizing my writing abilities to offer me a job.

Instead, I'm going to make it up as I go in Jeju Province, South Korea. It's an island. EPIK found me to be qualified enough to offer me a position there as an assistant English teacher, so I'll trust them that they've made a decent decision. It looks insanely beautiful.

I hope it feels like being in a video game,

because that's what these pictures bring to mind.

Eliot

"And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?"

T.S. Eliot

My Flyer for the HC Student Fair

Recipe

milan's recipe for a tasty pasta dish:

1. Cook the pasta. 2. Take some salami/sausage and stir-fry it until it's crispy. 3. Mix the pasta with tuna in oil (one can), the salami/sausage, some cheese (gouda, emental, eidam, green cheese etc.) and with Mexican vegetable (you can buy a special mixture of Mexican vegetable, if not, just use some red beans, peas, corn and baby-carrot). 4. Put some sour cream on it. 5. Put some basil on it. 6. Serve the pasta a la Milan to the hungry Ryan :)