Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all that jazz

On the eve of 2012, five hours before the rabbit hops out and the year of the dragon storms in, I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I had a wonderful holiday, having the opportunity to spend a few days with the wife and in-laws in 속초 (Sokcho) before heading back to Seoul mid-week to frantically get together my applications for graduate school.

No resolutions this year. But through this whole application process I've come to the realization that I should really do something about the size of my vocabulary. If I'm going to continue on my life as a future academic, I need to stop writing like a high school student.

Anyway, off for my last meal of the year. See you in 2012!

Thanks for reading,

-스티브

Minus One Tyrannical (and Uniquely Fashionable) Dictator

잘가!

Big news out of Pyongyang today, as it is being reported that North Korea's 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-Il has died of a heart attack. Only time will tell what this really means for the Korean peninsula and the rest of the world, but from the intial reports, one can only hope and pray that this will spark the beginning of a new era of positive change north of the DMZ.

And while very few of us will miss Kim's nuclear holocaustic threats, we will always remember Kim Jong-Il for how much he enjoyed looking at things through those stylish, stylish specs.

Until next time,

-스티브

As the First Snow Falls

From my classroom window

I'm going to start off by laying the disclaimer that I have no idea what I'm about to write. Not to discourage anyone from reading that lines that will eventually follow, but I just wanted to put that out there. I'm at work with around 10 minutes before my next class starts, and I haven't posted in a little while. So here goes...

December is by now well underway. The air is getting colder, Christmas is getting nearer, A Charlie Brown Christmas has once again added itself to my listening rotation, and today, I woke up to the first few flakes of snow in the air. Except for the cold, those are all good things, but I'm not going to lie. I really don't like winter. But I've also realized that the biggest reason I don't like things is because that sometime, someway, somehow I made a decision not to like it. So instead of being down about the approaching winter, I'm going to put on the best attitude I can. Besides, without winter, you can't have spring. And spring is pretty cool.

Life is going well, as usual, but the pace of things is getting hard to manage. Ever since the wedding, life has been flying by at the rate that I can't even get my weeks straight. The list of things I need to do is neither getting longer or shorter, it just is. I think I'm really going to be thankful for my week-long winter vacation when it comes. It doesn't look like I'm going be going anywhere exotic this year. That's unfortunate, but not necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure I'll go somewhere domestic. And I'm sure that it will be a good trip.

What else? The Steelers keep winning, which has nothing to Korea, but at least makes me happy. I will admit that it's pretty senseless to watch a bunch of guys on the other side of the world run around with a ball on a field. Especially when very few people around you care (or even know what you're talking about, for that matter). But that kind of senselessness keeps me somewhat connected with the world-back-home and still brings a smile to my face. That's good enough for me.

Class is about to start, so I should be going. One last thing I just came across in the newspaper. It seems that all foreign high school teachers and potentially all middle and elementarty teachers in Seoul will be losing their jobs soon. That really doesn't affect me directly, but it does prove that, despite what my high school economics teacher taught me, there IS such thing as a free lunch. It just comes at the cost of others.

That's all for now. I'll be back soon. In the meantime, in this season of love togetherness, let's keep our pepper spray and tear gas to ourselves.

Until next time,

-스티브