6 months

I can't believe I've been here 6 months already, my contract is half over.  Time really flies.  Things are going great.  Even better than my first year.  I'm spending my time studying Korean (almost everyday), meeting friends, and meeting language exchange partners.  I have also been doing a little jewelry work.

Bad thing is I've been putting on weight again.  Too much eating and not enough exercise.  I joined the gym in the summer and was doing cardio and lifting, but stopped going when I got busy with school starting.  I am going to join again soon.  

My neighborhood

Here are some random photos around my neighborhood. 

 My apartment and school:

 Bus stop near my home:

Studying Korean for 1 year

It's now been 1 year since I really started studying Korean regularly and keeping track of what I am doing.  I first started in fall 2009, but I was just studying on and off and it was poorly organized, so I really only consider myself to have started 1 year ago.  My study has been almost entirely on my own.  I haven't taken any classes, or had any tutors, but there are people I ask questions and practice talking with.  I'm disappointed in my abilities after 1 year, but I spent a lot of time trying different ways to study, different books, websites, etc, trying to figure out what's best.  Most of my study has been reading and writing, and talking to friends through Kakao Talk (which is hugely popular in Korea), so my reading and writing skills are so much better than my speaking and listening, which are terrible.  Recently I started meeting a language exchange partner to practice the speaking and listening. It sucks I mostly wasted my first year in Korea not studying much, but it keeps me motivated to study cause I don't want to waste another year. 

I went to see Men In Black 3 in Gangnam, Seoul yesterday.  It was a totally forgettable movie.  Only interesting thing is towards the end the subtitles got out of sync with the movie and they had to stop the movie to get the subtitles in sync and replay 5 minutes of it. 

My friends wedding

My friend Colin McDonald, who I have known for about 35 years, got married May 26th in Kyrgyzstan.  He has been teaching English here in Korea for about 3 years now, and met his wife here.  She is ethnically Korean, but born and raised in Kyrgyzstan.  Most of her family is there, so that's where they had the wedding.  I was one of two best men.  Because it's the middle of the semester I was only able to go for a few days and didn't get to see much.

The wedding was held at a resort on Lake Issyk Kul, out on a pier which is barely visible in the photo below.  In the distance, what looks like clouds, are actually the snowy tops of mountains.

 View from the pier:

Back in Korea

I came back to Korea March 1st.  I'm living in Pyeongtaek now.  It's about an hour south of Seoul.  I'm teaching at a public high school again. 

I'm glad to be in Korea again. 

"When are you going back to Korea?"

That is the question people have been asking me for the past 3 1/2 months. And for the past 3 1/2 months my answer has usually been, "soon."

Most people who I talk to on a regular basis and know nothing about teaching English there probably now think getting a job in Korea is really difficult. Finding just any job is easy. Finding a good job can be difficult. Or if you are like me it can be really difficult if you are both very picky about the job and don't put much effort into finding one.

So the reason I am still here is I just haven't tried very hard to find a job. I'm trying, but what I mean is, I think for as picky about jobs as I have been I have not been trying hard enough. If I had lower standards, I could have had a job by now, I have turned down several job offers for various reasons. I don't mean low standards, just lower.

Some people may be interested to know salary was not one of the things I was being so picky about. Most schools have offered about the same pay. The biggest things I was looking at were location, location, location, working hours, and the age group I would teach.

But now it's August and I am really starting to feel restless about getting back. So I have to relax my standards a little and start putting more effort in to the job hunt.