School Starts in Three Days!!!

Hi everyone! School starts in just three days!! I'm trying to disregard this scary thought for a little bit longer by adding a quick follow-up to Daniel's post from earlier this week. We just returned from our three-day faculty retreat, which took place on Korea's east coast. I was excited that we would be staying right next to the ocean, but it unfortunately rained the first two days we were there, and although it was almost nice outside today, we only had about half an hour of free time before we returned to Seoul. I still managed to spend most of that time happily with my legs in the water. :) I wish that I had had the last few days to prepare for my new classes (instead of what we spent most of our time doing in our sessions), but I'm glad that I am much better acquainted with the new teachers now than I was before. So before my life gets even more crazy the next few weeks, I thought that I'd put up a few pictures from the places we visited during our fantastic summer (you can see the progression of Daniel's beard). We hope to be better about blogging this year, so we'll see how we do. Love to you all!!


My homeroom on the last day of school. :)



Our first day (of our two-week Asian tour with Sarah) in Beijing.


At the Ming tombs.


The Great Wall at Mutianyu.


At an amazing dim sum dessert place in Hong Kong.


Visiting Kelson in Singapore.


At a large Buddhist temple in Penang, Malaysia.


At the beach in Langkawi, Malaysia (before Sarah's jellyfish sting). :(


Langkawi.


On Mount Rainier with my family.


Visiting Seattle. :)


Grandma's early birthday celebration.


Sarah and Ben in Grand Marais, Minnesota.


Lutsen, Minnesota. :)


Seeing Ashley! In the Carleton arboretum.


Sailing with Dennis!


At the "pizza farm" in Wisconsin with Phil and Jill.


Harvard!


In Cape May, New Jersey with my family.


Danny burying Robby in the sand.


My cousin Julia!


Playing the piano with Julia and Uncle David.

We're Back!

Here we are again in Korea! We arrived yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, Korea time. Leslie went to bed early last night; I went out shopping for groceries, etc. A few highlights from my evening:

• I went to Costco first, then to HomePlus. I took public transportation to both places, and taxis home. I needed to put my purchases in the trunks of the taxis. Both taxi drivers opened their fuel tanks by accident before finding the right button to open their trunks.
• Speaking of taxis, all taxis here are equipped with navigation devices that are freakishly advanced. It's absolutely standard for taxis to have little computer screens that have all of Seoul and its vicinity completely mapped out in 3D. The one in the taxi we took home from the airport would show a picture of any potentially confusing intersection or exit as it would look through the windshield, with an arrow pointing to the correct lane. The one in the taxi I took home from Costco would beep whenever the car exceeded the speed limit, and flash the speed limit in large numerals on the screen.
• Getting Honey Nut Cheerios out of the package in which they had been shipped to Costco: this involved tearing through several sheets of plastic and then wrestling with the tightly-wedged boxes to get one out. Finally successful, I turned around to see a Korean woman behind me looking at me expectantly. I offered her my box and she took it. Then I had to go back and wrestle another one out. The Korean woman's husband helped me.
• Most Koreans I've encountered are extremely helpful, even if there's little shared language. We had more luggage than the two of us could easily handle coming back from the airport, so the taxi driver left his car to walk with us to the front door of our apartment, pulling one of our suitcases. Asking for help in a store often leads to the person you ask going on an expedition to find another employee with better English to help you. That's how I got my Brita water filter in Homeplus. The English-speaker had a hard time pronouncing "filter" (it sounded more like "pulter") so I went into a detailed explanation to make sure he understood me--hopefully I didn't come across as too much of a jerk. Then he relayed my request to the first employee I'd found, who brought me right to what I wanted. A guy I passed coming into my apartment with all my Costco bags offered to help me carry them up the stairs when I found that the elevator was out of order. He was walking out; I pointed over my head to my apartment on the second floor to tell him I didn't have far to go, and would be fine on my own.

Today we can spend the day in, relaxing and maybe getting a little work done; we'll go out for dinner and drinks to celebrate a colleague's birthday this evening.

It's good to be back!