Pre-Korea ~ September ~ October ~ November  December ~ January ~ CHINA ~ February

August 31, 2007 This is it. I'm leaving tomorrow. It's about 1:30 in the morning and my flight leaves in 11 hours. I am very ready to go. Well, not physically of course. I haven't even started packing, but mentally I'm ready. I'm so tired of waiting to expect things. Nothing is ever what you expect. Hawaii was a good idea before Korea. I went into a gas station the other day to get a snack. I didn't recognize any of the food in one of the aisles. Most of it was in Japanese, although I did see Tai food as well. I've already gotten used to eating rice with every meal. It seems odd that we don't do that on the mainland. Everything in Hawaii is so much money, so the high prices of living in a city probably won't phase me as much. Milk (not on sale) is about $6-7 a gallon! That's crazy! Everything in the two grocery stores on the North Shore is at least a dollar more than back at home because they have to ship it out here. I should put a picture up so this doesn't look boring.          This is the little hellion, Mahea. She's really cute in this picture. Anyway- Hawaii's also got little Korean BBQs all over the place, so it is nice to eat Americanized Korean food a little bit more before I get the real deal. This is Pono, to the right. He's a cute kid, too. Gigantic. I'm trying to imitate his expression. This is Pono at his first football game. It's still the pre-season at Kahuku, but they played their game at the big stadium in Honolulu. Football's a pretty big deal in Kahuku, which is an understatement if anything. I like how Pono's got his little Bear's jacket on. Yeah... he's not really going to have a choice, whether or not he plays football throughout school. But if he keeps up his abnormally large growth, he's not going to have a problem playing. We had a big birthday party for Mahea's second birthday. We decorated the inside and out of the house and had a massive amount of 1-3 year-olds running everywhere for a few hours. I guess it looks kind of shabby in this picture, but everything seemed much more colorful when everyone was there. I'd better wrap this up. If you're reading this, and you have access to a webcam, you better have skype hooked up on your computer. My skypename is megadeathvortex, which is awesome, so don't make fun of it. This is a picture from my webcam. Mahea's not sure about it so she's pretending like she's uninterested, unaware that she's being filmed. Haha... I'm ditching my American cell-phone tomorrow so the only way to contact me will be through skype, or e-mail, or facebook. I'm going to try to be online as much as possible, but if no one calls me it will be really depressing. If you're in Chicago, it's a 10/9 hour difference with daylight savings, if you're in Miami, it's a 10/11 hour difference. I'll also be working on weekdays, but whenever I'm at my apartment I'll have it on. Okay, that's all. I really need to start packing. I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight. That wraps it up for Hawaii. Unless I see any tonight, my bathroom cockroach count was only six. No centipedes. Oh, by the way, that chirping noise I heard last time was a lizard/gecko. Apparently they chip.

August 14, 2007 So, I'm spending a lot of time in Hawaii right now, which I should probably elaborate on. It sounds really spoiled and ridiculous, but I've been here so many times that it's kind of lost that "vacation" edge. Hawaii's odd. There's so many people with no money here who are living on land that is worth so much. My sister's house is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but if it were in Illinois it wouldn't be worth much. The house isn't bad compared to their neighbors', but there are random chickens and dogs and big bugs all over the place. Don't get me wrong, though, every morning I still wake up to the beautiful Hawaiian mountains outside the window. Here's the view from my room:                                  So now you probably all think I'm crazy. I should show you a picture of the big cockroach I caught on the stairs yesterday and the boar that's tied up to the tree next to my sister's house. haha... Anyway, it's really nice to see the family and such. Mahealani (my niece) has gotten much bigger and she just walks around the house, talking all day.                                       She likes me when she's in a playful mood. If not, she pretty much doesn't want anything to do with me. Oh well. Give her time. Here's a picture of their turtle I like to feed.                                 Haha... random turtle. Okay, so I'm starting to learn Korean. I can read and pronounce the text, although I don't understand what I'm saying when I do so. I'm learning from this little book, which probably won't get me speaking Korean, but hopefully it will give me a really good foundation to start learning it when I'm there. I was studying it on the beach the other day by my other sister's apartment.                                        It was really nice, except for the crabs that crawl out of the sand all over the place.  I'm sorry, but crabs really creep me out. I have no idea why. They're so afraid of people, but it's probably the animal I am most afraid of in life. They give me chills. So anyway, I really think I can get a ground on this language and get to speaking it when I get there. It's not as hard as I thought it would be, but I guess learning any language is easier when you're actually going to use it. Okay... some animal just "chirped" in their kitchen. ... hmmm... it kind of sounded like an angry chipmunk... I'm going to go investigate.

August 7, 2007 I got my e-mail yesterday, placing me in an elementary school. That was surprising. I'm at my sister's house in Hawaii right now. She taught special-ed kindergarten here a few years back. She's giving me books and such of things I'll probably be able to use. I'm starting to realize now that I'm really not ready to teach elementary school. I'll have to do things like sing songs and be really animated all the time. Hmmm... I can do it, I'm just not sure I'll enjoy doing it for a full year. Or maybe I will. I'm not really nervous about lesson plans and things anymore. It might be harder in the classroom, but preparation will be a lot easier. I can always have them play a game or something if we have too much time. Also, at elementary school they really won't know much English, so I'll probably see a lot more progress per child, which will be really nice. Now I'm just wondering about the school itself. I'll find out about that on Wednesday.

July 10, 2007 To those of you who don't know (which isn't very many people at this point) I'm going to teach English in Korea for a year, starting in September. At this point, I don't know much. I know I'm going to be teaching in Incheon, which is right next to Seoul. It's pretty much the harbor. It's a big city. It's got maybe four million in it, give or take two million. I'm not sure what kind of school I'll be teaching in, though. I originally put high school down on my application, but I e-mailed my program coordinator awhile ago and told her I could do elementary school as well. Both have got their perks. Elementary school might be fun. I can play games with the kids and probably dress a little more casually every day. In high school, however, they'll be able to speak much better English already and I can probably talk to them like adults. I have the feeling though, that my coordinator will put me in a high school because I told her I might try to put on an English play or something. I'm not sure what that means but we were talking about it in the interview and it sounded like fun. I got my visa a few days ago. Maybe it was yesterday, actually. It's pretty crazy. Everytime I get something new, my plane ticket and now my visa, it feels much more real. I wonder when it's going to really hit me that I'm  going. I'm pretty excited. Anyway, hopefully this website will serve as a nice blog that I can post things on. Also, hopefully it will motivate me to update it more often. I'm going to buy a Canon D-SLR. I'm pretty excited about that, too. I haven't had an SLR camera since mid-high school. I don't think I have ever taken a long exposure shot with an SLR before. That's pretty crazy. Wait... this blog is supposed to be about Korea. I think that's all I have to say about that right now. Check back in two months. Then it should start getting interesting.