The Been Briefing

4:00 PM
A package arrived from my mom right before I left for school, eliciting much joy and excitement! Finally! my new running shoes. They fit perfectly.
And mascara... YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
And of course, there's nothing better than a note from your mom. May I just say that I have the best and coolest mom in the ENTIRE world?!


10:00AM
Up and At 'Em
I'm awake, eating my banana-nut muffin and drinking some hibiscus tea. I'm almost ready to face the day! If only my Step 3 students would TALK today.

Yesterday was Korean Independence Day, so there was no school. Wooohoo! Esther and I celebrated Tuesday night with another movie night. This time we watched Seabiscuit. All movies I watch on my labtop - Region 1 on DVDs - are compliments of guys back home. Thank you, everyone. The DVDs you sent... I show them to my kids and to my Korean friends. But I digress. I think Seabiscuit was educational and easy for her to understand. Somehow it had escaped me before the extent to which its' plot moved forward without dialogue.

After Esther left, I had the whole day to myself. Now - for some - the idea of having nothing planned for a whole day and being all alone is a daunting idea. I have found, to my amazement, that while there are fleeting moments of antsiness or loneliness, I do tolerably well. Also, I have had a cold (perhaps worsened by the oh-so-fun ice skating escapade this weekend), so I'm trying to recover. Mrs. Kim and I visited the doctor a few days ago - I for my worsened bronchial state and she for her stomach. With pills for my cold and medicine for my cough, I feel that responsibility to be a good steward of my body and keep myself low-key until I'm fully healthy again.

In any case, I gave my apartment a much-needed cleaning. (There is always the little thought in the back of my mind that I need to keep my possessions to a minimum; everything has to be carted back to the States in 6 months.) So even I had my own little Spring Cleaning session! I also caught up on laundry, listened to some music and answered some emails. I read in my Bible and Don Quixote.

Oh, on another note, I have not been studying Korean at all. It is a rather interesting linguistic dilemma I've had. I learn a Korean word, and two weeks later, one week, one day, even ten minutes later I've already forgotten it. The British line rings in my mind: "I haven't the foggiest." I think Korean requires a different part of the brain, because no matter how hard I try I can't seem to remember the words. Yet, I learn a German, a Latin, a Greek, a Spanish, Italian or Slovak word (all Indo-European languages -though different families: Germanic, Italic, Hellenic, or Slavic) and with a little vocal repetition and making a mental note, it's stuck deep inside of me. And if it's not in my immediate memory bank, I can just dig back in my "deeper memory resources" and I have an "oh, of course! duh" moment. So without feeling too great a loss, I have returned to my on-the-side studies of German and Slovak. I do not want to lose the work of previous years because of absence. Now THAT would be a real tragedy.

With that... I am off to conquer this day. Pay exciting bills and go teach my children some English.