We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog For An Important Announcement

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Your Blog Has Been Pre-empted For The Children

I haven't posted on the blog in quite some time - there's a reason. I've been pretty damn busy. Happy to be busy, frankly, since for a while there, I was pretty bored. I had a couple of classes added to my schedule to accomodate the summer influx of students (since I don't work at a public school, and parents tend to use hagwons sometimes as day-care, my job gets busier in the summer). I've been studying Korean with a couple of native Koreans, in trade for help with their English. They both speak damn near perfect English, but want academic vocabulary and information on English grad schools, so I'm digging through the vast and cobwebbed corners in my mind for all those Latinate roots I thought would only be useful for the GRE. I've been photographing everything in sight and trying to trim the fat from my already bloated library of streaky, cool-looking night-time pictures that only look cool if there aren't 30 of them in a row. I've been trying to get all of my music burned onto my computer, so that I can trade record collections with a friend of mine who has an external hard-drive.

Also, I've been trying to set up an email correspondence between some of my friends and family in America and one of my classes in Korea. So far it's a resounding success - the rest of this post will be devoted to the pictures of the student correspondents. A big shout-out and thank you to all the people who made this possible: Brittain, Colin, Mike, Mom, Robyn, Jim, Lauren, and Slaveia (my Korea to America penpal volunteers), and special props to Jeff, Cait, Josh, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma (good luck and lots of love), Tim, Asher, Steph, BAM, and all my other email buddies (if you're forgotten here, it's because my mind is under stress) helping to keep me sane. I will try to get a regular post covering my trip to Geumjeongsan up tomorrow; I just can't do it all in a day. Thanks to you all, and peace.

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Photos

Subway
Mmm-hmm. This is the subway.

Midory
Midory is one of my conversation partners. She refused to have a photo taken, since she wasn't made up. Our next conversation topic is, by her suggestion (with no seeming irony), "lookism." Go figure.

Blurry night photo
Five points to anyone who can tell me what this is a picture of.

Christine
Isn't she a sweet-heart?

Hollie
Hollie is ridiculously cute, and she gives me guff for smoking cigarettes. Good for her.

Olivia
Olivia - who knows what she is pondering? Possibly why Sarah is diving into her portrait in the background.

Paul
After this photo was taken, I frisbee-tossed a Kleenex box at Paul's head. I didn't throw it hard enough to hurt, but he did stop calling other students names. I feel bad about it.

Sarah
Sarah looks like she knows something, and is very satisfied with her knowledge. This picture kind of freaks me out.

Willy
Willy intentionally refused to smile in his portrait - it is evidently taking almost all of his strength.

The class
The really old student on the right is actually Kenny, the class' Korean teacher, who is blocking Paul out of the shot.

Comments

[Lauren]

Fear the wrath of the super rad, the super rad.
Andrew, I'm so excited for penpal-ing. Whoot. And I'm afraid that I am absolutely blown away by that picture of Sarah... looks like my kind of kid. Also, it appears that she's something of a fashionista. Thanks for letting me do this, big brother. I miss you, and I love you like nuts.