My New Years Resolution is to Update the Blog More Often

I doubt I'll stick to this one (especially since I'm writing this more than two weeks after New Years), but here's hoping I stay true to my word.

Anyways, its been a hectic few weeks at school. After vacation, I went back to work with an increased courseload. I'm teaching an additional seven classes a week during the month of January. We are doing pre-preschool for the students who will be starting preschool in March so I had to pick up a few of the preschool classes originally covered by the teacher now teaching the new students. I'm now teaching the six year old students their math and science lessons. I like having more interaction and a closer bond with the preschool students, although I do prefer my elementary classes to preschool. In addition to teaching more preschool, my school just like most hakwons, offers special winter classes because public schools are on break. So I'm teaching an extra elementary class three days a week.

Besides from school, I haven't been doing much during the weeks. I've just really enjoyed my down time and want to take advantage of the little I get now. Plus, it's getting cold in Daegu and its hard to get up the desire to go outside.

But I'm doing my best to take advantage of my weekends. This past weekend my friend from Semester at Sea, Sean, and his girlfriend, Zuzanna, came into Daegu to visit and explore the city and a nearby temple. We hung out in Daegu all saturday. We went to a "board game cafe," which is exactly what it sounds like - a place where you can go and play board games and enjoy a nice beverage. We played Settlers of Cattan, a game I fell in love with back in Boston/Somerville. I was so happy they have it in Korea. After that we grabbed some food at this popular western restaurant, The Holy Grill, and then we enjoyed the Daegu nightlife for a few hours, heading back to my place at a respectable hour so we could get up early to check out Haeinsa Temple.

We got up and headed to the bus terminal and caught a 12pm bus to Haeinsa, which was 1.5 hours away from Daegu. I slept the majority of the bus ride, it was great. Haeinsa is a functioning Buddhist temple, about 500 monks still live there. It was built at around 800 ad. I don't really know anything more about it, but it was beautiful in a fairly secluded location in the mountains of Korea.