Starting to catch up.

Summer in Korea is a hot and sticky wasteland.
It's too hot, and I honestly didn't care to go outside at all.
The result? a whole lot of taxi bills, and addiction to Iced Chai Tea Lattes (with soy), about fifteen extra pounds, and an electricity bill that could reduce people to tears. I also ate a lot of pizza. I know that that's not exactly a summer-time escape the heat food, but the oven would do a remarkable job of fighting my air conditioner. I often make the joke now about turning on the oven and the air conditioner at the same time to let them fight, but it's a joke that is based in fact.
Fact: The oven wins.
So, yeah, that's balls. I've put back on a lot of the weight that I lost, but I'm already taking it off again now that the weather is cool again. It's really terrible, it honestly is. It's so sticky... and then every place is overly-air conditioned, so a lot of people wind up getting sick, just from the transition from hot to cold and back to hot again. I couldn't sing for about a month, just from waking up every morning with a sore throat from my apartment being so dry.
Work has been an adventure. Brooke and Ryan are gone now, which has been tough, but luckily, they left at the same time as two new teachers arrived, Bobby and Meena, who have proven themselves to be super-cool people. And there's Jim, who looks enough like Colonel Sanders to be entertaining on those grounds alone. Luckily, he's also entertaining on other levels. Which is good, because a lot of his friends are blind.
I tried to extend my contract through to December, but I was told that they would only extend to November. Then Mr C decided to use that time to head home for a vacation (Thank God, if anyone ever needed a vacation, it's Mr C). Then they decided that maybe I could stay, but I had already decided to head home for December, and then back here for Christmas. I think I've said it before, but I think it's really important to be here for the people we know, because we're all away from our families, and we really don't have anyone but eachother. So I'll be coming back here.
Anyway, they told me a few weeks later that they wanted me to stay until December after all, but I had already made my plans. Then that changed Mr C's vacation plan, which was about getting a surgery or something, then a doctor's visit, and now it's just a vacation... which is weird, because the illness keeps getting downgraded. Which is good, I guess! So now I'm staying, and there is an extra teacher. So I will be balancing out for Mr C while he is away, and when he gets back on October 15th, I will be taking Mrs Woo's classes while she is off on maternity leave. The weird thing is that because Mr C has shortened his vacation and I will only be covering Mrs Woo's classes for three weeks, it means that most of my work obligation will be over by November 1st or so, which will leave me with almost a month of contract with no apparent work. Mr C told me the other day that my "contract will be honoured", so I guess that means that I won't be kicked out of the country. Which is good news. But who knows what anything really means here until the day? Seriously, everything is up in the air until the moment it's a mess on the floor. But, there is a really cool potential scenario now in which I have no classes for a month, but I still get paid. That would be SWEET! Although I have offered to do some recording for them, since they need to make some recordings for TOEIC tests and for listening tests in the classrooms. It's easy stuff for me to do, since I have all the equipment anyway, and I would be able to work at my own pace on it, and I could work during the day, leaving my evenings free to go bowling and make key chains with cutesy photos in them.
Anyway, this is random, but I'm currently sitting in a Starbucks near Chunnam University with Vanessa. She's working on lesson plans and I am writing in a word document that will sometime become a blog entry. We are reaching new heights of pretentious stereotype embodiment. haha. Anyway, some old guy just walked by, and since I was people-watching, I noticed that he had the finest comb-over ever witnessed this side of the Rio Grande. It was perfect, it was made of several groups of strands glued together with pommade. It made me so excited, I think I peed a little.
So... back to the life recap. Although, I suppose that was more indicative of my life than anything I've already written. yikes.