Returning from hiatus

I see it has been more than two months since my last post to this blog. To be honest, I haven't felt like writing about this of late, but since I am now down to the final nine months of my ESL career, I'd better get back at it.

Last time, I was talking about my first job at ULI. I had been there for all of three weeks when the school had it's summer vacation -- five whole days! One of the Korean-American teachers, Jake, asked me to join him and some friends on Korea's east coast for the holiday. Since I knew nobody and looked forward to getting away from my roommates, I said yes.

This was where I learned about Korea's legendary traffic problems during any kind of holiday period. A trip that would normally take three hours ended up lasting the better part of nine hours. We weren't driving along the highway so much as we were crawling. Walking was literally faster. It was absolutely no problem to get out of the car, walk to the side of the highway, take a leak, smell some flowers, and catch 40 winks on the soft earth before having to return to the car, as it would have only travelled some 20 feet in that time. Okay, so I'm joking about the 40 winks, but I've made my point.

Another pleasant discovery of vacationing in Korea was what a beach turns into during summer vacation: namely, a tent city (or refugee camp, if that provides a better visualization). There were so many people that I couldn't see the sand in some places. And the garbage!

Well, enough of the bad stuff. This trip resulted in the chance meeting that would change the course of my life. One of the friends Jake brought along was this shy girl, whose English name was Heather. She was a student of Jake's at ULI, and I think he was keen for her. But she only had eyes for me - HA! Over the course of our stay at Naksan Beach in early August 1995, Heather and I got to know each other just a little bit, but enough so to kindle a spark that would rise into full flame in the fall of that year. Wow, wasn't that poetic.

I had a good time on that trip. Even though I didn't realize how significant it was at the time, it obviously turned out to be the cause of my staying in Korea for far more than one year. Here I am, in 2006, blogging away from east Asia. With a wife. And two kids.