Week 30, 31, 32, 33, & 34: Decisions decisions
Hello everyone!! It’s been awhile since I last posted. I hope y’all are doing fine and dandy. Anyhow, I am back in the swing of things, back to boxing and I’m back in my second week of classes since summer break. Summer break was amazing and I wish I was still on it but it is nice to see my students again. I think I left off on the last blog of going to Jeju Island which was amazing. After Jeju, I had my three day summer camp at my little school that went really well! The kids enjoyed all of the activities I planned and they all had fun.
After the summer camp, I got my Lasek surgery. So before going into the surgery, I wasn’t all that nervous about it because it didn’t seem like a super complicated procedure. However, since I do boxing, I had to get Lasek instead of LASIK due to the risk of head impact from boxing. Lasek takes longer to recover from and it’s a lot more painful. The first three days of my recovery were brutal, like extremely brutal. I could barely open my eyes and my eyes were in pain and felt so so so incredibly uncomfortable. But after the third day, my eyes were much better and I was able to see. I can now say, my eyes are doing well and I’m so happy I got the surgery. It feels weird not having to wear glasses and the biggest times I notice is when I don’t have fog/steam in front of my face from wearing glasses and a mask. I got my surgery done with one of my best friends here and so she stayed with me for about three weeks total. It was nice to have a roommate and someone to take care of me for my eye surgery as well as just having nice company around.
After the eye surgery, I also had planned on this for quite a while but I got a tattoo on my right bicep. It’s of a truck and lavenders to represent my parents. I had thought of this tattoo idea for awhile but had’t found an artist that I liked until a couple of months ago. Anyhow, the tattoo took about four hours to complete but the entire session was about 6 hours as we had to change parts of the design I didn’t like. I think in the end, it turned out really well and I’m super happy with it.
After the eye surgery and tattoo, I had to go back to school. School has been pretty chill and the same as last semester. I missed seeing my 6th graders and I’m glad to be back with them. I have a new group of 4th graders, as I only taught half of them last semester. This semester, I am teaching the other half of the 4th graders. I was sad to say goodbye to my last batch but it’s nice to meet the new ones too. My little school is going well but it is busy as heck. Side note and super random, but I built and made a dog lamp with my host dad. My host dad owns a guitar wood work shop so he asked if I wanted to make a dog lamp and I of course said yes. It took about 5-6 hours but it was really fun and the lamp is so cute!
This past weekend, I had a big sleepover with five of my ETA friends at my place and it was so much fun. Because my host family owns a Hapkido studio, we were able to sleep in the hapkido studio instead of my apartment since it’s so much bigger. We also did a roof top Korean BBQ and had a lot of fun times. I got to go to Costco in Korea for this!!! We bought a lot of meat from Costco but haha as you can imagine, Costco in Korea is almost the same as the States besides the fact that there’s more Korean foods available. I also got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine! I am so incredibly grateful that I was able to receive the vaccine even though Korea is struggling with obtaining enough vaccines for everyone. But I can now say, I am officially vaccinated!!!
Anyhow, the reason why it took me so long to write a post was because I been in the midst of deciding if I’m renewing or not. After a lot of thought and considerations, I’ve decided to renew. I will be staying for another year with Fulbright. I decided to stay because I truly feel like I’ve grown a lot during my time here and besides my family and friends, there isn’t all that much I miss about the States. I will however be coming home for two months in December until February before starting my second grant year. During my second grant year, I’ll be applying for medical school so that hasn’t changed. It’ll be interesting to apply for medical schools while abroad though so hopefully that goes well.
But that’s it for this blog. If anyone has questions or anything they want me to speak on, just let me know in the comments! Super grateful for you peeps that read this blog because in the end, I know I’ll want it for the future. Best wishes and hope y’all stay safe and healthy!
Enjoy these pictures and videos!
