Week 19, 20 & 21: No changes

Good morning or evening everyone! I will just jump right into it. So week 19 was pretty chill because I had Wednesday off due to a national holiday called Buddha's birthday. Typically there would be a giant festival and plenty of things to do in my city but because of Covid-19 almost all festivals have been cancelled which is really unfortunately. I feel like being here in South Korea during Covid times is good and bad. South Korea has been doing so well in managing their cases just from contact tracing and following the guidelines but yet their vaccination program is so slow. A lot of the activities that I normally would be able to go to are either cancelled or have group limit. If I was in the States, I would have been fully vaccinated long ago but currently Korea has only vaccinated about 5% of the population and I don't think I'll be vaccinated until September-ish. I think a reason why the vaccination program has been so slow is because people don't feel the need to get vaccinated. The country has been doing really well with just contact tracing and protocol guidelines but still, I wish they would open up the vaccinations to those who want it (like me).

Anyhow, life has been good and teaching the students is challenging but also very rewarding. The students still ask me a lot of questions and are always excited to talk to me which makes me feel very welcomed. Since the beginning of the school year, my elementary school has been doing a hybrid of online and in person classes every other day but starting my 21st week, we are moving to all in-person which will be a chance in pace. I haven't done a week where I will be teaching students everyday so we'll see how exhausting that will be but I also feel like this will allow the students to get to know me more quickly and be comfortable having a foreigner around.

Aside from school, I'm still traveling around South Korea and exploring a lot of new places. Last weekend, I went to a city called Geoje, which is like an island city. It was really beautiful but so hot and humid so we ended up not doing a whole ton of stuff outside. However, we did go zip lining. I also ended up going shopping for summer clothes because I realize all of the clothes that I brought will be way too hot for this summer. I happen to be living in the hottest part of the country so this summer will be brutal. The temps have only been around 75 degrees Fahrenheit but the humidity have been like 90-95% already.

I'm also still loving kickboxing. I'm so glad I made the switch from hapkido to kickboxing. As much fun as hapkido was, I never felt like I was getting a good workout and exercising with a bunch of my elementary students can be mentally exhausting. With kickboxing, even though the workouts are extremely hard, I still enjoy every minute of it and love being at the gym. All of the dudes I workout with have been incredibility kind, even though I'm the only girl there. I would say I am in the middle of the pack. There are for sure people there who know way more then I do but there are also a lot of beginners in the classes too. I've sparred with some of the more advanced guys and yeah they can pack a punch and kick. But don't worry, they pull their punches with me because I am the smallest person there by like 50 pounds. I'm also learning a lot more moves particularly with kicking so its been exciting to see the progress I have already made so far.

Well, I guess that is all for now. I hope everyone is staying safe and having fun! Miss and love y'all. Please enjoy these videos of me zip lining and having a 1-1 session with one of the more advanced kickboxers. Also enjoy this other clip of one of my students dancing to a very famous song called "Rolling".