Hello everyone!
I am currently sitting in the plane, getting ready to take off from Grand Rapids and make my way back to Korea. Woo hoo!
Over the past two weeks I've gotten to visit with so many friends and family members; it's been great. I will admit, I am pretty excited to head back to Korea, but right now that's primarily because I'm truly ready to sleep in my own bed again. haha.
I am hoping that this time around things will progress a little better than they have the last few times I flew, and maybe that will be the case. Already I was upgraded to first class for my initial flight, although I did have to drop some weight at the baggage check.
Ok. Checking in again while in the air heading toward San Francisco. So that last flight ended up leaving about 35 minutes late because somehow it hadn't been refueled before we needed to go. And then the refueling truck ran out of fuel. haha. That's the way it goes. I made my flight with just enough time to stop and grab some breakfast before boarding. While sitting on this plane I watched some guys loading up luggage, and I actually saw them put one of my suitcases in the hold, but I didn't catch the other one. Here's hoping that it was just loaded before I started watching, although considering my track record (0 for 2 in the " luggage arriving on time at final destination" category) I'm already anticipating it to not be there on time. I would very gladly be wrong about this expectation though.
Let's see ... how about a little catch up? Just before leaving the country to come visit, my main class of 7 year olds finished their big English performance. Everything went really well with the show. The kids had a song/play/dance called "The Ox and the Frog" as well as a full play called "The Farting Contest". Both of these are funny little productions, and they went off without difficulty. Only two little glitches happened. As the first student gave his personal introduction and started to say, "When I grow up I want to be a ...", he froze. He simply stood there and looked a little unsure about what came next. Probably only 30 seconds or so passed before he picked up his lines again and finished off the sentence he had missed, but it seemed to last forever in that moment. You should know, whenever the kids step up to say some lines, our homeroom teacher will usually mouth the lines to help the students along. When I later asked Ji Hye about this student, she confessed that as he had said his lines, she had actually mouthed the wrong word to him, so he had had a moment of complete doubt and uncertainty; should he say "scientist" as he had practiced for the past weeks, or should he say "champion" as his teacher had mouthed. Haha. So instead of either he had just frozen.
During the whole performance series I controlled the CD player, so it was naturally my responsibility to make sure that everything was cued at the right time. I have had a paper copy of the script from the very beginning of our practices that lists all the track numbers and when they come up in the play. Now, as you can imagine, after going through these plays as many times as we have, I had pretty much memorized the order and timing of all the tracks, yet on that night, I had still kept the paper by my side just to make sure that all would go smoothly. We had used a CD earlier in the day that skipped or did some other unacceptable thing in the dress rehearsal, so come the real deal, we had even opted for a different CD that we thought had been burned pretty recently. During the performance the kids finished the first parts and cleared the stage to change costumes and prepare for the main play. I was supposed to start track 16 once I saw all the kids on the edge of the stage. The kids stood there, poised for action, so I pushed play. The kids didn't move onto the stage. They merely stood there and gave me the "deer in the headlights look." I could practically here some of them saying, "Ben teacher, what in the world are you doing?!" So I immediately paused the track thinking that maybe they weren't actually ready. I looked to the teacher helping them get ready for reassurance, and she motioned for them to start, so I clicked play once more. This time, Ji Hye peeked around the front row of parents to stare me down and once again give the "What's going on?" look. I then double checked the CD player and my paper script, and sure enough, both said "16." So I just raised my hands in the classic "Well I don't know" pose, and the kids came onto the stage. That's when I realized this important fact: my new CD, chosen to ensure that things went without difficulty, actually just didn't have the track that was supposed to be there. Haha. Go figure. The kids and Ji Hye had both known this immediately, but I hadn't realized until after it played a bit longer because I didn't recognize the song it actually was playing (the track formerly known as "17"). As it turns out, that CD had been made a long while ago because in some classes the teachers don't use that one song. Haha. Joke's on me. I think that's one of the few times that I've turned all shades of pink and red around the parents and kids since being here ... even if the embarrassment stemmed from something seemingly beyond my control. Lesson learned: always preview everything before the big day.
Checking in again. I'm now on my flight over the Pacific. Oh, yeah. So this is my first long flight in which there are not tv screens for each of the seats. This does throw a baby wrench in the gears, but I'll just have to make the best of it for the next 11 hours. (a bit later) Yet again, I have no fortune when it comes to sleeping on the plane (boo). As has been the case before, I feel the fatigue, but I don't feel sleepy at all ... even if I block out light and sound to the best of my abilities and try to lay back for a while. I'm so jealous of all those who can accomplish this amazing feat (ie- both of the guys sitting next to me. haha).
I'm in Korea! A couple hours ago by now I arrived in the Incheon Airport and placed my feet again on Korean soil. I went through Immigration, retrieved all my luggage and passed by Customs with no difficulty, and I am presently waiting to catch my bus back to Gwangju, which leaves within the hour. And I just ate my first Korean food since being back (mmm … delicious). I am still so excited to get home and go to sleep tonight. Whew. It will be great. I think that I'll wrap up this message now. We'll see how my readjustment and catching up on sleep go this week (because starting tomorrow I jump right back into the busy schedule that I left 2 weeks ago … plus there's a little extra through the end of this month), but I'm hoping to go through pictures and videos from the past month and get some things posted. This upcoming weekend I'll be traveling around a bit with some friends here, so I have a feeling that there won't be another big update for a week or so, but that's ok, right? Right. haha.
I am so glad that I got to catch up with a bunch of you during my time back in the States, and if we didn't connect this time, next time I will be around for longer … so we'll see one another face-to-face then. And as always, there's always Skype. I can usually make plenty of time for video chats or even just phone calls.
Lots of love,
bg
No comments:
Post a Comment