the bright moon is our heart

Hello, Tumblr and Tumblr readers. Good heavens, how times fly and change and swoop and dash and meander and wander. In any event.

Last week was meant to be my return to civilization but as the fates would allow, I came down with some sort of mystery sickness. As my actual voice (the one from my throat) was ruined, so were my hopes to type out anything worthwhile dashed. I just slept and laughed at my inability to hit certain notes. And snotted. A lot.

I’m on the better side of it now, though still feeling a bit of the fatigue. I had a vacation the last week of January and managed to update my photo albums on flickr, so go to those for a visual diary of what’s been going on. But my intention is to post an entry for each month that I’ve more or less missed. And then I’ll have to devote an entirely new one to my vacation destination: Hong Kong. 

But before any of that happens. I’m typing this from my classroom at school, and so I feel like I should talk about my current feelings about my job. Next term is my last one (and I do mean last, just to squash all those rumors about me staying another year). One more term means that after next week, I’ve got 3 months until my contract is over. 

I’m very ready to move on. I think my teaching style has been on auto-pilot this week, but the one thing that makes me sorry to go and happy to have these months left is the students. Everyday one of them finds some way to delight me, and I look at them from behind the eyes of someone who’s going to have to say goodbye to them before either of us is ready. For example, while teaching today, one of my students interrupted me to say “Teacher, your voice is very good!” because they were all very worried about me last week when I sounded so strange.

And lately, they’ve gotten into the habit of coming up to my desk to whisper secrets in my ear. They’re usually harmless things like their siblings’ birthdays or their test results. But it feels nice to be part of their world. There’s a bit of graffitti on the other side of my desk and my student drew my attention to it. I asked him what it said. “I love Sun-Teacher.” Even the vandals are showing me love!

If it weren’t for them, the only heart I’d be leaving in Korea would be the one I’ve shared with the friends I’ve made. But now I’ve got hundreds of little strings tied to me and I am dreading the day I’ve got to cut them all loose.

The bell is about to ring, so that’ll be where this thought ends. Just an update of my current internal state of affairs. And then tangible things soon soon soon!