Final Countdown!

There are just 17 more days left until I set foot back on American soil.
I've been super busy but I wanted to update you all on the craziness that has been going on as
the deadline approaches.

First:

In two days I'll finish my Cambridge CELTA (Certification of English Language Teaching for Adults)!  I've been taking this intensive course for 3 months now and it feels great that to finally be finishing tomorrow.

My TO DO list today:

1. Write up last Teaching Practice about Dreams and 2nd Conditional grammar
2. Finish all of my DF's for remaining 14 Units (this may take all day)
3. Do last online observation with write-up.

If I'm able to finish all of this before my friend Tatlihan's birthday party tonight then I'll work on editing some photos for my portfolio from the Seoul Fashion Week 2010 show. I had so many shots and video from that show that I never really got to editing them all.

Second

Making the best of what you have

The word of today is procrastination.

Sometimes it suffices ...

and sometimes it really screws you over.

This time it did the latter.

I wasn't able to make my flight to Vietnam in time and thus missed out on an entire 2 week vacation in the warm tropics of South East Asia.

All the while I'm feeling my lips and fingers go numb from the cold snap that is hitting Korea.

Usually, when I face a setback of this proportion (or less at times) my first reaction tends to be to

• stress
• Then panic sets in as I pull out all stops and become desperate to make it work.
• Finally I become despondent and fill my cup of self-pity.

However, thanks to a great motivational piece from a friend I snapped out of the rising self-pity mode and decided to make due with what I have.

In his words:

"My unsolicited advice would be to call it a loss and a lesson learned and find ways to make a useful and productive vacation in Korea. Don't spend money you don't have and worse still borrow money that you should be saving for after you are done in Korea. Perhaps this is a good chance to work on something else. Sometimes things happen "for a reason". Exercise, take care of yourself, work on something creative, sleep early, avoid drama and take advantage of this incident to do some quiet contemplation without feeling sorry for yourself. Travel is great, but the things we like about it on an emotional or spiritual level can be found within and in the little things we do everyday."

Could a person really receive better advice than this?  Well said friend and thanks!


So now I need to make a to-do list of things to accomplish this week

• Clean house
• Finish TEFL paper once and for all
• Budget
• Do taxes
• mail out gifts and postcards
• Go to the gym!
• Sell stuff
• Start planning for March
• Find a light-weight, good quality laptop for travel

Is there anything else you would add to the list?

Failure to liftoff

So this is what it must feel like when you are stuck somewhere and there are few if any options available to you.

As I blogged last night..my mind was a bit frozen and my head swirling from a person's sudden departure from my life. I didn't pack my bags but instead just sat in front of the computer trying to make sense of my trip. I made sense of it. Figured out my itinerary. However, I overslept this morning and ended up missing my flight. After checking with the airport travel agency I was told there is only 1 flight to Vietnam tomorrow for Business class. Price tag. 960,000won.  That's about $900.  I don't have that. So...It looks as if I'm stuck here..at the airport. 2 weeks vacation and nowhere to go. 

Hope I find a way to Vietnam soon. It's a well-deserved vacation and would be a crying shame to end up spending my entire vacation at home and out $500 from airline costs.

too be continued...