Last Day on Earth

Question: If you had one day left before leaving your home, family, friends, country...what would you do? Answer: Drive back to Houston and pray to God that today will be the day that the Korean Consulate decides to give you a visa, because otherwise you're not getting on your 6am flight to Seoul the next morning. Then, after that prayer has been answered, you book it back to Austin in time to have a nice dinner with your family and a few friends. Finally, you try to fit 2 days worth of moving, packing and errands into 5 hours, failing miserably, and eventually dashing out of your apartment (because you're late for your flight) for the last time with way more stuff than you intended to bring and half of your remaining belongings still in your former apartment.

So now I'm sitting at a desk in my new apartment, ten minutes (walking) from the school I'll be teaching at. My building is the tallest in Ansan; 26 stories tall. It's hard to fathom the fact that last week I was delivering pizzas in Austin, and tomorrow I'll be teaching English in Ansan. From the beginning, roughly two and a half months ago, things have been moving so fast. It hasn't fully sunken in that I'm on the other side of the globe from my home. Just getting here was a challenge, but now it's completed. A new challenge begins tomorrow. I found out today that the Korean teacher I'll be working with has never taught English before. Well at least we have something in common. Should be fun. Bring on those 3rd graders.