Lately I really miss Europe.  Actually, I miss everything Western, I think... I just love Europe the most, so I miss it the most.  But I also miss Utah, going on base, and even Canada just a little bit.  I don't really know what's going on with that.  I blame work.

The thing about work is that I'm becoming more and more certain the problem is inside my own head.  I mean, yes, work is ridiculous, but it kind of always has been and I'm just getting less and less tolerant.  And my co-teacher is ridiculous, but she's a very nice person and it's not her fault that all her little idiosyncracies drive me right up the wall.  Even her disorganization is probably not something manageable.  Unfortunately, her extreme extroversion and my extreme introversion are always going to make life unpleasant.

Just for example, a couple of weeks ago I was trying to work on my book (which I'm currently polishing up in preparation for publishing.  I don't have a publisher yet, of course...) and she asked me, loudly, about songs I missed from my childhood.  Then she played one from hers, also loudly.  Then she thrust a piece of paper and pencil at me and insisted I write down a song I missed, so I wrote down two, both older songs since I never really listened to pop that much... well, ever.  Then she criticized them for being "too old" and from her generation, not mine, so I explained that my mother used to play those songs and that's why I liked them.  Then she said she had wanted ONE song, not two.  All of this took quite a few minutes.  Then she played one of the songs.  From her point of view, I assume, she was trying to be friendly and I was being cold.  From mine, she was annoying me in the middle of my work.  I try to be polite about all this, but, you know, it's not satisfactory to her and so I'm pretty sure both of us are struggling with the situation.

Later on, that day or another day, she ordered food.  I don't want to eat another meal at 3 PM.  Of course insisting that I didn't want to eat was big deal, and then when the food arrived she had other teachers in to eat it together and they were all eating and talking loudly, and again, all I wanted to do was work and it was very difficult.  Same problem as the above.

Anyway, it's only a few more months...

Aside from that, Chris and I saw the Seoul Fireworks Festival last weekend and I tried messing with my zoom and that worked out as well as I'd wanted, so I was pleased even though the bulk of my pictures were pretty bad.  We also went to the horse racing park on Sunday, which was something I'd wanted to do for years, and that was pretty cool for the couple of minutes each race lasted and rather less cool for the hour or so in between each race.  This weekend we went to Gangwon-do to see the sea and all that; actually, there's a villa in what used to be North Korea before the Korean War, and Kim Il Sung and his family used to vacation in this villa.  That's all.  It probably wasn't worth the time it took to get out to it, but it's not so bad walking along the beach in the fall while the leaves are changing colours and the weather is a reasonable temperature for once, and I had a nice day.

It's leaf-changing season here now, and I was hoping for some nice pictures of that, but quite honestly it's got nothing on Canada.  The leaves in Canada change to scarlet, neon orange, and bright yellow.  The leaves here start to look either a little rusty or a little pale.

Okay, that's all for now.  My normally awesome life is kind of a grind while I put up with work and struggle through the final level of Korean class.  I just want to pass, just want to pass, just want to pass... after that, it'll be vacation time and my schedule will totally clear up for more interesting projects.  I actually really enjoy the class, and even my classmates who are usually pretty cool, but when it takes up the entirety of my non-Chris evenings every week and I have to spend an hour or two every day doing work for it... it gets to be kind of a burden.

Oh yeah... also, I don't like to write travelogues in here like I used to, just because Chris also goes to the same places and writes about them (for a much wider audience) and I don't really like doing the same thing as he does.  (Also, I'm lazy.)  But maybe once we start going to more inspiring places.  Korea is kind of tapped out right now...