Breaking Blog Silence

Good glory, it's been awhile.  Somewhere along the line, I fell off the blogging wagon (again).  Maybe it was the fact that Blogger is now blocked at my school (where I guess I did the majority of my blogging?), maybe it was the fact that I don't seem to do as many new and exciting things as I once did, maybe it's because I didn't have much to say in the way of blog worthy/appropriate content (would you believe that?) but let's just cut to the chase and say I got lazy.  So there you go.

Here's a short breakdown of what has gone down since the 4th of July, some of which will warrant their very own posts.  Cool.
> I signed up for a third round in Korea.  More on that later.
> I went home to visit for two weeks.  Definitely more on that later.
> (I wasn't going to blog about this, but it's become a fairly sizable chunk of my life here, so it's whatever) I dated a Korean dude, stopped dating him, started dating and stopped dating again (second round - different guy) and started talking to and seeing again the first guy.  Nothing too crazy or serious - trying to keep it light and fun, but if you know me very well, you'll understand that that's a bit of an oxymoron and much easier said than done...  Less on this later, but let me just tell you - dating in ESL is definitely interesting, at times frustrating, and most definitely complex, but in the end, at this point, delightfully challenging and pretty fantastic.
> school trip - imagine if you will: all of the EB teachers on a bus.  A raucous bus.  This most definitely warrants its own post as well.
> my first legitimate haircut (legitimate meaning not done by me in my bathroom) in over three years.  It felt so good to be in a salon again, and even better to be in one in which I couldn't speak enough of the same language as my hair dresser (I detest salon small talk - I'm so awkward about it, if you can imagine.).  Extra cool points: one of my students works at the salon to which I went and she helped do a lot of my hair (my hair needed a little extra love after three years...) - pretty sweet bonding experience with one of my pals.  The tresses are getting pretty long (by my humble pixie cut standards), folks.  Pony tails are my style of choice lately (it is SO FREAKING humid here) and I'm down to between two and four bobby pins to keep the stragglers in place.  Progress.
> plenty of Seoul gallivanting, including but not limited to fish pedicures, river cruises, Batman movie viewings (much better than I was ready to give it credit for...), bowling and probably much more than seems to be escaping me at the moment...
> Gwangju, Gwangju, Gwangju.  This city, my friends, is so good to me.
> once a month eye check-ups after my surgery - it's been almost four months since my LASEK surgery and whoa, what a game-changer!  The doctors (and me!) are continually impressed with the improvement in my vision given the sorry state of affairs in which my previous vision cast me.  Literally every appointment, my doctor says, "As you know, before, you had a very high level of nearsightedness (here comes my favorite part) and a PROFOOOOOOOUND amount of astigmatism.  And now, perfect vision.  Wow."  It sounds like he's really patting himself on the back, but I'm so over the moon with my change in vision that I'd gladly reach around and vigorously pat him on the back too.  Since my vision was so terrible and they need to continue the healing process, I'll have to continue these monthly checkups for at least a year.  No big deal.
> School, school, school.  Still love my school, still love my students.  Still feel unbelievably, inexpressibly lucky to have fallen into this situation, in case you were wondering.
> Joined the three fifths of the Korean population that has a smart phone (I'm serious!).  It is soooo cool to be able to talk to (most of) my pals at home in real time.  Like, whoa.
> Summer camp.  Nothing too crazy to report - pretty easy, pretty chill, pretty cool girls.  Hopefully the extra cool ones will come to our school next year!

Aaaaaand, that's all I can think of right now.  Here's hoping I come visit your computer more often :)