Meeting family in Busan

We're headed to Busan tomorrow. It's the big day of the Lunar New Year celebrations and my wife and I are visiting her aunt and uncle. Also coming are my wife's cousins. She has four, all roughly around her age. Today we went shopping for a few gifts. Some ginseng for her uncle and aunt, some "facial mist" for the woman and we also got some wine for her male cousin and the husbands of her cousins. I don't think they are expecting anything but they were so generous at our wedding we are happy to get them a little something.


I've met one of her cousins (and her husband ) twice before and most of the rest of the family when they came to our wedding but it'll be the first time seeing one of them. I'm a little nervous because not many of them speak English and I don't know what we'll be doing but the last time we met it was a happy occasion and I'm hoping this will be fun too. We booked a hotel for the night and will try to explore some parts of Busan that we haven't seen before.

Running on empty

New week, new series at work, no difference to my schedule. Thankfully I only work two days and then it's Seolnal (Korean New Year). I have a five day weekend to look forward to and hopefully recharge my batteries.


I do need a few days off. Currently I only have breaks on a Wednesday. We received our schedule for the new series last week. I was eagerly anticipating it hoping for a change but no, still the same. A few teachers have breaks on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday. The schedule is unfair but I do not know how it is put together - though this is of course not the fault of those teachers getting breaks.

If some teachers are to have breaks then it has to be spread around to the others eventually for it to be fair in the long term. Next months schedule will be interesting as the disparity cannot continue for much longer. It's hard to live up to the owner's awesome expectations when there is no time for a breather.

I am thankful that the next two days are very easy. I have zero planning to do as they either require no preparation or are classes I prepared for last year. With a lot of teachers leaving the peninsula over Korean New Year it's safe to say nobody wants to be working! The weather warms up a bit over the next few days so the break will see a nice respite from the cold.