Hiatus Over

It seems every time I write one of these things, I always have to preface it by stating how long it's been since I wrote the preceding blog. I haven't written since preparing for Korea, and since I've been here, I haven't had any extra time. This last weekend was the most relaxing weekend I've had since being here. Otherwise I've been traveling all over Korea seeing people. We've had a couple of weekends where we haven't traveled, but even those weekends we had deadlines to meet and places to be. It was kind of a bummer that Christmas weekend was the weekend we had nothing to do, but no major complaints. I wish I had a few more friendly and familiar faces around me at the time, but I got to Skype with my family and fully unwind. I think I got to watch 4 N.F.L games this weekend. I love watching my Steelers do their thing.
There are no classes this week and my school has been dead all day. We had a Korean blizzard yester-night. The inch of snow that dominated Gongju yesterday was enough to send cars into the side of the road and prevented many of my co-workers from coming to work. I was the first one to work today as everyone else was delayed. I actually have a lot of work to complete this week as my winter camp starts next week. It's going to be an intensive two weeks of winter camp. I need to have all my outlines prepared and materials ready. Our school is publishing a textbook for the two week camp and I am to prepare a chapter of the book. Daddy's going to be an author. I've spent most of my day reading up on old news that I missed out since I was so busy last week. I was originally told that I needed to have all my winter camp stuff submitted by Sunday, and on top of that I was forced to attend some training course after work. While I usually have some spare time at work or at home to keep up on news, I did not have any last week. I got to catch up on music news (this Paramore gossiping is so cute!), political news (Don't Ask, Don't Tell), movie news, and sports new.
It's already 3:20pm, so that means I've done about 6 hours of nothing today at work. Which isn't too bad considering most of my co-workers didn't even come to work or have been equally slacking. I really should have continued on developing my winter camp, but I have 4 more completely empty 8 hour days this week. Then it's New Year's weekend which I have no plans for as of yet. I'm hoping something comes up where I can be around people to start the new year. I feel as though I might get a little emotional as 2010 has been a very difficult year for me. I'm that it'll in my rear view where I can analyze is and use it as a growing tool. I'm bummed that I need to give Korea the first 3 months of my 2011, but after those 3 months I'm ready to gain some momentum in my life and take off. You'd think 2010 would have been a great year for me coming out of college with all sorts of momentum and everything in front of me. I guess we all need to fuck up, regroup, and try again.
I'm starting to feel like myself again, and it's about time. It has taken a long time to recover from my initial experience in Korea and my broken heart. I hear a lot of people look back at hard times and say that they wouldn't do it any differently. I would have done it differently. That's not to say that I haven't learned a lot and grown, but 2010 starting from February fucking sucked. There was a lot of excitement in February about going to Korea, but there was also a lot of anxiety and fear of the unknown. I took a leap of faith and trusted that things would be alright. Last time I take a leap of faith. Had I had a better grasp on the Korean people and Korean culture, I don't think I would've done it. I think so many people think about Samsung and their nifty little televisions and imagine Korea to be this advanced little country when they are actually a developing nation. I'm glad I got to experience living in a country that doesn't have everything we have back in America, because I know how truly lucky I am to be an American. My parents made some huge sacrifices by taking a leap of faith, and I'll forever appreciate that.
If I could go back, and change things, I definitely wouldn't have chosen to go to J.L.S English Academy in Jeonju. Nothing good came out of that. If I wouldn't have gone there, I would have never met Jinlan Song and I wouldn't have had my emotional foundation shaken like a Haitian earthquake. Maybe I'll write a full blog about that someday, but this doesn't seem like the blog to do it in. That story has earned a blog of its own. Maybe it's because I'm inexperienced with the fairer sex, but I'd like to think when a girl tells you the things I was told and offered the things I was offered, it's a big deal. I talked to her after she broke my heart and during my recovery process and she did promise me that it would take about 6 months to fully heal. I don't know if I'm just feeling better because I was given a deadline, or if she is a maestro of broken hearts, but it's about 6 months now and I'm feeling a lot better.
Everything this time has been about 156.76% better. That's after some rough calculations and rounding down. I've finished 3 months already, and the time has really flown by. That's pretty impressive seeing that I was in Korea for about 3 months last time, and it felt like 8 years. This time I actually have a worker's visa so I'm legally allowed to stay in the country for more than 3 months. I can only hope that my next 3 months will go by as quickly as my first 3 months. Then I'm going back home and having a mother fucking hamburger. I want to spend about a month working out and dieting to try to get into better shape. I lost 25 pounds net before I left for Korea. Which is pretty good considering that I was also lifting pretty hard so I must've gained some mass as well. I think a month of intensive dieting and working out will get me a lot closer to the conditioning I want to be at. I had nothing to do and was dealing with a broken heart before I left, so I went all out. 2 workouts a day totaling for about 6 hours at the gym and of course a strict diet. I was told, and I fully agree, that reshaping your health is about 80% diet, 20% exercise. I cut out almost all the sugar (minus a cup of orange or apple juice in the morning and some natural sugars from fruits), a lot of the fat (sometimes you just have to have a little fat when searching for protein, and I love peanut butter), and about 99% of my carbohydrate while eating in small portions every 3-4 hours. I've never done anything that dramatic with my health before, but it really works and I loved doing it. I was hoping to continue that trend in Korea, but being unfamiliar with my surroundings and having a full time job makes it really difficult. Therefore, I'm hoping to have about a month in America to really focus on my health and body. I'm doing to need some time to adjust and find a job anyways, so I'll use that time efficiently. I'm hoping to find a good job, work hard, put a dent into my loans, travel Europe, and then to school again in the next few years. I have a wonderful family and all the support I need to accomplish that vision. Right now, I have a ton of motivation behind me as well. I just hope that fire can remain lit for the next few years. I think if I ever need to re-start that fire, I can go look for someone to break my heart again. A broken heart is something everyone should go through as it is one of the best worst experiences you'll ever have. A few days after my heart was broken, I was able to chat with Anthony and Colin from Circa Survive. I was desperate and searching for an explanation and when I asked Anthony for advice the first words he said to me was, "that's awesome." My initial reaction was, "what a jerkoff!" but he as he continued to explain his stance, it made a lot of sense. Colin also confirmed that I would come out a better person. As I am just finishing my metamorphosis and breaking out of my cocoon, it is making even more sense to me now.
Well, I think I've avoided working enough today. I've got about an hour left at work so I think I'll waste my time doing something else. Hopefully I have enough time this week to write one more of these this week. If I don't, I'm sure I will in about 3 weeks when my winter camp ends.