jinju

the map of south korea (don't worry, no one got sent to the north) with all of our placements. that blue one at the bottom, within the green-bordered province, all by itself is my flag.

there's me. do you see the two greenish flags to the west of me? i'm calling us the bermuda triangle, where no one knows how to get to and where everything gets lost.

This is my placement, where i will spend the next year. Jinju is in southeast Korea, 5 hours away from Seoul. It's like 2 hours away from Daegu (where Susan is) and 2 hours away from Busan. I'll be teaching at the Gyeongnam Science High School (www.gshs.hs.kr). It's Co-Ed with about 200 students and the students live at the school. The school sounds like a sweet situation. The kids should all be pretty brilliant and motivated. But it is going to be painful being so far away from everyone else.

and when i say far away from everyone else i mean far away. it would take me as long to get to jeju as it would to seoul. i'm so isolated that some of the other fulbrighters were wondering if i asked for rural. the other two guys in my province are 2 hours away from me. a bunch of my fav people here (who i requested to be next too) are all together in a city that's like an hour away from seoul. i was all getting excited. i was thinking there's no way i'm not gonna be with this group in this city. wrong.

BUT, i do have a castle. although it might be less of a castle and more of a wall. but according to Jon (a previous Fulbrighter), it's got something cool inside of that wall. Jon is ridiculous. we essentially spent all of last night laughing about my situation. when i told him i got jinju he started cracking up and was like, "that's the opposite of what you wanted!" indeed.

BUT, i also have a lantern festival.

then we started talking about weather. and i grew up in LA right. where it's like 70s during winter, maybe 60 at night. here are some of Jon and Kelly's questions: what do you do during christmas? do you have christmas trees? where do the trees come from? what do you put on them? do you have snow? where does that come from? why do you think santa uses a sled?

apparently Korea's gonna be like 40 degrees. (i had to clarify whether that was Fahrenheit or Celsius.) i own one jacket. the coldest weather i've ever been in was Boston in march and i literally froze my ass off. it was like 50 degrees. yeah, i'm gonna die here. kelly offered me a jacket. i might have to consider it. no shame.

BUT, jinju will be warmer since it is so far south.

in summary, if you wanna see me this year, i'll be in jinju, in my castle/wall, singing Taylor Swift's Love Story, with my lantern, in warmer weather!