Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Return Home

Last subway ride
   After being home for almost two months now, I have settled into my weekly routine. Living back in the United States is amounting to be much more repetitive and uninteresting than my life was in South Korea. 
   Still sick, I returned to the States on the Second of January. After a long flight, I met my parents and brother at the airport, and met my aunt and uncle for lunch. After finishing lunch, it was time to go home. The rest of the weekend was spent recovering from traveling and sickness (I later found out, that it was mono).
   Now, that I was back in the United States, I had the month of January to complete my senior capstone project. If you remember, while I was abroad in South Korea, my senior capstone was to connect an American high school to the life, culture and history of South Korea through weekly blog posts. My final requirement for this project was to visit the classroom and present one final lesson. I scheduled my trip for January 17th.
Snow
   On the 17th, I woke up to snow in my hometown, but made the flight to Portland anyways. I got to Portland and used my free time to go back to my old work to visit some friends. I was surprised to see my work wife had returned to our job! While I was in Korea, I had spoken with her on the phone about how we had both left working at the recreation center and were doing different things with our life now, but she was the first person I saw in Portland.
Read my blog post here
   After reuniting with her, I began to make my way to the high school, only to check my email on the
max to see that Portland high schools had a two hour delay due to weather. My teacher had originally asked to reschedule, but because I flew in, we were still able to make it work. I gave the class a short lesson on Korean names.
   After finishing the lesson, I made my way back to the Portland State University campus to meet with friends. I spent my weekend with my friends Isaac, Roy, and Haley, playing mini-golf, catching up and of course, sharing all the missed drama.
   It wasn't long before I was in Portland again. The very next weekend I drove back up to Portland to join the Seollal celebration put on by the Korean Student Association. I got to see me good friend Sunho and see many of my other Korean friends. I was very happy to be back in Portland, but I realized, that coming to Portland a second time in such a short time made it even harder to return home.
   As for the rest of my time, I am keeping myself busy between working at the local parks and
Bam.Bam Designs
recreation department and my human anatomy class. I have started to get back in to photography as I drag my best friend along to abandoned locations to take photos.
   Also, I was able to convince her to have a Galantines with me this year. My best friend, her two younger sisters and I all went to the local sushi restaurant for Valentines and then went and saw Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey afterwards.
   For now, I just have work and school planned, but in my distant future I have very exciting plans to go see BTS in concert at Fedex Field!!