back to school blues

my new teacher is nice. She said write what we did this Summer. We went to Sea World. There were dolfins and sharks and manatnees. it was fun. Then we went to the beach. I burned all over like a lobster. My new house is bigger and the cats excape all the time. we moved into my new house. i like it a lot. i went to work lots of times. it's not as fun as the beach. splash! That's what the waves say. We ate at In & Out cheeseburgers. I wanted ice cream but we were out. My boss at work said thank goodness summer camp is over now we can relax.

Ha ha - like I go to school.

Really I moved and helped my husband start up his new business. I worked at my paid job at the YMCA hiring and then terminating all the summer camp staff, and I worked at my volunteer job cleaning up poop at the wildlife rehabilitation center (and playing with critters). The summer flew by, and I'm sad that it's gone because I didn't go on vacation yet.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

An essay by Stephanie Tyson (the 5 yr old part of me)

I was in a play. It was called a Midsummer Night's Dream. It was written a long time ago by some guy called Billy Shakespeare. He must have talked real funny because the lines we had to say were really weird. I was queen of the fairies and got to wear a pretty dress. (But no wings - boo). I got to make a lot of new friends. They are all pretty strange, but that's ok because I am too. Not a lot of people came to see our show, but we still had fun. Oh - I almost forgot - I got to paint the set and the sign outside. People said I did a real good job, and I got a gold star.

The rest of my summer was pretty boring. I had to work in a library everyday.
The end.

South Korean Summer

It's interesting to think about how, for so many people, summer is a time of rest and relaxation, while September is the time to get back to work. For me this year, it's essentially the opposite. Not only did I work all summer, but I taught summer intensive classes too! (Ok, so my schedule wasn't that intensive or anything, but still...) Plus, as of tomorrow at 9:15pm, I will have NO MORE work related responsibilities here in Korea. AND my plans for September include... doing nothing. Glorious!

That being said, I most certainly did do some interesting things over the course of my summer... but, being the blogging-obsessed geek that I am, I have already written about them extensively elsewhere. However, on the off chance you haven't read those posts, here are the highlights of what I did with my free time this summer: I went to Busan and GyeongJu, I attended a mud festival and a fireworks festival, and I visited a Korean Folk Village. So check those links out and enjoy!

P.S. I'll be back in the States in 8 days. Can you believe that??

Back-to-School essay

The ol' Supergroup here has been a little sparse. Not just the bloggers, but even our regular commenters have been slacking on the job! I would like to think that that's because everyone is out having fabulous summer adventures, and not because we got too boring to endure. Nah, it's probably not that (right??).

What have you been doing, Oh Readers and Bloggers? Next weekend is Labor Day, which, for lack of any other reason for existing, marks the unofficial ends of prime summer vacation time. The kiddies (and teachers) are going back to school, Congress is back in session, these fancy-ass euro-asian month long vacations (jealous!) are drawing to a close, and now it's time to reflect on how we spent our time-- how we matured, how we devolved, how we created stories to tell our grandchildren (with more embellishment here and less here, here, and here).

As I’ve mentioned previously, my Big Adventure this year was my 9/10-day trip to Japan (9 days there, but 10 counting travel). During this action-packed trip I visited Tokyo (karaoke!!), Kawagoe (Fudomyo!!), Kamakura (Zen gardens!!), Omiya (yukatas!!), Kyoto (big rocks!!), and Mt. Fuji (sunrise over clouds!!). A small selection of my over 460 photos are available here, but even they can’t do it justice. As with any great experience, I saw, did, ate, and learned things that have already affected my view on life and the assumptions of my culture.

I spent several weekends in Princeton, New Jersey, when my boyfriend, William, was living there, but now he has moved farther away so I don’t have to drive to central Jersey anymore. That’s the good side. The bad side, obviously, is that he’s farther away and I don’t get to see him as often. But he’s coming to Washington this weekend!

Last weekend I went to Dewey Beach in Delaware. As a Florida girl, it took me a while to get over the idea of traveling to Delaware, of all places, to go to the beach, but it was actually really nice. We went to a beach in a state park that was well maintained, sandy, and had good waves and cool water. I was a little worried about all the sunshine because the previous weekend I went to Front Royal and went tubing down the Shenandoah River. Four hours of sunshine are a little much for my northern european skin tone, and I roasted. But I applied 50 SPF suntan lotion this weekend about every 30 minutes and did fine (although I was peeling quite a bit, ewwwww).

I also took a trip back home for just over 24 hours for a friend's wedding in early July. This was a great amount of time to be there, although it was pretty expensive. I got in, hung out with my parents, went to the wedding with another friend, and left the next afternoon. The friend who got married had a bachelorette party earlier in the summer in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, where I had lots of outdoor fun and learned about John Brown, too!

And even without leaving DC, I got to do cool stuff! My mom came to visit for about a week and we visited Arlington Cemetery, Harper’s Ferry, and saw the family. Later, I went to the DC United game that was David Beckham’s MLS debut (swoon!), and my work softball team won the league championship!!

Damn, it’s been a busy 3 months!!