Another year over

Random Wednesday thoughts:

I just came from the movie theater where I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe. It was all right. I have the next two days, Thursday and Friday, off for our academy's "winter break." One of my Canadian co-teachers and I ever-so-gently pointed out to one of our Korean teacher friends that four days constitute really not so much a "winter break" as a "long weekend," but what can you do? At any rate, it's the first holiday or days off since I got here! My timing was just that bad, starting work here October 10th: I got here just after the big Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) and there has been a dry spell of two and a half months to welcome me. I think it was the longest period without a holiday in the entire year. Grand. My baptism by fire!

I haven't decided exactly what I will do for New Year's this weekend -- maybe Seoul? -- but tomorrow my agenda consists of relaxing and not much else. Maybe another movie.

Did I mention the other great thing about the no holidays thing? Since my job in the States the first nine+ months of this year was for the establishment which shall not be named at which I worked every holiday, I didn't get any there either. So I basically managed to work an entire year with no holidays. The only days of the year the B-land shuts down are Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I left before those, see? Good times. Oh well, who needs holidays?

I just rode the subway back from the movie theater to my neighborhood. The Daegu subway is very clean and also easy to use (and signage includes some English and Chinese!) but the last trains are around 11:30-11:50 p.m. That's unfortunate. The Seoul subway goes a bit later than that. A lot of things in Korea are open late -- it's no Boston -- but the subway in Daegu is not one of them. However, taxis are cheap and plentiful, so no problems when you stay out late.

I've been getting occasional bowl game news, mostly from the American Forces Network radio station, but I will have to pay attention to see what's going on with my USC Trojans right now.

I still haven't determined on what channel the Oscars will air, but I did find out definitively it's not the American Forces television station, as they don't have the Korean broadcast rights. If it's a live telecast, it will be on around mid-morning Monday. I might have to take the day off. Unless I can get our VCR to function. (Don't hold your breath. The broken VCR is waaayyyy down on the priority list in our apartment. Plus, who couldn't use a Monday off? See above re: holidays/days off.)

All right, that's my report from the last Wednesday of the year.