( Steph Lloyd )

I lost my phone over the weekend. I think I realized that I had lost it at some point during the day, but I pushed the feeling aside and kept going about my business. When we got home that night, I pulled everything out of my bag and couldn’t find the darn thing. I was really surprised because I’ve been known to misplace things in the house, but I’ve never really lost anything. Ever. I emailed some friends and asked them to call it and then emailed my boss and asked them to call and possibly turn it off. Koreans are pretty honest people, but I had this feeling someone would be making international calls to their cousins abroad. I called my boss from a payphone later on and she told me that a taxi driver in Seoul had the phone. He ‘delivered’ it to her brother for a fee of $30. I was so thankful that I didn’t have to buy a replacement phone the week before I left. The phone is still in Seoul, so I’ve been without my text messaging capabilities. I don’t have any friends, haha, so I text my students quite often. I’m going to miss those random, hilarious messages!

I went and talked to my taekwondo master earlier today and told him that I didn’t want to test before going home. I have so many things that I have to take care of before going home that I don’t have any time to practice. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that those other things are taking precedence, mostly because they have to do with getting money. Haha.

Tonight’s practice was less stressful since I wasn’t putting a bunch of pressure on myself to get it right. I was called out my master though, and that was a bummer. We had a sort of poomsae-off (like a dance-off, but with our forms). I’m the only non-blue belt, so they were all doing this upper level poomsae. When I got up to go against this punk, my master said to do the fourth poomsae, which isn’t hard, it’s just that I ALWAYS screw it up. It’s so annoying. So, I’m going through the first few moves and get screwed, get back on track, look at the kid, get confused again. At one point I turned to look at my master to let him know I didn’t know and he gave me this keep-going-or-i’ll-kill-you look. I started going again and then started laughing because I botched it so bad. I’m really not sure why I forgot it so completely, but I did.

After we were done, he gave the kid some comments and then turned to me and proceeded to say that I had bad manners and lectured me in Korean for a bit about… um… I’m not sure what because, hello, I DON’T SPEAK KOREAN! I walked away feeling bad that I screwed up my poomsae, but I didn’t even feel bad that he reamed me in front of the class. He’s got to do what he’s got to do and the last thing he’d want is for the kids to start laughing when they were supposed to be serious. For being the loser, I had to do 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups. After class I said thanks and bowed. He gave me a what-in-the-world-happened look and I just shook my head, smiled and left. Uh. I hate sucking! I have one more practice before we come home. I’m so sad!

Tomorrow we’re going to lunch with our Korean co-worker and working. Friday we have to go to the bank and then dinner with some other co-workers. Saturday we are doing a final pack of our things and possibly meeting a friend for a bit. I also have a crap load of things to finish up at work, only half of them are required, the rest I’m trying to do so that the next teacher will have an easier time jumping into things.

I couldn’t fall asleep again last night until 4 a.m. I have way too much on my mind! I’m going to go read for a few minutes and then hopefully fall into a deep sleep until morning. G’night!