good bye (and good luck!) (and thank you!) sandy teacher

we've had a busy week, and a too-short/one-day weekend. due to the irrational growing fear of h1n1 in south korea, and more specifically, at our little hagwon, school was canceled last friday. and while we had no complaints about an impromptu 3-day weekend at the end of last week, the "make-up" day for cancellation meant classes on saturday, and a 6-day week. and only one lonely sunday free of work commitments. boo-urns.

to bring you up to speed: the flu pandemic is no greater here than at home, south koreans are just huge hypochondriacs. you'd think they'd replace the communal towels in the bathrooms at school before shutting it down for an entire day due to germ-spreading fear (nevermind the nonsense of canceling friday's classes so that everyone's worries will have dissolved by ... monday?) but, anyway.

saturday's work day was also mark's partner teacher sandy's last day at school. she is moving on to bigger and better things (and more specifically, starting her work-free adventures by traveling to singapore and hong kong, awesome!). needless to say, we were pretty sad to say goodbye. we bought her a cake and a card that said "thank you" when it should have said "good luck" ... but thus is the hazard of my poor hangul reading skills. that being said, i suppose thank you still served a purpose! we received good bye presents too - in the form of matching couple mugs! how sweet. my vote is to emblazon this glorious pic on matching t-shirts. i'll let you know if this fantastic idea to jump on the korean-style-bandwagon ever comes to fruition.

other than that, we've more or less been laying low since our island holiday two weeks ago. there are only 10 days left in the countdown to our trip to beijing, china over chuseok (korean thanksgiving) (!!!!!!!!!!!), so down-time and curtailing of frivolous spending is in order. frugal pastime #1 - continuing with my self-run book club. i'm now onto jonathan safran foer's everything is illuminated, which with the opening line: "my legal name is alexander ... but all of my many friends dub me alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name." (1) has me swooning already.