T minus 21

Unbelievable. Just three weeks to go.

This has been a tiring week, and it's not over yet. I've had two full eight-hour days of teaching and one six-hour day. I'll also be teaching a full eight-hour day this Saturday as a favor to a coworker who's taking Saturday off. (I had thought I was done with Saturdays, but this "subbing" request suddenly came down the pipe, and it would have been churlish of me to say no.) I've got a ton of packing yet to do: boxes to buy, labels to slap on—you know the drill. Today's a short day (only four hours of teaching), so I'll be able to come home early and get right to it. Tomorrow I'm off, so I'll have to take advantage of the free time. (I'll also be traveling to the Korean Consulate tomorrow, come to think of it.)

Yesterday's Korean session went well. The two girls I taught were cousins; the older one is a rising seventh-grader; the younger one is an unbearably cute rising second-grader. Older Cuz caught on pretty quickly as we plowed through the basics of writing and pronouncing hangeul and rudimentary Korean syllables. Little Cuz struggled to keep up. At several points she marveled, "How can R. [older Cuz] go so fast?" as Older Cuz blazed through her writing practice sheets. Little Cuz is no slouch, though: she's got a great ear, and yesterday she imitated the pronunciation I modeled almost flawlessly. Little Cuz's problem, though, is that she's so distractable that I don't think she memorized a single hangeul letter. She's going to have to work on that; if she doesn't, she's going to find herself falling way, way behind.

Anyway, au boulot.


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