off to Seoul!

This (Thursday) afternoon, I'm taking the train up to Seoul, and I'll be there until Sunday. Will be meeting some friends and taking care of other business while I'm in town. Ought to be fun. Alas, from about 1PM to 5PM today, I'll be in the office, listening to students' whingeing. Some of it is going to be tearful; Miss Distraught will be making one final attempt to change my cold, cold heart, and it's not going to work. She's going to suffer the consequences of her actions, and if that means the loss of certain financial benefits for her, so be it.

I'm not sure I'll know what to do with myself during my free time up in Seoul. Shop? Heh—I'm poor. What can I possibly shop for? I had thought about bringing up my Droid X, so as to get it repaired at a decent electronics shop, but that's not going to happen: money again. Perhaps I'll just wander. The Cheonggyae Stream is a good spot for flâneurs.

So the plan is to arrive in Seoul Thursday night (I've bought my train tickets), go to a lunch appointment and a dinner appointment on Friday, both in Itaewon, meet someone in Yeouido on Saturday, then... what? I'll be free until Sunday afternoon. Perhaps I'll catch a movie while in town. Maybe "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire."

At 5PM on Sunday, I head back to humble Hayang. I won't be on vacation quite yet: we profs have one more obligation before Christmas—something called "Final Button Day." It sounds like an award ceremony for Mouseketeers at the end of their tenure, but Final Button Day actually refers to the locking-in of our posted grades. The idea is that, from now until that day, students can call their professors, weep, gnash their teeth, beg, sit, stay, roll over, heel, and do whatever else they think will persuade the profs to change their grades. But once that begging period is over, and once the changes (if any) have been made, along comes Final Button Day, and all the grades will be locked in permanently. It's a shame this has to happen on Christmas Eve; we're required to be physically in the office to click the lock-in button (although one of our number has apparently figured out how to click the button remotely) on that day. But it's only a small chore, one little click, so I'm not chafing that much.

After that: vacation for nearly two months! We're not back in action until late February. As I mentioned before, it may be that I'll be working during vacation; I know for a fact that I'll have to prepare an entire curriculum for the pronunciation course I'll be teaching, and I've got other projects lined up as well. I stare at my fat ass and realize there's no West for the reary.


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