April at a Glance

T.S. Eliot started his famous poem "The Waste Land" with the line, "April is the cruellest month," and were I to write a poem about my April, it might start with something similar. Not that it was a bad month, but it was certainly the most tiring, gruelling, stressful, and busy I've had in a long, long time. It started with Juan's visit and concluded with my Dad and Donna's a few weeks later. In between those two very busy periods I had lots of work to accomplish as I was tasked with developing and teaching a three-part writing class over a period of three weeks. In addition, I had to complete a variety of menial tasks. And of course Jenny also kept me busy. But as tough as April was, I wouldn't have traded it for any of the other months I've spent here--the work really was worth the results it produced.

The family visit went quite well overall. There was a little trouble with the food (particularly raw seafood, an abundance of spiciness, quirky vegetable dishes, and foods I just couldn't explain in English) and the cultural oddities, but the rest was quite successful in my opinion. They were able to meet Jenny's parents, who treated to an excellent seven or eight course meal at the first meeting. The next day they rented a van and both families took a drive to Gyeongju for a look around at Korean cultural sites. We were again treated to a nice lunch and a spectacular duck dinner at a restaurant that overlooked placid rice fields and gentle mountains. I should also mention that we had a mid-afternoon coffee break at a gorgeous lakeside cafe. More about that in a subsequent post...

Jenny and I had an eventful month as we met each other's parents and tried to plan out the future a little more. We haven't reached any definite conclusions about the next year yet, but we do have a Plan A and a Plan B that we'd like to pursue.

Next week I'll go into more detail, perhaps also mentioning the four day trip to Japan.