Thirty Days

A girl is sitting in a hospital room with her boyfriend of one year. He has a terminal illness. The girl is starting her first days of college at a prestigious-far away university next month. She will have to leave his side and move on with her life...He may pass away while she is gone, there's no telling.
With only thirty days remaining in Korea my stomach churns...that nervous, sad feeling you get when you say goodbye to someone you love, wondering if you'll ever see them again, but knowing that leaving is something that you must do and there are no other options.
So yes, my departure date is set and now I must focus on appreciating the time I have left on this little peninsula.
You know how people say, you don't know how to appreciate something correctly until it's gone. For the first time, I feel that the phrase is completely true. I wish that there had been some way that the knowledge I have of my 'home' could be transferred to when I first arrived. Although I have accomplished quite a bit while being here there is still so much more I long to do. Granted, there is still a month...so a little time remains. It feels unreal at this point, I know I'm leaving but I'm not even slightly ready for it; I just got to feeling completely comfortable here. There's still so much to do as well (Work related things, too)!!!!

Tourism: This past weekend I went to Changdeokgung (a palace) and Chandyakgan (a river) for a lantern festival. I'll post a link so you can see photos if you want. It was a lot of fun, however, it has gotten really cold lately. I had visited changdeokgung when I first arrived in Korea (it was my first tourist attraction here), but it had been really cold and all the leaves had fallen off the trees. I had wanted to go back before it got too cold because this palace is especially known for it's Secret Garden. Unfortunately, I did not make it in time because of it's tour schedules. It was nice to see it again though.
Click for photos!
It was nice to see all the lanterns lit up at night, too. I went with my friends Hayley and Jieun, but we were freezing!!

School: My students these days are as cute as ever. A few of them had contracted Swine Influenza, but none of them got too sick from it. One of them just came back from holding today (when they stay home to study for tests) and said, 'Margaret, you know I kind of missed you.' Peppero(빼빼로) Day was last week. It's kind of like a couples holiday, but students will give their teachers things on peppero day. Actually, as I was sitting here I just remembered it, and, being hungry, took out my peppero that a student had given me. If you know pocky it's kind of like that. Addicting and super delicious! I'll put up some pics of the loot I got soon.

Culture: This is my favorite Kpop song lately, it's called Chocolate Love. It's a music video by a very popular girl group, however, it is also a cell phone commercial. You see, to combat the piracy problem lately, the artists have just decided to use their hit songs as sponsorship songs for products. So the new cellphone is called Chocolate. And you'll see that they are using it shamelessly in the video. However, I don't think it's such a bad idea...why should we pay such exorbitant prices for music, especially when our world is in economic turmoil. Music is supposed to make people feel relaxed and relieve our stress not create more. So, why not take music and let it advertise, turn profit that way to offset that lost from CD sales. With no further delay, here is chocolate love,

Farewell.