Keep your eye on the prize

We're currently in the middle of golden week here in Korea. Golden week is the week surrounding Buddha's birthday and it comes with a long weekend, lanterns and free food. Last weekend Lance and I visited Seoul to see the annual lantern festival. We arrived early and spent the whole day there. We ate a fabulous Mexican lunch (which is the only place I can convince Lance to eat while we're in Seoul now), visited some display lanterns at a temple and along a river. We got to see several women walking around in beautiful Hanbok, traditional Korean clothing. We were also able to make a couple of our own lanterns in honor of Buddha's birthday at a temple we visited. The Korean lady who helped us was very generous with Lance's poor attention to detail and ended up finishing his for him. It was beautiful. Finally we were treated to the main event; a parade full of beautiful ladies in Hanbok, Buddhist monks and even some politicians. However beautiful, the festival this year was also somber. All of the participants wore yellow ribbons to remember the Sewol ferry accident that happened a couple weeks ago. About 300 people, mostly students from a neighborhood in Seoul, drowned. It's affected Korea on a nationwide scale and the festival was no different. We enjoyed watching the beautiful festival and hearing the monks music, but what we witnessed was an entire country in mourning. I'm glad for the experience, even if it was a sad one.
On a daily note, Lance and I moved to our new Apartment on Tuesday and we've been teaching at a school in Dangjin. We like the school and our co-teachers, and we really like being in a more urban area. That goes double for the little rice burger place down the street that has been sustaining us. However, we've been moved into an apartment smaller than most hotel rooms. We have one room and a tiny kitchen. We're trying to make it work because we really don't have any other choice. Right now we have a mini fridge, smaller than I had in college, and no dresser or closet. Hopefully in the coming week that will be remedied.  We're happy with the actual working part of the job, but like all Hagwon owners our boss is incredibly cheap and he's taking advantage of having foreigners whose housing and visa are in his control. Lance and I would be willing to look for yet another job but there is no promise that that job will be better and it would delay coming home further. Right now we want to focus on getting into grad school so that we won't have to work jobs like this ever again. Our eyes are on the prize.