Back in the swing of things...

It was wonderful to be back in America for a month, but it has also been good to get back to normal life and routines. I didn't take nearly as many pictures in Indiana as I do in Seoul, so here are a few random highlights, although this certainly isn't a comprehensive overview. 

I always forget how much I love American beef. In Korea, I usually eat Australian beef. It's good, but not quite the same.... 

It was great to get to catch up with all of my friends and family. I got to wine and dine my grandpa at Bob Evans one morning. 

Thanks to wonderful stores like Hobby Lobby, I was able to reconnect with my inner craftster. 

Isn't it amazing? There's lots of pepperoni, REAL cheese, and it didn't cost $35!!

I made some Korean food for my family, but I'm not sure if they enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the American food. 

It was amazing to walk into a shoe store, and know that they would carry my size. I stocked up for the year. 

I also reconnected with my past self. I guess this is proof that I've never liked mornings, and probably never will. I look just about like that now when I wake up. 

I did go through quite a bit of culture shock when I was back. I guess it makes sense, going from scenes like this: 

and this: 

to this:

My flight back was a little round-about... My flight from Chicago to Tokyo was delayed by almost 24 hours. I got on the phone, and after an hour and a half figured out a different way to get home. This was the good news. The bad news is that I now had a layover in Munich, Germany. It was almost 9 hours to fly from Chicago to Munich, then another 10 1/2 hours from Munich to Seoul. I was so incredibly happy to make it back to my apartment after all of that. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it until a few days later. But it was nice to not have to try to pull large suitcases up the big hill outside of my apartment. 

Things have been plunging ahead at work as well. The new semester starts on Friday, so we've been doing lots of meeting and preparing. It's going to be quite a busy semester. I'm teaching at least five different courses, possibly six different ones. It should be an adventure. We had a welcoming ceremony for the incoming Freshmen last week. The foreign faculty had to sing a welcome song in Korean. It was pretty terrible... They also made us put on academic robes and hoods and mortarboard hats and process through the auditorium and sit on a stage. As we were all donning our regalia, there were lots of Harry Potter jokes flying around the room....

Finally, just to leave off with a little bit of the whimsical randomness of Korea, here is a karaoke room mascot and the American Santa from the Santa display at my school...