Before I begin this post, a happy birthday to Matt Compton, my roommate for two years ... happy bday dude! (It's 8/3 here in Korea, so I'm allowed to ...)

Back to your regularly scheduled program:

Yesterday I finished up work around 930 [I'm always the last one to leave now...] and left the hakwon [... but I got a set of keys!] and headed home. I was dead exhausted from teaching 8 hours (and being at the hakwon for 12+ hours...).

On the ride back, there's a bridge that I cross on the bus... and man. The night was beautiful. It was f'ing beautiful.

The moon was out last night, and it just seemed so _big_ because it was so bright. The image as I crossed the bridge with the bright moon reflecting across the dark river ... with the subway/train overpass bridge in the background and a huge domed building in the far right ... with the 63 Building (the cleverly named 63 floor building) in the background ... all giving off different colors of lights. I wish I had my camera then. I would of gotten off the bus, walked to the center of the bridge, and taken the exposure.

But no such luck. I had left my camera at home. So I hurried back home, grabbed my camera, and headed on the bus back towards where I wanted to go. About an hour later, I was back on the bridge, but as luck would have it, the clouds came out and thus blocked the moon.

Totally bummed. This picture, had I been able to capture it right when I originally crossed the bridge, would of been my favorite nighttime exposure. Damnit.

You can't capture them all, I guess. I did manage to fire off a few shots, but they were all sub-par, so I ended up trashing most of them. So that was a two hour expedition for nothing.

But there is something very scary about taking pictures late at night on a highway overpass ... with cars buzzing by you at 60-70 km (not horribly fast) while one is trying to get an exposure. Even if the "sidewalk" is about 4 feet wide ... one can always feel the buses and trucks rumbling past.

In terms of teaching, things are about the same. Totally burned out, but I'll survive. I'm ready to quit working here and go back to school where I can relax to some SVU late night, chatting with Yush and Sech (I do miss those two clowns, even if they are my mortal enemies).

The hakwon put me in a position to teach a one-time extra class for the 7th and 8th graders ... I made them a chemistry glossary and I went over some SAT math problems. Not getting paid, and I'm usually dead and hungry after teaching 4 hours of SAT in the morning, but it was enjoyable. Teaching SAT is f'ing repetition, and it bores me out of my skull. The 7th/8th graders I taught, who have a reputation for being bad, were truly interested in learning what I had to teach ... because it was above their level.

Perhaps it struck a chord with me since I've never been satisifed with the level of schooling during my pre-college days ... it never matched my level.

So although it was supposed to be a one-day thing, I decided I'll teach them as long as they're interested in learning. Of course, I'm not getting paid for the overtime work (as has become usual, it seems), but who am I to deny these kids real education when they really want to learn?