tea diaries ~~~~~ groooooovy

Wow, it's been almost a month! I think I have trouble focusing on more than one thing at a time. Well, my novel is done, I finished it in the afternoon of November 30th - I'm not saying it's good or anything, but it's DONE. That's what I signed up for. I think it's okay for a first draft, it definitely needs a lot of editing before I can think about submitting it anywhere, but it feels so good to complete what I started. Did I think I'd actually write a novel when I started it on November 1st? Well -- no. I think I thought I'd have some decent excuse - maybe my job would give me another class to teach, or I'd down with a bad case of the mumps or something - and it would have to be put on hold. The cold weather here made going outside so unattractive that it wasn't hard to just sit in the library and in cafes and let it write itself. :)

I'm on another little semi-vacation right now for a week - the CAMPS start this Friday, during which I've been warned that we'll be working weekends, evenings, weekend evenings, and perhaps new hours will be added to the original 24 just so we can work a little bit more. It's the calm before the storm. So in the spirit of togetherness and bravery, our department took us all out for a hike on one of the oreums (small mountains) of Jeju.



Being December, it was a little cold, but the views were still beautiful.



When we came down from the mountain it was still morning - amazing! I'm not used to waking up early for these kinds of adventures. We went to this horse and pork restaurant which was filled with these little cartoon pictures of horses and pigs frolicking together and raising hoofs in cheery, smiling hellos. I love horse - I've had it before - the best part being raw horse meat with sliced pieces of pears. Ohh ... I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.